by R. L. Naquin
I stuck my hand in my pocket and felt the object there: my Muse bubbles. A few people strolled over and watched the sequence I’d seen a moment before. The waterfall turned off, the woman tried to take a puff, water poured out and kept her from satisfaction.
A guy from the group watching her shook his head. “Smokers.”
The guy next to him tugged his sleeve. “This building is lame. I heard there’s a guy getting his foot bitten off by an alligator in the Minos building. Let’s head over there.”
The first guy nodded and they turned to go. They noticed me standing nearby and gave that weird chin thrust bros give each other.
“’S’up?” The second guy said. Apparently, he didn’t expect an answer, because they kept walking.
I returned my attention to the woman in the enclosure. Surely she wasn’t in there being punished for smoking. It had to be something else. Eternal torment was for people who committed horrible crimes, not people with unhealthy habits. At least, I hoped not.
If so, I’d probably be stuck forever with a cheeseburger hanging out of reach overhead while people threw fries at my head, forever missing my mouth.
I watched the woman cycle through another round of drowning and denial. The problem wasn’t the chains or the waterfall. It was the need for the cigarette.
I leaned over the wall so she could hear me. “If you drop the cigarette in the water, it won’t tempt you anymore. It would be easy. Just let go.”
She glanced over at me and shook her head. The strain on her face was painful to look at. This was worse than just wanting a cigarette. They’d done something more to her to crank up the addiction. The longing in her eyes was agonizing—almost like looking at someone with a broken heart.
What kind of ridiculously cruel place was this?
The waterfall ran its cycle again. She hung her head while the water gushed over her, but her arm remained rigid, keeping that cigarette safe and dry. When the water stopped, she flipped her soaked hair out of her face and looked across the pond at me. Dark smudges lay beneath her eyes. Her hand shook a little as she tried to take one quick drag before the falls started again. Of course, she didn’t make it.
But she still managed to keep the cigarette dry.
I patted my pocket and felt the reassuring weight. Did I dare pull my bubbles out and use them?
I glanced around the hallway. It must’ve been a slow day at the torture museum, because nobody was around. The fact that the eternal torture of souls in the afterlife was a form of entertainment down there was appalling.
Screw it. I’d tried to tell her to drop the cigarette. I could use the bubbles one last time to be more convincing. Walking away from her now would haunt me forever.
With one last peek around, I pulled the hidden bubbles from my pocket, dipped, and blew.
The bubbles floated toward her, riding a breeze that drifted through the enclosure. They reached the spray from the waterfall and popped several feet before they reached her.
“Dammit.” I waited for the water to stop and blew another stream of bubbles at her. “Let go. You don’t need it anymore, hon. Drop the cigarette.”
A few of the bubbles went wide and missed their target, but several popped on her cheek and the side of her head. She flinched and glanced up at me before the waterfall started up again and doused her.
I stood stunned for a moment, my bubble wand dangling from loose fingers, dripping magical soap goo on the floor. She’d heard me. I’d stupidly forgotten that I wasn’t equipped with an invisibility belt. Or maybe I’d realized I could be seen, but I hadn’t expected her to hear me. Or feel the bubbles pop against her skin.
The dogs hadn’t seemed to notice, and the recently dead hadn’t been equipped with flesh and bone. This was the first time I’d tried this on an ordinary human. Though, I wasn’t entirely certain she would count as an ordinary human, either, since she was wearing a temporary body issued by the Underworld. Ordinary was relative.
I made a frantic search of the area around me to be sure no one had appeared when I wasn’t paying attention, then tucked the wand in the bottle. By the time I’d screwed the cap on and shoved the bottle into my pocket, the waterfall cycle had completed and shut off.
The soaked prisoner stared at her shaking hand. Her gaze flicked to me, and her lips pulled into a nervous smile as she released the cigarette. It tumbled end over end into the water, as if in slow motion.
I grinned and gave her a thumbs up.
