Still

by Camilla Monk

  Unleashed, like it’d . . . burst out of me Alien-style? I gulped softly at the mental image. “What about Perses? Why can’t he do that himself?”

  Unexpectedly, it was Ryuuko who chimed in while she worked on picking up our teacups and collecting them on a silver tray. She shot an unreadable look at Faust. “Because Chronos bans everyone from using the table. Only the guardian knows the words to unseal it. If Perses wants the power, Faust unseals the table, or you break it. No other option.”

  I gazed at the tattoo around Faust’s wrist. His shackle. “And you can never allow either to happen,” I murmured to him.

  He mustered a pale copy of his Fausty grin. “I would never stab you.”

  “Unless you have to,” I replied. Yet I couldn’t find it in me to be angry over this. It just hurt a little to think that maybe we’d never be able to trust each other completely, because he’d been chosen to guard the table, and I’d been chosen to be the only threat to it. Divine fate sucked giant balls.

  Lady Palombara’s gaze traveled back and forth between Faust and me. “Perses needs one of you, and he knows it.”

  I twisted my neck with a grimace, fighting exhaustion. “And we’re stuck. They have Lily working on the table at Katharos’s HQ. If I try to get near, Montecito will use her against me.”

  Faust dragged a hand across his face, scratching his beard. “And she’ll use you against me.”

  That gave me pause. I turned to him. “You don’t have to come with me. Lily is my problem. I chose to stay at the Residenza knowing something was off with Katharos. I chose to get involved. I know I agreed when you offered to help me, but . . .” I glanced at his tattoo. “I understand now . . . that I can’t ask you to do anything that would threaten the table.”

  He leaned forward and rested his elbow his knees, looking drained, just like me. “Emma, if you march to the Villa Malespina with the intent of bargaining with Lady Montecito to save Lily . . . I can’t ignore that. There’s too much at stake.”

  “So, you would stab me,” I joked. My throat was dry though, and it didn’t sound that funny.

  He didn’t reply and instead, clasped his hands and rested his forehead on them. “I’d rather not have to, Emma . . .”

  “But we can’t just hide here. Faust,” I urged. “I’m not immortal, and Lily certainly isn’t. There’s no time. You were in the Libro with me. I didn’t dream her voice. Every second she spends around Montecito and Lucius, she’s in danger. What if she finds out what they are like her grandpa did?” I stopped there: no need to get graphic.

  “You do have time,” Lady Palombara countered. “What you sorely lack, Emma, is patience.”

  Maybe. But her lack of fucks to give was starting to piss me off, and I could feel my legendary short fuse start to sizzle. I inhaled through flaring nostrils. “Patience? Are you serious? You’re the one who keeps rambling about how dangerous Perses is! Faust and I already escaped Katharos twice, and I can tell you this: those guys are anything but patient. We can’t stay—”

  “Then you go.” Ryuuko—who had been observing our exchange in silence until now—leveled her vacant stare at me. “Now we seal the Porta Alchemica, and you do what you want. You fight Perses alone with your black hole if you want.” Her eyes narrowing, she thought it useful to add, “Since you’re stupid anyway.”

  I shot up from the couch, every single muscle in my body coiled from the need to fight back, explode. I wouldn’t. I could control this, be the bigger person. I mean literally so since she must have weighed ninety pounds. I averted my eyes and said, “I need some air.”

  Faust rose in his turn to stop me, a wrinkle of concern splitting his brow. “Emma, wait . . .”

  Palombara tilted her head, her gaze shining with kindness I suspected was, in fact, condescension. “Suit yourself. I must tell you, however, that your guilt and naïve calculations are clouding your judgment. Saving Lily won’t redeem you in your mother’s eyes.” The galaxies in her eyes bored into me, deepening the wound. “You know nothing can.”

  Shots fired. I reeled, wobbled a bit on my legs as I tried to process that she’d just casually ripped me open in front of Faust and Ryuuko, and now that aching, gangrened part of my heart I tried my best to protect all the time, was pulsing in the open, defenseless.

