The Immortal Fire

by Anne Ursu

Charlotte looked at him in utter confusion. Steve leaned in to whisper, “Football is British for soccer.” She turned and glared at him.

  As they descended out of view of the street, Zee turned back, looking pleased with himself.

  When they disembarked, he went to the ticket machine and bought three tickets with the money that was in the bag Mr. Metos had thrown at him. Charlotte surveyed the lobby, seeing dark, shadowy men everywhere, while Steve bobbed up and down on his feet, looking very nervous.

  They went through the turnstiles, still attracting people’s curious gazes, and hurried to the platform. They only had to wait three minutes for the train to come, but it felt longer than an eternity, longer than math class. Steve said nothing, just stood there, pale and shaking slightly. When the train finally pulled up, the trio hopped on and looked around nervously, waiting for the train to leave the station.

  It did not.

  “This is the District Line train for Ealing Broadway,” said a pleasant, canned voice over the speakers. “Change at Earls Court for Richmond.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes and counted to thirty, and when she opened them, they still had not left.

  “What’s going on, Zee?” she muttered thickly.

  “Just because I’m English doesn’t mean that I have a psychic relationship with the Tube, Char,” Zee muttered back.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Steve. “I’m Canadian.”

  And still they waited. A few more people got on, glanced at Steve (who glared back), and moved to another car. Charlotte could hear one whisper, “Hoodlums.”

  And then Charlotte saw them. Leo and Teodor, running along the platform, looking into the windows.

  “Zee!” She pointed, and they ducked down. Charlotte’s mind flitted to Mr. Metos—how had they gotten past him? An ill feeling washed over her.

  Charlotte peeked out the window. The two Prometheans were talking to a man who was pointing toward their car. Across the platform, another train was just pulling in.

  “They’re coming,” Charlotte whispered. Zee gasped a little, and then motioned them all into the next car as the doors to theirs opened. Down the length of three cars they went. And then there was a loud noise, and the train began to stir.

  “This is the District Line train for Ealing Broadway,” repeated the voice. “Change at Earls Court for Richmond.”

  “Come on,” Zee said, motioning them forward. They jumped out of the doorway—“Please stand clear of the closing doors,” said the voice—and the doors shut behind them. “Quick, quick,” said Zee, and he led them off the platform, into a hallway, and down some stairs. Their rapid footfalls echoed all around them. They ran up another set of stairs that led to the other side of the platform. Zee reached the other train first and caught the closing doors. Several people in the car gave him dirty looks as the doors opened again and Charlotte flung herself inside—“This is the District Line train bound for Upminster”—not daring to breathe until the train opposite them began to pull away.

  “We did it,” breathed Zee.

  “We did it,” said Charlotte.

  Silence. The cousins looked at the seat next to them. It was empty.

  “Um, where’s Steve?”

  They pressed themselves against the window and saw a chained form disappearing up the stairs in front of them. They both yelled at once and lunged toward the door, just as their train started to pull away.

  Charlotte turned to Zee, jaw hanging open, as their train took them away from the station.

  “That little git!” Zee exclaimed.

  “What do we do?” Charlotte asked, panting. “Where’s he going?”

  Zee’s face contorted in a grimace. “I have no idea. There’s another line up there. He could be going for it.”

  “We’ll get off at the next stop. Go back.”

  “Char,” said Zee, still breathing heavily, “we can’t. By the time we get back he could be anywhere, on another train, or—”

  “But what if the Prometheans—”

  “He can’t be stupid enough to go back there. Char, Samantha saw us. She could be telling the police right now. We have to get away.”

  He was right. They couldn’t get caught now. Steve had a plan, apparently; it just didn’t involve them. Still, it might have been nice if he’d said thank you.

  The two sat for a while, trying to catch their breath. Charlotte closed her eyes, trying to will away the tightening of her ribs. She’d been feeling much better—but sprinting for her life did not help. “What are we doing?” she asked finally.

  “Char”—Zee leaned in—“we have to get to Delphi.”

