“What was he in this life?” she asked. “Before you found him.”
“A con man.” Enjoying her gasp of surprise, he took her hand and led her toward the stake with its fluorescent ribbons hanging sodden in the rain.
Chapter Fourteen
SOPHIE EXCHANGED A FEW TEXTS with Jacob that night while they both did their homework, she in Corvallis and he in Eugene. But her mind thrummed with everything Adrian had told her. She longed to know more about Hades and Persephone.
And Hermes. He had darted across their lives on an irregular basis, forever mischievous and causing trouble, but nonetheless their ally. A valuable person to have at your back, he also excelled at dodging repercussions for his behavior. A con man? Of course; what else would he have been?
Niko had been sixty-six years old when they approached him, Adrian told her as they lingered next to the stake. After avoiding arrest for his swindles in his native Greece and half a dozen other countries in Europe, he was living in England under one of his many assumed identities. Upon receiving the offer to become eternally young and strong, and gain a whole undiscovered realm in which to hide and explore at his will, he accepted immediately.
“Turning from a paunchy, balding old guy into a fit, young-looking bloke made him insufferably vain,” Adrian said. “He kept dragging me to pubs and challenging me to contests—who could get some girl’s phone number first, stuff like that. Which I never took him up on.”
Adrian had been quick to add that last bit, Sophie recalled. It was cute, his wanting to impress her with something as trivial as that, when he had so many other massively impressive qualities at hand.
She finished her homework, and, exhausted, fell asleep after mumbling goodnight to Melissa.
Each night she had gotten a little better at this lucid-dreaming thing. Tonight she leaned harder on the skip-backward button, shoving entire lives past her into the heap of beautiful, terrible, ordinary human things she had experienced, and searching with a physical exertion for that one life that held so many answers.
She was far enough back now that history had given way to prehistory, which meant she must be getting closer, but also made the era difficult to pinpoint.
Groggy in the morning, she picked up her phone to text Adrian. Native America, I think, she typed. Our village was learning to build a new kind of boat and there was a big argument about it. One man killed his brother.
Ah yes. Think that was the American southeast, he answered. You’re very close now. Maybe 3 more lives, then you’re there.
Her body tingled with excitement as she hurried into her clothes and walked through the cool fog to her classes, bumping elbows with other students. Jack o’ lantern and bat decorations leered at her from windows. It was already Halloween season. The year was passing her by while she lived this strange inner life. But how, she wanted to demand, was she supposed to concentrate on classes and ordinary life with the prospect of unlocking Persephone’s secrets dangling in front of her?
After class she treated herself to coffee on Monroe Avenue. Ignoring the other students crowding the cafe, she sat at a small table and gazed at the steam rising from her coffee. She was practicing moving backward in her mind toward the next life while awake. Thus occupied, she didn’t notice the person beside the table until she spoke.
“Would it be all right if I sat here?”
Sophie looked up to find an elderly woman wearing an OSU Beavers sweatshirt, orange lettering on black.
“Oh. Of course.” A quick glance around showed that, indeed, the chair opposite Sophie was one of the only empty seats in the cafe. “Sorry. I was in my own little world.”
The woman chuckled, showing straight, faintly yellowed teeth. “That’s all right.” She eased herself into the seat, leaning a cane against the window beside her. “I’m Betty Quentin.”
“Hi. Sophie. I’m a freshman.”
“Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands. Betty Quentin’s hands were dry, her nails varnished cotton-candy pink.
“Do you teach?” Sophie asked.
“Only occasionally. I’m an emeritus professor now—retired.” The professor regarded her with pale blue eyes. “What are you studying?”
“Nutrition. Or that’s the plan so far.” But evidently I was a Greek goddess once, so maybe I ought to switch to Classics, she thought, half-seriously.
“Useful field. Very good.” Quentin removed the plastic lid from her coffee, releasing a curl of steam, and bent her head to take a sip. Knotty white hair covered the top of her head, a few pink patches of scalp showing in spots. “I teach philosophy. Not nearly so useful, but it’s always fascinated me.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“It is. Also, I keep an eye on unusual people. Like your Adrian Watts.”