  Surprise flashed in Faust’s eyes; he turned toward Palombara. “Theia, please, don’t be so harsh,” he told her, his hand fumbling for mine. “I’m sorry, Emma, she can sometimes be—”

  “Leave me alone,” I snapped. I didn’t need his pity. It was worth no more to me than Ryuuko’s quiet contempt as she observed our exchange. Faust’s fingertips found my knuckles. I pulled my hand away to shove it in my pocket. I glared at Palombara, shivering all over, my stomach lurching like I was seasick. “Open your Jell-O portal. I’m out of here,” I barked.

  She feigned confusion. “Do you mean the Porta Alchemica? Very well, Ryuuko will open it for you.” She chuckled. “What are you planning to do? Hide out on the streets? Or perhaps ask the police to solve titan matters?”

  I didn’t know. A thousand tons had been dropped on my shoulders over the span of two hours, and I couldn’t carry that weight, couldn’t take it anymore. My breathing was coming in painful pants. My head hurt, and I needed to kick something or smash it against a wall. The teapot would do. I bent to grab it and hurled it to the floor with all my strength. It shattered at Palombara’s feet. Water stained the bottom of her dress. She didn’t move an inch from her couch, her patient gaze set on me as I unraveled.

  Ryuuko leaped from her armchair to lunge at me, but Faust was in the way. He shielded me with his body. His features were taut with a mixture of surprise and anger I’d seen on a hundred faces before—he wasn’t the first to be disappointed in me. Wouldn’t be the last, either. “Emma . . .” My name, nothing more, loaded with reproach. I wasn’t sure why it made me feel so shitty to hear it in his mouth.

  I couldn’t listen; my brain was clouded with too much hate, too much pain. I shoved him aside, challenging Palombara’s soft gaze with my blazing one. “Here’s what I’m not gonna do: stay here and do nothing while you keep reading my thoughts like we’re on Dr. Phil! And just for the record, the only reason I want to help Lily is because it’s the fucking decent thing to do! I don’t give two fucks about her or mom or Richard . . .” My voice broke. I swallowed back the tears I could feel blurring my eyes. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I just . . .” I just came here to see my father.

  But maybe that wasn’t in the cards of this life that no longer belonged to me anyway. I’d been designed as a shell for a black hole. How terribly accurate. A tear rolled down my cheek that I wished I could stop.

  Faust’s eyes were staring through me as if he had no idea who this blistering bitch was, and Lady Palombara apparently had nothing else to say. I barreled out of the living room and across the villa’s marble hall without another word, ignoring Faust as he fumbled his way around the furniture and called my name.

  Palombara found her voice as I pushed the heavy wooden doors leading out, but it was only to say, “Emma, do you want a cloak to go out in this weather?”

  I didn’t bother turning around. I just raised my hand and flipped her off.

  The funny part is, I really thought Lady Palombara would let me go. I slammed the villa’s doors, barreled down a flight of stone steps into the crisp winter air, and took my first steps on the snowy lawn stretching at the building’s feet. I covered less than a hundred feet before realizing that my sneakers were no longer cushioned by powdery snow, but rather skidding in sludge, then treading in wet grass.

  What the . . . I darted a puzzled look around. The snow was melting, lightning fast. In a matter of seconds, the air had grown warm and the inky night clouds stirred apart to reveal a bright moon above my head. Pure white became a dark green lawn where rose bushes sat, scattered. Freed of their winter coat, naked statues looked down at me, a mocking glint in their empty eyes.

  She’d made it a summ
er night.

  I whirled around and yelled at the villa’s now-closed doors. “Wow, you’re so funny! And I’m so impressed! Fuck you, by the way! I hope you get mole mounds all over your lawn!”

  My curse rose to the sky, echoed by a shrill birdcall somewhere in the trees. The door remained closed. I resumed my walk across the park, searching for the wall we’d crashed through in Katharos’s stolen SUV. But it was just darkened woods everywhere I looked, hemming the expanse of fresh grass . . . except where a long archway formed by the canopy met over a trail. There was no end in sight to this creepy bowel though, only a tangle of trunks and shrubs fading into pitch-black.

