Underworld's Daughter

by Molly Ringle

  Hekate was horrified, as was Dionysos. Persephone and Hades found the three in Tartaros, and confirmed the story—it had gone just as Hekate and the rest described. The king of the nearest city, which governed the revelers and the would-be killers, listened to the account told to him by Dionysos in person. It sounded like perfectly fair self-defense, the king concluded. He even apologized for the shocking rudeness of his citizens violating a religious ritual, and said he hoped the sacrifice of the three would bring the blessings of the gods back to his shamed countryside.

  None of the immortals knew how to answer such a thing. It was good to have allies, especially kings, but hard to explain that supernatural blessings were not so easily lost, obtained, or understood. It was as Demeter said: the stories sprang up and grew on their own, with no basis in reality. People loved their poems and legends better than they loved truth.

  So Persephone and Hades naturally went right on worrying about Hekate participating in the Dionysia, despite Thanatos’ failure there. What if the killers tried harder next time, with a greater force? What if they targeted Hekate instead of Dionysos? The crowd wasn’t as likely to protect her. She wasn’t the central focus of the festival.

  “They usually don’t even know who I am,” Hekate assured her. It was a few days before midsummer. She was sitting on the stone floor of her bedchamber, using sticky sap to refasten some of the colored stones that had fallen off her cloth mask. “I don’t call attention to myself. In fact, I use magic to deflect it. You needn’t worry.”

  “I’ll try.” Persephone folded her arms, lingering in the doorway. “But need I worry about you coming home pregnant with some unknown reveler’s child?”

  When Hekate answered with a sharp laugh and lifted a half-amused, half-offended expression to her, Persephone added, “It’s all right. I love you and trust you and I want you to enjoy yourself. But…you might wind up rather unhappy if that happened.”

  Hekate arched a black eyebrow, an expression inherited straight from Hades. She returned to her stone-sticking. “Some unknown reveler? No, of course not.”

  “Well. That’s a relief.” Persephone felt this conversation was uncomfortably like her long-ago exchange with Demeter—when Demeter had asked her straight out if she was in love with Hades.

  Hekate rose with the completed mask. “Besides,” she added as she slipped past Persephone, “there’s magic to prevent pregnancy, you know. Too bad not everyone can do it that way. Cloudhair seeds, ugh.”

  Persephone stared after her daughter’s retreating back, her mouth falling open. Then she murmured to herself, “Indeed, too bad. That’d be convenient.”

  Q’s in the Seattle area, said Sophie’s text to Tabitha. Threatened my dad. Be on the lookout just in case.

  Tab frowned and spent a minute figuring out who “Q” was, then recalled it. Let the bitch try, she texted back. My followers rip people apart.

  Ha. Yeah, I remember. Srsly though, be careful. They might check out anyone who’s close to me, such as my BFF.

  Thanks. YOU be careful, babe!

  Tabitha sent the text and sat back against the cafe bench seat, earbuds blasting the class-assigned symphony into her ears without her registering a note.

  Crazy cult people? That seemed a lame thing to worry about. Not when she had tasks on her list like planning the next party—lined up for it she had The Luigis, the current number one band popular with hipsters. Also on the to-do list: deciding how best a girl should enjoy boundless riches and secret immortality. Niko and Freya totally got that. They were enablers that way. But honestly, why didn’t Sophie and Zoe—and apparently Adrian—realize the amount of fun they could be having, and weren’t? Gloomy Underworld types. She switched the symphony off, and clicked instead to The Luigis’ album on her iPod.

  Annoying thing was, she sort of did see their point of view. With great power comes great responsibility, and all that Gandalf-advice shit. Hell, Dionysos could be considered one of those Underworld types, with his dying-and-rising-god routine. So maybe that meant Tab was one too. But it was sure more fun to hang with Freya or Niko.

  Especially Freya. Damn, that woman had her technique down—mainly the “I’m flirting madly with you but I promise nothing” technique. Now that Freya was hanging around the West Coast to help search for Thanatos, Tab saw her more often, and got lots of doses of alluring confusion.