A chill flashed through Sophie from ears to feet. She forced down another sip of coffee, trying not to let her hand shake, and offered a frown as if the name meant nothing to her. “Sorry?”
“What he’s offering you isn’t natural, Sophie.” Professor Quentin gazed at her with concern, as if Sophie were her granddaughter.
“What are we talking about?” Sophie asked quietly.
“The golden apple. The holy grail. Immortality.” Quentin said the word in a stage whisper.
Sophie tried to smile as she were amused, while her mind clamored in a panic that this might be one of the exact people who’d had Sanjay murdered. She smoothed the hem of her jacket over her trembling legs. “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand.”
“I know you’ve been talking to him. A few messages here and there, maybe some meetings. Beware, dear. I’ve made such people my life’s study. They exist. They’re not supposed to be in this world, but they’ve been coming in lately. I warn you, for your own safety, turn this man—this creature—over to us right away.”
Sophie jumped to her feet, scrambling to pick up her backpack and keys; making sure she had her phone in her pocket; grabbing her half-full coffee cup. “I’m sorry, I need to get to class. It was nice to meet you.”
“Contact my associate if Adrian proposes meeting you in person.” Quentin held out a business card. Sophie took it. A glance at it showed the same name Jacob had received: Bill Wilkes. “If you keep talking to Adrian, and you don’t let us know,” Quentin added, “you’re going to be caught in the middle of a fight you don’t want to be in.”
Clutching the card, Sophie stepped back. “I have to go.”
“I’ve scared you. I apologize, but there was no other way. He’s a monumental danger, Sophie. Don’t let him seduce you. Oh, by the way…” Quentin held up her cell phone, its screen displaying a photo. Sophie leaned a few inches closer. It was a picture of her parents’ fruit stand back in Carnation. “Looks like a nice place,” said Quentin. “I’ll have to visit.”
Sophie didn’t even say goodbye. She felt nauseated and cold. She backed away from the table, crashing into someone else’s chair and dropping her coffee, then spun and rushed out of the cafe. She ran the whole way to the dorm, sneakers slapping the pavement, pack thumping her back, her breath tasting like acid.
Once she was safe in her dorm room—if she was even safe there—she pulled out her phone and called Adrian’s number.
“Hey,” he greeted.
She sat on the floor against her bed and pulled up her knees, still breathing fast. “This old woman in a coffee shop—she warned me about you. She knew what you are, and told me not to take what you were offering. And I think she threatened my family.” She blinked against a sting in her eyes, and realized tears were rising.
“Who was she? Did you get a name?” Alarm had sharpened Adrian’s voice.
“Yeah, she was a professor. Started with a Q. Quinn, or…”
“Quentin?”
“That was it. You know her?”
“Professor Quentin came to meet you in person? Old woman, white hair, blue eyes?”
“Yes. Who is she?”
“She basically is Thanatos. The head, the b
oss, the obsessed one who keeps them all fired up and gets them to kill us. People in the Underworld, who used to be in the group, they’ve told me about her. She’s been doing this a long time.”
“Oh, my God. So that ‘freaky’ vibe was right on.”
“What’d she say about your family? What was the threat?”
“She flashed me a picture of the fruit stand. Said, ‘Nice place; I should visit.’” Sophie tried to steady herself with a deep breath, but it wasn’t helping.
“Okay, for now, try not to worry about that. She’s probably just trying to scare you. But you can warn your parents that some weirdo mentioned the place to you, and that they should call the police if anyone’s lurking about. Now, what did you say? About me and how much I’ve told you?”
“Not much. I acted like I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. But she said she knew about ‘messages’ between us.”
“Hmm. Maybe just because of our comments on your blog.” He paused to take a breath. “Okay, go back, tell me everything she said. And what you answered.”
It wasn’t hard; the conversation hadn’t lasted long. Sophie did her best to repeat it in full.
