Underworld's Daughter Read online

  But Hermes dodged aside and caught the knife by its handle. “You see,” he said, “I knew you would do that.” He flicked it into the sand beside Ares’ feet before rising and strolling away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Adrian blew on the spoonful of squash soup to cool it, then ate a bite. “It’s good soup. Glad there was enough for leftovers.”

  Sophie nodded. She dipped a crust of bread into her soup bowl, and bit into it.

  The wind sent dry leaves rustling outside the trailer, and she glanced at the window and sighed. Which she’d been doing all evening.

  “Haven’t said much on your blog lately,” Adrian observed.

  “Too busy. And why bother, if Thanatos is watching it to see if you comment?”

  “I wouldn’t comment anymore. No need.”

  Sophie shrugged, still not looking at him.

  Adrian set his spoon down. “Something wrong?”

  She left the crust of bread in her bowl and wiped her fingers on the paper towel in her lap. “It’s weird, not doing anything on Halloween.”

  A spark of relationship panic flared to life in his chest, as if he’d forgotten her birthday. “Oh. It’s…is it a big thing in America? It’s not in New Zealand really, and I…didn’t think. Do you usually do much?”

  “We have a produce stand,” she informed him, meeting his gaze. “We are up to our ears in pumpkins and Indian corn this time of year. We do a cornfield maze. We do costumes. We do trick or treating. Yes, we do a lot.” She looked out the window again.

  “You could have said. I…okay, do you want to go out?”

  “We don’t have costumes. We’re too old for trick or treating now.”

  “Do you want me to take you somewhere? I’m sorry. I don’t understand. I was gone all day with errands for the souls, and Halloween doesn’t occur to me as a thing…”

  She smirked, merely a puff of air from her nose, not truly a smile. “Doing errands for murdered souls is pretty Halloweenish. Guess you celebrate it every day.” Ordinarily she was proud of the work he did. Tonight, her comment was more like snark.

  “Er.” He scratched his scalp, more bewildered by the second. “Tell me what you want to do, all right? We’ll do it.”

  “I can’t really.”

  “Of course we can. We can do anything.”

  She glanced at him and away, meeker now. He thought he detected a glimmer of tears in her eyes. “I want the holiday back, the way it was when I was a kid. I want…home.”

  He set his hand on top of hers, but tentatively, for she still held her back straight. And despite that sensual pounce last night, it was obvious he still had no idea whether she wanted his attentions, or indeed, wanted this life for good at all.

  “I can take you home,” he said softly.

  She shook her head. “I’d still have no costume. No job in the corn maze or anywhere else. I’d be a creepy high school grad who comes back and hangs around for no good reason.” She sniffled and drew a deep breath. “Besides, we don’t know when Quentin or one of her people will show up. I can’t be at home much anymore.”

  He lowered his gaze to his bowl of soup. “I know the feeling.”

  “Yeah.” She turned over her hand beneath his, and folded her fingers around his thumb. “You can never go home. They say.”

  “Not often, in any case.”

  “Growing up sucks.”

  “Sometimes it does,” he agreed.

  “I’m sorry I’m so moody.”

  “It’s all right. I get that.”

  “And sorry for…turning you down.” Her mouth curved into a shy smile. “At least until last night.”

  He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Last night was worth any wait.”

  “Those dreams. I tell you.”

  “Yeah.” His heart sank a bit. It was obviously Hades, not Adrian, who tended to stir her up. Could you be jealous of yourself? “And what was Persephone up to now?” he asked.

  “The proper deflowering. The day a bird got into the bedchamber.”

  “Ah. That is a good one.” He pulled his hand back. “Do you want…” he started. “I mean. Should I grow a beard, or anything?”

  Confusion and amusement morphed her eyes. “What?”

  “It’s just, the dreams seem to do it for you when I don’t, and back then I—Hades—had a beard, and…”

  She fell apart in giggles.

