by Jasmine Walt
Plutus groaned. “Aphrodite...” he warned.
“Fine, fine,” she pouted. “Just don't get her killed, you hear me, Plutus?” She glanced back at me. “She's kinda cute, it'd be a pity if she went fully dead.” Then, as if to make her point, she slapped my butt.
She slunk over towards Plutus and gently touched his arm. “Be careful, cuz,” she said quietly. There was a note of genuine concern in her voice, completely different from the goddess who was standing there only a split second before. It seemed that the gods could switch emotions on and off like a light switch.
Plutus' severe face softened, and he nodded his head towards her. “I will, Aphrodite,” he said. A small smile flitted across his handsome features. “I'll still be here tomorrow.”
“You'd better be.”
As she sauntered off, wiggling her assets with each step, he turned his attention towards me. The smile grew a bit larger and he shook his head. “She never changes. Good to see that you're up and out of bed,” he said.
I shrugged. With Aphrodite no longer scrutinizing me, I immediately felt more like myself. “I got really bored. I already looked over all of the suspects and read all the notes about the case. I couldn't look at them anymore.”
“Well, if you're bored,” he said, “would you be interested in going on a little adventure with me?”
I wasn't sure if I had the energy but I wasn't going to turn him down. Not only was I his bodyguard, but he was compelling. Something about him was pulling me closer to him. “Where are you going?”
“I'm heading to the Surface,” he said wryly. “I'm off to go do my job. And I guess if you're my bodyguard, the best way to keep an eye on me is to come with me.”
“Your job?”
He nodded. “Have to go play the God of Wealth for a few hours.”
It was going to feel strange going to the world of the living when I was practically a ghost. As Plutus explained, we were going to be something like observers on the Surface. We'd be invisible to everyone, they wouldn't be able to hear us, and we couldn't touch anything.
“So what good will we be?” I asked, feeling a bit surly.
“You'll see,” he answered cryptically.
He grabbed my hand, and we teleported to the Surface.
It must've been because there was no direct sunlight in the Underworld, but it felt so bright outside. The yellow-white light of the sun burned my eyes and it took me a few seconds to adjust. Plutus, because of his blindness, didn’t seem to notice.
He immediately started walking, leaning heavily on his cane. He moved with singular purpose and travelled as quickly as if he'd been powerwalking. I followed him closely. It didn’t take me long to realize that we were in an unfamiliar city. In the middle of a market, deep in the heart of a large city, we moved among a large crowd of people, bustling about and going about their own lives.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Mumbai,” Plutus called behind him. “India.”
Wow. I hadn't expected to end up here, of all places. People kept walking, no one noticed us, and people walked through both of us. Talk about a weird sensation. It was incredibly disconcerting to be a ghost.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“We're here to make a kid's day.” He slowed before stopping, his head turned slightly.
Curious, I looked to see what had caught his attention. Then I saw the little kids.
They looked to be about five or six years old and judging by their dirty faces and tattered clothes, they’d seen hard times in their short lives. My heart clenched.
“What's going to happen to them?” I asked, feeling that something bad was about to occur.
“Watch,” Plutus whispered. He couldn't hide the little smile that escaped his lips.
A tourist couple walked by, out of place among the market-goers. Maybe they were on their honeymoon. They looked around, open-mouthed at everything they saw. I knew what they were thinking, because I felt the same way.
While they were gaping at the market, something sparkled out of the woman's purse. I saw it like it was a glittering diamond. It wasn't. It was a 100 Euro note, which was ridiculous, because they were in India, they should be carrying Indian money, right? Still, there it was, the 100 Euro note, which fluttered from her purse and down to the ground.
They didn't even notice.
Timidly and quickly, the boy snatched it up and scurried back to his sister. They were looking at it in disbelief that someone would drop any amount of money. Slowly, hopefully, the little boy smiled and hugged his sister.
“Do they look happy?” Plutus asked quietly.
“Yes.” It was a sad, beautiful scene. “Did you do that?”
Plutus turned away. “Let's get going.”
He grabbed my hand, and a split second later, I was standing in a living room where an elderly couple was excitedly watching TV, a yellow slip of paper in their hands. It took me a second to realize what they were watching so intently. An announcer was speaking, and they were repeating everything he was saying.
“...38...”
They were watching the lottery drawing.
“Are you doing this too?” I whispered to Plutus. Standing in someone's living room felt a whole lot more personal than standing in the middle of a market in Mumbai.
“You don't have to whisper,” he said at a normal volume. “They can't hear you.”
“And you haven't answered my question.”
“...17...!”
“Yes,” he said.
“...29...!” the man cried. They both got to their feet, screaming with unadulterated joy. They were hugging each other, tears streaming down their faces. “Fifteen million dollars, Marie!”
“Wow,” I exclaimed, blinking. “They won the lottery?”
“Yep,” Plutus said. “It's going to help them live well for the last five years of their lives. Their family is going to fight over their remaining assets, and it's going to tear them apart.” He spoke softly, with a hint of sadness.
