I’d thought it was hard to find my way into Hecate’s realm until I looked for Asphodel. I took the plastic ghost and attached it to my mother’s necklace with her charms and used the Hell’s Belles basement entrance.
According to Danvers, I needed to walk until I came to the wall. I’d never ventured past Hecate’s castle before. There’d been no reason to, but once I passed it, the air became lighter and sweeter. With the charm, I would be able to pass through the wall and move into the Field of Asphodel.
I wandered around the underworld for hours without finding Asphodel. Finally, I stopped and said, “Show me the way to Asphodel.”
I saw a gleam of white in the distance and headed for it. After about an hour of hiking, I reached a gray stone wall, which was high enough that it blocked my view of what was on the other side. I got a toehold and pulled myself up and over. I dropped down with a heavy thud and lay there while I caught my breath.
Soft sunlight warmed my face. I sat up and looked around. The ground was covered in white flowers as far as the eye could see. I’d reached Asphodel.
I headed for the field of the fragile white flowers. White asphodel grew in abundance, but there was no sign of any black plants. Some of the dead souls feasted upon the white asphodel while others flitted aimlessly about. The spirits ignored me.
I touched the plastic ghost hanging around my neck and was rewarded with a sharp prick on my finger. It was only a drop of blood, but it was enough. The spirits converged upon me, hungry for blood.
“Stop!” I commanded and the spirits subsided. I was shocked. Not only could I summon spirits, but I could command them.
“Very good,” Doc said. I turned to face my father. “Your powers are growing, Nyx.”
I didn’t expect to find him hanging out in Asphodel, but that’s where he was. He was Hades. The underworld was his to command.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he replied.
“I’ve been all over looking for you,” I said.
“Here I am,” he said. He acted like he didn’t have a care in the world, but I could tell something had happened to him. His salt-and-pepper hair had gone white.
“Is this where you’ve been the whole time?” I asked. “I thought Hecate had you.”
“She tried,” Doc replied. “She was not successful.”
“Obviously,” I said, “or you wouldn’t still be in once piece.”
“I’m impressed. Not many venture into Asphodel. At least not the living,” Doc said. He was remarkably calm. The twitching and shaking were noticeably absent. Maybe Asphodel was good for him.
“I need black asphodel to trap a soul.”
Doc went still. “Whose soul?”
“Hecate’s.”
He rubbed his right arm. “You want the black flowers for her?”
“You helped my aunts trap her the first time,” I said.
He hesitated before answering. “I supplied a few ingredients.”
“Can you do it again? And where are you going to get black asphodel?” I asked. I gestured to the field we stood in. “All I see is white flowers.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Doc replied. “The asphodel elixir must be mixed with your blood. Hecate will be expecting a trap, but she won’t be expecting this one.”
“Why not?” I was skeptical. Hecate had been two steps ahead of me from the beginning.
“The black asphodel only grows one place,” he said. “And I’m the only one who knows the location.”
“I need at least a dozen of those flowers,” I said. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“Let’s take a walk,” Doc suggested. “I’ll show you.”
“Where are we going?”
“Here,” he said. He touched my shoulder and we were standing in a field of black asphodel. The sky was the color of ash and a single white poplar tree stood like a lonely ghost in the distance.
“Where are we?”
“A part of the underworld that even Hecate doesn’t know about,” Doc replied. “Your mother is the only other person I’ve shown this place to.”
My father was trying to connect to me, but whenever he mentioned my mother, it only reminded me how he’d abandoned her to the Fates.
“Is this where you got the asphodel for the elixir?”
He nodded. “Let me show you my home,” he said.
One of my father’s many nicknames was The Rich One. Hades was known for his wealth, so I had expected something ostentatious, but instead, he led me to a simple one-story structure at the edge of the asphodel field.
It was desolate but beautiful. I bent and sniffed one of the blooms. It had a sweet, spicy scent.
“Is this where you go when you disappear?”
He nodded. “Yes, it was built for me a long time ago.”
I hadn’t thought, not really, about how long a god must live. And I’d been whining about putting in a couple hundred years.
Once inside, I surveyed my father’s home. He was showing me his secret place and I wanted to learn what I could. It was tiny, for a god, and sparsely furnished. The walls were plain white, but several paintings hung on them.
I felt comfortable there and I realized it was because I was surrounded by my mother’s things. There was a vase of her favorite flowers, a garnet ring she’d worn when I was small.
“This still has your bite marks in it,” Doc said. He held up a small wooden rattle.
I recognized a carved wooden flute. When I was a child and scared of the things that came for you in the dark, my mother would play it and sing me to sleep at night.
I snatched up a miniature book charm, which I’d been searching for since my mother’s death. “Do you know how long I’ve looked for this?”
He nodded. “I knew why, too.”
“Did you know she’d hidden my thread of fate in the athame?”
He shook his head. “I had no idea. That was my first athame, and I gave it to her when I found out you were coming. We were so happy.”
“Then what happened?”
He touched his scarred cheek contemplatively. “Your mother found out about Deci. And Rebecca. And that was that.” The sorrow in his voice almost made me reach out to comfort him. Almost.
But then I remembered my mother and I had spent our lives on the run because of his cowardice and lust.
“Let’s get the asphodel and go,” I said.
“Is there anything here you’d like to have?” he asked. My eyes went to the miniature book and an ivory wheel of fortune. The charms still missing from my mother’s necklace.
I grabbed the missing charms and placed them on the necklace. “I can’t believe I have them all.” The miniature book and the ivory wheel of fortune joined the black cat carved from Indian ebony, the little coral fish, the emerald frog, the diamond-studded key, and the horseshoe made of moonstones. “Finally.” I touched each charm gently.
“Please, take anything you’d like,” he said. “Take it all.”
I cleared my clogged throat. My mother’s presence permeated the room. “I thought the aunts were the ones who had the charms.”
“I didn’t trust them,” Doc said. “I wanted to keep them safe.”
“Too bad you didn’t feel the same way about your wife and child.”
“I am trying to make amends,” he replied. “In my poor way.”
“Hecate’s daughter Wren said you left Hecate to die,” I said.
After a long moment, he nodded. “She was ambitious,” he said. “She wanted to rule the underworld. I was not willing to let that happen.”
“That’s why she is doing all this?”
He nodded gravely. “I’m afraid the sins of the father have indeed been laid upon the children.”
“But you still won’t help me stop her?”
He shook his head. We picked the flowers in silence.
There was nothing else to say, except “Take me home.”