  He allowed a smile. “Okay, sandals maybe? The cloak and tunic kind of outfit? You mentioned costumes…”

  She laughed even harder. When she finally recovered her voice, she picked up her crust of bread and stirred the soup with it, grinning. “No. It’s not about beards or sandals. You do do it for me. I just…sometimes have trouble processing this relationship. An immortal, the spirit realm, Thanatos. Greek gods. It is out there, you know.”

  “I know,” he admitted, though his hopes sank again.

  “I’m still trying to work out how to handle it. How much of my normal life to give up for it.” She spoke gently and thoughtfully, watching a drop of soup fall from the bread crust. “But the dreams, the scenes like that…they remind me I should enjoy you. Maybe I do have to be an outcast, but at least I’m an outcast with you.”

  “You wouldn’t have to be an outcast if it weren’t for me.” His brain told him to shut up, never to remind her of such things. But if she was unhappy, oughtn’t they speak of the reasons why?

  She ate the last bite of bread, and stood to take her bowl to the sink. On the way she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for making me laugh.” But her smile was already gone, the pensive look in place again.

  “Right. Anytime.” He gazed at his spoon, marveling how he could live through millennia of lives, usually in love with the same soul, and still have no idea, some days, what she wanted.

  The immortals initiated the four women. Persephone and Hades invited them and the rest down to the Underworld for the event, since the orange’s magic might not work elsewhere.

  They still kept the tree’s location a secret. While Hades picked the fruit, Persephone waited next to the river with the four women and the group of immortals, chatting with them to ease their nervousness about standing among ghosts. Most sent skittish glances around, and jolted when souls approached in curiosity to run an immaterial hand through their flesh. Ares, Persephone was smugly amused to note, seemed the most alarmed and least courageous of all. A taste for glory in war evidently didn’t translate to peace in the presence of the departed. Perhaps he feared he’d encounter someone he’d last seen on a battlefield with his spear in their neck.

  Hades brought the four sections of orange and handed one apiece to the women, who studied the blue fruit. Poseidon, Hermes, and other immortals sidled close to examine it too. But oranges didn’t grow anywhere around Greece, so it was unlikely they’d recognize it, nor be able to identify which tree in the Underworld’s vast and varied gardens it came from, especially with the telltale orange-colored peel missing.

  Rhea, the most experienced at leading religious rites, had prepared a small speech to deliver before the women ate the slices. She invoked the “Fates” who decided the punishments and freedoms of souls, and asked them to embrace these women as immortal emissaries of the spirit realm. Fates were what the legends had called such forces, and the immortals had no other name for whatever was at work in the Underworld.

  Amphitrite, Rhode, Kymia, and Benna ate their portions of fruit. Everyone smiled. A murmur of celebratory remarks began. Persephone stepped up to the four and reminded them of the physical effects as she had experienced them, and how they probably would not feel much right away, but should indeed notice changes by this evening.

  The joy radiating from Poseidon’s face as he hugged his wife and daughters lingered in Persephone’s mood after the others had gone home. She and Hades continued their work in the Underworld, sending out inquiries for murdered souls and listening to their stories to see if there was anything they could do to catch the culprit or eas
e the family’s suffering. Meanwhile she kept thinking how one bite of that orange, at the right place and time, would have prevented all these tragedies. But it also would probably have overpopulated the world. Or did the Fates, or the Goddess, wish the immortals to have this realm—this entire other world—where they could act as stewards and emissaries for the living, as Rhea put it?

  “It does make you wonder,” she said that night after washing down another mouthful of cloudhair seeds. “We could have a child, I suppose. Eventually.”

  Hades, lying naked beside her, stroked her from underarm to hip. “A child who grows up in the Underworld? Unique soul that would be.”

  She settled down beside him and twined herself into his embrace. “Not for a while, anyway. But something to think about.”

  The blue orange took its expected effect. Persephone visited Poseidon’s family and witnessed the strength and rejuvenated beauty of Amphitrite (suddenly young again), Rhode, Benna, and Kymia.

  She didn’t see Adonis, though she asked after him when one day she met with Aphrodite.