  I buried my face in my hands and massaged my temples slowly, fighting the unpleasant buzz of a headache. I was 100% sure we hadn’t come here through the woods, and that trail had “trap” written all over it. Palombara wasn’t done playing with me.

  I glanced back at the warm light pouring from the windows. The living room remained empty. She, Faust, and Ryuuko had retreated into another room. I sucked in a shuddering breath. I was alone in the dark, trapped somewhere outside reality, at the mercy of an ancient goddess with a shitty sense of humor. I was running on empty, lost in every sense of the term, but my pride and the anger still thrumming in my blood wouldn’t let me go back there with my tail between my legs. My molars ground together in aggravation. I would be no one’s bitch!

  I marched to the trail, inhaling earth and moss. With each cautious step, fear took over the last of my fury as the woods around me came alive. The night breeze whispered in leaves; birdcalls were answered by the lazy croak of a frog somewhere in the thicket. Twigs snapped under my feet, like firecrackers exploding in the silence enveloping me. More than once, I froze and blinked terrified eyes when I thought I saw something stir in the dark, my heart pounding in my throat.

  And still, there was no end in sight, only the villa behind me, getting smaller and smaller until its windows were little more than shimmering gems in the distance. There had to be a way out. Palombara couldn’t just trap me in here forever. Faust wouldn’t let her. I swallowed a painful lump in my throat. I hoped he wouldn’t, but I’d blown him off when he meant to take my defense; he had every reason to give up on me. Shame tightened my heart for the second time that day, and as usual, after the anger came the regrets. I wasn’t sure I truly wanted to push him away, but I knew nothing else: strangers or enemies, nothing in between because I’d never been taught otherwise.

  “Then you’ll have to learn.”

  Holy fricking baby Jesus—I jumped out of my skin and whipped around, in the direction of Palombara’s voice. My eyes popped so wide my eyeballs damn near rolled out. She was here, standing in the dark in front of a wall that hadn’t been there five seconds ago. Light haloed her silhouette, pouring from a sculpted gate encased in ancient mossy stones. On each side, I recognized the statues of two bearded deities I’d glimpsed right before Silvio had sped through the shimmering Jell-O. The Porta Alchemica.

  “Is this what you were looking for?” Palombara asked softly, motioning to the open gate. My eyes adjusted to the light splashing from the portal, and moving shapes came into focus. It was the municipal park we’d driven through earlier, bathed in a late afternoon glow. Police uniforms bustled around the gaping hole in the fence, working to close it with yellow tape.

  “Go,” Palombara offered.

  My gaze shuttled back and forth between her and the portal. “It’s still day,” I chewed out.

  “It’s been less than twenty minutes out there,” she replied, her mouth twisting as if it were totally obvious and, seriously, Emma, didn’t you know that? “As I tried to tell you, you do have time to sit and consider your options before ramming into Perses like Don Quixote. Time flows somewhat more slowly beyond the Porta Alchemica than it does in the outside world.”

  I gazed at the “crime scene” through the gate, at the lean young policeman scratching his cap and looking around the street.

  “So? Are you leaving?” Palombara crossed her arms over the bodice of her blue velvet dress. “Or have you changed your mind?”

  “Why did you bother with all the tricks and bullshit instead of just telling me that?” I bristled, all shields up. “What do you really want from me?”

  “I merely wanted to give you a little time to calm down, and,” she looked up at the star-studded veil above us, “you left without a coat.”

  I didn’t reply, just stared at her, my jaw hanging limp.

  She chuckled. “Why don’t we talk for a moment and try to work out our differences? Sit, Emma.”

  Hang on, not so fast . . . I glanced around, frowned. Had that stone bench been standing in the middle of the trail a second before? “Uh, did you just . . .?”

  She shrugged an eyebrow and went to sit on the long slab of sculpted limestone. “It’s my dimension,” was the only explanation she offered.

  I went to perch on the edge of the bench gingerly, and by the time I looked up again at the Porta Alchemica, sunlight was no longer pouring through from the real world. A slab of plain concrete now walled the gate, just like I’d seen on the other side hours ago. My eyes lingered on the esoteric signs carved in stone all around the door and the Latin inscriptions under the six-pointed star topping the whole thing.

