Chapter 13

 

I breathed in Ravi’s potato-chip breath, and did my best to extract Kimmy’s elbow from my ribs, as I stared out at the office building in front of us. The place was a marvel of modern architecture, full of curves and swoops and elegant lines. The glass front reflected the blazing orange of the sunrise a dozen times over. There was even a fountain outside, with a statue in the center of a man grasping a lightning bolt. It looked like the kind of place some overhyped new company with more money than sense would set themselves up. Or, I supposed, the former king of the gods, who didn’t like it when anyone reminded him “former” was the operative word there.

“This is Zeus’s temple?” Lissa asked in a squished voice. She was crammed between Kimmy and Imogen, in the backseat that was designed to hold three people at most and definitely not the five of us who had squeezed in back here. And it didn’t look like Imogen had been overly concerned with giving her space.

“One of them,” Ciara said from the passenger seat. Lucky duck. She had gotten the place of honor beside Ginevra, because she was the only one who knew the way.

We had been driving all night. The temple was so far into Pennsylvania that we were practically in Ohio. “Why make us come this far?” I asked irritably, waving the smell of stale potato chips and halitosis back toward Ravi. “I’m pretty sure Zeus has a temple in Albany. Or several. He could just as easily have accepted our surrender there.”

“This was where he asked us to come,” said Ciara. “I figured it made sense not to push back too hard on minor things like location. That leaves you more room to negotiate the things that do matter.”

“And don’t forget,” Ginevra added, with a stern look over her shoulder, “this isn’t surrender. It’s a strategic retreat. We’ll take whatever resources Zeus offers us and use them to win the city back from Persephone. From there, we’ll settle in to play the long game and eventually get out from under his thumb.”

“We can hope.” I stared out at the building, with its burbling fountain and its statue stretching toward the sky, and couldn’t help but compare it to the dingy apartment we had left behind. It was already clear who held the power here. “But he wouldn’t have offered us this deal if he thought it would be that easy.”

“I never said it would be easy. I said it was what we would do.” Ginevra opened her door. “It’s time. Let’s go.” She swung one leg out of the car, but the rest of her didn’t follow.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Ravi asked, sending another dose of spicy cheddar fumes straight into my nose. “Because if we’re about to turn around and drive all the way back, I’m going to need a pit stop first.”

“We’re not turning around. This is the right decision.” As she let out her breath, I thought I heard her add, “I hope.”

She got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Ravi followed her lead, and I stepped out after him. Imogen and Lissa exited to the other side.

Kimmy and Ciara were the last ones left in the car. Lissa held out a hand to Kimmy, but she hesitated, seeking out Imogen’s eyes. “Don’t come in with us,” she urged her sister. “Get out of here. Drive to the airport and don’t look back.”

“Remember when we were kids,” said Imogen, “and we drove halfway across the country to Grandpa’s house for Christmas, and I was reading the latest book in that series I liked so much?”

“Taffy Talbot, Dog Walker Detective,” Kimmy supplied. “I can’t believe I remember that.”

“And then I lost it at the rest stop, and it took an hour for Mom and Dad to convince me to get back in the car. I didn’t sleep for a week, until they bought me a new copy and I found out what happened in that stupid book.” Imogen pushed Kimmy’s hand away. “I’ve never been able to leave a mystery unfinished. None of this stuff should exist, and until I understand it, I’m not walking away.”

“The notebooks are gone!” said Kimmy. “Persephone has them by now. And we don’t know what’s about to happen in there. Do you really want to be forced to sign some deal with Zeus, and never be able to walk away from all this for the rest of your life? You don’t know what you’d be getting yourself into—but I do. I’ve seen a lot over the past few months. I know how easy it is for someone to get hurt. Or worse.” She glanced up at Lissa, then quickly away again, and I knew she was thinking about Lissa’s limp body on the morgue slab.

“Don’t tell me you actually care about what happens to me,” Imogen scoffed.

“Of course I care! You’re my sister!” Kimmy blushed, and quickly backtracked. “Or maybe I just have enough to deal with right now, without you hanging around and getting on my nerves.”

