Underworld's Daughter

by Molly Ringle

  “Kind of immortal?” Terry said. “Oh, I am not listening to this.”

  “You saw him disappear. What’s your explanation?” Sophie asked.

  “I—” Terry tossed his hands in the air in surrender, then dropped them, and pulled out a chair. He plunked down into it.

  A text bounced in from Adrian. Sigh. Suppose you’re right, if they’ll be calling the police on us otherwise. OK, see you soon.

  “He’s coming,” Sophie said.

  “So that woman who warned me about him…” Terry said.

  “Betty Quentin.”

  “She thinks he’s immortal, too? And that’s why she’s going after you? Because you’re dating him?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “Honey,” her mother said, “someone who claims to be immortal, and who’s got people trying to kill him…look, he seemed nice, but that doesn’t sound like the kind of person you should be seeing.”

  “I am wondering about the mental health issues here,” her dad agreed.

  Sophie shrugged, tired. They’d see soon enough.

  The knock sounded softly on the side door. Sophie got up and let Adrian in. She peeled a dead leaf from his coat collar, and frowned at the mud smeared on his jeans. “What happened to you?”

  “I do not recommend switching realms from anything higher than ground floor.” He sounded tired too. His gaze slid to her parents, who watched them from the kitchen table.

  Terry glowered, but said nothing.

  Rosie and Pumpkin scampered in from the study, yipping in excitement. Adrian crouched to let them smell his hands and clothes. They quieted down, intent on sniffing, fascinated by the scents of Kiri and whatever else they picked up on him. He stroked their heads and said hello to them. They wagged. Rosie licked his hand.

  Sophie smiled. Her dad always said dogs knew how to recognize good people.

  Indeed, Terry glowered even harder at this show of affection from his faithful animals toward the intruder.

  Isabel rose. “Come sit down. Is it…David? I’m sorry, I’m confused.”

  They approached the table. Adrian questioned Sophie with a look.

  “No, it’s Adrian,” Sophie said.

  “Adrian Watts, from New Zealand,” Terry guessed.

  Adrian nodded, flashing a glance from one parent to the other. “Wellington, specifically.” Then he shut his mouth and looked again at Sophie for direction.

  “Actually,” Sophie said, “don’t sit. Come outside.”

  “Why?” Terry said.

  “This is the kind of thing you have to show someone. Telling doesn’t cut it.”

  “Going to show us how you’re immortal?” Terry said, deeply skeptical.

  “He’s going to show you how he disappeared,” Sophie said.

  “Fine.” Isabel came around the table. “I’m curious. May I get a coat?”

  “Sure. Of course,” Adrian murmured.

  Terry grumbled, but he got up too and fetched his coat.

  They shut the dogs inside the study, with orders to stay quiet, and tromped out into the gravel driveway. The motion detector light went on, casting its bright glare across the front and side of the house. Frost glittered on the herb garden.

  “Right over here’s good.” Adrian led them to a spot near the garden hose. “No trees in the way.”

  “Trees?” Isabel glanced around.

  “You’ll see,” Sophie said.

  “So, um, I suppose I’ll go alone first, to demonstrate.” Adrian backed up a step, awash in the security light. Then he vanished in a puff of air.

  Isabel sucked in her breath with a squeak.

  “That.” Terry pointed at where he’d been. “That is what I’m talking about.”

  Adrian reappeared in the same spot, startling them anew.

  “Okay, Mr. Watts, you got my attention,” Terry said. “How do you do that?”

  “I guess now I bring you along.” Adrian glanced at Sophie.

  “Can you even take three at once?” she asked.

  “Well. Bit awkward, but, yeah. Here. Do kind of a group hug, you three.”

  Sophie nodded to her parents, and drew them in so they both hugged her.

  “Now this is ridiculous,” Terry said. “What kind of drugs are we talking about here, honey?”

  “Just hold still please.” Adrian stepped up and got his arms most of the way around the huddled group. Then with that familiar wobble and tug, the world darkened and the ground shifted, and he released them. “Perfect. There we are.”

