by Molly Ringle
“Try living a long time without aging.”
“As if I’m patient enough for that.” She performed a running leap into a tree, where she caught a branch and scrambled up. Hades glowered at her, hand on hip. She jumped down, cloak flying, and laughed in delight when the hard landing didn’t sprain her ankles—in fact, didn’t even hurt at all.
“Here.” He stepped in front of her and drew his bronze dagger from the sheath on his belt.
“Ah ha, you’re willing to try it, then?” she teased, though her heart sped up in nervousness.
“Hardly.” He turned her palm upward, and before she knew it, he had slashed a shallow cut upon her first finger. The blood welled up along the thin line. As she blinked in surprise, he sliced his own finger too, and pressed the wound against hers.
At last she understood. She wrapped her other hand around their joined fingers to hold them together. “Ah,” she said. “Since you won’t let me use the cloudhair seeds.”
“Exactly.” He put away the dagger with his free hand. “I’ll be able to track you, which will of course be useful. But let’s see if you can track me.”
Their cuts stopped bleeding soon. Persephone licked away the smear of blood and watched the transformation on her finger. The cut joined into a white line, which then smoothed itself away into unbroken flesh, all within the space of ten or twelve slow breaths.
She took his hand and placed hers alongside it, comparing the healed fingers with triumph. “There. See?”
Hades only glanced at their hands. He was smiling at her with affectionate secrecy. “I can sense you.” He slid his hands around her ribs, and laid his face on her neck. “You have no idea how long I’ve wished I could track you. Finally I can. Now I won’t lose you.”
Persephone embraced him in bliss and closed her eyes. “Then let me see. How does it work? I think of you… “
“Yes, think of me.” He let go of her and moved backward. “No, keep your eyes shut.”
She obeyed, closing them again, and stood still.
“Tell me where I am,” he said. His footsteps traveled away and dwindled into silence.
Thinking of him, she did sense it: a hum, or a glow, or a vibration, some chord that meant him and no other. “You’re off to my left,” she called, keeping her eyes shut. “Now you’re moving farther away, and behind me. Now—it’s gone.” Confused, she opened her eyes and turned around.
He stepped out from behind an oak tree far behind her. When he reappeared without the tree between them, the sense of his location leaped back into place in her mind.
“Ah,” she said. “Oak.”
He returned to her, smiling. “Then you can sense me.”
“Oh yes.”
He caught her up in a hug tighter than she had ever experienced. She returned it, squeezing him hard enough that she suspected it could break the bones of a mortal man.
He only laughed as he let her go. They resumed walking. “There is one more test, you know. Other than trying to kill you. Though I’m afraid it does require some patience.”
“Oh?”
“Let’s see if you can switch realms.”
Chapter Four
Sophie opened her eyes to the perpetual darkness of the cave bedchamber, lit only by the dim blue of an LED button that sat on a wall ledge as their nightlight. She closed her eyes again in pain at the upbeat dream she had awoken from. Why did she have to experience that memory now, of all times? Persephone eating the orange, becoming strong and healed, embracing Hades as his immortal equal…it wasn’t fair. She turned her face into the pillow, longing to sink back into the dream and not have to deal with the modern world today.
Adrian stirred alongside her, and moved to the other side of the bed. Soon another light sent its faint white rays across the stone walls—probably his cell phone, where he’d been checking the time. He slipped out of bed. She watched from beneath nearly-closed eyelids as he walked barefoot across the floor in his dark green boxer shorts and black T-shirt. He paused by Kiri’s dog bed to pat her when she lifted her head, then he moved past into the bathroom.
When he returned to bed, his weight shifting the mattress, Sophie sighed and turned over toward him. But she felt too depressed even to slide closer or to meet his gaze. She stared across the rumpled blankets, her head heavy on the pillow.
Adrian rested on his side, gazing at her. “Been dreaming?”
She nodded. “Persephone ate the golden apple,” she said quietly, in the ancient tongue. Golden apple: chrysomelia. Lovely word, really. Too bad she didn’t have a damn golden apple of her own.