  “The dragon of the Hesperides watches over the entrance of the magic garden,” Palombara said, smoothing the folds of her ample dress.

  “Is that what’s written?” I asked, pointing to the Portal with my chin.

  “Yes.”

  “And Ryuuko is the dragon,” I reasoned.

  “She told you so herself,” Palombara noted, amusement gleaming in her dark eyes. I’d have wanted to figure out that dragon thing, but she went on to say, “You’ll have to excuse me. When I meet someone new, and I smell a fierce temper, I can’t help rousing them a little . . . to see who I’m dealing with.”

  I’d agreed to make peace, but the memory of our conversation in her living room was still fresh in my mind. I muttered, “Like when you laughed at Faust when he was trying to kill himself?”

  If she picked up on the jab, she didn’t let it show. “No, it was different with him; he was never that volatile.” A wistful smile relaxed her features. “He’s one of the kindest and most patient souls I’ve ever met—and truly worthy of guarding Chronos’s Table—but he tends to shy from decisions and confrontation.”

  “I kinda noticed that about him,” I admitted with a reluctant smile of my own.

  “But you’re quite the opposite. Headstrong and bellicose, perhaps too much for your own good.”

  I shrugged. “You give me shit. I give you shit.”

  “Spoken like a lady,” she noted sourly before her expression sobered. “Emma, I didn’t say those things solely to probe old wounds and see what I would find.”

  No need to answer; I knew she could read on my face what I thought of that claim. She darted a guilty look upward at the moon glimmering through the canopy. “Well, perhaps I did try to nudge your demons out. What I’m trying to tell you is that you are wrong . . .” My nostrils flared. “. . . about your path.”

  You’re not wandering aimlessly.

  “I know,” I murmured, forcing the words past my lips. “I’m not as stupid as Ryuuko thinks. I get it, I think. It was all meant to happen this way. Lily’s grandpa killed himself to escape Katharos. Lily took over his work and found the table for them. Montecito wanted to be immortal, so she rung Perses. It was all linked, and meanwhile, I decided to find my father, and I came up with that stupid plan of flying here and showing up at his doorstep, like in a movie or something.”

  I touched my stomach. “The only reason the black hole is in me is that it needs to be here, right now.” My fingers played with one of the holes in my jeans, running along the frayed edge. “It was never about saving Lily. The Omega is only here for Perses because he’s trying to snatch the table, right?” Too bad whoever had chosen me over everyone else hadn’t bothered checking if I was
capable of using that power in the first place . . .

  Palombara nodded. “I’ve considered this possibility. Or perhaps you’re meant to accomplish something else entirely. The truth is: you will never know. No one can.”

  “But you’re . . . a goddess. You see things,” I countered. “You can’t see what’s in the cards for me?”

  She combed a lock of pale gray hair behind her ear, and her lips pressed into a sorrowful smile. “No one can, Emma. I can no more see your future and purpose in this world than I can see mine. There’s no point in looking for any signs.” She looked at the sky. “Only Chronos and the Parcae are gifted with prescience. The rest of us must walk in the dark.”

  “The Parcae?”

  “Daughters of the all-powerful Nyx. She and Chaos were the first of our kind; all titans descend from them. Perhaps you’ve heard of them as the fates?”

  Actually, I had . . . “Lily was the one who first told me that the fates spin the thread of your life and that you can basically never deviate from that path. Things can happen a thousand different ways, but you’ll still go from point A to B.”

  “Your stepsister is unexpectedly wise,” Palombara said, a shadow passing across her features.

  “She was always really smart.” I shrugged. I stretched with a groan. Man, that bench was hard, and my butt was getting numb. I gazed at the Porta Alchemica absently. “What would you do if you were in my place?”

  Palombara’s shoulders hitched. “I didn’t see that question coming.”

  I smirked. “Maybe I’m not always that easy to read. Anyway, what would you do? You say if I go pick a fight with Montecito and Perses, I’m screwed. But, of course, Montecito is gonna put Lily’s life in the balance, and if I try to break the table’s seal to save her, I’m screwed, too, because then Faust has a halberd waiting for me. So, how would you play that hand?”