by Molly Ringle
Then, scaring him enough he actually yelped, a flame whooshed out of the wall. Niko didn’t seem perturbed. He only switched off his flashlight and kept walking. The flames kept up with them: one after another flared into life just ahead of their footsteps, and winked out again a few yards behind them, as if a motion sensor was being activated.
But it didn’t feel like a mechanical trick. It felt real. Uncanny. And dreadfully identical to what he’d already seen in his darkest memories.
Before he’d had time to absorb the horror and wonder of the familiar honeycomb of cells they entered, containing one sad-looking ghost apiece, Niko had parked him in front of a cell. Landon beheld his grandmother.
He lurched toward her. She regarded him with unhappy blue eyes, her form translucent. Unlike Landon, she wasn’t confined by bars or handcuffs; just one of those vine ropes, wrapped around her waist and fastened to the wall. Her space was tiny, a closet of rock with a flame burning in the floor at her feet.
“Landon,” she answered. “They caught you too. Oh, I’m sorry, dear.” Her voice sounded like it always had, but deadened. Thinner, defeated.
“Grandma.” Panic thumped within his chest. “Are you all right? I mean—you’re not, I know, but…”
“This is the natural order. It’s where we have to be, when we’ve made the wrong choices too often.” She sounded unhappy, not tranquil like the other souls he’d met.
“But—Thanatos is still right, aren’t they? This—this is all wrong, this is what we have to stop—”
“We can’t stop this. No more than we can stop the sun rising. No, dear, it’s been like this long before our group existed, and will be for as long as humans live. Thanatos was misinformed. I see it now.” Her gaze dropped to the flame in her cell.
“But what do I do? I was trying to carry on your work, and—and they’ve captured me. They killed you! They’re not right either. They can’t be.”
“Too much killing,” his grandmother said. “Too much harm. On both sides, yes. But far more on ours.” She looked at him. “I was one of them once. An immortal. In the ancient times.”
He felt dizzy. “No.”
“Perhaps it’s why I strived to know more about them, in this life and others. But I went about it wrong. Don’t be a part of it anymore, Landon. Don’t end up here.”
He looked about the stuffy, hellish cave in desperation, then back at her. “Are you always alone? Does anyone ever come talk to you?”
“They’ve come to ask me about Thanatos,” she said. “Adrian a couple of times, and him a couple of times too.” She nodded toward Niko. “He also asked me if I forgave him. I said I did. I think that helped us both, according to the laws down here. But only a little.”
Landon turned to stare at Niko in bewilderment. Niko’s light eyes held Landon’s for a second or two, then his gaze drifted aside as if the topic mattered not at all. Landon didn’t have to ask if it was true. Souls couldn’t lie. He knew that much now.
Landon and Betty Quentin spoke a few minutes more, but most of what she said was along the same lines as before: Thanatos had been wrong. The last thread of what he used to know was getting pulled out of the fabric of his life. Was there one single thing left of his former identity that he could still cling to and trust? No. Not really.
Still, as he trooped back up the tunnel with Niko, he tried to rationalize it. “They get warped down there. Right? Their minds—it’s supposed to make them feel guilty all the time, or something.”
“Tartaros does suppress happiness,” Niko said. “Makes you focus on what you’ve done wrong. But ‘warped,’ not really. If anything, it gives you clarity. Shows you what your actions caused.”
“Were you ever down there, between lives?” Landon asked.
“Oh, who could ever find fault with me?” But his irony sounded brittle, which piled another suspicion onto Landon’s confused mind.
Stepping out into the open cave fields again was a relief in comparison with the stuffy tunnels. His legs felt weak; he looked forward to lying down a while on his blankets, and to having his hands untied. Small pleasures.
On the way back to the cell, Niko picked up one of the souls to be Landon’s next guard. It was the dark-skinned woman in the long red dress—Rhea. She had been killed by Thanatos a few months ago, caught in India. She had a way of scrutinizing him that gave him the shivers. Didn’t help that she said occasional things out of the blue like, “The Goddess surely does not like the path you are on, Landon Osborne.”
