by Skyler Andra
Tonight, I would unleash my deadly beasts on the wretched souls who had fled my realm.
Chapter 17
Autumn
Nothing changed. This thought crossing my mind likely had something to do with the fact that I’d been a virgin until very recently. I wasn’t sure that you could have the kind of sex that Hades and I had had over the past twenty-four hours and not find that it had left you changed.
At some point, I woke up to an empty room with a lunch laid out for me and a soft dress draped over the chair. The food, a platter of cheeses, olives, meats, dried fruits, and vegetables, melted on my tongue. The dress, a deep spring green, was the perfect fit that hugged my curves in all the right places.
Left alone in the room, I didn’t know what to make of it all, so I went looking for Hades. I found him in the garden below with surprisingly little trouble. From the balcony, I observed him for a few moments. He looked contemplative and tense, running his hands over the colored daffodils.
He lingered near beds laid out with geometrical precision, each surrounding tall, marble statues. I gasped, amazed at the medley of hues. I hadn’t even known some colors were possible, but I guessed anything was when you were a god.
Then to my surprise I noticed the shape of the garden beds. Two back-to-back crescent moons on each side of a cross. The exact symbol depicted on my necklace. I touched the pendant as I moved away from the balcony, heading for the garden.
The Lord of the Underworld stood in the back, in his toga, without a hair out of place.
“Hi,” I greeted, draping my arms over his shoulder so I could kiss the top of his head. He gripped my wrists, pulling my hands up to kiss my palms.
“Who made this garden?” I asked.
“I did,” he replied with a sting in his voice.
I sensed it was a sensitive topic, but I had to understand the connection with my necklace. “For Persephone?”
He tensed further at the name. “Yes.”
I didn’t understand his reaction so I pulled away, removing my necklace as I walked around the seat to sit beside him. I put the jewelry in his hand. “What does this symbol mean?”
His face hardened and he stared at the pendant. “It is the transpluto symbol, representing death and rebirth.”
“Where is the spring goddess?” I leaned down to smell one of the daffodils. “Is this a memorial garden for her?”
“The garden was a gift,” he answered, his voice tight, like a wound-up spring about to pop. He closed his hand over the pendant. “No. She is not dead. Just gone.”
“Where?” He jumped up when I asked.
“She left,” was all he said, his back to me.
He was hiding something from me. Some important detail that I needed to know. Sure, we all had our secrets, but this was important to me.
“A lady at a fair gave me this necklace,” I offered, not wanting to give up just yet. “She called me the Lady of Spring. Wasn’t that what they called Persephone?”
He spun so fast to drop the necklace in my lap. “Do not use that name again!” The snarl in his voice, more than the words, told me to drop it. But I needed answers. He’d made a garden for his former love. I didn’t want to live in her shadow. Not when he obviously still harbored feelings for her.
“So is this a god thing?” I asked.
He looked at me, startled, red and flustered from my previous line of questioning. “Is what a god thing?”
“All of this.” I circled my finger. “We do what we did last night, we get back to work in the… well, it’s not morning, but it’s close, maybe. What passes for morning.”
God. I was blabbing. His reluctance to open up to me had put me on edge.
He stared at me, and it looked like he was going to say something before he changed his mind. “I am employing you to help me solve an issue I cannot solve on my own.”
“Oh,” I said, and I had to blink back the sudden tears that sprang to my eyes. Wow. He’d really only wanted me for one night and day, nothing more. I guessed being in his garden had reminded him of who he really loved. My stomach clenched. “Um, I…”
In a moment I was in his arms, being held so tightly that I might have objected if I hadn’t needed to be held just then.
“That wasn’t…” he trailed off, his voice low.
“Did you mean that it’s more important that we focus on the job?” I squeezed him, not wanting him to let me go.
“I did, but that’s not all.” He leaned his chin on the top of my head. “There is a job ahead of us that we must do.” Urgency laced his tone, which stirred a lump in my throat. “The dead are… they need us. You know that, don’t you?”
I nodded because I did. The dead whom I had met so far had shared a common denominator of misery and helplessness. They needed both of us, and even if he was meant to be my boss, I couldn’t deny the tug of duty any more than he could.
“We have to take care of that first,” he said soothingly. “After that… everything else will fall into place.”
Fall into place. Would he still want me after the job was complete? Would he return to the Underworld without me to dwell on his lost love? Junipers! I didn’t like the dark thoughts creeping into my mind. That wasn’t me.
“You know,” I started, trying to find my happy place. “I’ve found that that almost never happens in real life—things just falling into place.”
Hades pulled back from me, cradling the side of my face in his hand. A stray tear escaped, and he thumbed it from my cheek with a gesture so tender it made me tremble. It was a strange contrast to look at how kind he was now while remembering what he had done to me just a few short hours ago. All the same man, yet different, and that enthralled me.
“I like to think of myself as an optimist,” he explained.
I did a double take at him. “You know that dressing all in black doesn’t really shout that?”
He laughed with what I presumed to be amusement because I was funny.
“I’m a man of faith, how about that? Is that a little better?”
