by Aimee Carter
“You’re making me babysit?” said Persephone in an equally horrified voice.
My mother focused on me first. “Kate, darling, I know you want to help, but you will help the most by remaining safe so I do not have to worry about your well-being.”
“But—” I started, and though she held up her hand, I kept going. “Mom, please. You can’t keep coddling me like this.”
“You know you do not have the ability to fight in a way that will be helpful to the rest of us,” said my mother bluntly.
“That’s not my fault,” I said. “You’re the one who promised to train me. I could’ve learned.”
“Not in less than two months. We were all stretched to our limits already, and even if we had, you aren’t one of the original six. You simply are not powerful enough to help change the course of battle fighting head-on like that.” She touched my cheek. “Please, allow us our greatest chance of success. Remain safe.”
I dug my nails into the palms of my hands. “You can’t make me stay here.”
“I know, but I trust you to make the right decision. Milo needs a mother, and he can’t have that if you’re gone. When the time comes, he’s going to need you. And you’re going to need him.”
“So you want me to just hide my head in the sand until it’s over?” I said thickly. “How can you say that? You’re the one who showed me how to be a fighter in the first place.”
She gathered me up, and I melted into her embrace. “Sometimes fighting means surviving in the face of insurmountable odds. That’s what I need you to do. Be the survivor I know you are.”
I hiccupped into her shoulder, and my fingers tightened around her sleeve. “Please stay with me.”
“If I could, I would. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with the two of you.”
Holding her arm out for Persephone, she waited, and finally my sister accepted the hug. “First time you come to see me in hundreds of years, and you want me to babysit,” she muttered, and my mother kissed her forehead.
“I’m sorry, darling. I’ll make sure to visit more often.”
That wasn’t a promise she could keep if she were dead, and Persephone flinched right along with me. Was this the last time we’d be together like this?
It couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let it. There had to be something.
“I’ll promise to stay here with Persephone if you promise not to risk your life,” I said. It wasn’t much, but until I could come up with a solid plan, it would have to do.
“Oh, Kate.” My mother kissed my hair. “You might as well ask me not to go at all. I haven’t let Cronus get the best of me yet, and I don’t intend on starting now, that I swear to you. Have a little faith.”
Easy for her to say. She was the one running off to fight. “I love you,” I mumbled. How many more times would we say these endless goodbyes before it really would be the last time?
“I love you, too. Remember Milo.” She pulled away and looked me straight in the eye. “Can you do that for me?”
I nodded, a heavy numbness settling over me as she turned to say goodbye to Persephone. Instead of embraces and tears, they bent their heads together and began to whisper. “Let me go with you,” said Persephone. “Cronus and Calliope can’t hurt me, and I could be useful.”
My mother shook her head. “I need you here with Kate, to make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
Persephone rolled her eyes. “Of course she’s going to do something stupid. She’s Kate.”
“I’m counting on you not to let that happen.”
After one quick squeeze of her hand and my mother’s admonishment to be good, their goodbyes were over. Persephone’s eyes were dry. How could this be so damn easy for her?
James touched my shoulder, and I spun around to hug him. “If you die, I will be so pissed at you,” I said.
“Then let’s hope that doesn’t happen. If you wander into battle, I’m going to be so pissed at you,” said James.
“Then let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” I mimicked. “Do you need a lift to Olympus?”
He snorted. “Nice try. Your mother’s got it covered.” Hesitating, he pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth. An almost-kiss full of questions I couldn’t answer and promises neither of us could keep. “Don’t forget—I get to be your first affair, and I’m holding you to that.”
“You’d better,” I said, and with that, he let me go for one last hug with my mother. The knot in my throat grew unbearable, but I refused to cry. I didn’t want the last moments we had to be full of blubbering sobs.
Neither she nor James said anything. They smiled, no trace of fear or anxiety on either of their ageless faces, and James offered my mother his arm. She took it wordlessly, and together they faded until there was nothing left but the breeze.
“Come on, let’s get you some tea before you fall over,” said Persephone. She took my elbow, and I didn’t argue. If Cronus slaughtered everyone I loved, Persephone would be the only family I had left. Not exactly a satisfying consolation prize, but I didn’t want to give her any reason to hate me.
As much as I wanted to reassure myself that it wouldn’t come to it being just the two of us, I couldn’t. It wasn’t up to me, and I couldn’t change the outcome of the battle through sheer willpower and thought alone. I could do something to help though, if I could only think of something that would be worth the risk.
Something Persephone had said niggled in the back of my mind, but before I could concentrate fully on it, she pushed the door open. “Adonis! What did I say about feeding the dog peanut butter?”
Adonis, Persephone’s boyfriend—husband?—rose from the floor, and I gaped at the puppy at his feet.