At least right now she was being quiet.
Landon ran his tongue around his teeth, which felt thickly coated and disgusting. After Niko propelled him into the cell and removed the bungee cord from his wrists, Landon asked, “Do you think I could get a toothbrush? Please.”
Niko’s eyes traveled around Landon’s face, carrying a glimmer of something like pity. “Sure. Why not. Razor too, maybe.” He pointed at Landon in warning. “Safety razor. No cutting your wrists.”
Landon shivered, and nodded in acceptance. Insane and unpleasant though this experience had been so far, Thanatos rarely treated their captives this politely, he had to admit.
“So you’re good cop,” Landon said. “Who’s bad cop? Zoe? Adrian? Sophie?”
“If they want to be, they’re free to.” Niko stroked Landon’s week-old beard with thumb and finger—a surprisingly gentle sensation. “But mostly, dear boy, I think you are your own bad cop.”
He left the cell, locked it, and left Landon with Rhea as guard, the knife tied to her hand.
Landon watched until Niko was out of sight. “What does that even mean?” he said aloud.
Rhea gazed after Niko. “With that one, it is not always easy to tell.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Each morning after Hades’ and Persephone’s souls had departed, Hekate climbed high in the sky on her spirit horse to clear the encircling oaks and seek her parents’ signals. She sensed nothing for almost two months. Then one day, during a rain that was swelling all the rivers and soaking her in mid-air, she gasped. They were out there, across the stormy sea.
She wheeled her horse that direction and shot off at top speed. Even if it meant crossing the great ocean, she would brave it. Their signals, like a pair of lighthouse flames, would guide her.
But they weren’t far at all.
“Sicily,” she said to Hermes later that day, when she arrived in his borrowed room in Athena’s palace, where he was staying a few days. Sopping wet with rain, she gripped his tunic, and laughed when he winced at how she dripped upon him. “They’re in Sicily! My parents. Can’t you sense them?”
His face changed as he focused. Then he closed his warm hands around hers. “I do! That’s fabulous. Then you’ve gone to them?”
“Yes, but of course they’re still in the womb. All I could tell was they were in neighboring towns, and her family seems to be a large one with lots of children already, and his might be an unmarried younger mother. I couldn’t be sure, not without asking nosy questions that would be odd from a traveling stranger.”
“And you are indeed the strangest of travelers.” He peeled off her wet wool cloak. His naughty smile unfurled. “Let’s get you out of these chilly things. All of them.”
In the next few months, Hekate paid frequent visits to the Great Goddess’ temple near the Sicilian villages where her parents’ souls had been reborn. It was another site of intense energy, which no longer surprised her. She familiarized herself with the temple, showing up often enough that she became known among the worshippers.
One day while mingling in the crowd there, she sensed the approach of her father’s soul. She whirled around. Among the others stood a young woman holding a baby.
Hekate strode forward. The young woman looked up in alarm, for Hekate was tall, dressed in midnight blue robes and Underworld jewels, and known to be an immortal with powerful magic. Hekate smiled to calm her, and said, “Welcome. I don’t believe we’ve met. Who’s your little one?”
/>
“I’m Symaethis. This is Akis.” The color deepened in the girl’s face. “My family was disgraced when I became pregnant. I—I’m not married. But the temple here took me in, and their midwives were so kind. They’ve cared for us and allowed us to stay. This is our home now.”
Hekate couldn’t stop smiling at the three-month-old infant with his sweet, plump face. “Yes, around here we’re much more interested in being kind to each other than in silly notions of marriage and disgrace.” She touched Akis’ palm with one finger, and he gripped it and beamed a toothless grin at her.