  “He’s being stoic, but it’s stung his pride,” Aphrodite said. “And wrecked his hopes for the future. Now he has to proceed like a normal man. Which wouldn’t be any problem if I hadn’t unfairly raised his aspirations.” She twisted her mouth. “Not sure I’m doing him any favors, ultimately.”

  Persephone smiled. “I do know what you mean, but I doubt anyone on Earth would say you haven’t done him any favors.”

  Persephone also checked in with her mother to see how she was coping with Poseidon’s wife gaining eternal youth.

  “I am sorry if it makes life harder for you,” Persephone said over a tea of fresh garden herbs, in the house she used to live in with Demeter. Her tone was stilted despite her effort at sincerity. It was an awkward topic to bring up with your mother, especially when your mother had done her best to thwart your own marriage.

  But Demeter shrugged in resignation. “I’ve been getting over that, in the past year or so. Even at the best of times, Poseidon and I were not an ideal match. It takes some admitting to oneself, but that’s the truth.”

  Persephone’s lungs expanded in relief. “Good. And you know, if you do find someone else, a mortal, even—well, now there’s hope for a future there.”

  “Only if he’s more popular with our friends than Adonis is.” Demeter fished out a wet leaf stuck to the inside of her cup. “Poor lad. I rather like him, myself.”

  After leaving her mother, Persephone walked through the village, greeting and visiting the people she used to live among. She carried bags and baskets of plants from the Underworld and the spirit realm, and delivered medicines and treats to various households according to their needs.

  An old woman tried to give her a block of cheese in return—one of the only bits of food in the house—but Persephone shook her head. “I’m not in need of anything these days. Just let me bring you what I can. The ointment should help your joints if you keep your hands wrapped for as much of the afternoon as you can manage, all right?”

  “You’re a good girl, Persephone.” The woman smiled while Persephone applied the last wrappings of twine to hold the poultice in place. “Is it true you’re immortal now?”

  Persephone kept her smile in place, but an inner shield went up. The immortals, along with the candidates for immortality, were all sworn not to speak of the fruit. A different story had to be spread to account for their strength and youth. “Indeed, the Goddess has so favored me. Or so it appears. We’ll see if it lasts.”

  “Marrying a god, then. Looks like that’s what it takes. Know any who would take me?” The old woman laughed until she coughed.

  But not everyone was so good-humored. Starting in Persephone’s former village, and also in the seaside town where Poseidon and Amphitrite and their daughters lived, stories sprang up about the gods and their new ability to give out immortality. People had seen the rejuvenated women with their own eyes, women they had known for years, and thereby could swear the stories were true this time. The rumor spread swiftly to other villages and cities. It matched up with the fanciful tales people already wanted to believe, and became an instant mania.

  When Persephone visited her former village again in a few days, she was thronged with requests.

  “My son just turned old enough to become a soldier, and is leaving to help fight off the marauders,” a woman said with tears in her eyes. “I fear he’ll be killed. Please, isn’t it a good cause? Can’t you make him immortal?”

  “My wife has begun having seizures,” a young man said. “I’m afraid to leave her at home with the children. What if something happens? Please, she’s a good mother. I don’t even want to be immortal, but if she could be, like you and Poseidon’s daughters, she’d be such a fine goddess.”

  “Look at my daughter,” a mother said. The girl, maybe twelve, leaned on a walking stick and gazed humbly at Persephone. Her spine was curved, bending her neck forward, and one arm hung limp and shriveled. “She’s been getting worse,” the woman said. “How can the gods let a child suffer this way?”

  Persephone emptied her bags and baskets of every medicine and small treasure she had with her. She pressed them into the hands of her supplicants, babbling instructions for healthy practices. She gave her cloak to a thin child, and her sandals to a pregnant woman, and pulled all the precious stones off the bracelet she wore and handed them around.

  But as soon as she escaped and switched realms, tears flooded her eyes. Leaning her face against the saddle of her spirit horse, she sobbed.