“Pogo?” I knelt down, and the black-and-white dog Henry had given me let out a bark muffled by a mouthful of homemade peanut butter. Tripping all over himself, he scampered across the cottage and jumped into my arms. One lick on the cheek, and I could no longer hold back the floodgates.
Persephone stepped around me as I clung to Pogo and cried. She could give me all the nasty looks she wanted; she’d abandoned her family an eon ago. I’d barely started to get to know mine.
By the time my sobs ended, she had a mug of tea waiting for me on the tiny kitchen table. She sat in the chair opposite mine, and Adonis lingered nearby, leaning against the wall and shuffling his feet. While I sipped my tea with Pogo in my lap, neither of them said anything.
Several minutes passed, and I couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Aren’t you afraid of what’s going to happen?” I said, my voice rough after my crying fit.
Persephone shrugged. “They’ve been at war with the Titans before.”
“But it’s different this time. They don’t have Calliope, and Henry—”
“What about Henry? What’s wrong with him?”
With a sigh, I launched into everything that had happened since she’d left the palace after the first battle. Calliope’s plot to kidnap me, the nine months I’d spent as her prisoner, Milo, my connection with Cronus, what I’d promised him and what he’d promised in return—the attacks on Athens and Egypt, Henry’s fight for survival, his sacrifice to keep Milo and me safe. Everything.
“And now they’re going into the biggest battle in history down two of their strongest fighters with no real hope of success.” I cuddled Pogo, and he licked the crook of my arm.
Persephone drummed her fingers against the wooden table, her expression distant. “And you’re goi
ng to spend the entire time here, not even trying to help them?”
“The only thing I could possibly do is distract Cronus and Calliope, and you heard Mom. She doesn’t want that.”
“If I were you, I’d be fighting like hell to keep every good thing I had in my life,” said Persephone. “Not all of us had that chance. The relationship you have with Mother, with Henry—you two made me an aunt, and you’re sitting here like a lump instead of doing everything you can to get them back.”
“You think I want to sit here? If there was something I could do to help, I’d be doing it, but I can’t—”
“Like hell you can’t.” She narrowed her eyes. “Think, Kate. Just stop and think. You’re the girl who trekked across half the Underworld to reach me on the off chance I might know where to find Cronus, and you’re giving up right now? I don’t think so.”
Were she and James conspiring to make me feel like an utter failure? I opened my mouth to protest again, but she held up her hand.
“There’s always a way around a problem, and you have half an hour to figure it out before the battle begins. So you tell me, Kate—after everything you’ve been through and everything you’ve seen, are you going to sit there, or are you going to fight?”
I took a deep breath. Persephone was right; there was always a solution. There was always a way to fix something, even if it was hard. Even if it was nearly impossible.
Anything is possible if you give it a chance.
Henry’s voice. Henry’s words. He believed in me, even though I’d long since given up believing in myself.
Think. Think. The weapons. Cronus’s bargain. The layout of the palace. Nicholas. Persephone.
My eyes flew open, and the pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. “I know what to do.”
She grinned. “It’s about damn time.”
Chapter 17
Final Stand
We arrived arm in arm in the middle of Persephone’s forest. The moment the ground underneath our feet shifted, she let go of me, but I didn’t care. For the first time in ages, I knew exactly what I was doing.
Grabbing her hand, I dragged Persephone through the trees, toward a redheaded girl surrounded by the tamest animals I’d ever seen. A baby deer rested beside her, a singing robin settled on her shoulder, and in her lap she cuddled a litter of bunnies no bigger than my fist.
Persephone squinted. “Who is that?”
“Just let me do the talking,” I said, and once we drew close enough, I called out, “Hi, Ingrid.”
“Ingrid? You mean the first girl too stupid to figure out how to live?” said Persephone, and I elbowed her in the side.
“Kate!” Ingrid’s squeal echoed, making the rock wall at the edge of her afterlife obvious. “You really came! I thought you were just trying to be nice, but you’re really here!”
“Yeah, I’m really here.” As I knelt beside her to pet the tame fawn, Persephone’s forest melted into Ingrid’s meadow of candy flowers. “Unfortunately it’s not for catching up.”
Ingrid’s face fell, but before she could get too upset, Persephone spoke up behind me. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to handle a knife, would you?”
She tugged nervously on a lock of hair. “Why?”
“Because Cronus is about to destroy the world, and the council doesn’t have much of a chance against him,” I said. “They need help. The dead are the only people Calliope and Cronus can’t hurt, and they’ve got a whole room full of weapons that could take them down.” Or at least Calliope. If this didn’t work on Cronus...
It was worth a shot. It was our only shot.
“And you want me to help you?” said Ingrid.
“We want all of the girls to help us,” I said. “Persephone doesn’t know who they are, but we were hoping you might.”