If she’d had any doubts this was her father, they would have been dispelled at the touch. Finally making physical contact with him again was like breathing the air after swimming a long time underwater. Hekate basked in the warmth, even as her eyes filled with tears. “Stay here as long as you like,” she said, still gazing at him. “We’ll make sure they take good care of you.”
***
Persephone’s soul, meanwhile, had been born into a family who lived not far from the temple. She was the only girl (other than her mother) in a house full of boys, and from a distance Hekate judged the home to be a stable enough place to grow up, though the family didn’t seem to smile much as far as she saw.
As the years passed, Hekate kept checking up on her reincarnated parents, with varying degrees of worry or happiness about their progress. She worked on the establishment of new temples and the business of murdered souls. Then she sought relaxation in Hermes’ bed, wherever it happened to be that day.
Although she still possessed greater affinity for magic than anyone, she slowly discovered, as her own awareness deepened, that her immortal companions all used magic to some degree too, though most didn’t realize it. She already knew they must, since they had been able to learn how to switch realms. But as she got better at reading fine variations in energies, she found the immortals each had at least one skill for which they channeled enough power that she would say they were performing magic.
Hermes’ talents in sleight of hand and influence over others involved magic. Aphrodite’s erotic thrall over people did too. Apollo, Artemis, and Ares used it to make arrows strike exactly where they wanted. Athena and Rhea used it to calm others and discern truth versus lies, which made them excellent diplomats.
When Hekate brought up this revelation at one of the meetings, most of her friends shrugged it off as unimportant. If they didn’t know they were doing it, what did it matter? Some were intrigued, but none of them seemed able to stretch their powers any further than they already extended, so they eventually dismissed the issue too.
As to Poseidon and Amphitrite, she had credited them with at least some water magic, as everyone knew of their uncanny luck around the sea. But they approached Hekate after the meeting to speak to her alone, and surprised her with their confession.
“We’ve known of our water magic for decades,” Amphitrite admitted. “We’ve always been able to control it consciously. I even had it as a mortal, but it got much stronger when I ate the fruit. As strong as his.” She tilted her head toward Poseidon.
“Even as a mortal?” Hekate marveled.
“When Zeus and Hera were alive,” Poseidon added, “we didn’t want it known, because we didn’t want to be pressured into fighting sea wars. But we doubt you’d make us do that.”
“Oh, no, I’ve no such inclination. But you must show me! I want to see.”
A covert investigation, just the three of them down at the shore, proved their magic utilized the same water energies Hekate sometimes used, but Poseidon and Amphitrite outshone Hekate in sheer strength for this particular element.
“I’m glad of it,” she laughed. “More magic in the hands of more good people.”
Of course, she later found herself brooding over the possibility that powerful magic could find its way into the hands of evildoers. Her only consoling thought was that the power would likely rebound or be revoked if it was used for cruelty, as had happened in her own case. But that didn’t undo the evil deed itself.
Sometimes when she explored the world’s energies, she sensed there might even be ways to combine or twist spells so a magic-worker could put off natural punishment for years—not that she herself would ever try such a thing. But surely the wrong type of person would, if they thought of it. Unfortunately she couldn’t say with confidence that the Earth’s forces would prevent such a thing. After all, they allowed a great deal of violence among the world’s creatures, and though the caves of Tartaros performed their role admirably, it often seemed punishment that came too late to do any good. Hekate should have understood better than anyone why the world worked the way it did, but she still could not explain it. All she could do was keep trying to serve love and justice through her own actions.
Hekate took the strawberry tree Hermes had brought her at the start of their affair and planted it near a tributary of the Underworld’s main river. The tree grew vigorously, and over the years its leaves turned a moonlight white, and its berries a wine purple. The berries tasted as bland as ever, but did have the effect, she found with amusement, of acting as an aphrodisiac. Hermes laughed too when she told him, and gobbled up several to test it.
“But,” he admitted later, lounging naked next to her, “it’s not as if you and I need those.”