  “What are those for, those kisses?” Tab asked her the other night, when Freya kissed her goodnight after they’d had dinner.

  “Old times’ sake,” Freya said.

  “Sophie said you slept with Adrian for old times’ sake, too. She didn’t seem way happy about that.”

  Freya only laughed. “Sophie has nothing to fear from me. She knows that.”

  And somehow she’d left without Tab feeling any the wiser.

  Meanwhile that attraction to Hekate-Zoe stayed rooted in her brain, bugging her at inconvenient times. What was up with that? Why was that so hard to trust or resolve?

  She thought of Zoe’s steady, unnerving, wise stare, which made Tab feel about five hundred years younger than Zoe instead of three years, even though age shouldn’t matter between two immortals with access to past-life memories. She thought of Zoe—and Hekate—doing her amazingly cool tricks, waving magic about with the ease of blowing bubbles. In comparison, she felt unworthy, a raucous and immature partier. Zoe wanted something deeper, and Lord only knew why she’d look for it in Tab.

  Plus she honestly kind of wondered if Zoe had thrown a spell on her to make her keep thinking about her, same as Dionysos had wondered it about Hekate.

  She scowled at her open computer on the cafe table. Final exams, cults, relationships, magic spells? Who had time for this crap?

  She turned up the volume on the music, and tackled the much more delightful task of planning the next party.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Nikolaos sauntered up to the trailer in the frosty morning air, where Adrian stood waiting. Niko wore clothing that was dark-toned and unobtrusive, for him, aside from the red and white striped scarf and matching hat.

  Adrian sipped his coffee. “Oh good, I’ve finally found Waldo.”

  “I thought perhaps the chances of you licking me were greater if I looked like a candy cane.”

  Adrian snorted. While he tried to decide upon the most insulting comeback, Kiri hurtled in from the field. She greeted Niko with a yip of joy and darted round and round his legs, her tail whipping back and forth. She was too well trained to leap onto him without permission, but clearly was having trouble restraining herself.

  “Yes, it’s all right,” Niko assured her. “Come give me a hug.” He knelt, opening his arms.

  “You’ll regret that,” Adrian said.

  Kiri planted her paws in Niko’s crouched lap and licked his cheeks. He grunted, wincing. “Muddy dog.”

  “Told you.”

  After gratifying Kiri with fur-ruffling and compliments, Niko rose and tried to wipe the mud off the front of his clothes.

  Adrian opened the trailer door. “Come in. I’ve got dog towels.”

  Inside the Airstream, Adrian toweled off Kiri’s muddy feet while Niko took another towel and cleaned his coat and jeans.

  “Sophie off studying?” Niko asked.

  “Yeah. Final exams coming up. Had a study group to meet at the library.”

  “None of them in Thanatos, one hopes.”

  The familiar anxiety twisted in Adrian’s stomach. “I don’t even bloody know. I don’t think so. None of them are acting as suspicious as Melissa used to. But…argh.”

  They sat opposite each other at the table.

  “Well,” Niko began, “I do still have access to the guru’s email. And through that, I’ve read what Quentin’s emailed him. But it isn’t much. Mostly she assures him she’s in a safe location, doesn’t say where, and they ponder the possible meanings of ancient documents that talk about immortals. They do seem to be matching it up with what they learned from Sanjay, and p
iecing a few things together that are actually true.”

  “Such as?”

  Niko took off his hat, and scratched at his scalp. He already had an inch or so of hair grown back after shaving it in the wake of the grenade fire. Adrian hadn’t seen him in well over a month, he now realized. “Oak, for instance,” Niko said. “They’re finally understanding Sanjay claiming he could sense certain other people, and that oak blocked it. Apparently in their ancient chicken-scratched tablets and scrolls, there’s a similar mention of gods finding one another by a magical sense unless oak stands between them.”

  Adrian frowned and wrapped his hands around his cooling coffee mug. “I don’t much like them knowing that.”

  “Curiously, I don’t like anything they do. Except when they get suicidal impulses. I approve of that.”

  “If only they didn’t keep taking others down with them.”

