Underworld's Daughter

by Molly Ringle

  He snorted, as if to dismiss the notion that there could be anything he’d want in her stupid girly room.

  Sophie looked out the window over the sink, toward the front of the house, where the produce stand’s red and white striped tent stood. “Mom working the stand today?”

  “Yep,” Dad said.

  A tremor of worry shivered through Sophie. Her mind flashed back to Quentin holding up a photo of the fruit stand on her phone. Nice place. I should visit. “By herself?” Sophie asked.

  “Ross is with her.”

  Relieved, Sophie nodded. Ross was a high school senior, and a wrestling champion. He could surely defend Mom against Quentin if the old nutjob did show up. “I’ll go say hi.” Sophie set her backpack down against the wall.

  “She’d be mad if you didn’t,” Dad said.

  As Sophie walked to the front door to go out, her brother fell in step beside her, and began telling her about the smart-ass things his buddy had said in Spanish class the other day. Sophie smiled. Evidently Liam kind of liked having her home after all.

  Chapter Five

  After greeting everyone, collecting all the gossip, and helping herself to fruit salad and cheese from the fridge, Sophie went up to her room and shut the door. Such sweetness and luxury, having a bedroom all to herself again, filled with her familiar possessions from childhood and adolescence: tattered oval rug, TV-show posters rubbing edges with clippings about nutrition, a pom-pom in her high school’s colors someone had thrown to her during a football game, the occasional hot guy in a magazine ad—none of whom looked as hot as Adrian did to her anymore.

  But she only absorbed the atmosphere of her room for a few breaths before turning to the task at hand, the most important one. She sat on her bed, selected Tabitha’s number, and called it. A text wouldn’t do, not for this. Her heart throbbed against her throat.

  “Hey, lady,” Tab answered. She sounded her cheerful, vibrant self, but with something held back in her voice, a mystery that didn’t match Tab’s usual forthright openness.

  “Hey.” Sophie licked her lips, and switched to the language of the Underworld. “Sounds like we have a few things to talk about.”

  Rather than answer with guilt or counter-accusation like Sophie had dreaded, Tab burst into sparkling laughter, not unlike Aphrodite’s. “So many things!” she answered in the same language, then switched back to English. “When can I come see you?”

  “Depends,” Sophie said. “Can you switch realms and did Niko give you one of those horses?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, and yes.” Now Tabitha did sound a touch guilty.

  Sophie ignored the envy that prickled in her chest. “And you can sense me? So you’d know I was in Carnation even if I didn’t tell you?”

  “I can, and I’d figure that out, but I don’t know why you’re in Carnation.”

  “Come on over. I’ll explain.”

  When Tabitha showed up—looking amazing, her skin and hair gleaming—they shut themselves into Sophie’s room and settled down for a talk.

  Sophie explained first, since her Greek god adventures had begun before Tab’s had. She described her abduction by Niko, her introduction to Adrian, and her increasing attachment to him. She covered the scary attacks, which she had reported to Tab in their abridged versions earlier, but now Tab winced and nodded vigorously, helping fill in the Thanatos-related details that Niko had related to her. And when Sophie got to the orange she would have eaten last night, but which had gone missing, Tabitha gasped and covered her mouth.

  She scrambled up from the pillow she’d been leaning back upon, and hugged Sophie with startling strength. “I’m so sorry. Oh, Soph, I had no idea, he didn’t say a word! I swear, I will make it up to you. All he said was you’d been there with his friend Adrian, and you guys were Persephone and Hades, and honestly I still don’t get all that, but—”

  “Not your fault. Niko thought I was going to wait longer to eat it. He is still of course a sneaky douche.” Sophie extricated herself from the hug. “And you’ll start remembering about Persephone and apparently Dionysos pretty soon here.” She realized she sounded like Adrian, reassuring her time and again that she’d remember everything soon. Sophie looked into Tab’s blue eyes. “Now your turn. How did this all happen?”

  “Well.” Tab sat up straight on the bed and tucked her legs into lotus position. She’d never been so flexible before, and now that Sophie examined her, she suspected Tab had lost the ten pounds she’d always claimed she needed to lose in order to be perfect. Round, soft curves still defined her figure; she was certainly no twig. But now she radiated health and beauty.