“All right,” Adrian said afterward. “You did the right thing, pretending you didn’t have a clue. I figured someone would approach you before long, since they’ve already tried to go through Jacob. But Quentin personally coming all the way to see you…that’s not good.”
“What do you mean, all the way? I thought she taught here. At OSU.”
“She doesn’t. Was a professor somewhere on the East Coast. Lives in New Jersey, we thought.”
Sophie hugged her knees tighter. “She came to Oregon just because I’m here?”
“Probably. As a way to get to me.” They were silent a second. Adrian sighed. “God. Why am I doing this to you? Putting you in the crosshairs of people like that?”
“But if I stay…mortal…they wouldn’t hurt me. Would they?”
“I hope not. Okay. Um, it’s possible someone’s seen us together, or stolen a look at your texts or something. Be really careful with your phone.”
She groaned. “Oh, hell, I’m an idiot. They could be listening right now.”
“I doubt it. If they’d done a really choice job of bugging or tracing your phone, they’d have followed you straight to one of your meetings with me. Still, look very closely at it after we hang up.”
“Yeah. I’ll Google how to catch spyware.”
“Do that. And,” he added, “I hate to say I shouldn’t see you very often, but…”
“No, we can be careful,” she insisted. “If we go to the spirit realm, they can’t get there, can they?”
“They can’t,” he assured. “As long as they don’t actually see you with me, we should be all right. We’ll find new places to meet and switch over. Also, I’ll let the others know about Quentin. I bet Niko would be happy to do some surveillance on her and this Bill Wilkes. I’ll ask around in the Underworld, too. Everyone’s got contacts and secrets to share down there.”
“Can I tell the cops I’m being stalked?”
“At this point I doubt you could. She hasn’t quite made any explicit threats, and it’d be hard to explain it without bringing up what we are. But if she—or anyone—takes one step closer to you, makes any sort of dangerous move, then yeah. Get their arse arrested.” He sighed. “Don’t suppose I could lend you Kiri, to guard you as you walk around.”
“Nope, can’t keep dogs in the dorm. But I do have pepper spray.”
“Good. Carry that. And, hey, um…” His voice went shy. “Thanks for telling me right away. For still wanting to talk to me at all, in fact.”
She smiled, though he couldn’t see it. “Well, I need to hear how this Hades story ends up. I can’t ditch you till I find that out.”
“Quite right. You can’t.”
After they hung up, she gazed frowning at her window. Why had she immediately called Adrian? Could she prove he wasn’t out to hurt her—that he wasn’t just as dangerous as Quentin claimed? Not really. Unless you could trust thousands of years of memories and instincts brought on by an Underworld fruit.
With a smirk, she hauled herself to her feet. Everything had turned insane in her life. All she could do was go along for the ride.
Chapter Fifteen
AFTER SNEAKING HADES OUT OF the palace, Tanis led him north toward the seaside. By dawn it was pouring, and so cold they both shivered in their soaked cloaks. But their island was receiving its much-needed rain at last, which made them exchange grins as they ducked into an abandoned sheep-herder’s shelter to rest and eat breakfast.
Near evening, they entered the port town on the coast. The rain was finally letting up, allowing in warm rays of sunlight. Hades had been here only a few times as a boy, with his parents, to buy certain rare types of fish. But he had never set foot on a boat, and thus had never left the island. His contact with the sea was limited to wading and swimming near the shore on those rare visits, where he marveled at both the saltiness and the sheer might of the ocean.
Despite the new evidence that he was more or less indestructible, he quaked as he climbed aboard a ship at the docks and stared out at the fuzzy blue horizon. The vessel was huge, at least the length of ten tall men and the width of five, but even in harbor, it rocked alarmingly with the waves. The sails rippled and snapped with each gust of wind. The oars looked like thin splinters, no match at all for the sea’s power.
Tanis, who had arranged their passage and paid the ship’s captain, came on board with him.
“If there’s going to be a storm, shouldn’t we wait?” he asked.
