Guardian (Hidden Book 6)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “I want to talk to E alone,” she told him.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”

  “Because,” she answered in a deep, gruff voice, imitating the tone he’d had. “My mom is probably ready for a break.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get any secrets out of you later,” he said, getting up and heading for the door.

  “You can have fun trying, anyway,” she said to him, and I caught the barest of grins on his face as he closed the door.

  “You two are as ridiculously enamored as ever, I see,” I said, and Mollis laughed.

  “Sometimes,” she agreed. Then she sobered. “It’s good having you back, E. I missed you so much.”

  “But my stay will be short-lived, will it not?” I asked with a small smile.

  “I didn’t want to ask you yet. I wanted you to settle in and relax for a while,” she said, and I could tell how much it bothered her. Mollis never has been good at keeping her feelings to herself.

  I took her hand in mine. “What do you need, demon girl?”

  “Did my father ever tell you how he knew someone had died?” she asked me, still holding my hand.

  I shook my head. “That was something only the Lord of the Dead knew.”

  She took a breath. “When someone dies, I feel it. Doesn’t matter where they are, how far away. It’s like part of my brain lights up, as if there’s this pinprick of awareness.” She paused, thinking. “And until they’re brought to me, it’s like a niggling irritation, that something that belongs to me is out there somewhere. It only calms when the crows have brought the souls here and they are contained and waiting for my judgment.” After my sisters had betrayed Hades and his family, there were not enough of us left to collect souls of the dead. Nyx, our Creator, had assigned that task to special crows of Her own creation.

  I listened. “That must be rather overwhelming. Considering how often my sisters and I had to go collect souls… I have a good idea of how often people die.”

  She nodded. “It is. It took some time to get used to.”

  I waited, watching her.

  “We’re having some problems with lost souls,” she finally said, and her clenched jaw, the set of her shoulders let me know everything I needed to know about how she felt about that.

  “Lost?” I asked.

  “The crows can’t find them. I’ve had the imps look, once the crows failed. Nothing.”

  “How many?” I asked. “Going back how long? Because I am sure we never lost one.”

  She smiled at me. “You’re right. You and your sisters never lost one. I’d know. There have been other issues, however. When the gateway between the original Nether and this world began to fail… when Tartarus itself began to fail—“

  “Some escaped,” I said quietly, picking up the direction she was heading in, and she nodded. “How many?” I asked again, more quietly.

  “Twenty-seven,” she said, and I let my head fall back, looked up at the ceiling. “I know,” she said, an apologetic tone to her voice.

  “And how long have you been dealing with this?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “Pretty much since I inherited my dad’s power and role. I didn’t recognize what it meant until after I’d experienced a few deaths, and then I realized some were missing and it was wearing on me.”

  “Do we know which ones?”

  “I hope you weren’t expecting sweet, kind, gentle types.”

  “I know better than to hope for that,” I answered. She nodded, stood up and walked over to the desk. She rifled through the stacks there, and picked up a sheet of yellow paper on which she’d written a list of names and dates.

  “These are our lost souls,” Mollis said, sitting down beside me again. “I added their locations and dates of death. I don’t know if that will make it easier for you or not.”

  I looked down the list. I’d escorted the souls of some of these beings myself. “Some of these were hundreds of years ago,” I murmured. “This information will help. Souls are somewhat tethered to the area of the world where they died, where they lived. They tend not to wander, which is why it is generally so easy for us to collect them in the first place.” Usually, I thought to myself.

  “I was wondering about that, if souls tended to return to their old stomping grounds. Does this happen often?” she asked me.

  “No. It definitely does not. Only once did we have souls escape, and that was during a period of time when Zeus and Hades were in one of their spats.”

  “What happened?”

  I kept my eyes on the slightly messy writing on the page in front of me, though my mind was thousands of years away. “Zeus was being a reckless imbecile, and threw lightning at Tartarus, killing several of the demon guards. A few souls got out. All returned to where they’d last been in the mortal realm.”

  She was watching me. “Will it be difficult?” she asked. “I mean, I know the crows can’t do it. But is this dangerous at all?”

  My mind flashed back. Memory. I threw her a smile. “They can be tricky when they want to. And some of these…” I shook my head as I looked at the list. “What are the odds that these particular souls would escape?” It was, essentially, a list of notorious serial killers. “There is something behind this.”

  “Damn,” she muttered. “I was hoping I was just being paranoid again. Isn’t it possible these are just the worst, so of course when they had a chance at escaping judgment, they ran fastest?”

  I shook my head. “It’s possible…”

  “But you don’t think so,” she said.

  “No, I do not.” I looked over the list again. “Why were they still there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some of these died a very, very long time ago. How is it that they were still waiting for their judgment?”

  “I asked my mother the same thing. Apparently, for some, the wait for judgment is part of the punishment. They get to stand there, waiting, for hundreds or even thousands of years. Plenty of time to think and be afraid.”

  I nodded.

  “E,” she said, and I looked up.

  “Yes?”