  Sophie’s parents released their hold on her. They stepped back, turning to stare at the dark forest and patches of meadow.

  “Where the hell…?” murmured Terry.

  It was so dark here after the glare of the security light that Sophie could only see her parents as black silhouettes. Stars twinkled overhead; the clouds had cleared. Night insects and animals clucked and chirped their eerie sounds all around.

  “How did you do that?” Isabel asked in a hushed voice. “Where are we?”

  Sophie turned her head toward Adrian, whose arm still brushed against hers. “You want to take this one?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  They sat unevenly arranged around the rectangular kitchen table. Sophie and Adrian stayed close together near the two sides of one corner, Terry dominated one long side, and Isabel the other end.

  Adrian still felt Terry was likelier to kill him tonight than Quentin was, from the resentful glances he kept flinging. But at least now Terry and Isabel were starting to believe him.

  They covered all the necessary territory, Sophie patiently supporting him and sharing in the explanations. His disability in childhood, his mum’s death, his first encounter with Rhea and the Underworld, his introduction to the past and its assemblage of Mediterranean immortals, his bringing Sophie into it, Thanatos and the truth surrounding the attacks, and the complications of Sophie not being able to become immortal yet because Zoe and Tabitha had eaten the last ripe fruit. It also explained why Tabitha kept cheerfully but oddly showing up just to “see how they were doing”—not that Tab’s efforts were keeping Quentin from coming round on other days with her own check-ins.

  The “bringing Sophie into it” part was what drew the most resentment from her parents, of course—notably her dad. Her mum tempered her worry with fascination, and asked more questions than Terry did.

  They wanted proof, as any sane people would. Switching realms impressed them, certainly, as did the ghost horses. Adrian drove the bus away from them and back again to demonstrate its high speed, but Terry and Isabel refused to get in and experience it. Still, those didn’t absolutely prove anything about past lives, immortality, or the Underworld. Sophie and Adrian both trotted out the foreign languages, which Terry did his best to verify with online translation pages. Adrian dealt his arm a shallow cut with a kitchen knife so they could watch it heal. And upon getting the nod from Sophie, Adrian handed over his phone with the video of Sophie’s grandfather on the screen.

  As he watched his father speak kindly in a message to Sophie from the Underworld, Terry pressed his hand over his mouth, his eyes aggrieved, much as Sophie had looked when she first saw the video.

  Isabel watched over his shoulder, then sent a keen look at Adrian. “It’s an actor, isn’t it? How’d you find someone like that?”

  Adrian shook his head. “It’s him. I can take you there tomorrow—later today—if you want.”

  “That may be the only way you’ll really believe it,” Sophie said.

  “Would we go in that bus?” Isabel asked, and winced when Sophie nodded. “Oh, dear. That looks a little scary.”

  Terry cleared his throat, his gaze upon Adrian’s phone, where the video had ended. His voice sounded soft and hoarse. “I’d be able to talk to him? See him?”

  “Yes,” Adrian said.

  Terry pulled in a shaky breath and tapped “play” on the video again. He and Isabel watched it in silence.

  “It really looks like him,”
Isabel murmured as it ended.

  Terry set the phone in the center of the table. “All right. I’ll go with you, Mr. Watts.”

  Adrian wished he had the confidence to say, “Please, call me Adrian.” Lacking it, at 3:30 in the morning after being caught mostly naked in this man’s daughter’s bed, he only answered, “All right.”

  “The pomegranate?” Sophie asked Adrian.

  He nodded. “I suppose, since you both know everything, you’re welcome to your past lives as well. When you’re there, you could eat the pomegranate. As to the immortality fruit—well, I don’t have that, or Sophie would’ve eaten it by now. But there are always plenty of pomegranates.”

  “I don’t know.” Terry sat with hands in his lap, still staring at Adrian’s phone. “I’m…not quite ready to mess with my head that much yet.”

  “I’d like to do it,” Isabel said.

  Terry frowned at her, and she shrugged. “I’m curious,” she said. “Plus I’d love all those extra languages.”

  Terry sighed. “You’ve always been more adventurous than me. Guess that’s where she got it.” He shot a glance at Sophie.