  “I don’t remember exactly how I met him,” Tabitha said. “I was a bit drunk at the time. It was at a party at someone’s apartment. Tons of people. Lots of margaritas.”

  Though Sophie tended to remain sober at parties, Tab readily became hard to control after accepting a few drinks. Sophie sighed, and nodded for Tab to continue.

  “But I know I ended up talking to this guy with crazy curly hair and, like, a full leather outfit,” Tabitha went on. “I figured he was gay and planning to hit Capitol Hill and find himself a date for the night or something. Still, he looked familiar. Probably because you’d sent me that photo of him, the first day in the dorms. Remember?”

  The day Sophie officially met Adrian. Of course she remembered. “The Eurotrash photo.”

  “Right. I didn’t figure it out till later, though. I just kept saying, ‘Don’t I know you?’ like a stereotypical drunk girl, and he kept going, ‘Oh, you do, love.’ But he wouldn’t say how. Finally he was like, ‘Hey, let me show you something,’ and he asked if he could take me out onto the sidewalk and hug me. Dude, I’m in theater; we hug all the time. No big. So we step out and I hug him. And poof! World is gone.”

  “Other realm. Right.”

  “Right. It rocked. I made him take me back and forth a couple of times. Then I started singing and shrieking because it was so awesome.”

  “And because you were drunk,” Sophie noted.

  “That did factor in. Then I noticed his horse—his freaking glowing ghost horse. I mean, I had to check that out. I was sticking my hand through it and giggling, and he said, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’ Which, to sum up, we did.”

  Envy stung Sophie again. She glowered at the colorful pom-pom on the wall. “All the way to Greece.”

  “Uh-huh. Via New Zealand.”

  Sophie looked at Tab. “What?”

  “To pick up ‘this girl I think you’ll like,’ he said. Well, he was right about that. Again, I’m fuzzy on the details, but—”

  “What girl?”

  “Zoe. I thought you knew. I mean, if you knew I was there—”

  “Zoe? Adrian’s Zoe?”

  “Adrian’s and your Zoe, if I understand it right.” Tabitha licked her upper lip salaciously. “And so cute, oh my gosh.”

  Sophie’s mind whirled. “My Zoe? Okay, what?”

  “Well, Adrian filled her in on all the memories he was having back when, right?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “So in a way, she already knew who she was back in these Greek god days. And again, I haven’t even gotten to those, so when they tell me I’m Dionysos, I’m like, whatever; I’m immortal now! That’s what counts.”

  “So who was Zoe?” Sophie asked.

  “She said Adrian was her dad? Hek-something…what was the name.” Tabitha studied the ceiling, then snapped her fingers. “Hekate. So we picked her up, and I gather she was blind, but she isn’t anymore, because we shared the orange…you okay, lady?”

  Sophie felt dizzy. “You both ate it?” Also, that name, Hekate, it was zeroing in on her brain, approaching, about to strike.

  “Yep! Jeez, I thought you knew. Sneaky old Niko. Two new immortals, both hot gay women. The world is lucky, I’m telling you.”

  “He said he had another surprise.” Sophie’s mind slid toward Zoe, whom she’d never met and had only seen in photos on Adri
an’s phone. Adrian’s child in a past life? Hekate?

  Tabitha started talking again, but at that moment the recollection from Persephone’s life burst upon her and showered details onto her mind, scattering them down like brilliant flower petals.

  A young woman seated on the cave floor, decorating a mask with bits of colored stone. The same young woman, or girl, standing face to face with Hades as he moved his hand level from his head to hers, finding them the same height; he then laughed in amazement and kissed her forehead. A younger girl, maybe twelve, lying in Persephone’s arms, sick with a fever and dreadful sores while Persephone’s heart fluttered in grief and terror. A little girl rolling down a grassy slope in the Underworld, laughing, while Kerberos bounced around her and yipped. A dark-haired baby girl, nursing from Persephone’s breast, while Hades knelt at the bedside and gazed in adoration at them both.

  Sophie gasped, filling her lungs with the air she’d forgotten to breathe for half a minute.

  Tabitha stopped talking and stared at her in alarm. “Whoa. You okay?”