  “Can they do things in the mortal realm? Can they hurt anyone?”

  “Spirits can’t actually, physically hurt someone by laying hands on them,” I began slowly. “In fact, the only beings they can manage any physical contact with at all is my kind, and I suppose the crows, because we have to be able to physically escort them to you.” I paused. “What they can do, is cause disruptions. They can manipulate physical objects. When you hear stories of ‘hauntings’ sometimes, though it’s very rare they are actually real, it can be blamed on errant souls, opening and closing doors, lifting and throwing objects. Sometimes we took too long in getting to a soul, and it wandered off and caused problems.”

  “Can people hear them?”

  “Some can,” I said. “Those that are more sensitive to the line between this world and the next. Those are few and far between, though,” I added.

  Mollis nodded.

  “So a bunch of dead serial killers, and they’re free, and they can mess with people. I asked the imps to start looking for stories about any weirdness that sounded like it could be caused by something like this, but of course that’s useless because how many quacks believe they have a ghost living in their house?”

  I laughed. The presence of the spirits of the dead in the mortal world was extremely rare. Most things can be explained by other things. Usually, it has something to do with imps or demons, the occasional vampire. It didn’t stop the mortals from believing places were haunted.

  “I think we need to work on figuring out why. Why these spirits, specifically? Because there is no way this is a coincidence, my friend,” I said.

  “I know. And we will, but I need you to start tracking them down, E. Find them, and bring them back to me. And we’ll figure out who or what is behind it all.”

  “I will,” I promised her.

  “Do you need help? Should I send
anyone with you?”

  I patted her hand. “Are you forgetting who you are talking to, demon girl? I hunted many of these souls in the first place.”

  “But this seems…bad,” she said.

  “It does. But I am hardly new to that, either.” I stood up.

  “When will you leave?” she asked, standing up with me.

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Oh, don’t do that. Wait until morning! Spend one more night home with us.” She shook her head. “I feel like such an asshole for sending you out again already.”

  I shook my head. “It is my duty to serve the Lord, now, the Lady, of the Dead. It is my duty and my honor to do this for you. And I am the only one who can do it.”

  “Can Aunt Meg help?” she asked me.

  I gave her a gentle smile. “Mollis, you are a Fury. Are you capable of physically detaining a spirit?”

  “No,” she grumbled.

  “No. You can punish them, but that is only after they are contained, which only happens after a Guardian has apprehended and shackled them. Yes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Okay. You’re right.”

  “Of course,” I said, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Stay with us for tonight,” she said again.

  “I will,” I promised. I gestured toward the window. “I saw the sculpture of your father. Hephaestus?”

  Mollis nodded. “He did an amazing job, didn’t he?”

  “He did. As always. I saw Persephone out there.”

  “She is there almost every day since Hephaestus finished it. She comes in the morning, and she kneels there. Sometimes she’s still there when I’m heading home for the night.”

  “She mourns.”

  Mollis nodded. “It has been hard on her. For the first couple of weeks or so after my dad died, she stuck around. She was with my mom a lot. And then she just kind of started drifting away. She seems to want to be left alone… and I can’t even blame her. No matter what my mother and Hades had, no matter how much passion they had, she lived by his side for thousands of years. She loved him. And from what I know, he was a shitty husband, but he loved her, too. I can’t imagine what she’s dealing with,” she said, shaking her head.

  “We all grieve differently. The only way out is through, right?” I asked, and she nodded. “All right. I will let you finish up here. I will see you at the loft.”

  She hugged me, and I left, promising again that I wouldn’t go off yet.

  As I walked through the Netherwoods, it was difficult not to be annoyed. Of course, I was pleased to help her with this. I was more annoyed that no one had said anything sooner. If they had told me about this immediately, I could have most likely easily tracked the souls to where they’d died. Souls always returned there. Morbid things. But it had been years since these souls had escaped. I had acted more confident than I was that they would actually remain in the place they’d died. Would they eventually venture away? And while I understood that for Mollis’s own mental state, these souls needed to be captured, it bothered me that they didn’t seem to be looking more closely at why. The fact that we were looking at some of the most degenerate beings humanity had ever produced was enough to make my stomach turn over.

  I took a deep breath. I would figure it out. Souls had to be captured. That had to be my first order of business, because the longer they were out, the longer they could cause harm. The longer they were in the mortal realm, the more ability souls gained to manipulate things. Some, though it had only happened once before, figured out how to gain a corporeal form once again.

  That would be bad.

  I glanced down at the list again.

  This would keep me busy for quite a while.

  That evening at the loft, it quickly became apparent that my departure was not being discussed. Mollis didn’t say anything about it, and neither did Nain, who undoubtedly knew what was going on already. I understood why. If it was revealed that she was having difficulties due to these lost souls, that she was weakening, it would make things even more difficult. There was no shortage of enemies for my Queen, and the first sign of weakness would be like blood in the water, beckoning the sharks. She also played the role of unshakeable leader to most of our team, and it would do no good for our allies to have to worry about her. I was fine with keeping my departure to myself. It would only draw additional attention to me, and they were just beginning to not focus on trying to amuse and entertain me, now that I had been back for a few days.