Ingrid set the bunnies down and stood, brushing dirt off the white dress that must have been the height of casual fashion back in the 1920s. “As it happens, not only do I know who they are, but while Henry was trying to figure out who was behind the murders, he even let me meet them. It’s a bit of a walk, but I can take you there.”
At last, some luck. “We don’t have time to go on foot. The battle’s about to start,” I said. “I’ve got a faster way, though.”
With Ingrid’s help, we gathered up eight of the other ten girls. Two of them hadn’t been in the sections of the Underworld Henry had allotted for them, and we were running out of time. Eight would have to do for now.
I stood before them, shuffling my feet nervously. Because Ingrid lingered by my side, I saw the meadow in front of me, but every time one of the other girls edged closer, the background shifted into their afterlives instead. Forests, a white sand beach, an empty theme park—it was bizarre, but I forced myself to ignore it. As long as the other girls could see me and each other, that was all that mattered.
“I’m Kate,” I said. “Henry’s wife.”
The word felt strange on my tongue, but it got an immediate reaction from the girls. A whisper rippled through the group, and the ones in the back jostled for a better position.
“That’s impossible. You actually passed the tests?” said a girl with curly auburn hair. “Like, survived and everything?”
I held my tongue. Of course they thought it was crazy. Calliope had killed each and every one of them. After a while, even Henry had thought it’d be impossible for anyone to make it. “Barely,” I said. “I got lucky.”
“Can’t believe it was Calliope,” said the same girl. “The bitch stabbed me in the back and threw me in the river. I thought it was James.”
“Yeah, well, turns out you aren’t so smart, after all, Anna,” said a dark-haired girl on the other side of the group. The top of her head barely reached my chin.
The first girl—Anna—snorted. “Like you’re any better, Emmy, insisting Ava was behind it.”
“She’s slept with every other god,” said Emmy. “Don’t see why she wouldn’t go after Henry, too.”
“That’s enough,” said Persephone. “Let Kate speak.”
For the third time in an hour, I explained everything that was happening. No one interrupted me. “The battle’s about to start, and our numbers are dwindling,” I added at the end. “I wouldn’t ask this of any of you if we weren’t desperate, but we are. We need fighters.”
“I don’t know how to fight,” said Emmy, and the other girls murmured in agreement. Anna, however, cracked her knuckles and stepped forward. The background shifted into a garden that put Versailles to shame.
“A chance for a stab at Calliope? Count me in.”
One down, seven to go. “I can get us into the castle undetected,” I said. “Calliope and Cronus can’t hurt you.”
“Are you sure?” piped a voice from the back.
“Don’t be an idiot, Bethany,” said Anna. “Of course she’s sure.”
“I am,” I said quickly. “I swear, if you do this, you won’t be in danger.”
“It’s true,” said Persephone. “I faced off against Cronus and Calliope a year ago. They tried their best, but I’m still here. Not a scratch on me.”
Another murmur rippled through the group. “You’re sure the weapons will work, too?” said Emmy.
I hesitated. No, I wasn’t sure. Even if one of us managed to take out Calliope, I had no idea if this would work on Cronus. And what if they weren’t corporeal on the surface? What if they were ghosts, like I was in my visions?
“We have to try,” I said
. “If nothing else, we need to distract them long enough to get Henry out of there. We need him on our side. The council is heavily outgunned, and if we don’t find a way to help, they will fall. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually Cronus will get the best of them. Of us,” I added. “And Henry will die with them.”
Silence. I shifted my focus from one face to the next, searching for any sign that they would agree, but none of them met my eye. Before I could give convincing them one last shot, however, Bethany called from the back, “Count me in.”
“Me, too,” said Emmy, and one by one, the others also volunteered.
“Thank you,” I said. “I can’t tell you what this means to—”
Crash.
The earth around us trembled, and several of the girls shrieked. Ingrid clutched my arm, and we all looked up at the sky above us. Most souls had no idea where they were and thought their afterlife was the real thing, but Henry’s girls knew the difference. They knew that the sun’s warmth was an illusion, and beyond the fluffy clouds was the ceiling of an enormous cavern. And that was why they were the only ones who could help us.
The trembling subsided, but it didn’t matter. The battle raged above us, and we didn’t have any time to waste. “I need a whiteboard and a marker,” I said, and several of them stared at me blankly. “A blackboard and a piece of chalk then.”
Nine of them appeared around me. Illusion or not, being dead had its advantages.
I sketched the layout of Calliope’s castle as best I could, marking each important location—Nicholas’s cell, the nursery, Calliope’s room—as accurately as I could. In three minutes, we had a plan. Whether it worked or not, at least it would give the others a chance.
Getting them up to the surface would be tricky, but the gaping hole in the cavern where Cronus had escaped the first time was still there. He was trapped on the island, but I tested the exit twice. I could get in and out without any trouble.