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Wealth isn't all good,” Plutus said. “Many times it's often a curse. A lot of people who fall into a bunch of money often wish for things to go back to the way they were. They end up...hating their wealth. Wishing it'd never happened.” He was frowning. “It's not my fault. But you can see why there might be someone who wants to kill me. To be in control of this power.”
He grabbed my hand and we zapped to more locations. I saw a court divorce, splitting up the assets of a sad eighty-year old man and his gold digging twenty-two-year-old wife. I saw a teenager steal money from his mother so he could buy drugs. We stood by as a father died way too early and his two young daughters watched the life fade from his eyes. Luckily, he had taken out life insurance, but you got the feeling they would have traded all of it to get their dad back. The stock market went up; people were rich; an earthquake decimated a sweatshop in a third world country, and the company offered to pay the grieving families two months' compensation for their loved ones dying in the collapse of the building.
The whole thing felt both beautiful and awful. All at once, I saw both sides to wealth. The good side that allowed people to live their dreams. And the bad side that shattered people's lives. Plutus was pretty stoic about the whole thing, while I had tears streaming down my face.
“This is insane,” I said.
“Yeah,” Plutus agreed. “You grow really tired of it after a while. As a god, there's so much you impact, but you have little effect on the outcomes of what happens. It's all a part of Fate. My job is to dispense the wealth. After that, it’s up to the mortals to decide if they’ll use it for good or bad.”
“What if you stopped doing it?”
“The balance of the world would shift and that could be catastrophic.”
“Do you always have to do it?”
His blank eyes looked at me for a few moments before answering. “Yes,” he said softly. “Some gods can get away
with a proxy doing their work for a few years. But not me. I'm...I'm really the only one who can do this.”
I remembered the vision that Hades showed me, when this whole thing started. I remembered seeing everyone starve in that vision of an apocalyptic future.
“Is that why you can't help third world countries?”
“I can't do anything about it at the moment,” he said softly. A pained expression crossed his face giving me far more insight into his work than any words could have. “I've been trying for millennia to create equal societies. It's getting there, but it's hard.” He clipped the last word, like he was biting back what he really wanted to say.
“Does it suck?” I asked. “Having tons of power and not being able to do anything meaningful with it?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes it does. Being powerless is the worst feeling in the world.” He raked his fingers through his hair.
I reached out to touch his arm, but he recoiled from me. I let my hand fall to my side. I knew how far to push someone before they completely closed up.
“Let's keep going,” he said. “I can't stay up here too long.” His voice sounded strangled.
He grabbed my hand and we were whisked away to another location. I involuntarily shrieked, as we were standing on the roof of a very tall building looking out at a white-capped mountain in the distance.
Before I could ask, Plutus said, “Tokyo. Japan.” He pointed over to the mountain. “That's Mt. Fuji.”
I was glad that the wind swept through my body, because at this height, we would have been blown off to our deaths if we’d been in mortal form. Even though I was somewhat dead, I was shivering like I was still alive.
“What are we doing up here?”
Up until now, we had been traveling, seeing people interact with each other and the world around them. This was the first time we were up here by ourselves with no one else to observe.
“I need to rest,” Plutus said tiredly.
I tore my eyes away from the spectacular view to look at him. He looked ragged, worn around the edges. I saw the bags underneath his eyes and wondered how long it had been since he’d gotten a good night’s sleep. I'd never seen a god look so tired.
“You said before we teleported here, that you couldn't stay up here too long.”
He sighed and sat down on the very edge of the roof, letting his feet dangle off the edge. “Yeah,” he acknowledged. “The longer I stay topside, the weaker I get. It saps my energy.” He grinned bitterly. “One of the major drawbacks of being my parents' son is that I am bound to the Underworld.”
I sat next to him on the edge. It was a little too close for my liking, but I wasn't going to look weak next to him. I was sworn to protect him.
“That's...” I fought for the right words. Nothing came to mind. “That's really shitty.”
He chuckled. “Yep. But what can you do?”
A horrible thought crossed my mind. The cop in me really wanted to ask a question, while the human being underneath told me it was insensitive.
He must have sensed my unease, because he asked, “What's wrong?”
I swallowed to clear my throat. “Mind if I ask you a question?” I asked. He nodded. I really don't want to ask this, I thought, to acknowledge the possibility. “You aren't the one who's trying to kill you, are you?”
He blinked at me, momentarily confused. “How...do you mean?”
I gestured out to Mt. Fuji. “I mean...” Spill it, Callie. “You're a god, yet you're blind and lame. Other gods consider you to be weak. Your powers are...brilliant...but you really can't do anything with them. You're the only one who can do your job, and you can't stay away from the gloom of the Underworld for too long. You're not the one who's trying to...off you, are you?”
He blinked one more time and then leaned back, chuckling even harder. “No, no, I'm not trying to 'off' myself, Callista. There're far easier ways to kill me than what they're trying to do.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Far easier ways. Besides, if it really was me, I'd succeed.”