  We ate, and we sat and talked, and, slowly but surely, people started drifting off toward their homes or their rooms in the loft. Mollis, the demon, and their children prepared to retire, and Mollis hugged me. I murmured that I would likely be leaving early, and she thanked me and hugged me once more. We parted ways, and I headed up to my room.

  I tossed and turned in my bed. I wondered if it would be rude to just leave in the night so I could get on with it. But, they were expecting that I would stay until morning, and I’d hate for them to need me for something during the night and find me gone. After glancing at the clock for about the thousandth time and seeing that it was just a little after one a.m., I got out of bed with a sigh.

  I walked down the stairs, still wearing my pajama pants and a t-shirt. The loft was mostly dark, other than a light in the kitchen area and a lamp in the living room. It took a moment to realize Brennan was sitting in there, laptop open, hunched over it. He glanced up when I reached the bottom step.

  “You are up late,” I said.

  “So are you.”

  I went into the kitchen, considered hot chocolate, but that would only make me want more hot chocolate. I put some water on for tea instead, and measured some of the chamomile Ada stocked the kitchen with into a tea infuser. I stood and waited for the water to boil, glancing at the refrigerator, which was covered with a hodgepodge of takeout menus and children’s drawings. Once the water was nearly boiling, I poured it and brought the cup into the living room.

  “Did you want any?” I asked Brennan, and he shook his head. He set his laptop on the coffee table as I settled myself onto the sofa, tucking my legs beneath me. I set the cup on the end table. “You don’t need to stop on account of me,” I told him, nodding toward the laptop.

  “No, I know,” he said.

  “Work?”

  “Work,” he answered. “The amount of paperwork we have to file is ridiculous.”

  “Doesn’t Jamie help you with that?” I asked, referring to one of our shifter friends who Brennan had brought on board once he’d become director of the supernatural division for the federal government.

  “She does, but,” he shrugged. “You know. I’m choosy about what actually goes into the official reports.”

  I gave him a small smile, nodded. It was the entire reason he had the job to begin with. He knew, because he’d been approached, that the federal government had a department focused solely on keeping track of and learning about supernaturals. He’d joined so he could know exactly how much they knew about his friends and teammates. Over time, he could “clean up” their files so that, officially, the government knew only a minimal amount about those he cared for. As an added benefit, when something was happening at the federal level that affected supernaturals, our team was usually the first to know about it.

  “And now they’re opening offices in eight other cities, so mine, being the first one in the U.S., is serving as kind of a model for how to handle things,” he continued. The existence of supernaturals had been a shock to the human population. Things were still tense, and fear ran rampant. In all honesty, I had expected the humans to figure it out a long time ago.

  “So lots of time answering questions then, is what you are saying,” I said, and he nodded.

  “Did you know European and Asian countries have had supernatural affairs departments for decades? Sometimes even longer than that?” he asked me.

  “It does not surprise me. Having so many older cities, places in Europe and Asia have even more supernatural act
ivity than we do here,” I said. “But we have a concentrated population of exiled gods. I am pretty sure we are unique in that.”

  “I hope so. Can you imagine if there were others running around?” he said, and I laughed. He was watching me. “You’re leaving again,” he finally said.

  I took the infuser out of my tea, set it on the saucer. “How did you know? Did Mollis tell you that?”

  He shook his head. “She was specifically not answering questions about your patrol schedule when we were trying to figure it out for next week. That tells me you’re not going to be on it, and I know you, so I know that if you were going to be here, you’d insist on being out patrolling.”

  I didn’t answer, just sipped my tea. It was still too hot.

  “So where are you going, and why the big secret?” he asked, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees.

  “My Lady has a task for me,” I said.

  “You’re not a servant, Eunomia,” he said.

  I smiled. “Do you go where the demon tells you to go?”

  “That’s different.”

  “It isn’t. You recognize Nain as your leader, you do as he says. This is the same. She is my leader and my friend, and if she asks something of me that makes sense, I will do it.”

  “You just got back, though,” he said after a few moments.

  I smiled at him. “And I plan to be back again soon.” I studied him for a moment, made a decision. “I do not think she wants word to spread about what I am doing for her. But I think you can help me, if that is something you want to do.”

  “If I can, I will. What’s going on?”

  I filled him in on the lost souls, and who they’d been, and how the crows had been unable to find them. He sat and listened intently. “So, with that in mind, if you hear anything about something that could have anything to do with this, unexplainable violent activity, people being hurt by things they weren’t able to see… if you could tell me about it, it would be a help.”

  He nodded, lost in thought. “I’ll do some digging, too. Now that we’re more out in the open with the rest of the law-enforcement community worldwide, I actually have contacts. I’ll ask around. I won’t say what happened,” he said, stalling my reminder to keep it quiet. “But I’ll poke around and see if anyone has heard anything.”