“The sailors know the weather. They say it’ll likely rain again, but not hard enough to worry about. Besides, tonight’s winds are excellent for carrying us to Greece.”
He gazed at the sea, where fish large and small broke the surface in energetic leaps, catching golden flashes of sun on their scales before plopping back into the depths.
If the ship overturned and sank in the middle of the Mediterranean, and sharks or other sea monsters ripped him into hundreds of pieces, wouldn’t that finally kill him? He saw no way it couldn’t, if various parts of him were in the stomachs of different fish.
Oh well, did it matter? He had been prepared to die anyway.
But as the crew untied the ropes and freed the ship from its moorings, and the wind swept them out upon the sea, Hades’ heart lifted with excitement. The sensation of sailing with the wind was the closest thing to flying he’d ever experienced. Holding onto the edge, he watched the sea spray splash into the air while the hull danced through the waves.
Then he turned and watched his island, his only home and entire world, dwindle in their wake. Aside from Rhea, everyone there thought he was dead, killed for a good cause. He whispered a prayer to his old household gods and goddesses to keep watch over his family and neighbors. After the prayer he stopped and wondered, for the first time in his life, who or what those gods and goddesses really were. He had always assumed they were spirits who sometimes took the form of fantastical beasts (or part-beast-part-humans), the way the old stories had taught him. And of course they were invincible. But if he himself was invincible, then what did that mean?
It felt sacrilegious to think of himself as anything like a god. He couldn’t be. Gods were supposed to know everything, and he knew virtually nothing. He hoped these others, to whom Tanis was taking him, could tell him what he was. And he hoped the real gods and goddesses were still up there, in their intangible, omniscient spirit forms, watching over him as they sent him on this journey.
Tanis leaned on his arm. “Let’s find a spot to sleep.”
They lay down behind a stack of lashed-down crates carrying cargo to Greece. Like the other passengers, they used their bundles as pillows. An extra cloak covered them both for a blanket. A spare sail had been strung overhead to keep off the rain and wind, but in the space between it and the walls of the ship, Hades could see a deep blue line of sky,
sparkling with stars. The sea spray left the taste of salt on his lips. His senses full, he fell asleep.
The journey took several more days, their progress slowed by the many ports the ship stopped at. Hades filled the hours marveling at the Greek landscape and at the vast sea and its frolicking creatures, and talking to Tanis, who had made the voyage several times by now. As the ship sailed along the coast, she pointed out villages and landmarks. Finally they disembarked at a bustling port, its narrow docks so full of people that Hades was almost knocked into the water a few times as they walked toward shore.
Shouts and conversations filled his ears. The Greek language dialects were similar to that of Crete, but pronounced differently enough that he couldn’t decipher half of what he heard. Tanis, being a native, took care of the trading for them, procuring them breakfast and extra food. From the heavy pack Hades carried for her, she brought out Egyptian jewelry and jars of Cretan honey and oils, and bartered them for fruit, cheese, and yogurt.
They ate in the shade of an olive tree overlooking the sea, then she led him out of town and into the mountains.
It was another few days’ journey, interrupted by overnight stays in the homes of villagers and shepherds, before they reached their destination. In the shreds of a late-morning fog, they stood at the foot of a great mountain, its top hidden in clouds. The chilly, pure air rolling downward suggested snow at its peak.
“Here’s where mortals like me stop.” Tanis pointed at a grassy, narrow track between the boulders. “Follow that goat path. The immortals live on top of the mountain.”
Hades stared with consternation into the fog. “But what if I get lost? What if I can’t find them?”
“You will. Or they’ll find you. And if the clouds clear, you’ll see their houses easily enough.”
He turned to look into the face of the brave, sweet woman who had brought him farther into the world than he’d ever been. He halfway loved her already; the painful memory of his young wife had faded further with every day he spent in the company of someone so lively and charming. And besides, it was now clear he’d never find his wife again. He had knocked upon the door of the spirit realm and had been denied entrance. He felt he’d been given permission—even encouragement—to restore his interest in living women.
Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) Page 13