  “Last question for tonight,” Sophie said. “Liam? Should we tell him?”

  “I’m thinking no,” Terry said.

  “I agree,” Isabel said. “I mean, he’d love it; it’s like something out of those comic books he reads.”

  “Graphic novels,” Sophie corrected.

  “Right,” Isabel said. “But he could be tempted to say something about it to a friend, and if word got out…if these cult people are really that dangerous…”

  “Oh, they are,” Sophie said.

  “Then let’s wait on telling him. Yes.”

  It was nearing 4:00 a.m. They agreed to adjourn to bed and meet again after lunch to work out a plan for visiting the Underworld. Before saying goodnight and heading upstairs, Isabel and Terry each shook Adrian’s hand.

  “I still am not going to claim I like this,” Terry added after the conciliatory gesture, and pointed at Adrian’s face.

  Adrian swallowed. “Understood. Completely.”

  Terry shook his head and followed his wife to the stairs. “Goodnight.”

  At the kitchen door, Sophie took Adrian’s hands and gazed wearily up at him. Her forehead wrinkled as she lifted her eyebrows in an apologetic cringe. She wore buttoned-up flannel pajamas with her hair wrapped back in an elastic band, a different picture from the woman with the loose wild curls and the open silk robe sitting on top of him a few hours ago. But equally lovable.

  Adrian kissed her forehead to smooth the wrinkles away. In an undertone he said, “I think I felt closer to being murdered when I woke up and saw him there than I did when Wilkes shot me.”

  Sophie grinned and hid her face against the front of his coat. “God. Not how I planned this weekend going.”

  He slipped his arms around her, savoring the warm flannel-clad curves. He debated a moment internally, then decided. “Listen. Regarding Liam…”

  She lifted her face in question.

  “Just between us,” he said. “Well. You haven’t liked it when I’ve kept things from you, so…remember how I said Poseidon was still a kid?”

  Sophie froze, then her eyes widened. The dim kitchen light caught and brightened the green in them. “Liam is Poseidon?”

  Adrian nodded.

  She stepped back, out of his arms. “Wow. How much else are you not telling me?”

  He glanced unhappily at the clock over the stove. “How late do you want to stay up?”

  Arms folded, she gazed across the tile floor. “No, I know. Encyclopedias’ worth of information, I’ll remember it eventually, blah blah blah.”

  “Is there—are there any other questions you want to ask right now?”

  She looked at him. “Who was my mom?”

  “I’ve told you, I honestly don’t know. Not everyone we know was an immortal. People can still be our loved ones in this life, or any life, even if we never knew them before.”

  She sighed through her nose. “You knew about Liam, all this time.”

  “What would it have changed, if I’d told you?”

  She shook her head, avoiding his gaze, as if finding him impossible.

  “Do you have any other questions?” he asked again.

  “Way too many, and I need to sleep.”

  He gave up. She kissed him with nearly as much coolness as you’d kiss your grandmother, and they parted.

  Zoe found the text from Adrian waiting for her when she switched on her phone Sunday morning.

  Z, I don’t mean to complain, but wtf kind of protection spell was that? Her dad caught me in bed with her and called the police. Yeah, you can laugh. I got away. But we ended up having to tell her parents everything. They’re in on it now.

  Zoe did laugh in shock, covering her mouth. Still in bed, she pushed off the blankets and scratched her head, finding her hair sticking up all directions, as it always did in the morning. She texted him back.

  OMG. Wow. Well, the spell protected against outside forces. He was inside the house, yes? And if you got away, then it sort of worked. Also, LOL. Details pls. Not gross ones of course.

  While awaiting his answer, she rose, picked up the sunglasses from the desk, and put them on before heading for the bathroom.

  How much longer could she go on deceiving her parents? She almost envied Sophie, coming clean about what she’d been up to, sharing the wonders of the spirit realm with two of the people she loved most in the world.