  Her joyful tears made the room go blurry. Sophie blinked them away and laughed. “We had a daughter.”

  Adrian soared above the Pacific, speeding toward New Zealand and the gentle vibe that meant “Zoe.” He was somewhere near the equator, and even with the speed whipping the wind against him and bringing the temperature down, the air was warm and humid and smelled of tropical salt water. Endless blue ocean surrounded him. The trip could have been viewed as a visit to paradise, but in his current mood it felt more like being lost at sea.

  Sophie’s immortality was delayed, and clearly the disappointment stung her, which alone would have made him punch Nikolaos. But it hurt Adrian too, not having her alongside him in equal power and strength. And no amount of beating up Niko would fix that.

  Nonetheless, he had turned all angst-ridden King of the Underworld and banished two of his best friends, who had gone out of their way to help Sophie just the other night. He felt a bit ridiculous about that. But then, hadn’t Niko and Freya acted sneakily? Was it really allowable for one party among the immortals to hand out the orange without consulting the rest?

  Of course, he and Niko had approached Sophie without consulting the others. Rhea had been angry at him for that.

  Rhea. There was another large component of his depression. The world’s oldest living person, one of the world’s oldest living things, now wiped out by thugs and reduced to merely another soul among the multitudes.

  Adrian’s hands tightened on the reins until the leather creaked and warped in his grip.

  The world was horrible enough without a group like Thanatos. Why did they have to exist? And they would never quit. Every one of the members he’d spoken to in the Underworld, where they were souls and couldn’t lie, made it clear: like so many other cult fanatics, they were crazily devoted to their cause, willing to kill or die for it. Now they had sprung Quentin, who would surely do her best to strike back at Sophie and himself. The vendetta had turned more personal than ever for her.

  How could he keep Sophie safe, let alone himself and everyone else he cared about, with these people on the loose? He didn’t know where his enemies were or even who they all were. He felt like a clueless loser, not a godlike immortal.

  He tilted the reins to steer the horses toward New Zealand’s North Island, which was at the moment only a fuzzy dark green line on the horizon. Perhaps seeing Zoe and his father would cheer him up, but he wasn’t counting on it.

  His father likely wasn’t home yet. He worked full time at a railway office, where he arranged for freight shipments to find their way onto the right boats. Adrian wasn’t sure of his hours today, and for both their safety, he never contacted his dad directly. They passed messages through Zoe. So it was to Zoe that Adrian steered his horses.

  The spirit-realm twin of Wellington Harbor uncurled into view, its surface alive with the fins and flippers of sea creatures. It amazed him how full of animals the oceans were in this realm, and probably would be in the living realm, if people hadn’t hauled them out by the billions in nets. He slowed the bus and glided a meter above the smooth harbor. A pod of porpoise-like animals breached the water beneath him, spraying him with mist from their blowholes.

  He settled the bus on shore. Flowers speckled the ground and climbed into the trees on vines, their fragrance filling the air. Spring had recently arrived down here. Despite how the mythology had it, Persephone’s seasonal presence was never truly gone from the Earth. It was always somewhere.

  And their daughter was here too, now quite close to him.

  Exactly how angry would Sophie be when she found out he hadn’t told her about their child? He sighed in defeat, suspecting he had even more chilliness ahead to endure. But Sophie’s mind was being blasted with such a torrent of memories already, he couldn’t bear to pile on with more. She’d reach the life of Hekate soon enough. And all the wonderful and devastating details that went with it.

  Arrived, he texted Sophie. Off to see Z. xo.

  He whistled to Kiri, who bounded over from her olfactory inspection of a rotten tree trunk, and they began walking.

  Sophie’s answer arrived in a moment. OK. Tab’s coming over now. We’ll talk.

  Let me know how it goes. Adrian put away his phone with a grimace.

  Dionysos. Formerly known as Adonis. “Mixed feelings” would be an accurate way to put Hades’ opinion of that soul. He hoped Sophie’s influence could keep Tabitha on the better side of behavior in this reincarnation, especially now that Tab wielded immortal power and longevity.