Something under the water made a loud clink, and I peeked through the Plexiglas to see her shackles had released. Her eyebrows drew up in surprise, and she glanced above where the water should have, by now, come crashing down on her head. Not even a drip. The overhead cliff was dry.
A door appeared at the back of the enclosure and swung open. The woman gasped and moved toward it.
As she stepped through, she looked over her shoulder at me and waved. “Thank you!” She stepped through before I could answer. The door swung shut, and the entire enclosure turned black like a stage between acts.
I hurried away. If she told anyone how she’d been helped, they might come looking for me. There was probably some sort of law against a Muse operating without a license with illegal bubbles. Especially in a place where people were supposed to be suffering.
On my way out the door, I prayed she wouldn’t tell anybody what I’d done. No, that was wrong. I couldn’t pray.
Who do you pray to when gods are the ones you’re trying to avoid? With more than half my time in the Underworld still to go, I had to stop this. I wasn’t a Muse any more. Or at least, not for another three-and-a-half weeks. I needed to act like a junior personal assistant, not a Muse. I had to follow directions exactly, behave perfectly, and get my time over with so I could go home.
“No more going off book,” I told myself on the drive back. “No wandering into strange buildings, no yelling at rowdy goddesses who drink too much, and no more bubbles.” I patted my pocket to be sure they were still there. “I mean it. No more bubbles.”
Even I didn’t believe I really meant it.
Chapter 14
On Wednesday, I’d expected to drop off the dry cleaning at the mansion and be on my way. The previous week had been so weird with Lita keeping me from coming inside and Hades telling me not to dawdle.
Dawdle. Who even said that anymore? Gods who’d been around for thousands of years, that’s who. I’d have been better off remembering that from time to time.
I pulled around the looping driveway, grabbed the clothes hanging from a hook on the inside of my cart, and approached the door, prepared to ring the bell if Lita didn’t yank it open before I got there.
It swung open on its own before I—or anyone else I could see—touched it.
I stuck my head through the door and looked around. “Hello?” I took a step inside. “Lita? Otis?” Nothing.
The door slid shut behind me. It didn’t lock itself as it had before. Slinging the clothes over my shoulder with the hanger hooked over two fingers, I climbed the stairs, still on the lookout for another living soul in the house. The only sounds were the soft swoosh of my feet on carpet and the ticking of a grandfather clock downstairs.
The silence unnerved and irritated me. I never knew what to expect in this place. I was welcome. I wasn’t welcome. And now, the place was completely empty, and I was left alone in a house with an occasionally self-locking door and hidden portals to the gods only knew where.
As before, some of the paintings lining the walls were draped with dark cloth. In some cultures, that meant the person in the portrait had died. I was torn between respect for the dead and curiosity as to how anyone’s death could be significant in the Underworld.
At the top of the stairs, I turned and followed another hallway lined with paintings. Several were covered with the same black cloth. I paused in front of one. A peek wouldn’t be terrible, would it? If they really didn’t want me to look, somebody should have been here to say so instead of leav
ing me to wander this creepy house by myself.
I reached out, biting my lip, and brushed my fingers over the cloth.
No. I was trying to follow the rules. Nothing under there could be any of my business. It wasn’t as if I knew anybody who’d died down here.
Not my business.
I found Hades’ room and hung the clothes in his closet as I was supposed to. The fireplace route to the kitchen was tempting, but I hadn’t been invited. Taking the stairs was the rule-follower’s way to go.
Feeling smug and self-righteous for making good decisions, I turned toward the door and strutted into the hallway to head downstairs.
The cloth on those paintings looked soft. As I walked past the next one, an enormous painting taller than I was, I nudged a little closer and brushed my arm against it without pausing.
It was even softer than expected. Some sort of crushed velvet, maybe. And rustling it like that had disturbed the scent, sending a cloud of roses and honeysuckle into the air.