Adrian shifted onto his back to stare upward. “I wish Niko would come back so I could beat him up more.”
Sophie exhaled a huff in place of a laugh.
They ate a breakfast of bananas, almond butter, and dry muesli, with Greek-style coffee Adrian heated over the fire in the bedchamber’s hearth. What made it Greek style, Sophie gathered from his listless comments, was the long-handled pot you used to heat it over a fire or stove, and the foam that gathered on top as it boiled.
It should have charmed her, a modern detail of an exotic country to which she had ancient ties. Besides, ordinarily she liked coffee. But today the brew struck her as gritty and she missed the half-and-half she usually splashed in. Must everything be going wrong, down to the coffee?
“Still want to go back today?” Adrian asked after several minutes of silence.
She nodded and sloshed the gritty coffee around in the mug. “I need to call Tab. And do all that other stuff.”
Her interest in life stirred again at the thought of talking to Tab, but it was a jealous interest. It would hurt to hear the glorious details of someone else becoming immortal. Still, she needed to hear them, because part of her was indeed happy for Tabitha, and also just to get the conversation over with.
Adrian splashed the remainder of his coffee into the fire, where it hissed on the coals. “Anytime, then.”
Before they left, Adrian brought her to the fields so she could say goodbye to Rhea. He stood back several paces while she walked to the woman’s soul.
Rhea must have heard they were coming; she walked forward to meet them. Compassion radiated from her translucent face. “I am sorry about Niko’s trick. I’m sure he never meant to hurt you by it.”
“Maybe not, but now I have to go on dealing with everything as a weak mortal.”
“You’re not weak. You’ve done a wonderful job so far. Please don’t be discouraged, and take heart if your friend is immortal now. It means more hope for us all in the long run.”
“I suppose. I just…feel betrayed. Or at least left out.” In the pale grass, the buds of new red violets surrounded her sneakers. She thought of Persephone leaping without reservations into marriage with an immortal—as Sophie should have done from the start. But Persephone had fewer ties to the living world, many stronger ones to the immortals, and also, back then it wasn’t so damn tacky to get married at eighteen.
“It’s wise to leave room in our lives for the chaotic, the unexpected.” Rhea chuckled. “Hermes has always been excellent at providing those elements. It’s part of the reason I like him, despite the trouble he causes. Ultimately you will find he brings more good than harm.”
Sophie lacked the eternal patience of the dead at the moment, and sourly felt her inadequacy. She considered muttering resentful words against Niko. But a resurgence of grief for Rhea’s recent death swept back over her, and in a few seconds the red violet buds swam in a blur of tears. “I wish he’d been there to do some good for you,” she said, her voice choked.
“Oh, my dear. My existence isn’t over. It never will be. No one’s ever is.” Rhea stretched out her intangible, light-filled hands and traced them down the sides of Sophie’s head and arms, as if sketching a line of blessing around her. “Do what you can. You don’t need to be perfect and you don’t need to rush.”
Sophie blew her nose, nodded, and mumbled goodbye in the Underworld tongue.
/> Sophie and Adrian didn’t speak as they climbed into the bus with Kiri and launched off. It reminded her of the first time she had come to the cave, that strange, unsettling visit when she had refused the pomegranate and he had tricked her into consuming it anyway. He’d been preoccupied and distant on that ride back, and this time he was even more so. Today, somehow, they had twice as many problems as they’d had a month ago, and they couldn’t even find comfort in being together.
Over the Atlantic, cold, salty wind filled the bus. Adrian’s arm around her was warm but felt like it belonged to a bodyguard, not a boyfriend.
She checked her phone messages. None from the newly immortal Tabitha, nor from Sophie’s family. But she had a voice mail from someone with an Oregon area code. She tapped the button to listen to it.