  Charlotte nodded again. The Prometheans were near destroyed. It was all up to them now. If the Promethean Flame was in Delphi, they needed to go there. That was their next step, it was clear—find the Flame, and then use it. Give humanity knowledge. Mr. Metos said people were unique because they had the power of choice, but they didn’t, not really. They couldn’t make any choices without the truth. This was their mission now—not fighting the gods, but giving everyone else the ability to.

  “What do you think we do with it?” she whispered. “Once we get it? Present it to someone, or…”

  Zee grimaced. “Oh. Well. Right. Well, that’s the thing.”

  “What?”

  He shifted. “Well, I just read it. To use the Flame, well, we have to go up to Mount Olympus.”

  Charlotte stared at her cousin, waiting for him to burst out laughing at his own joke. This would be uncharacteristic for him—telling jokes in the first place, of course, and then bursting out laughing at them—but stress made people do strange things sometimes.

  But he wasn’t laughing.

  “You’re not laughing,” Charlotte said.

  “Yeah, well, this is what the book says. There’s a hearth on Mount Olympus, and you put the fire there.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that exactly?” Charlotte’s voice sounded several octaves higher than normal. She had ventured—rather bravely if she did say so herself—into two godly realms in the last six months and only survived by the skin of her teeth. It seemed that that should really be enough for one lifetime. She’d gotten attacked by a Chimera just for going to history class; she couldn’t imagine what could happen if she waltzed up to Olympus carrying Prometheus’s fire. It did not, after all, go that well for Prometheus.

  Of course, it was all leading to this, all leading to Charlotte and Zee making the climb up to Mount Olympus, home of the gods, home of Zeus. It would not end any other way. She was marked for danger, just as her father had said, and there was no more dangerous place.

  Charlotte’s heart felt like it was going to run off the rails. She put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. One foot in front of the other, she told herself. Find the Flame. That is all.

  “How much money did Mr. Metos give you?” she asked Zee finally.

  “Um…” Zee opened the pouch and began to count. “About three hundred pounds.”

  Charlotte didn’t know anything about British currency, but that didn’t sound like enough. “You don’t have any friends who are superrich and don’t ask a lot of questions, do you?”

  “Alas, no.”

  She put her head in her hands again and sighed. She needed to remember to collect rich friends along with foreign language dictionaries.

  And then she sat up, beaming at Zee. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you do.”

  Thirty minutes later they had arrived at a modern business district overlooking the river and were standing in front of two tall skyscrapers of steel and glass. The scene looked nothing like the old-fashioned stone facades of London highbrow streets Charlotte had seen in movies, but she supposed London, like the rest of the world, was allowed into the twenty-first century.

  A uniformed, white-gloved doorman let them into the special elevator to the penthouse apartment, which took up the entire top floor of the building. Charlotte found her heart rising along with the elevator as they traveled upwar
d, and when the doors opened and she beheld the thin, pale, light-haired man in a dinner jacket in front of her, she found tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  He held out his arms, exclaiming, “Miss Charlotte!” and she fell into them.

  “Hello, Sir Laurence,” said Zee.

  “Sir Zachary the Brave!” he replied, bowing. “Smashing sword!”

  Charlotte beamed at her friend. She had loved Sir Laurence as a giant squid, and now that he was human again she loved him even more. It was nice to have one person in the world whose very existence made you feel better about things. (It also did not hurt when that person was extremely wealthy.)

  “My manners are beastly,” Sir Laurence said, motioning them forward. “I suppose it’s spending all that time as a beast, what! Please, come in.”

  As they stepped into the huge flat, Charlotte’s eyes widened. She had been expecting to see something out of a Victorian design magazine, like Hades’s Palace only much less grim, with intricately patterned flowered wallpaper and ornate trim and elegant high-backed chairs and something called a settee, whatever that was.