I inhaled deeply, enjoying the familiar smell. It reminded me of my childhood. Wherever we’d lived, Mom had always grown the most beautiful flowers.
At the next covered painting, I ran my fingers over the fabric, feeling its lush, dense weight and delighting in the fragrance it sent out. Whoever was painted underneath must have been dearly loved.
The next draped portrait I came to was small, like a framed 8x10. I stopped in front of it and stared at the folds of the cloth. A subtle burnout pattern of flowers and vines chased up and down its length.
I reached out again, tracing the outline of a leaf with my fingertip. A peek wouldn’t hurt. If no one saw me, it wasn’t too disrespectful, was it?
The hallway was silent. No one was around—just me and the ticking of the clock downstairs. I pinched the corner of the drape and pulled it up a little so I could look underneath without fully uncovering the portrait. They couldn’t possible get mad at me for taking a tiny peek, as long as I left it the way I found it.
I squinted in the low light. It was a woman, judging by her bare legs dancing in a bed of flowers, but I couldn’t see anything else. I pulled it a little higher and saw a shapely arm carrying a basket dripping with grapes and lilies. A white dress fluttered around the woman’s legs. I pulled a little too much, and the fabric fell away. I froze when I saw her face.
She looked exactly like me.
Or rather, she looked like me with long blonde hair that fell in gentle waves to her waist. When I looked more closely, I could see the differences—softer cheekbones, fuller lips, eyebrows that arched in a graceful line. She wasn’t me, of course.
She was my mother.
A million questions crowded my brain, tumbling over each other in an attempt to be heard. I took a deep, calming breath. There had to be a reasonable explanation for this. Maybe the painter had met her once—or someone like her. Maybe it wasn’t even my mom.
I moved to the next painting, this one larger, about four feet tall. Most likely, this one would have a completely different woman in it. She’d have dark hair or a large nose. Or maybe there wouldn’t be any women in it all. The first had been a fluke.
I gave the velvet cloth a tug and let it fall to the floor. There stood my mother, a serene look on her painted face, holding a golden scepter and wearing a crown. The gates of the Underworld stood open behind her.
“No.” I shook my head and stepped back. “No, no, no.”
In my haste to distance myself from a bizarre portrait of my mother as the Queen of the Underworld, I banged my shoulder against a gilt frame. The cloth hanging over it slipped and puddled at my feet.
Hades and my mother danced beneath a moonlit sky on the shore of a flaming river.
My eyes filled with tears. Why wouldn’t she tell me? Why would she spend so much effort lying to me about who she was? Who I was?
I pulled down three more cloths. Every one of them was my mother. One depicted her emerging into the world from a hole in the ground, flowers blooming at her sandal-clad feet. Another showed her holding a basket of kittens while several baby lambs cavorted around her.
I raced into Hades’ bedroom, remembering the covered picture on his nightstand. I took the cloth away and found a photograph of my mother smiling into her husband’s eyes. There was no doubt in my mind that it was her.
My mother was Persephone. Goddess of Spring. Wife of Hades.
Holy shit.
I returned to the hall and freed every covered painting. My beautiful mother smiled down at me from all around. I pressed my back against a wall and sank to the floor with my face in my hands. I couldn’t look anymore.
Everything in my life was a lie. Mom’s affinity for plants was more than simply a green thumb. My father wasn’t some random hero or Bible salesman who had died. Was Hades my father? If not, he was certainly my stepfather.
Waves of nausea pulsed over me, and spots formed on the edges of my vision. I realized I was hyperventilating, and made a conscious effort to slow my breathing.
I had no idea what to do with all this information.
I had no idea who I really was.
~*~
I was in that hallway for a long time. I sat on the floor gazing up at the life-sized portrait of my mother sitting on a throne beside Hades.
All that time I’d been trying to get her to tell me who my father was, and she was the one I really should have been concerned about. She was the goddess the agency had detected in my blood. It wasn’t some long-lost father.
