Chapter Nine

I hear Adrian hit you.” Tabitha laughed and rolled back on the grass in Volunteer Park.

“Didn’t hurt,” Nikolaos claimed. “And I hit him back. Harder.”

“Then he banished you from the Underworld.”

“Whatever. Like he can tell me what to do.”

“So now they know about Zoe. Your cat’s out of the bag.”

He glanced at her. “No one ever knows about all my cats. But I knew they’d find out that one soon. So what are you going to do now?”

She sat up, dead leaves and grass sticking to her hair. The nearest streetlight in the park stood several trees away, but the light was enough for her to make out his curious look as he watched her. She turned to face the city skyline. “This is gross and selfish, but I kind of want to show off. Make people worship me. Make the douchebags from high school sorry they ever dissed me.”

“Don’t we all. I’m fine with that as long as you don’t actually show off your immortality.”

“Well, duh.”

“So how will you acquire this worship exactly?”

“Theater was always my idea. Plays, musicals. Become the newest big name on Broadway or classical crossover, have cute girls begging me to sign their boobs.”

“As long as I get to be there to help hold their shirts out of the way. How’s your voice? Good enough for this fame plan?”

She pouted. “Not really. A month at Cornish with all the future divas of the world has been enough to show me how lacking I am.” Tabitha had just begun her studies at Cornish College of the Arts, in the rushing heart of Seattle. “Plus the whole bullshit of auditioning, waiting to be called back, working your ass off in a restaurant or something while you’re waiting—it actually kind of sucks. Or so I’m gathering.”

“Then forget that. The parties are the choicest part of fame anyway. Skip straight to those.”

“I’m remembering some. I just got into another life, in China, and dude, do you remember? I was this prince, and I seriously had a harem of women, and the parties I threw—”

“Oh yes, those were grand.” He stretched his legs out in front of him. “But your parties as Dionysos, your festivals, now those were the days to be reckoned with. I’d scoot your memories along if I were you, and start recalling those.”

Tabitha sent an impatient breath out her nose. “Sophie said the same thing. What I do not get is why some life three thousand years ago is so much important than what we can do now.”

“On the whole I agree. But I make an exception for that life, because in that one, and only that one, we were immortal. Therefore it’s instructive. Also it’s sexy.”

“I’ll get there eventually.” She pulled her long hair off her shoulders and twisted it up behind her head, sliding a stick through it to secure it. “So why’d you come find me? To make me the life of the party for eternity? Not that I’m complaining.”

“I wanted you along for the ride,” he said.

“And Zoe?”

Nikolaos looked up at the full moon, which shone through a shroud of autumn clouds. “Her too.”

“Why us? You understand we’re not going to have sex with you, right? I mean, if we live forever, I guess it’s possible we’ll come around to liking guys, but…”

He grinned. “I’ll never give up hope. But even a perv like me does want friends. Ade and I aren’t always the best match. Obviously.” He pulled up his knees and folded his arms around them, considering the moon again. “I got on well with Sanjay—Apollo. But they’ve killed him, and souls aren’t the most exciting friends. You and I tended to be good mates. Drinking buddies, in most lives, though in immortal days we couldn’t actually get very drunk. More like getting-other-people-drunk buddies.”

“Right on. So, Zoe? She got people drunk with us, or what?” Tabitha realized she kept steering the conversation toward Zoe, and felt dorky about it. She did want to learn more about that tasty Kiwi, but hadn’t decided yet if she wanted to be Zoe’s girlfriend, or her friend with occasional benefits, or what. Living potentially forever with a person was a daunting prospect, and Tab didn’t want to screw up their friendship, or relationship, right out of the gate. Thus the friendly but not totally affectionate texts, which she hoped weren’t offending Zoe.

“No, her I brought back because…” Niko lifted his chin toward the moon. “She’s magical.”

“I get that, if by ‘magical’ you mean ‘hot.’”

“I also mean magical.”

“We switch realms and ride ghost horses. Aren’t we all magical?”

“Yeah, but her more than most. You’ll see.”

Tabitha shrugged at the enigmatic remark, and squinted at him. “So, parties, you say. Hanging with famous people. How do we even do that?”

“I know a few and can introduce you. Your charm and charisma will do the rest.”

“Not with my sucky wardrobe and small-town hair,” Tabitha grumbled.

“Money fixes those.”

She considered that truth, and remembered something he had said about diamonds and emeralds in the Underworld. “You said we can get money?”

“Already have it. Mountains of it. You’re welcome to some. Immortal’s salary, let’s call it.”

“Hmm. Then you’re saying I can have some fun while I decide what to do with eternity. Enjoy the perks first.”

Niko lay back, folding his arms behind his head. “The world is your jar of caviar, my dear.”

Zoe lay on her back in the grass, gazing up at the feathery leaves of the titoki tree above her. She’d never actually seen the tree till this spring. All her life, in her parents’ back garden, she’d heard its leaves rustling in the wind, touched its fallen seeds upon the ground, and sometimes thought she felt the tree’s vibrant life force quivering through the Earth under her. To finally gaze upon it was a priceless treat.

And yet, closing her eyes worked best for sensing the magic. So she closed them. At once she felt the trunk stretching its roots like fingers into the soil. She sensed the mushrooms, mosses, worms, beetles, spiders, and every little quiver of life that added up to the symphony of Earth magic. It balanced the sky magic perfectly, the warmth of the sun and the rush of the wind as they poured across her.

She hadn’t reached Hekate’s life yet, though she was moving backward faster than Tab was, to judge from Tab’s laid-back texts. But Zoe already understood how closely her own soul always linked itself to magic—witchcraft, if you wanted to call it that. And she already knew that in the Underworld, the Earth magic was of course immeasurably strong, but the huge mass of souls brought sky magic with them to balance it, and that was why they glowed.

Later, after going indoors, such thoughts never made much sense to her. But at the moment, lying with her eyes closed, her back against the Earth, spring’s breath washing over her, it felt like the clearest, purest logic.