  Niko nodded. “Good news is, I haven’t yet found any mention of Freya or myself, nor Zoe or Tab. I don’t think they know about any of us, though they do suspect there are others. Or that you’ll convert others soon.”

  “Then tell Tab to keep a bloody lower profile,” Adrian muttered.

  “Yes, we do remind her, but the dear thing’s having such fun, she forgets.”

  Adrian grumbled inarticulately.

  “However,” Niko added, “I still haven’t managed to hack into Quentin’s account itself, to see what else she’s sending, and to whom. That’d be convenient. I don’t suppose she’s handing out new business cards of people we can stalk, the way we did with Wilkes?”

  Adrian shook his head. “Not that we’ve heard. Instead she’s walked right up to Sophie’s dad in person, and did the whole Mafia threat.” Adrian attempted an Italian-American movie gangster accent. “‘Nice family you got here. Real shame if anything happened to them.’”

  Niko smirked. “It’s old-school and clichéd, but it does get the point across.”

  “Obviously they’re going to go after Sophie again, or someone in her family, and hold them hostage in order to flush me out.” Adrian clenched the mug to keep down the tremor developing in his hands. “What else could that threat mean?”

  “Indeed.” Niko frowned out the window. The pale December sun lit up the green of his eyes. “Or it’s a diversionary tactic, to get us to look one way while they do their real dirty work elsewhere. Or they’ll do both, the way they went after Rhea and you at the same time. Whatever it is, I do suspect it’s you they’re trying to eliminate.”

  “Naturally.” Adrian pulled in another deep breath. The smell of the coffee now nauseated him instead of soothing him. Yes, all he needed to do to protect his beloved was offer himself up as a sacrifice, and join the dead in the fields of souls. No problem. That’d make everyone happy.

  What truly chilled and depressed him was the whisper in his head that said, actually, that would be best. Sophie would be better off, even if losing him grieved her in the short term. She’d have her family, she’d have her life back…

  He shuddered, shaking off the horrid thought. No, Thanatos couldn’t be right. They could never be.

  “So we look for them,” Adrian said, “and we guard Sophie and her family whenever we can.”

  Niko nodded. “Freya’s helping. We’ll make a habit of lurking round Carnation. And I’ll keep up my hacker tricks to see what other intelligence I can turn up. Oh, and I’ve brought you some new disguise pieces. Just because that amuses me.”

  “Cheers.” But the nausea lingered within him. For right this moment, no one was guarding Sophie, and as Niko had lightly suggested, one of her study companions could be in Thanatos.

  Adrian got up and dumped the rest of his coffee in the sink. “Well, I’m off to meet Sophie.”

  She still had a few hours of study group left, in truth, but he’d find a table near hers and keep watch. And if Thanatos wanted to attack today, great, because he’d love a good excuse to throw someone out a library window, plate glass shattering and all.

  No one in Sophie’s study group was in Thanatos. She honestly didn’t think so, and chuckled when Adrian told her he was guarding her in case of that possibility. He’d lurked at a table next to theirs for two hours, and she had to pretend not to know him. What with the studying for tomorrow’s chemistry final, and the huge paper she’d just finished writing, she was too tired to laugh in a full-bellied way at his appearance, though his new disguise was decidedly laughable. The orange and black Oregon State hat with earflaps would have been bad enough, but paired with the oversized sweater in blue and white block stripes, and the fake goatee, it was a wonder she kept a straight face.

  She pulled the hat off him as soon as they got into the spirit realm. But she touched the goatee, loosened up his hat-squashed black hair, and regarded him. “Yeah,” she said. “With facial hair, you are indeed very Hades.”

  “Fancy that.” He left the goatee on for now, and walked with her through the dark spirit-world night. “And how are Hades and Persephone, in your memories?”

  “Fine. I mean, unsettled about Thanatos, and about Hekate always going off to the Dionysos festivals. But all right otherwise.”

  He nodded without looking at her. With a twinge of unease in her belly, she remembered, as she did several times a day, that they would not be all right pretty soon now.

  She drew in a breath of the cold night air. Ice was forming, its crystals crunching underfoot in the meadow grass and fallen leaves. Sophie glanced at the sky and found it heavily clouded, as it had been in the living realm.

