“Death takes a toll on your soul,” he replied.
“Isn’t that what being a necromancer is all about? Death?”
“Exactly,” he said.
I went to the fridge and grabbed another beer. When I turned around, he was gone.
“I wish he’d quit doing that,” I muttered.
Talbot opened my front door a few minutes after Doc left. “Is it safe to come in?” he asked from the doorway.
“He’s gone,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” I said. “Want a beer?”
“Nyx, it’s breakfast time.”
“Breakfast of champions.” At his prissy look, I added, “I could use the company.”
We sat in the living room in silence for a few minutes, until the entire conversation I’d had with Doc poured out of me.
“That’s rough,” Talbot said when I finished. “Do you think Dad knew that Doc is your dad?”
“Yes.” Ambrose was Doc’s only friend.
“He is just chock-full of secrets,” Talbot said, but he didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask.
I didn’t want to talk about my deadbeat dad any longer. “The Book of Fates is missing.”
“Maybe the Fates took it,” he said.
“It’s a possibility,” I replied. “They weren’t thrilled with the idea of me being the keeper of all the secrets, anyway.”
My head ached. Talbot was bug-eyed from lack of sleep. We were both too tired to think clearly.
“We should try to catch a few hours of sleep,” I said. I tossed him a blanket and retreated to my room.
I looked for the Book of Fates. It was supposed to hold all my aunts’ secrets, but it was gone.
The Book of Fates was the Custos’s responsibility. Deci had passed the title on to me when she died, but what happened when I died? I’d only been dead for a little while and I hadn’t transferred the book like Deci had transferred it to me.
Had Wren taken the Book of Fates, too? Or did Morta take it back into her icy bosom? I hadn’t wanted to be the Custos, but a peek at how they’d trapped Hecate would have been useful right now. She’d kill more people, unless I found a way to stop her.
I couldn’t sleep. The faces of the people I’d buried wouldn’t let me.
Chapter Three
I awoke to the sound of Talbot banging on my bedroom door. “Nyx, I know you’re in there,” he yelled.
“I’m coming,” I said. I opened the door with a theatrical flourish. “Give me a minute.”
“Someone has to make sure you don’t drink yourself into a coma.”
I ignored him. I’d cut down on my drinking. Mostly.
“Let’s go to Hell’s Belles. There’s no food in my apartment and I’m starving,” I said.
“What you really mean is you’re out of absinthe.” There was a definite tone in his voice.
“I just want some food. And to check in on Bernie.” Bernie ran Hell’s Belles for the aunties, but she was also a demon who had contacts in the underworld. If she didn’t know where Hecate was, nobody would.
“Okay,” he replied. “If you can manage to hold off on drinking. At least until after lunch.”
“Quit with the lectures,” I said. I’d stock up on liquor later, without him. I grabbed my athame and jacket and we walked to Hell’s Belles.
Before we made it more than two blocks, a mage blocked my path. “Son of Fortuna?”
“Yes?”
He spit in my face. “I wish you’d never come to Minneapolis,” he said, before crossing the street.
“Hey, buddy, wait a minute,” Talbot said. He started after the guy, but I shook my head. I couldn’t speak because shame clogged my throat.
At the restaurant, I grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and wiped the spit from my face.
Normally, people fought hard to get a seat at Hell’s Belles. They made the best food in town. Today, it was empty, except for a couple of mortal kids who’d obviously pulled an all-nighter and a Korrigan from the House of Hades. The Korrigan’s short stature drew snickers from the drunken college students.
We grabbed a booth near them and I gave them my best menacing stare. The snickering subsided. I was doing the mortals a favor. Korrigans were usually slow to anger, but once they got riled up, somebody usually ended up missing body parts. Other than the Korrigan, we were the only magical customers in the restaurant.
“Guess the news is out that I let the Hecate out of the bag,” I said. “Could be worse. There could be villagers with pitchforks.”
“It’s still early,” Talbot replied wryly. “What are we going to do?”
I was touched by the way he’d said we. Like there wasn’t any doubt that he was standing by me, despite the fact that I’d screwed up. The prophecy foretold, He, born of Fortune, shall let loose the barking dogs as the Fates fall and Hecate shall rise.
I’d fought the prophecy my whole life, but I fulfilled it anyway. No wonder my aunts wanted to kill me. And now half of Minneapolis felt the same way.
“You mean because there’s a big red target on my back and I’m not immortal now? Nothing.”
“Maybe I could ask Naomi for a bottle of ambrosia?” Talbot suggested. Ambrosia, aka nectar of the gods, was the orange soda–like drink my aunts manufactured at Parsi Enterprises. It was also the secret to eternal life, at least for mortals.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.
“You want to die before we put Hecate back in the underworld?”
I shook my head. “We should figure a few things out first. Am I dead? Am I undead? Am I a true mortal now or something else?”
I was voting on the something else.
“I should ask about the ambrosia. Just in case.”
I shrugged. “Do what you want, but I already know her answer.” Naomi was all soft and gooey around Talbot, but the girl had a spine of steel.