“Sophie, this is Marilyn with the police department; we spoke yesterday. It’s about eight a.m. on Saturday now. I need to inform you that the suspect Betty Quentin escaped from custody sometime during the night. Obviously we’re investigating how that happened, but we also wanted to put you on alert, as the primary victim of her crimes. Our guess is she’ll try to lie low rather than go after you or anyone else, but it’s safest to consider her dangerous and to be on the lookout. So please call back with any questions, and we’ll be in touch soon.”
Sophie pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it. “Shit.”
Adrian looked at her. “What?”
“Quentin got out! She escaped. Already.”
“Bugger.” Clenching his teeth, Adrian steadied the reins. “Wilkes said she would. But I didn’t think it’d be so soon.”
“They say she’s hiding out. They’re looking for her. But—what if they can’t find her? What if she finds us first?”
“Never thought I’d say this, but I wish I could track her.” Adrian sighed in frustration. “Well—all right. She has to hide. She’s wanted by the police now. That’s good. That means if anyone even sees her, they can call the cops.”
Terror threatened to undo Sophie’s mind completely. She’d wondered how this week could get any worse, and now she knew. “But she’s going to come after me! What the hell do I do?”
“I—I don’t know! Look, maybe she won’t. I mean, I did warn her I’d drag her into the spirit realm and leave her there if she made the slightest move against you, and if she’s at all smart, she’ll realize I meant it.”
“Then she’ll send someone else to do it. Like every other time.” She was practically hyperventilating.
“Fine, do you want me to turn the horses around and take you back to the Underworld? You can hide out.” He sounded upset, but hopeful—as if in truth he wanted her to do exactly that.
She hesitated, mouth partly open to answer. A short while ago hadn’t she rattled off all the reasons she should keep her normal life in order and running smoothly? Didn’t she already know Thanatos had people watching her, whether Quentin was locked up or not? She looked at her phone. “Maybe I’ll call them back. See if they have any updates.”
“Yeah.” Adrian sounded tired. “Do that.”
Sophie phoned Marilyn of the Corvallis police, and spent a few minutes collecting news. At the end of it, she hung up, still uncertain but less panicky.
“Okay,” she told Adrian, “they haven’t found her. They say someone came from the state police—or at least, they seemed to be state police—and brought Quentin out of her cell for questioning. Then there was a disturbance of some kind, another arrested guy freaking out and trying to grab a cop’s gun, and everyone jumped on that. And when they settled him down, Quentin and the so-called state cops were gone.”
“Clever. Planted a diversion. Niko could hardly have done it better.” His lips tightened as he spoke the accursed Niko’s name.
“So I’m supposed to be extra watchful, and they’ll patrol campus and check in with me daily. And they say if I want, they’ll post a guard overnight by the dorm. But…” She sighed. “I have to decide if I’m actually staying at the dorm tonight. Or ever again.”
He nodded. “Where to, then?”
She pondered it only a few seconds, weighing scenarios. “Carnation. Home.”
They examined the GPS map on Adrian’s phone, and Sophie directed him to land in the field behind her family’s property. “It might be swampy, but nobody should be there.”
A forest of something resembling maples stood there in the spirit world. He brought the horses down among the trees and the bus settled to a stop. Sophie leaned out to look around, comforted to know she was close to home, and curious what the wild version of home looked like.
“Even more trees than usual,” she concluded, and climbed out.
He stepped down after her and tied the horses to a tree. Kiri leaped out and sniffed the ground.
Adrian walked to Sophie, his boots squelching in the wet earth. “Do you want me to meet your parents, or…?”
He sounded so unenthused that she smiled, though wearily. “Not today. I’m too shaken up to keep a good cover story going.”
“Me too. I don’t think I could even fake a decent American accent right now.”
“So.” She hitched her backpack onto her shoulder.
He wrapped his arms around her. She settled her forehead on the collar of his wool coat. Rather than switch realms, he held her in the embrace a moment, beneath the wild trees. “You’ll want to stay with them the weekend?” he asked.
“Yeah. Suppose. Where are you going to go?”
“Maybe I’ll go home too.”