  When she returned to the Underworld, she followed her new homing ability to Hades. He sat in the fields, talking to souls and scratching notes onto a wet clay tablet. When he looked up to greet her, and beheld her miserable, tear-streaked face, his smile faded in alarm.

  She dropped into his arms in a huddle. “What have I unleashed?” she wailed. “I should tear the tree out, burn it.”

  He murmured hasty apologies to the souls, and they withdrew. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Everyone clamors for immortality now. They all make good cases. There are children, mothers, fathers…I can’t fix them all. But they want me to. I want to.”

  “Ah. Yes, Hermes tells me it’s the same in all the places where they’ve heard of us. It was bad enough before, but now it’s worse, with the rumors of us making people immortal.”

  Sniffling, she pushed her hair out of her face. “Shouldn’t we destroy the tree? I can’t bear to make such decisions. Who am I to choose?”

  “We choose together, all of us.”

  “But the mere fifteen—nineteen—of us, who are we to choose?”

  He slid the tablet out of the way and circled his arms around her. “I feel the same every day down here. How do I choose which of these souls to help? How can I ever help them all? How can I deliver every important message back to the living? I can’t.”

  She nodded, ashamed at being so self-absorbed when he wrestled the same problems constantly. “Rhea would say the Goddess guides you to help the right ones. The Underworld, at least, does have its own thoughts or powers. But when I’m up there, among ordinary humans…”

  “Doesn’t the Goddess guide them too, and you as well when you’re among them? Weren’t you her priestess once?” He kissed her on the cheekbone. “No need to tear out the tree and destroy it. It’s a blessing, and yes, like all blessings it’s unfair that some receive it and some don’t. But if we’re wise, we’ll see to it that it brings good to the world.”

  She tugged a handkerchief from her bosom, and blew her nose. “But people will hate me. They’ll hate all of us. There could be revolts, riots, innocent people hurt or killed.”

  “Let’s not worry about that until it starts to happen.” He smoothed her unraveling ponytail back over her shoulder. “And anyone who hates you is missing out on one of life’s loveliest features.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It had been a long driv
e back west into Washington to reach Carnation from the cabin in Idaho where Betty Quentin and Landon were staying. Landon offered to drive out alone, but Betty insisted on performing this errand herself. They did consider sending an anonymous letter instead, but both agreed it could be too easily traced and used as evidence against them.

  Much better to stroll up to the Darrow family fruit stand, as she was doing on this frosty, clear November day, and speak to Terry Darrow directly.

  Betty wore large sunglasses, and had the hood of her thick quilted coat pulled up around her head—all decent as a disguise, as well as keeping her warm on a cold day. She beamed like any cheerful old lady in search of a good deal on pears as she walked up to the middle-aged man.

  Terry wore a brown bomber jacket and a battered Mariners baseball cap, and was unloading a crate of apples. His latest customer had just driven away from the gravel parking lot.

  “Morning,” he said to Betty. “Just got some great red pears in. And some gorgeous sweet potatoes.”

  “Marvelous.” Betty leaned on her cane, picked up a sweet potato from its display case, and turned it over to examine it. “Your lovely daughter’s not helping out here anymore?”

  “Nope, she’s off to college. Means I’m getting old.” Terry stacked the apple box on top of the other empty ones.

  “I’ve seen her a few times. Smart girl. But here’s the thing.” She set the sweet potato down. “She’s seeing a new boy. He’s a dangerous article, Mr. Darrow.”

  Terry’s smile vanished. Sharp wariness entered his hazel eyes. They resembled Sophie’s, now that Betty looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sophie’s new boyfriend. Ask her about him. Ask her if his name’s Adrian Watts, and if he’s in the country legally. Because I can assure you that he isn’t. He’s from New Zealand, shouldn’t be over here at all. Slipped in without going through the proper authorities. And he was involved in those attacks on your daughter.” All true, though misleading, and in any case hardly Adrian’s most dangerous features. Nonetheless, it would alarm any good father and might cause trouble for Adrian with law enforcement. Which was only fair, after he’d put her into similar trouble.