  Instead Sir Laurence seemed to have gotten his hands on some rather unusual design magazines. The room was circular, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the river. The center of the room was sunken, with three platform-like steps leading down to a furnished area lined with a big, curved, white leather sofa and two chairs that looked like some combination of Tilt-A-Whirl chairs and space pods, if the Tilt-A-Whirl chairs/space pods had zebra print cushions. The walls were lined with blue velvet, and the floor was covered in thickly tufted two-inch-high white carpet. Off to one side of the cavernous room was a spiral staircase made out of stainless steel steps that hung in the air as if suspended. In the center of the ceiling hung a giant mirrored globe, and in one corner proudly stood a black, Charlotte-size lava lamp.

  “Wow,” murmured Charlotte.

  “Blimey,” murmured Zee.

  “Do you like the place?” Sir Laurence beamed at them. “I only wish the Lady Gaumm were alive to see it. She did so like zebras. Such a grand creature, the striped horse of the Serengeti! Now, what might I get for you? Tea?”

  Soon Charlotte and Zee were sitting in the space pod chairs (surprisingly comfortable), drinking lemonade and eating funny little cucumber sandwiches while Sir Laurence sat on the giant albino cow couch and appraised them.

  “Now,” he said brightly, “Miss Charlotte, Zachary, has anyone tried to kill you today?”

  They exchanged a look. “Well, actually—”

  “Par for the course, what! But you outwitted them, didn’t you? No one can defeat my Miss Charlotte!” He beamed at her. “Now, what might I do for you? I have rooms for the both of you. You may stay as long as you like. You will be under my protection.”

  Something squeezed at Charlotte’s heart. How she would love to stay with Sir Laurence, in his weird velvet space palace, how she would love to eat strange little sandwiches and watch his lava lamp and be under his protection. Maybe just one night…

  “Sir Laurence,” Zee said quietly, “we really appreciate the offer, but we have to go. We have something important to do.”

  Sir Laurence leaned in, his pale blue eyes growing wide. “What?”

  Charlotte did not know where to begin. It was all so odd—the dream, the book, this sudden sense of purpose. They really did not have that much to go on, except the utter conviction that this was what they were supposed to do.

  “It’s—”

  “Sir Laurence,” Zee said suddenly, “do you have any more of these sandwiches?”

  “Oh! Quite!” said Sir Laurence, and he disappeared into the kitchen again. Charlotte turned to look at her cousin.

  “Char,” he whispered, “I don’t think we should tell him.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I don’t think anyone else is supposed to know.”

  “But this is Sir Laurence!”

  “I know, but”—Zee shook his head—“I just don’t think we should tell anybody. I think we’re supposed to do this ourselves.”

  Charlotte frowned at him. It was just like Zee. He always had to keep everything to himself, not wanting to burden the world with his existence. And he had to do everything himself, to prove whatever it was he needed to prove. But Sir Laurence wasn’t just anyone, he was the only person in the world (other than Zee, who was so obvious he didn’t even count) whom Charlotte trusted completely. And it would be so nice, for once, for it not to be the two of them against the world.

  And yet…and yet. Somewhere in her heart, Charlotte knew he was right. No one else had been able to find the Flame. Whoever was sending them the dreams had picked them. Charlotte had read enough books to understand: The Flame was their quest, and it was theirs alone.

  When Sir Laurence returned with more sandwiches in hand, Charlotte looked at him sadly. “Sir Laurence,” she said softly, “we can’t tell you what we’re doing. But…well, Zee’s right. We have to go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  Charlotte looked at Zee, who nodded imperceptibly. “Delphi.”

  Sir Laurence straightened. “My dears, don’t you think that danger seems to find you easily enough without you going to look for it? Have you seen what’s been happening over there?”

  “We have to,” Charlotte said. “There’s something we have to do.”

  He frowned. “And I suppose your quest is not one a gallant erstwhile giant squid might accompany you on?”

  Charlotte looked at the ground. “I don’t think so.”

  “All right,” said Sir Laurence, looking resigned. “But you must promise me that you will be very careful. I am quite fond of you, you know. And if you need me, you just ring, and Sir Laurence Gaumm will be right by your side.”

