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ALSO BY MARINA FINLAYSON
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HIDDEN GODDESS
Marina Finlayson
Copyright © 2017 Marina Finlayson
www.marinafinlayson.com
All rights reserved.
The right of Marina Finlayson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth).
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.
Cover design by Karri Klawiter
Model stock image from Taria Reed/The Reed Files
Editing by Larks & Katydids
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
Published by Finesse Solutions Pty Ltd
2017/08/#01
Author’s note: This book was written and produced in Australia and uses British/Australian spelling conventions, such as “colour” instead of “color”, and “-ise” endings instead of “-ize” on words like “realise”.
To be notified when Marina Finlayson’s next novel is released, plus get special deals and other book news, sign up for her newsletter at:
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For Mal, just because.
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
ALSO BY MARINA FINLAYSON
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1
*There’s a fireshaper looking for you.*
I put my beer down on the gleaming surface of the bar as Syl’s voice sounded in my head. Harry, the bartender, continued the conversation Syl had interrupted, but I was no longer listening. My heart leapt, though my rational self knew it couldn’t be Jake. We’d spent so much time together lately that I kept expecting to see him every time I turned around, but he was trapped in the underworld. I did my best to stop the little surge of emotion from crossing the mental link to Syl; she’d already told me I was acting like a love-struck teenager once today, and she didn’t need any more ammunition.
A fireshaper was looking for me. Once, those words would have struck fear into my heart. There’d been a fireshaper looking for me for a long time, which was how Syl and I had ended up hiding out in sleepy Berkley’s Bay in the first place. It had seemed like the last place a bigshot councillor like Erik Anders would think to search. But Anders had been dead for a couple of weeks now, and with the god Apollo taking an active interest in what his fireshapers got up to these days, a visit from a fireshaper was nowhere near as alarming as it used to be.
*Anyone we know?* It still paid to be cautious. It was hard to shake the habits of a lifetime. I’d started to see another side to fireshapers once I’d met Jake, but they weren’t all like him.
*That priest guy from the temple in Crosston.*
*Winston? The old Chinese one?*
*Yeah.* Her mental voice was strong, as if she were close by. She was probably still sunning herself on the kitchen windowsill of our tiny apartment, just across the street from where I sat in the pub. We could only communicate this way when she was in her cat form—had she abandoned Winston on the doorstep to change forms?
*Did you just leave him standing there while you shifted?*
*Nah. Didn’t bother answering the door. It’s so warm here and I’m too tired to get up.*
*Too lazy, you mean.* Actually, she’d been out of bed before me, but there was no need to let truth get in the way of a good insult. *What if it had been Apollo? I’m sure he would have been thrilled to be left hanging on the doorstep because you couldn’t be bothered to get off your furry butt.*
She snorted. *As if Apollo would have knocked anyway. He would have magicked the door open and waltzed in like he owned the place.*
She had a point there. *So if you didn’t answer the door, how do you know he’s looking for me?*
*I can hear him talking to Joe and Holly.* Our neighbours’ door was right across the landing from ours. No doubt he’d knocked on it after being ignored by Syl. Cats could be such buttholes. *Want me to go out there and tell him where you are?*
*If that wouldn’t be too draining for you. Send him over to the pub.*
I came back to my surroundings to find Harry staring expectantly at me. Damn, it must be my turn to say something. I took a gulp of beer to cover the awkward pause. The bar was more than half full, which was unusual for this time of day—too late for the lunch crowd and too early for the evening drinkers. The fine weather must have brought a few holiday-makers down from the city early. It was still spring, but by summer, Berkley’s Bay would be awash in tourists.
A few of the locals at a table behind me were covering the same conversational ground as Harry and me: everyone had a theory about what had happened to Alberto, the vampire publican, who’d gone missing last week.
None of those theories, of course, accounted for the fact that he wasn’t a vampire at all, but a god: Hades, the Lord of the Underworld.
“Sorry, Harry, I missed that last bit.”
“You look like you’re half a world away, love.” Harry rubbed at a non-existent spot on the bar. It was practically an antique, made of local wood, and the front of it was covered in intricate carvings of birds and wattle flowers. Alberto was very particular about keeping it polished to a high sheen, and had all his staff trained to wipe up spills straight away. Not using a coaster was practically a hanging offence. “Is everything all right?”
If only he knew. I was more than half a world away—my heart was in another plane altogether, along with a certain blue-eyed shaper who’d stolen it. Jake had agreed to spend a single night with the goddess of the River Styx in the underworld, in exchange for her help. Or so we’d thought. Of course, we’d all forgotten that, in the underworld, it was always night. The bitch had double-crossed us, leaving him trapped with her indefinitely, unless I could get help from a higher power. Even Apollo hadn’t been able to force her to honour the spirit of her bargain rather than the letter.