That wasn't a very reassuring answer. In fact, it sounded like he had at least thought of suicide. I didn't blame him, especially after seeing how the other people in the Underworld treated him. I couldn't imagine thousands of years of that. The whole thing was sad. And a waste.
Oh God, Callie, it sounds like you like him.
Trust me to make something far more complicated than it had to be.
I looked back at Mt. Fuji. “Good,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “I'd hate to be doing all of this work for nothing.”
“I imagine so,” he said bemusedly. He sounded even more tired, like the conversation had zapped what little energy he’d had left.
“We should get you back to the Underworld.”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. For some reason, it seemed like the wind wasn't messing up his hair too much (while it was throwing my hair all sorts of ways, even if it was blowing through the rest of me), and he looked serene for a moment or two.
“I like it here,” he said in a low voice. “Mortals are just so...interesting...”
“And very mortal,” I said with a short laugh. I stood up from my spot and wiped off my jeans. “It is time to go back.” I held out a hand to help him up.
Plutus regarded my hand for a moment before sighing and taking it. I pulled him up to his feet and steadied him against the dizzying height of the skyscraper.
“Good thing I'm about your height,” I told him with a blush.
He quirked an eyebrow, and I giggled self-consciously. Something passed between us then. I don't know what it was, some sort of understanding, maybe. I believed him when he said that he wasn't trying to kill himself, although I felt like I had had seen into a part of him that very few others had.
He reached out to grab my hand, presumably to take me home.
“Look, Callista, I...”
Then—at first I didn't know how it happened—I was swept off the side of the building. It all happened in slow motion, at one point, I was looking at Plutus, the next I was falling with my back to the ground, reaching up like I was expecting him to grab me. Except, by the time I could reach out, I was beyond his reach.
WHAT THE HELL?!
What the hell had happened? Had Plutus pushed me off? Or were we being attacked? I remembered Hades warning me that if I died in his service, there wouldn't be an Afterlife for me. This was it. I was going to die, plunging to my death off the top of a skyscraper in Tokyo. Would people even see my splattered body? Or would I die as a ghost without anyone noticing, the life inside my body in San Francisco just slipping away?
No, I thought. No.
Oh, God. I was terrified of death.
Of course, even as I was thinking these thoughts in slow motion, everything happened far quicker than I could describe.
“CALLISTA!” Plutus cried, breaking through my thoughts.
Then—insanely—he threw himself off the building, reaching out towards me. He was perpendicular to the ground, making himself as aerodynamic as possible to try and catch me before I hit the ground.
“Plutus!” I shrieked, the wind tearing the words from my mouth. At least I knew he wasn't the one who had thrown me off the building. That would have been too perfect. As he drove his body towards me, I saw what had thrown me off the building—and it was far more terrifying in the daylight than in the dark of my bedroom in the Underworld.
A Shadow Assassin reared its ugly head and shrieked in anger, a sound that made my blood run cold. How the hell did they find us here? When Plutus was doing his rounds?
I didn't time to think about it. I had to take care of it now.
I reached into the waistband of my jeans, grabbing my God Gun, which was becoming a lifesaver, aimed at the black shadow that had launched itself behind Plutus, and fired, which probably increased my descent even more.
The Shadow Assassin splattered into red gore that the wind blew away.
I didn't have much time to celebrate. Somewhere below me, the ground was quickly rising up to meet me, and Plutus wasn't going to make it in time.
However, he certainly looked like he wanted to.
I thought briefly about firing down at the ground—the kick of the God Gun was surely enough to slow me down, even a little bit, yet I had no idea what it would do to the people below.
I watched as his hand edged agonizingly closer and closer to me, but it wasn’t close enough. Then I felt the touch of the concrete hit my head, just as his fingertips touched mine, and we teleported away from Tokyo, away from the what remained of the Shadow Assassin, and my imminent death on the sidewalk.
I landed roughly on my back in my bed, breaking the posts of the bed with a loud thud. Plutus came crashing on top of me.
My head hurt from the almost-impact of the sidewalk, the rough landing on the springs in my mattress, and Plutus' body weight holding me down. We were alive. I was alive, rather. Mostly.
I puffed heavily trying to regain my breath. Tears sprang in my eyes and I couldn't see straight.
“That...” Plutus was heaving as he got up on his elbows. “That was...too close.” He shook his head. “I could...I could've teleported to the ground and caught you...but I didn't know if I'd have enough...strength...”
I was speechless.
The door burst open, and Tisiphone was there, half in and half out, looking like she was rushing to save us, halting in the doorway. Her face went from surprised to smug as she saw Plutus lying on top of me.
“And here I thought I was coming to rescue you,” she muttered.
Plutus rolled over, and we both laid on the bed, breathing heavily.
“I can't slow down my pulse,” I gasped, putting a hand over my heart. “I think I'm going to have a heart attack.”
“Can't,” Tisiphone announced.
“She can...still feel like she is,” Plutus retorted between breaths.
A moment later, Hades pushed his way past her and knelt next to Plutus on the bed. “Are you all right?” he asked his son. He looked concerned, but not as concerned as I would have thought after yet another attempt on his son's life.