“Faith…” I had never been much for faith. I didn’t have a relationship with it, and it had never come to intersect with my life all that much. However, I knew Hades wasn’t talking about some higher power. As far as most things went, in his narrow scope, he was the higher power. No, he was talking about something else, and his eyes warmed me in places that I wasn’t even aware had been cold.
Me, I thought. He has faith in me.
“All right,” I said, stepping back from him.
He looked disappointed with my answer, but the truth was that if I kept on letting him look at me like that, if I kept on letting him touch me, there was a chance that we would never leave the palace.
You know, not a phrase I expected to be saying about my dating life, but here it is. I’m not even mad.
“All right?” he echoed.
“Yeah.” I took his hand and tugged at it. “Let’s take care of business. And then we’ll figure us out, all right?”
Something made him smile, and to my surprise, he leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. It was different from the kisses we’d shared before—lighter, sweeter, playful. No one just looking at Hades would have said that he was a playful man.
“Good,” he affirmed.
“Cool. Well, boss, let’s get on the road. We have people to help.”
***
After a brief spell of teleportation dizziness and nausea, I felt pretty darned in control when we hit the road that night, headed back across the state to a place that wasn’t far from my hometown.
I only realized our destination when we rolled up to Allwin Medical Center, one of the biggest hospitals in the state. Trembles I’d long since buried reemerged. I pressed one hand to my stomach, cradling it with the other. This was where my mom had come for her treatment. Or the so-called treatment that had ultimately killed her.
Chemotherapy killed more people than it cured. The doctors had given her a fifty percent chance
of surviving, but no matter how hard she fought the sleepless nights, the pain, and the toxins leaching strength from her already frail body, she never gave up. Not once until the last night when death came for her.
Hades had said that my mom didn’t belong in his afterlife. Which one had she gone to? I wondered if I was destined for the same underworld as her. The idea of leaving Hades behind opened a hollow pit in my stomach. But the idea of joining my mother had my stomach flipping with joy. Not that I planned on leaving any time soon when I had a whole lifetime ahead of me.
The Lord of the Dead parked at the entrance reserved for emergency drop-offs, which was bright and bustling. I almost thought he planned on magicking the car invisible or something, but when nothing happened, I shook my head and put my hand over his.
“No, don’t you dare,” I ordered, my voice tight. “Parking lot’s to the right. You’re a god; you can afford to pay the parking fees.”
He gave me a quick and sharp glare, but I must have looked as stubborn as I felt because he silently drove on into the enormous garage and parked.
When I opened the door, I nearly threw up because it smelled the same as it had back then. Cold and subterranean, impregnated with a bitter chemical tang of cleaning solvent. Years ago, I’d read that scent is one of the biggest triggers for our memories, and this scent spilled a whole box of memories in my head that I had marked “Please do not touch ever.”
At Hades’ curious gaze, I shook my head briskly.
“Let’s get this show on the road, all right?” I insisted, determined to get in and out fast so that I didn’t have linger where all my pain resided.
“Is everything–?”
I didn’t let him finish as I hopped out of the car and swiftly crossed the parking garage to the elevators.
He had no choice but to follow me.
The elevators had changed sometime in the last five years. Before, they’d been beige but now they were painted with bright cartoon characters, likely to remind you of where you parked. We were on Green Bear, and I imprinted that into my brain with a grimness that it didn’t deserve. Traveling down in the elevator dredged up that horrid sinking feeling of losing my mom and being unable to do a thing about it.
Upon entering, I stopped at the desk to sign us in and nearly threw up again, but the nurse didn’t look at me.
“Excuse me,” I said, swallowing my bile. “Can I get a pen?”
The nurse kept typing on her computer.
I waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing. Then I looked at Hades expectantly. He hid—and poorly, may I add—the fact that he had been examining me.
“She cannot see you,” he advised. “I made you invisible so we could get past the desk.”
“Oh.”
He reached for me, but I made a cutting motion with my hand. “I can imagine what you’re thinking.”
“And I can assure you I doubt that.” He smoothed his suit jacket down over his broad chest.
“You paid me to do a job, and it’s a job I’ll do, okay?” I brushed my hair with my fingers and took a deep breath. “Soonest begun is soonest done, right? Come on. Where are we headed?”
For a moment, I feared he might tell me no—that I wasn’t up for it. Then he’d have had a real fight on his hands. I mean, seriously, it was a fight that he’d win hands down given the fact that he was an actual god. But I was stubborn, so I’d still put up a good fight.
Instead of arguing, Hades nodded. “That way.”
I let him start walking before falling into step behind him.
My stomach twisted as memories played in my mind. The pillows propping my mother up, her sunken, sallow cheeks and deadened eyes, the smile she’d put on for me when I knew it killed her inside for me to see her like that. Her hands, weakened by the treatment, squeezing mine with all her might. God, how long had it been? Five years. Time had done nothing to erode the rawness curling in my stomach or the ache in my chest.
I concentrated on Hades’ back rather than glancing at patients, nurses, or family members in an attempt to keep those memories at bay. His figure looked like nothing else at the hospital, and I didn’t remember anyone like him from the long months I had spent here.