She shifted her face against his coat. Picturing the greater part of the Pacific Ocean lying between them made her feel more desolate than ever.
“You’ll text me every waking hour?” he said. “Let me know you’re all right?”
Sophie looked up and nodded. “You too.”
He nodded back, then glanced aside. “Go run, Kiri. I’ll be right back.” He pulled Sophie into the living world.
The ground reshaped beneath them, meadow grass and mud squishing as their weight suddenly landed on it. The smell of the soggy meadow filled Sophie’s nose with comforting familiarity, even in a chilly wind beneath dim gray skies. This was Washington. This was home.
But this was love, standing before her with unhappy dark brown eyes. Adrian kissed her on the lips before letting her go. “Be careful,” he stated, separating and emphasizing the words.
“You be careful too.” She drew in her breath in the hopes that fresh oxygen would quash the ache in her chest. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
She walked away, navigating her sneakers around the biggest puddles in the high grass. The roof of the two-story farmhouse peeked over the trees ahead. One of the trees was an oak. Would Adrian not be able to sense her if he stood in certain places in the field while she was in the house? She looked back, strangely pierced by that thought of disconnection. He lingered there and watched her, the wind tossing his dark curls. He lifted a hand in goodbye. She waved back, and kept walking.
The next time she looked back, not half a minute later, he had vanished.
She trudged along the back fence to the gate, her heart so heavy that it felt it was residing in her damp shoes. But at the squeak of the gate hinges, and the click of the latch, the two family dogs started barking inside the house. Sophie smiled. Her step picked up as she approached the side door that let into the kitchen from the driveway.
Rosie’s paws hit the door’s window, her jowly boxer face between them. Beside her, Pumpkin leaped into the air, his small yapping head appearing and disappearing over and over. He was an orange-brown Pomeranian-terrier mix, and not nearly tall enough to see out the window unless he jumped.
Sophie laughed and pushed open the door. “It’s okay, silly kids, just me.” She knelt and wrapped one arm around each dog.
Yapping gave way to joyful whining and face-licking. Their tails whipped her hands and knees. She kissed each dog on the forehead, so unexpectedly glad to see them that she thought she might start w
eeping in happiness.
“What is up with you, dogs?” her dad called from down the hall. He appeared a moment later, eyeglasses on, light blue shirt tucked in and clean. Probably he’d been paying bills or answering email. When he spotted Sophie, he beamed and opened his arms. “Baby! This is a surprise.”
“Someone was driving up this way, so I hitched a ride.” She let go of the dogs and rose to hug him. He smelled like spicy aftershave and the worn leather of his favorite brown bomber jacket, which usually hung on the back of his desk chair.
“I am so glad to see you.” He rubbed her back, then held her out to look at her. His eyebrows rose in the middle in concern. “You okay?”
After the other night, he meant. An attempt on her life, ending in a grenade explosion. That much he knew about, and it was more than enough to freak out any parent. But the other night also included a second grenade explosion in the spirit realm, which left some of her friends with severe if temporary burns; a discovery of the betrayal of her roommate; and the murder of their ancient mentor Rhea. Now, on top of those problems, she added her failure to eat an orange that would make her immortal, because Tabitha had already eaten it.
All of which her parents did not know about, and shouldn’t.
Sophie nodded. “I’m okay. But I wanted to come home for a bit. Get some rest before going back and dealing with everything.”
“Of course. Rest as much as you need.” He grinned, his mustache stretching along with his lips. “I’m just so happy you’re here. What a great surprise.”
“Where’s—” she began, but the question soon answered itself as footsteps thundered down the stairs, and her little brother skidded to a stop on the kitchen linoleum.
Liam was wearing his Avengers T-shirt and had acquired a green streak in his dark brown hair since she last saw him. He lurched forward as if about to hug her; then, apparently remembering he was cool now, being twelve, he stood back instead. He hitched his thumbs into his studded belt, flicked his hair out of his eye, and said nonchalantly, “What you doing here?”
“Visiting. Making sure you’re not snooping through my room.”