  Charlotte nodded, unable to speak for a moment. She gathered herself and then, her voice thick, said, “Sir Laurence, our friend, Mr. Metos. He saved us. He’s in trouble, and…”

  “Say no more!” said Sir Laurence. “I shall rescue him! Fear not, my lady. Sir Laurence is on the case!”

  Next to her, Zee had cleared his throat and was shooting her furtive glances.

  She looked at him. “What?” Flushing, he stared at her, trying to communicate something he was clearly too embarrassed to say. Then it hit Charlotte. “Oh, yeah.” She turned back to Sir Laurence. “Can we have some money?”

  They had discussed nothing, had planned nothing. They were going on a dream, on an unlabeled map, on a book in French that concluded that their quarry did not exist. They did not know precisely where they were going or what they would do when they got there. But the next morning, Charlotte and Zee found themselves on Sir Laurence’s private jet bound for Greece, the home of the gods.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Kindness of Strangers

  STEVE COULD NOT SAY WHY HE DID IT, EXACTLY. But when Charlotte and Zee reached the platform and hopped onto the other train, he found himself heading the other way. It was nothing but instinct, the sort of instinct that gets you to be captain of the Quiz Bowl team when you’re only a sophomore. Impulse, his mother would call it—as in, try not to be so impulsive, sweetie, as in, when you punched the opposing team’s captain at the regional finals, you might have found other ways to express your frustration.

  They were better off apart than together, that was the thing—he could make his own way. Those kids were willing to die to rescue him, and he’d never even met them before. It was quite a thing. He didn’t know how to feel, how to react. He should have thanked them—he should have said something. But the best thing he could do for them, really, was stay away. He didn’t want them getting shot for him.

  He wanted to go back, that’s what he wanted. He wanted to find those—what, Prometheans?—which sounded to Steve like a bad metal band who liked to light things on fire, and punch them. A lot.

  But he did not want to get kidnapped again, and those guys did seem to have a lot of weapons at their disposal. Whatever they
were planning on doing with him, it didn’t sound good.

  As he made his way up the escalator toward the sunlight, it finally occurred to him that he was free. Or at least as free as you can be with your wrists still chained. He did not know how long he’d been gone for—it felt like weeks, but he couldn’t say for sure.

  He still did not understand why those men were holding him. They never hurt him, never did anything to him except chain him to the floor and bring him food three times a day. At first he thought he was being ransomed, but his mother surely would have gotten them whatever money they wanted, somehow. That’s how it had always been, just the two of them against the world. That’s why he had punched Joe Koskie—after they’d soundly trounced Anola High, Koskie had said something completely inappropriate about her. That’s the sort of thing that gets a guy punched.

  That’s what got to him about this—he’d heard those people say something about him being “the son.” It didn’t make any sense. Were they trying to get to his mom somehow? Or did they know who his dad was?

  The thought sent a chill through Steve. His mother never said anything about his father, just that she had made a mistake once, that she had met someone who had promised the world and then disappeared—poof—in a puff of smoke. Then she’d gotten a teaching certificate and raised him on her own.

  She was happy now, but when he was a kid he would hear her crying herself to sleep. He would go in and comfort her, again and again, “It’s okay, Mama, it’s okay.”

  He’d thought, at first, that maybe one of the creepy guys was his father, that maybe they had kidnapped him to bring him home. But his father never appeared. Which was good, because if he ever met the guy…

  As he left the Tube station and turned down the street, Steve noticed passersby eyeing him and then moving hurriedly on. He was rather surprised that no one stopped to ask if he needed help. This was the problem with a big city like London. In Winnipeg if you saw a teenage boy walking down the street with his wrists chained up, you’d ask if he needed assistance. And maybe he wouldn’t, maybe he was going to a costume party or was doing some elaborate piece of performance art or just liked wearing chains, but at least you’d ask. Or at least you would if you were Canadian.