It was true. Even without magic in berries or spells, they enjoyed a fiery passion for one another. She had expected him to grow tired of her after a few months, but he kept coming back to see her year after year, steady as ever.
She knew he sometimes saw other lovers. He encouraged her to branch out as well, and once in a while she did: priests at the temples, usually; men she had gotten to know and felt an affinity for. However, once a woman had become accustomed to the ingenious mind and seductive talents of the trickster god, mortals rarely satisfied her for long.
She put no claims on Hermes despite her longing for him, and her lack of insistence on a commitment was, she supposed, why he didn’t abandon her. On days when jealousy or loneliness darkened her skies, she reminded herself he surely had been seeing her longer now than any other except Aphrodite, and his demeanor toward Hekate was more romantic than she ever saw him act toward Aphrodite, so she should be grateful. Besides, if Hermes and Aphrodite could enjoy an intimate-friends arrangement for all these decades (as had other pairs of immortals), Hekate could surely manage it too.
She did miss him on the days when he was away, which were frequent. Much as he loved being with her, he also had a never-ending number of adventures and tasks to pursue in the world, as did she. They fell into the habit of meeting at least every few days, though, and on the days they were apart she often detoured into the fields of souls to pluck a handful of the strawberry tree’s leaves, and take them with her on her errands. Touching the cool leaves in the pocket of her robes served as a reminder of her love.
One day, at a temple on a spot of high-intensity magic, she paused in her discussion with the priestess to take out the leaves and stare at them. She had absently slipped her hand into her pocket, and felt them nearly vibrating, like a bronze goblet ringing in response to a note from a flute.
She said, “Just a moment,” to the priestess, and strode around outside the temple, investigating other plants and materials. There was a mortal-world strawberry tree not far off, and its leaves responded the same way. Other than that, nothing else resonated except a carved disc of Underworld gold on a necklace she wore.
Hekate approached the confused priestess, who wore a twist of gold in the shape of a snake around her upper arm. Hekate’s touch upon that gold found no magical ringing. “Was this gold mined in the living world?” she asked.
The woman nodded in perplexity.
“Strawberry tree leaves from either realm, and gold from the Underworld.” On an impulse, Hekate seized the priestess’ hand. “Let’s try something.”
By that evening, the seemingly impossible had been achieved: a mortal switched realms, without being escorted by an i
mmortal.
“It scared her more than it delighted her, I think,” Hekate mused to the rest of the immortals at their hastily-called meeting the next day. “She was happy to let me keep this piece of gold for now and not try to use it again herself. Still, I wonder, did it only work because she’s a priestess, and therefore trained to sense the other realm?”
“This raises a lot of questions,” Athena said. “That’s just the beginning of them.”
The others looked unsettled on the whole. Tired. It was how they often looked lately. Being around them felt like the chill in the evening air that signaled the end of summer. Only about half of them came to the regular meetings anymore, and the debates over new candidates for immortality had grown jaded. Thanatos was murdering new immortals almost as fast as they were made—old ones too, but new ones seemed easier to trap. The killer cult was wearing everyone down. More and more immortals retreated to the spirit realm for more of the time, and kept their identities secret in the mortal world. They just wanted to live. They no longer had a stomach for big decisions like voting on candidates. Similarly unwelcome was this news of a portal between realms—possibly lots of portals—through which anyone could stumble with the right tools.
“But it could help our allies, our temples,” Hekate pointed out. “Say they’re attacked, and could slip into the other realm to wait it out. Or they could leave messages for us there, somewhere the enemy wouldn’t be able to intercept them.”
At least Athena, Rhea, and Hermes were interested in the news, and eager to explore the possibilities. Over the next few years they approached temple leaders in more places, evaluating them for trustworthiness. Eventually, at twelve different sites, they taught select initiates how to enter the spirit realm. Hekate brought them specially made tokens of Underworld gold for the purpose, hammered out by Hephaestus in the shape of strawberry tree leaves and etched with lettering or symbols to mark which site the token belonged to.