Apollo thought only Hades or Zeus would be able to free Jake from Styx’s clutches, which sucked big time, since both of them were missing. Zeus had been gone for ages, but Hades had only just disappeared, and I was far more worried about him than about the father of the gods. Hades was my friend, and not the kind of person to take off without warning. Besides, his bond with Cerberus, the great three-headed hellhound, had been broken two days ago, and that could only be bad news. Either the shadow shapers had caught him and collared him to stop him accessing his power, or he was dead. Not exactly a fabulous choice of options. I was worried sick about him.
“Everything’s fine,” I lied. “I’m
just worried about Alberto.”
“Aren’t we all, darl?” The gold signet ring on Harry’s little finger glittered in the light from the old-fashioned lamp overhead as he worked. Usually he wore a lot more jewellery to work. With his black uniform shirt, he looked like he was already in mourning for his missing employer. “I mean, I’m genuinely worried about him, and a man couldn’t ask for a better boss—but we have to think of ourselves, too. What’s going to happen to the pub if he never comes back? I’m paid up to the end of the month, and I’ll work until then, but I can’t keep going forever. A man’s got to eat. I’ll have to look for another job.”
He’d probably have trouble finding one. Harry’s track record wasn’t the best. This job was the only one he’d managed to hang onto for more than a year, as he would happily tell anyone, as if his unreliability was a source of great pride.
“What will you do about the bookshop?” he asked.
Alberto the vampire was something of a real estate mogul in the area. As well as the pub, he owned several of the local businesses, plus half a dozen houses that he leased to the holiday crowd. Money was clearly no object when you were a god. He’d given me a job in the little second-hand bookshop when Syl and I had first come to town, plus cheap rent on the tiny apartment above it.
Today was Sunday, so the bookshop was closed, but what about tomorrow? With tourist season ramping up, I couldn’t leave it closed, but there was no way I could go back to selling books with the fate of Jake and Hades hanging in the balance. If the shadow shapers had Hades, he would only live until they got their hands on his avatar. With that, they could kill him in such a way that all his power passed to them on his death. Our only hope was that he hadn’t had it with him when he was caught.
I waved a vague hand. “Today’s my day off, Harry. Don’t make me think about work until tomorrow!”
He smiled, but worry still lurked in his eyes. He smoothed back his already sleek hair, gelled, as usual, within an inch of its life. Behind me, the door thudded closed, and his eyebrows rose in surprise.
“What?” I turned to see who’d come in and found Winston scanning the crowd. Most of the pub’s patrons were staring straight back at him, their conversations momentarily silenced. Berkley’s Bay might be in fireshaper territory, but that didn’t mean that the order’s priests were a common sight in the town. Apart from a statue to Poseidon down by the waterfront, there was very little attention paid to the official religion of the shapers in these parts. We didn’t even have a shrine, much less a temple. Until Apollo himself had taken me to his great temple in Crosston, I’d never seen one of his priests, who rarely left the temple they served.
Winston wore the red robes that proclaimed he was on official business as a representative of the god, not the plainer white ones he’d had on last time I’d seen him … yesterday? Was it really only yesterday? It felt as though I’d lived three lifetimes in the last two weeks—so much had happened. The cuffs of his sleeves hung down nearly to his knees, heavy with embroidery, and perched on his thinning white hair was the most ridiculous red hat. Maybe it was supposed to be a sunburst, but it looked more like a tiny red octopus clinging to his head. No wonder the people in the bar stared.
Winston’s expression cleared when he saw me, and he approached with a smile on his lined face. “Miss Lexi! There you are.”
He settled himself on the bar stool next to me, arranging his robes carefully about him, moving with the deliberateness common to the elderly. A few wisps of white hair clung to his chin in the most pathetic excuse for a beard I’d ever seen.
“Can I get you something to drink, Reverence?” Harry asked.
“Water, thank you.”
Harry moved away reluctantly, no doubt burning to find out what business one of Apollo’s priests had with me. I was a little intrigued myself.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Reverence,” I said. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I didn’t expect to be here,” he admitted, “but my lord desired that I find you. And please call me Winston, Miss Lexi. It’s not right for someone like you to be calling me Reverence.”
“Someone like me?” A sales assistant in a bookshop? A part-time thief? A woman who attracted trouble the way roadkill attracts flies?
“A companion of Lord Apollo.” His voice was filled with awe. Yesterday, he’d met his god in person for the first time, which had to be a pretty full-on experience for someone who’d dedicated his life to the god’s service.