During the evening, the hospital hallway traffic was reduced to its night shift, the nurses and custodians who kept the hospital ticking along until dawn. Behind every door we passed lurked a story, some kind of pain, and someone having what might be the very worst night of their life or the very last. I forced myself to take a deep breath, and then another.
Since her death, I dreaded visiting hospitals. After I started at Pearl’s, I was only made me do deliveries for a little while until I’d burst into tears one day after a traumatic flashback. No one wanted to make runs to the funeral homes, so I traded up. Weird, considering I’d technically traded the dying for death, but somehow it was easier once they were gone—the peace of passing on radiating through me.
I jumped when Hades took my hand unexpectedly, gentle and protective. I glanced up, ready to growl at him for being patronizing, but he wasn’t looking at me. He charged forward with the same kind of single-minded intent that I was used to, except now he was doing so while holding my hand.
That’s something about him, I thought suddenly. Outwardly, he might appear cold, hard, and unreachable. But beneath that layer resides a kindness that you would never know. That he doesn’t want anyone to know. And it made me wonder why he had shut himself away. Why he’d locked himself in his cage of indifference.
We didn’t have to talk about the careful way he held my fingers like he was afraid he might crush them. Together, we made our way through the hospital until we found the person we were looking for. I expected us to end up in oncology, my stomach churning at the idea as I grew more than a little terrified we would. But we arrived at neonatal, instead, which was almost worse. The tightness in my chest intensified.
Outside one of the private rooms, a tall man dressed in a rumpled suit was slumped in an uncomfortable chair with his legs tucked under to make sure he wouldn’t trip anyone. He was perhaps ten years older than I was, or maybe it was only his weariness and the silver stubble on his jaw that made him look that way. I could see the frame of the chair straight through his body.
Hades and I exchanged a look. Although what had happened at the quarry was still fresh on my mind, he gave me a small, nearly imperceptible nod and stood back. He still stood close enough, though, to jump in if I needed him.
“Wait just a second,” I said, trotting back to the turn of the hall where there was a coffee machine.
Hospital coffee was never good, but it didn’t have to be. It had to be hot, sour, and enough to keep you awake, and that was about it. I took a few packets of sugar and a little cup of creamer too, then went back. The man looked up as I did so, and the moment he saw that I wasn’t a nurse or a doctor, he looked away.
“Hi,” I began. “What do you take with your coffee?”
He raised his eyebrows confusedly at being addressed but sat up a little straighter, glancing up at Hades for a moment before returning his gaze to me.
“Um, cream and a sugar,” he replied. “Thank you.”
“Sure thing.” I took my time mixing everything up because I didn’t think that he was going to be able to hold the cup, not with how transparent his hands were.
Soon I got him talking about who he was and why he was here. Barnard Ross had had everything going for him until he didn’t, and one night at Allwin Medical had taken it all away from him. As he talked, his voice fractured while skipping back and forth over the night he had lost his wife and newborn daughter at once. The picture came together, and I knew that if I went looking, I’d find the death announcements for Lynne and Lucy Ross, followed shortly after by his as well, although separately caused by a car accident just two days after. Again, I didn’t know how I knew. I just did. It was less important than telling me about the nursery they’d painted for Lucy, about their good-natured arguments about schooling,
and the less-good natured ones about her parents and his. Each one had been promised lives they’d never get to live.
I glanced over at Hades and noticed his eyes moistening. Had this soul softened him a little?
Barnard continued talking, until finally, sometime later, he gazed at me and then at Hades. “I’m… I’m not supposed to be here anymore, am I?”
It was all I could do not to reach over and give him a hug. But I had learned my lesson, even if there were no cliffs to chuck me over. Instead, I gave him my hand, the one not holding the cooling coffee, and let him squeeze it.
“No,” I told Barnard. “But this man can get you where you need to go.”
He nodded, standing up and turning to Hades. Both of them looked as if they had the weight of the world on their shoulders, but Barnard straightened his back as if finally ready to go.
“All right,” he consented.
I gave him a grim smile before turning away, heading for the sink around the corner. As I dumped the coffee down the drain, a glimmer of the afterglow of his soul departing tickled me but didn’t cheer me.
Hades took a longer time than normal to catch up with me. I’d mostly stopped shaking, and I hadn’t even thrown up. I decided that I deserved a pat on the back for that.
“Autumn?” Hades called, his voice low and croaky for someone normally so stoic and strong.
“Is Barnard okay?” I changed the subject because we didn’t need to talk about how I felt. This wasn’t about me.
Hades nodded, his eyes never wavering from me, but I caught a redness evident in them that hadn’t been there before. Then I noticed the other signs: his normally perfect kempt hair was disheveled, and creases lined his shirt.
“That one was hard for you?” I asked understandingly.
Muscles in his cheeks flexed but he remained silent. There was a lot he wasn’t saying, a lot he let slide, so I reached for his hand to show him how much I cared for him.
“He’s gone where he needs to go,” he said, his voice a little shaken.
I realized with an abrupt, sickening lurch that that meant Barnard had gone on to find his wife and his daughter. The room spun around me for a moment, and I had to take a deep breath. I knew I was holding on to Hades’ hand too tightly, and after a moment I let it go.