She’d said she’d been married and her husband had a temper. She’d said her husband wasn’t my father and she’d fled.
But she’d told me so many lies, I didn’t know what to believe. I wrapped my arms around my folded legs.
“Oh, dear.” Lita had appeared next to me. She glanced around at the piles of black fabric on the floor, then at me huddled in a ball looking up at my mother’s pictures. “Come to the kitchen, sweetheart. You’ve had a shock.” Her voice was gentle, and she reached down and took my hand to help me up. Her grip was surprisingly strong.
I followed her to Hades’ room, my eyes wide and blurry with unshed tears. “Why didn’t she just tell me?”
I glanced at the small picture on the table next to the bed—Mom and Hades smiling and holding hands like any other couple in the world.
Lita pulled me through the fireplace and into the kitchen downstairs. She took my elbow and guided me to a stool by the counter.
Otis grinned when he saw me. “Wynter! Wonderful to see you again. What can I get for you? Sandwich? Maybe some fried chicken?” He frowned and peered at my face. “What’s wrong?”
“She found the paintings.” Lita rubbed her palm over my back. “I told him that wouldn’t keep them hidden for long, but no one listens.”
Otis leaned across the counter and took my hand. “Some tea, then, yes?” He held eye contact with me, his expression focused, until he finally drew a small nod and a weak smile from me. “Good.” He patted my hand and went to put water on to boil.
Lita fussed over me, bringing me a cloth napkin, pressing her hand to my cheek, putting a variety of cookies on a plate and sliding them in front of me.
I bit into a peanut butter cookie, barely noting the warm, melted chocolate inside. “Why wouldn’t she tell me?” I chewed for a moment, then narrowed my eyes. “You both knew when I came here before.”
They passed a look between them and tried to look busy.
After a moment, Lita sighed and came to sit next to me. “You have to understand. It wasn’t our place.”
“But by the gods, you look just like her.” Otis grinned so wide I thought he might start laughing. Instead, his eyes filled with tears, and he took a handkerchief out before turning away.
Lita gave me a one armed hug. “We’ve missed your mother so much.” She gave a melancholy sigh. “So kind to everyone. And funny. My goodness, she could make me laugh.”
The kettle whistled low, and Otis took it from the burner and poured hot
water over a teabag in a mug. “Nothing’s grown here since she left. No fresh flowers, no grass outside. Nothing.”
I frowned. “Is that why it’s all brown out there?”
He nodded. “I have to import my vegetables and herbs from Mt. Olympus. Even my houseplants are gone.”
I thought about Phyllis, basking under a grow light back in my room. “But I have a houseplant. She’s fine.”
Lita smiled and held my hand in both of hers. “You’re the daughter of Spring.”
I ate another cookie, this one double chocolate chip. “What else can you tell me? Do you know who my father is? Is it Hades or someone else?” I took the mug Otis brought for me and inhaled the steam. “I’m not here by accident, am I?”
Otis took the stool on the other side of me, and we sat in silence for a few minutes, side by side by side, staring at the wall above the stove. I ate cookies and sipped my tea while I waited for a response.
“The thing is….” Otis scratched his chin. “The thing is, these are very good questions.”
“And we can’t answer them for you.” Lita took my napkin from me and wiped the corner of my mouth, leaving a smear of chocolate on the cloth. She handed it back. “You’ll have to ask Hades and your mother. The night she left, Otis and I were away. We only know Hades has been very unhappy for the last twenty-four years.”
All the moving from place to place. All the new schools. All the strangeness my mother had brought into our lives. She was a goddess, running from a god, hiding her possibly illegitimate child to keep her safe.
And here I was drinking tea and eating cookies in his kitchen.
So much for keeping my head down and out of trouble.
I wanted to ask a million questions, but I knew they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer them. I wouldn’t be able to ask Mom any questions until my next trip home, and that was over a week away. And there was no guarantee she’d finally tell me the truth. There was only one way I’d get any answers.