“Trust me, it wasn’t my idea to start hanging out with gods.” Nor to lose my memory, or whatever the hell had happened to me. Nor to get on the fireshapers’ Most Wanted list, and most especially not to fall for the most annoying fireshaper of all. The list of things I hadn’t meant to do was long, and made for scary bedtime reading.
“But the gods have ideas for you. They have plans for us, Miss Lexi, and we must have faith in the paths of their choosing.”
Yeah, right. The gods had withdrawn from the world so long ago that many people—including me, until a fortnight ago—didn’t even believe in their existence. They were a story in a child’s picture book, nothing more than a convenient fiction used by the shapers to justify their place at the top of the food chain. The idea that someone like Apollo gave a rat’s arse what happened to anyone but his own gilded self was laughable.
However, there was no reason to burst Winston’s adoring bubble. If he spent much time in Apollo’s company, he’d work it out for himself soon enough.
“You know, every time you call me ‘Miss Lexi’, I age another five years. I tell you what—I’ll call you Winston if you promise to call me Lexi. Deal?”
He beamed, nodding so vigorously I feared for the octopus’s grip. There didn’t seem to be anything but the power of prayer holding it on his head. “Deal.”
Harry returned with a glass of water and set it on a coaster in front of the priest. Ice clinked as Winston took a long drink, a few drops escaping into his straggly beard.
“Have you had a long trip, Reverence?” Harry asked, digging for information as subtly as he could.
Winston laughed. “The longest I’ve had in many a year. I can’t remember the last time I left the temple.”
Another customer called Harry to the other end of the bar, and I grinned at the look of frustration on his face as he moved away again. I wondered if Winston had been vague on purpose.
“What does bring you here?” I asked.
“Lord Apollo has sent me to set up a temple.”
“Whatever for?” How many temples did one god need? And why Winston? Surely there was some young flunky he could have sent, rather than uprooting an old man. Typical of Apollo. It wouldn’t even have occurred to him that Winston might not be up to such exertion. The gods might be older than dirt, but they didn’t have to deal with the trials of ageing the way humans did. Judging from the distortion of his knuckles and the way his hand shook as he raised the glass to his lips, I was guessing that Winston was pretty well acquainted with the pain of arthritis, at least.
“Lord Apollo foresees the need for travel between Crosston and Berkley’s Bay in the coming weeks, and he would prefer if a faster option were available to him.”
“I see.” The gods could travel instantaneously between their own temples, and Berkley’s Bay was a three-hour drive from the city. Of course Apollo would prefer the teleportation option. My irritation with him mellowed. At least he wasn’t planning to abandon me now he had his powers back. I had the feeling I was going to need his help in the search for Hades. “Did you have a comfortable trip?”
“Very. One of the acolytes drove, and I snoozed in the back seat.” He winked at me. “At my age, one must never pass up the opportunity for a nap.”
I hid a yawn behind my hand, still exhausted from recent events. “That’s good advice at any age. You must be pretty important to have your own driver.” I didn’t want to admit how ignorant I was about the priesthood—he could be the high priest,
for all I knew.
He smiled. “Not important at all. My fireshaping was never strong enough to rise above the level of priest—I just don’t have a licence. I always wanted to learn, but somehow, there never seemed to be enough time. Or perhaps my superiors decided I didn’t have the temperament to make a good driver. I was sometimes impatient with temple life when I was a young acolyte.”
Looking at him now, that was hard to imagine. He sat very still, his gnarled hands folded neatly on the bar, and projected an air of serenity.
“Have you served the temple all your life?”
“Since I was seven years old. And never in all that time did I expect to meet my lord face to face.” He beamed, his eyes nearly disappearing into the wrinkles around them. “These are strange and wonderful times we are living in, Lexi.”
“You can say that again.” Although maybe a bit heavier on the strange than the wonderful.
“Lord Apollo wished me to speak with you about facilitating the purchase of a house in the central part of town, which could be converted to a temporary temple.”
I was relieved that Apollo didn’t expect some grand edifice to be erected on short notice. “I’m surprised he didn’t tell you to speak to the mayor about it.”
The mayor was a watershaper, and not one of my favourite people, but he was the local representative of the shapers. I would have expected shaper business to be routed through him, particularly something as big as establishing a temple.
“He said he would prefer the existence of the temple to remain private for now.”
Ah. Okay, that put a different slant on it. I took in the glory of his red robes, topped off with the bizarre octopus hat. “You know, you’re not exactly travelling incognito. People will wonder what a temple priest is doing in a place like this. You don’t look like you’re on vacation. There’ll be talk, and rumours.”
Hidden Goddess (Shadows of the Immortals Book 4) Page 1