  Atop a hill, he stopped beside the stake that marked Zoe’s bedroom. He sensed her nearby, perhaps in the garden or another room of the house. Good day for a swim?, he texted her, which was their code for drop-in visits.

  She answered right away. Yes!

  He felt her approach, waited until she was holding still, then picked up Kiri and switched realms.

  The floor of the house stood nearly a meter above the natural ground. He got shoved upward and landed unsteadily on the carpet, knees bent, the dog squirming in his arms. He set Kiri down. “Hey, Z.”

  “Hey.” Zoe stood in front of him, grinning, leaning with one hand on her desk. She wore a gray T-shirt and black capri pants, which barely covered the knees on her long legs. Her short, light brown hair was shoved messily to one side and tucked behind her ear, held in place by the sunglasses over her eyes.

  Kiri trotted to her, tail whipping, and Zoe knelt to ruffle up her neck. “Hello, darling.”

  Adrian approached, and Zoe hugged him, her body strong in his arms despite her skinny frame.

  “Been a while,” he said. He pulled back to smile at the sunglasses covering her eyes. “Gone back to the sunnies, have you?” She’d worn them for a year or two in high school, but had discarded them after that.

  “Yeah, makes things easier.” She pulled them off and gazed up and down him—or at least, it certainly looked like she was doing that. It didn’t resemble her usual gaze, the unfocused look of a blind person. Adrian peered at her, confused. She tilted her head. “That’s a nice color on you, that navy blue.”

  He glanced down at his navy blue shirt, then blinked at her. “Um. How’d you know that?”

  Zoe squinted at his head. “And what’s in your hair, a leaf?” She reached out and plucked a scrap of something from his head, and examined it. “Seaweed or kelp maybe. How’d that get there?”

  Adrian stared at her. She did look remarkably strong and healthy, not a blemish on her skin…and now she met his eyes directly, smiling. “Zoe?” he whispered.

  “Hello, Dad. Surprise,” she said, in the tongue of the Underworld.

  Chapter Six

  It’s only been a few days. Mum and Dad still don’t know,” Zoe said. They were sitting on the floor against her bed, a plate of sandwiches between them. She sent a furtive glance toward her closed bedroom door.

  “Wow,” Adrian said. “Thus the sunnies.”

  “Ye
ah. It’s easy enough to fake being blind. I’ve got enough practice. But I’m starting to get sloppy. This morning I picked up a book and almost started reading it in front of them.”

  Adrian smiled, but the disgruntlement hadn’t left him, even in his delight at her transformation. “So you can switch realms and all that?”

  “Yep. Niko trained us. We even got to pick out a spirit horse, one for each. I keep mine tied up in the other realm here, near the back garden. You probably didn’t see her. The sunlight makes them almost transparent.”

  “I guess.” He fed a sandwich crust to Kiri. “You wouldn’t eat the orange for me. Nor even the pomegranate. But you would for him.”

  “Ade. It wasn’t really for him—though, yeah, he is quite persuasive.”

  For months now, Niko had been coming occasionally to New Zealand to check on Zoe and sniff round for Thanatos. It was safer than having Adrian do those jobs, since Thanatos or the neighbors would recognize Adrian, but didn’t know Niko. Niko had gladly taken on the task. He liked Zoe instantly upon meeting her—not to mention he’d held affection for her in past lives. Zoe reported liking him too, or at least finding him amusing. But Adrian hadn’t guessed Niko could persuade her into such a huge step. Especially without either of them consulting him.

  He picked apart another crust. “Who was it for, then?”

  “You. I mean, I was finally ready, is all, and the opportunity presented itself.”

  “But you didn’t tell me. When it happened.”

  “I wanted to surprise you.” She shoved at his knee. “I wanted this moment. Admit it. It was awesome.”

  Adrian glanced at her, then watched Kiri lick crumbs off the carpet. “Did it for Tabitha, didn’t you.”

  She was silent too many seconds before answering. “No. I mean, I hardly know her. I didn’t know her, that night.”

  “You had a few hours to chat before you got to the Underworld. The three of you cozily sharing Niko’s horse.”

  The hint of ribaldry in her laughter stirred his irritation further. “That was interesting. And, okay, they did bring me a bottle of rum, and you know that’s my favorite.”