“Kimmy is right,” said Ciara. “Depending on what Zeus asks you to agree to, this could be your last chance to walk away. Besides, I don’t know how Zeus will react to a civilian who isn’t involved with the temple in any way. You aren’t even supposed to know about the gods, remember?”

But Imogen made no move to get back into the car.

“If you’re still holding out hope of getting those books back, forget it,” said Kimmy. “They’re gone for good. Along with absolutely everything I owned,” she added, her face taking on a glum cast that suggested she hadn’t considered that particular layer of this shit sandwich before now.

Imogen made a wordless noise of frustration. “Forget the books! I’ll tell all of you the same thing I told you when you tried to take a detour and drop me off at the airport. And when you wanted to abandon me at that rest stop just over the Pennsylvania border. And—”

“We get it,” Ginevra interrupted. “Say what you want to say, or stop wasting time.”

“I told Mom and Dad I would talk some sense into my sister,” said Imogen. “And she’s still here with you bunch of freaks, which means it hasn’t worked yet. And that means I’m not going anywhere.” She crossed her arms.

“Fine,” Kimmy snapped. “Suit yourself. But don’t come crying to me if Zeus burns you to a crisp with a bolt of lightning.”

Ginevra cast a wary glance up at the building. “Enough. The agreement was that we would arrive at sunrise, and we’ve lost too much time already. Let’s get moving.”

She started toward the building, and everyone followed her—even Kimmy, who scrambled out of the car to catch up to Lissa. Everyone but me. This time, I was the one to hang back.

Ciara hiked up her gauzy skirt and climbed across the console into the driver’s seat. We had decided that—assuming we couldn’t persuade Imogen to leave—Ciara would head to the airport herself, return the rental car, and then catch a flight to the most remote part of the world she could manage. Twenty-four hours from now, she would be on the other side of the planet, and her life as a fugitive would begin.

I motioned for her to roll down the window. When she did, I walked up to her, ignoring the looks Ginevra was shooting me over her shoulder. “So,” I said. “This is it. The last time we’ll ever see each other.”

“No.” Ciara shook her head, and rubbed wetness from her eyes. “It won’t be.”

“Glad to hear you’ve found your old optimism again. Although I don’t know what it is about this particular situation that brought it out.” I paused. “You know how I feel about this plan, but… thank you. For setting it up for us, and giving us an option besides dying back there.”

Ciara reached through the window to grab my hand, and clenched it so hard I thought my bones would snap. “You’re going to survive,” she promised through the tears she didn’t bother to wipe away.

I squeezed her hand back, every bit as hard. “Well, yeah.” I tried to smile. “But remember what you promised. You need to keep yourself alive too, all right?”

Ciara sniffled. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

I dropped her hand, but only so I could throw both of mine up in frustration. “You’re still doing it! Let me take care of you for once. I know I’m not any good at it, but at least let me try!”

“Mal, let’s go,” Ginevra called from across the parking lot. She and the others had already made it nearly to the door.

“Go,” Ciara urged. “You’ll be okay. I promise.”

I couldn’t say anything through the sudden tightness in my throat. I could only nod as I turned around to jog after Ginevra.

The front doors, made of frosted glass, seemed to take up half the front of the building. As we took the final steps forward, they opened ahead of us. Two Marked of Zeus, identically dressed in form-fitting black suits, stepped out together, one to either side. At least, I was guessing they were Zeus’s Marked, based on the branching red scars that traveled up their faces and down what little exposed skin I could see on their necks and hands. I had heard that Zeus chose his Marked by striking them with a bolt of lightning. Apparently I had heard right.

At the same moment, the two Marked each held out a hand. “Your weapons,” one of them said in a monotone.

I scoffed. “Yeah, that’ll be a no.”

“We were under the impression,” said the second Marked in an identical voice, “that you wished to make a deal with our god. We don’t allow armed guests into our temple. So unless you’ve changed your mind about the agreement…” He left the sentence unfinished, letting the words hang in the air.

Ginevra swallowed. “Do it,” she said reluctantly.