Talbot changed the subject. “What did Doc say?”
“Besides the fact that he’s my father? Not much.”
Bernie walked up to our booth and set two cups of coffee down. “What’ll you have?” Bernie was barrel-chested with sad droopy eyes, and today, her eyes looked sadder than usual.
“Bernie, do you have time to talk?”
She raised a sardonic eyebrow before pointedly looking around the almost-empty diner. “I think I can spare a few minutes.”
“What happened to all your customers, Bernie?” I asked. “Rumor of a health code violation?”
“You happened, Nyx Fortuna,” she said. “You are bad for business.”
I started to get up, but she waved me back down. “Don’t get excited,” she said. “It’s not my business anyway, and the owners can afford a few slow days.”
We both knew the owners were my aunts.
“Have you heard anything about Hecate? Where she might be? ” I asked. Bernie had been my aunts’ spy in the underworld and I’m sure Bernie was on Hecate’s list. Maybe not as close to the top as I was, but I had no doubt that Hecate hadn’t forgotten about her.
“I don’t know where she is exactly,” Bernie said. “But I did hear she and a bunch of demons forcibly moved out the owners of a riverfront house. Somewhere near the Warehouse District.”
I sipped my coffee while I thought about Bernie’s news. “Did the owners live?”
Bernie gave a slow shake of her head. “That’s not the worse part. The goddess gave the Houses an ultimatum. Join her or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Die.” Bernie was nothing if not succinct.
I pushed my coffee aside. I needed something stronger to deal with the news that I’d started a magical war.
“I see.” That was the real reason for the lack of customers. Hecate was forcing the magical in Minneapolis to choose sides.
Even Bernie’s peach cobbler couldn’t cheer me up.
When we left the diner, I was busying thinking about how badly I’d screwed up that I almost mis
sed Wren, but a flash of red caught my eye. She was weaving her way through the pedestrians, straight toward us.
Before I could even think about a spell, she was right next to me. Two demons trailed her, bigger and meaner than the ones who came after me.
She made a hand gesture like someone telling a dog to sit, and her personal lapdogs folded the tree trunks that passed as their arms and waited.
“You are looking well, Nyx,” she said. Her glittering eyes met mine. She no longer looked like the small sweet bird of her name. Now she resembled a bird of prey, a hawk, or a vulture, feeding on others.
“No thanks to you,” I snarled.
“Sometimes we must do things we don’t want to do.”
I didn’t move, but she shook her head. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Whatever you are thinking of doing,” she said. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
I didn’t bother to ask why she was here. She’d get to it eventually, if I could refrain from killing her that long. But I was curious so I let her talk.
“Hecate wants to offer you a deal.” Wren had ditched the Tria Prima robes as soon as she came topside, but she was still under her mother’s thumb.
I rubbed my neck. “That didn’t turn out so well last time.”
“As a gesture of good faith, she told me I could let you in on a secret.” Her bright smile reminded me I’d once thought of her fondly. But any lingering feelings disappeared when I remembered the slaughter at the conference center.
“And you always do what your mommy tells you.”
Her bright smile disappeared. “Yes.”
“Even if it means slaughtering innocent people?”
“Yes.”
There was nothing left to say, except “No.”
“You haven’t even heard what I have to say.”
“Doesn’t matter. My answer is no.”
She frowned. “You’ll change your mind. I’m sure of that.”
“I won’t.” Pedestrians made a wide berth around us. Most of them didn’t even look up.
“You don’t know everything about your family, do you?”
It gave me great satisfaction to say, “I do. It’s Doc.”
“You mean Hades, don’t you?”
“Hades?” The name slipped out before I could conceal my ignorance. The god of the dead? There was no way Doc could be Hades, although he had brought me back, a difficult feat even for a necromancer.
“He didn’t tell you, did he?”
“Doesn’t matter. Why should I believe a liar like you?”
“Ask him,” she said. “Ask him how he tracked my mother when she was pregnant with me. How he left her to die. Left me to die.”
Wren’s words had a ring of truth. It explained everything—his ruined face, his abilities that were above those of a normal necromancer, even his absence in my life. My father was the god of hell.
Doc was Hades, a powerful god. I couldn’t get my head around it. How could my mother have loved Hades? How could he have stood by and watched while my aunts hunted and killed my mother? I wanted answers.
Chapter Four
Wren left and I didn’t try to stop her. She was just her mother’s puppet. It made me sick that even though I hadn’t trusted her, she’d wormed her way into my life, into my bed. And it was all because Hecate had told her to. Maybe her mother had told her to lie about Doc, too.
“Shouldn’t we go after her?” Talbot asked.
“Probably,” I admitted. “But she’s Naomi’s sister.”
“And your ex,” he pointed out.
“An ex who tried to kill me.”
“Still, an ex.”
“Drop it, Talbot.” The real reason I wasn’t chasing after Wren is that I wasn’t relishing the idea that I might have to kill her. The rest of the Wyrd family was pretty free and easy with murder. I wasn’t.