  At the notion of love, Zoe’s mind slid right where it wanted to: toward Tabitha. Oh, she didn’t love Tab, not yet. They didn’t know each other well enough. But it had felt too good, dreadfully sweet, to share Thanksgiving dinner with Tab and her mum, to watch Tab’s awkward side emerge, as everyone’s did when their embarrassing relatives met their friends.

  Tab’s mum drank too many glasses of wine, and got maudlin and nosy by the end of dessert. Tab and Zoe improvised excuses for Zoe to leave soon after, and in the frosty driveway Tab had apologized for her mum’s behavior, looking humble and ashamed. Also gorgeous—all warm sleek blonde hair and velvet-covered curves, and lips that probably tasted like pumpkin pie at that moment…

  Not that Zoe got to kiss them. No, she got a hug, but then Tabitha’s phone sang with its five thousandth text message of the night, and they stepped apart and Zoe flew home to New Zealand. Alone again.

  If only Tab weren’t so obsessed with another. Not Freya—though surely that would be an issue soon too. No, the faceless goddess Fame was the more dangerous one contending for Tabitha’s worship right now.

  It wasn’t safe, Zoe reflected, washing her hands in the bathroom and emerging again. Seeking fame was outright stupid for any immortal. Someone would notice Tab wasn’t aging, if the fame kept up long enough. And why would anyone want to be pestered everywhere they went, anyway? But then, adoration and Adonis-Dionysos went hand in hand.

  Spells existed to alter someone’s affections. Wasn’t hard. She could tweak Tab’s mind a little, make her care less about fame, more about her friends…

  But along with not using magic to cause harm, you didn’t use magic to mess with a person’s brain or body without their consent. Except in dire circumstances such as to save their life, or prevent them from harming someone else.

  On the way to the kitchen, a new text from Adrian arrived. Zoe paused to read it, lowering her sunglasses in the shadows of the corridor.

  Reading his shortened text version of the evening took a minute, then she tapped in her reply.

  When she lifted her face after that, her heart seemed to stutter to a halt. Her mum sat in the armchair in the front room, in full view of the corridor, laptop on her thighs but with her gaze fixed on Zoe. She’d seen it all: Zoe reading the phone with her eyes after moving the sunnies out of the way, and replying via the on-screen keyboard in a way a blind person simply couldn’t do.

  Zoe gazed back.

  “When were you going
to tell us you could see?” her mum said.

  Zoe already knew the first word she’d be texting back to Adrian now.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Thirty

  Hey, do you have Freya’s number? Tabitha texted to Nikolaos. And do you think she’d be up for meeting me?

  I do have it, but that depends, he responded. How clingy do you plan to be?

  I am never clingy!

  You rather were in the old days, is all. At first. She’d be cautious because of that.

  Whatevs. I can always just track her without calling first, you know, Tab texted.

  Yes, because that doesn’t look stalkery or anything.

  Adrian did it to Sophie.

  I rest my case, answered Niko, which made Tabitha grin.

  Well, will you give me the number? she texted.

  How about I talk to her for you. I’ll let her know you’ve reached those memories and are keen to see her.

  Thanks. Tell me how it goes. Soon!

  Tab put her phone down and scowled at the football game her dad was watching on TV. He called this bonding? Whatever. At least his girlfriend Jamie wasn’t here. Tab could spend the rest of the game brooding about Aphrodite and not trying to make excruciating “girl talk.”

  It had hurt so much, and felt so good, that feeling of love that had tortured Adonis. Tabitha had never known anything quite like it in her own life.

  And the torture, she lately recalled, had expanded one day to levels you could truthfully and chillingly call suicidal.

  Adonis sat on a boulder and stared into his fifth or maybe seventh or eighth cup of wine that night. Revelers at the late-summer bonfire festival sang and wavered around him.

  Shock stunned his mind. Aphrodite had ended their relationship.

  How long had it been? Eighteen years? She’d found him and brought him into her bed when he was sixteen, and now he was thirty-four and his shoulders got stiff more quickly when he worked outdoors, and wine made his head ache sooner and longer, and though his hair was still brown and golden, it did have a few threads of gray. She had stolen his youth. Taken over his life during all of it. He would have given her the remainder of his years too, but she no longer wanted him.