  “Might get your snow tonight,” she said.

  He glanced up too. “That’d be nice.”

  In the chilly trailer bed, before sleeping, they embraced and sought comfort in kisses and intimate strokes. But tonight it seemed to her that Adrian’s touch carried desperation, a clinging to her, as if someone was about to pull her away. She clung to him too, in anxiety and love. But she still didn’t know how she would respond if someone were to say, Choose. Adrian or your family. Adrian or the rest of the world.

  Why can’t I have both? she lamented in silent answer, and held him tighter.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Hekate swung her knapsack of clothes, masks, and other items onto her shoulder. She found her mother in the fields, and waited until Persephone was done talking to one of the souls.

  “I’m off,” Hekate told her, and gave and received a kiss on the cheek.

  “Three days, as usual?”

  “Yes. In Argos, or just outside it, at least.”

  Hades walked up with Kerberos, and Hekate kissed her father too. “I’m leaving Kerberos with you this time.”

  Persephone’s brow crinkled. “We feel safer when you bring him.”

  “I know, but he hates it. The drums scare him, and the drunk people keep trying to play with him and put costumes on him.”

  That made them grin. Hades took hold of the scruff of the dog’s neck to keep him back. “All right, let him stay.” He pointed at her, the grin fading. “But be careful.”

  “I will. Goodbye!” She strolled across the white grass, feeling its soft coolness under her bare feet, while her mind already raced ahead to the possibility that this time, this festival, Dionysos would do more than just dance with her. The way he’d looked at her and held her against him in the dance at the last festival, half a month ago, sent hope and desire surging up in her chest.

  She crossed the river on the raft, and on its opposite side she turned to wave at her parents. They were two small figures among the masses of souls, but easy to discern from the solid gleam of Persephone’s white and red clothing and Hades’ white and purple. They waved back. Kerberos darted around Hades’ feet, in the attitude of having brought a stick to throw, and planted his front legs down flat in front of Hades in invitation to play. Hades knelt and took the stick, and teased Kerberos with it, making the dog dance from side to side in a frenzy. Persephone and Hades both seemed to be laughing.

  Hekate smiled too, walked aw
ay through the entrance tunnel, and flew her horse to Argos.

  “No fearsome watchdog of the Underworld today?” Hermes greeted her when she arrived at the gathering spot at the city gates of Argos.

  “I allowed him to sit this one out,” Hekate said.

  “In that case, I’ll protect you.” He hooked his arm into hers and waggled his eyebrows.

  She laughed. “I wonder about your definition of ‘protect.’”

  The festival took place outside the city. Starting at sunset, a procession led deep into a sea of olive trees at the base of a broad, dry hill. Night fell early, for this was the winter solstice. Hekate was glad for both her woolen cloak and for the grove of trees that sheltered the group from the cold wind. Like most of the worshippers, she wore fur-lined leather boots instead of going barefoot or sandaled, and a wool shawl around her head in addition to the jackal mask.

  Torches, drums, the masks and symbols upon poles, the oration about the dying god—these features usually remained consistent from one Dionysia to another, and tonight’s was no exception. But extra torches and bonfires burned in the spaces between the olive trees, for warmth as well as light.

  Dionysos, when he appeared, had a gorgeous leopard pelt around his shoulders in addition to a long wool tunic, and skin boots with gray rabbit fur. An ivy wreath decorated his head. He looked every bit the king of the winter night, becoming the part as splendidly as he became king of the languorous summer in the hot months.

  An idea came to Hekate as she listened to his speech about the return of life and light, his words tailored to match the solstice. Could she manage the spell from here, without touching him? She’d been working on it, and thought it worth a try. Concentrating, she pulled in and directed the energies, and focused her thoughts upon the leaves of his ivy wreath.

  Little glowing lights burst to life, hovering at the tips of the leaves, a crown of stars the blue-white color of moonlight. The people gasped and cried out in wonder.

  “Oh, nice touch,” Hermes complimented, beside her. He had figured it out at once, of course. He’d seen her perform such tricks before.