“Are you okay?” Talbot asked. “Hecate is just trying to mess with your head.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Hades is the god of necromancy,” Talbot said, “but I have a hard time picturing Doc as some powerful lord of the underworld.”
My fists clenched. “I believe her. Doc brought me back from the dead. Do you think any old necromancer could do that?”
“No,” Talbot replied. “But I’m glad he did.”
“Doc is one of the most powerful gods there is and he let my mother die,” I said. “It’s always felt personal with Hecate and now I know why.”
“She strikes me as a goddess who takes everything personally,” he replied.
“I take it personally when someone tries to murder me. I always thought Hecate held a grudge against me because of my aunts, but it turns out it’s my father she really hates.”
“He’s fragile,” Talbot said. “And we don’t even know if it’s true.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “We find out that my father is a Greek god and all you can worry about is hurting his feelings?”
“I’m worried about you,” Talbot said quietly, but I knew I’d hurt his feelings.
Doc had been the one to give me my mother’s emerald frog, the one to heal the damage done to Elizabeth’s face when she fell victim to Deci’s pyromania, and the one to bring me back from the dead. He’d saved my ass more than once.
“I always wondered what his story was, but I never dreamed he might be my father.”
“What did your mother tell you about him?” Talbot asked.
“Nothing good.” I replied. The vision of my mother as she lay dying reminded me of how my father had failed her, had failed me.
I gritted my teeth and went looking for him. Minneapolis was a big city, but I’d figured out a few of Doc’s hiding places. It took me a couple of hours of combing the streets, but I found him. He was waiting in line at the shelter on Third Street.
I pulled him aside. This was not a conversation for mortals’ ears. “Come with me.”
He followed me into an alley that smelled so bad that not even the junkies would use it. “How can I help you, Nyx?”
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” he replied.
“That’s not what I’m asking,” I replied. “Hecate’s daughter says you’re someone else. A god. Don’t lie to me.”
He gave a longing glance at the exit, but returned his attention back to me.
“I’m Doc. I am your father,” he said. “But that’s not who I used to be.”
“Who did you used to be?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted him to admit it.
“Who have you been talking to?” he asked.
“Hecate’s daughter paid me a visit,” I said. “Now are you going to tell me or not? What’s your real name?”
“Hades.” The one word changed everything. I knew it was true. Maybe I’d always known. “Nyx, I wanted to tell you, but I never found the right time.”
I snorted. “You had plenty of opportunities.”
“Who would you rather have as a father? Doc or Hades?”
“I would have rather had someone who was around,” I said. “Like when my mother and I were running for our lives.”
“I failed you,” he said softly. “I failed her.”
The skittish, scarred man before me bore no resemblance to the great god of the underworld. “I still find it hard to believe, even though part of me knows it’s true.”
“How else do you think I called you back from the dead? A mere necromancer couldn’t do that.”
“Everyone thinks Hades is dead.”
“He is,” he said. “All that’s left is me. A broken god.”
I stared at him. Despite his nervous tics, his scarred face, and his attachment to a somewhat ripe trench coat, which he wore even in summer, I believed him.
“What happened to you?”
“Power corrupts, Nyx,” he said. “I loved your mother, but I wanted her sister. I did what I wanted, regardless of other people’s feelings. It didn’t end we
ll. Not even Hades should mess with the Fates.”
“All this time…” I stared at him, unable to reconcile the broken man in front of me with a powerful god.
“What do you want, Nyx?” he said. “If I don’t go in soon, I’ll lose my bed.”
“You can stop her, stop Hecate.”
He shook his head. “I no longer interfere in the magical affairs.”
“You interfered with me,” I pointed out. “I would have died.”
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“Because you are my son and I couldn’t watch you die,” he replied.
“If you don’t help me defeat Hecate, everyone will die.”
He shrugged. “Death isn’t always the worst thing. Sometimes living is.”
I ignored the fact that I’d felt exactly like that not so long ago.
“You don’t have a choice,” he said. “Hecate needs to be contained.”
“You’re not going to do anything?”
His shoulders lifted again, a helpless gesture. I wanted to smack him.
“You knew the Fates were hunting us all those years, but you did nothing.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“You let her die.”
“It was my fault,” he said. “Deci…”
“The mighty god Hades is nothing but a fucking coward,” I said.
He bowed his head. “Yes. Your choices make you or break you.”
Doc, my father, refused to answer any other questions. He didn’t look back as he trudged into the shelter.
After he left, I cruised the Warehouse District. I couldn’t tell which house Bernie had been talking about, but houses on entire streets had gone quiet and dark. No kids played in the street or in the front yards and the few people I did see hurried about their business, heads down. I didn’t see any demons and besides, the neighborhood was too big of an area to canvass all at once, so I turned back and headed for Eternity Road.
Chapter Five
Talbot and I arrived back at Eternity Road at the same time. Ambrose was locking the door.
“Everything okay, Dad?” Talbot asked.
“It was quiet, so I thought I would make an early night of it,” he replied.
Talbot and I exchanged glances. It was barely 4 p.m.
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