I supposed it wasn’t as if giving up my weapon would put us in an appreciably worse position than we were already in. And what were we going to do—turn around and drive home, maybe helpfully slathering ourselves in peanut butter and jelly on the way before Persephone’s Marked ate us for lunch? As Ginevra handed her knives to one of the Marked, I passed my gun to the other. He had to tug at the weapon before I could make myself release my grip.

Ravi held out his empty hands, showing that he wasn’t armed—the sword had been too bulky for him to carry around inside the apartment, and he hadn’t had time to grab it or anything else. One of the Marked swept his eyes over him, with what I was guessing was more than normal vision, before he nodded. He turned the same look on all the non-Marked, one by one, then turned to his companion and gave him a longer nod. Together, they turned and reentered the building, holding the doors wide for us.

The heat was on full blast inside, but that didn’t make the temple feel welcoming. It put me in mind more of stepping into a furnace, or maybe the fires of hell. Divine power encircled me, probing at my mind as it crept across my skin. The instant the last of us stepped through, the doors hissed shut behind us. I felt the temple’s wards slamming down over us, and shuddered.

The lobby was a cathedral of chrome and glass. Above the front desk, and along the sides of the spiral staircase, a stylized lightning motif was etched into the gleaming walls. In the center of the lobby, I saw a fountain that almost matched the one on the outside, but I only had to look at it for half a second to tell that something was wrong about it. It took me another few seconds to figure out what: in place of water, the fountain was shooting tiny blue-white sparks.

“How many people here do you suppose think that’s just some kind of fancy tech?” I asked under my breath.

One of the Marked of Zeus shot me a quelling look. But his voice was all polished politeness as he asked, “Would you and your associates like some time to rest and freshen up? We’ve had a suite made up for you.”

“No, thank you.” Ginevra matched his tone almost exactly, but added a layer of ice. “Let’s get straight to the negotiations.”

The Marked nodded. “Very well. Follow me.”

He led us up the stairs and down a hallway that seemed to stretch longer than the length of the building, all the way to the horizon. As we walked single-file behind him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were marching to our doom. Strategic retreat, I reminded myself. Maybe thinking of it that way helped Ginevra block out the images of Persephone’s Marked making themselves at home in our temple. It sure as hell didn’t help me.

Finally, our escort stopped and opened one of the many doors. He stood to the side and motioned us in.

Most of the room was taken up by a long wooden table—real wood, thick and heavy and smelling faintly of the tree it had come from. The front wall of the room was one giant window, and the entire ceiling was a skylight. That gave us a doubly good view of the gray clouds roiling across the sky, as well as the bright flashes of lightning every couple of seconds, accompanied by deep bass rolls of thunder. Rain beat down on the skylight above our heads, and poured down the window in thick ropes. I could smell ozone on the air.

I frowned. It had been clear outside when we had come in, only a few minutes ago. Not only that, but…

“We didn’t go all the way up the stairs.” Kimmy said it before I could. “There should be another floor above us.”

Imogen stared up at the skylight. “That shouldn’t be possible,” she murmured, then raised her voice. “How is that possible?”

The Marked startled at the sound of her voice, seeming to notice her for the first time. “Who is this?” he demanded.

Ginevra answered before she could. “These two are our Guardians in training,” she said, gesturing to Imogen and Kimmy.

“But I—” Imogen started.

“That’s not—” said Kimmy at the same moment.

“Go with it,” I muttered. The excuse made a lot of sense, actually. Kudos to Ginevra for thinking of it, and saving herself the trouble of explaining not only Imogen’s presence, but Kimmy’s role as Lissa’s anchor to the mortal world. She could have claimed they were Marked, but the two of them would never have been able to pull it off. Guardians, though, they could manage. Everyone knew Guardians were a little weird.

The second Marked of Zeus glided in behind us. He moved so smoothly that I hadn’t even heard his footsteps behind us in the hallway. I had to watch his legs for a moment, as he walked to the other side of the table, before I was convinced his feet were actually touching the ground.

The other Marked joined him in front of the window, and as if they had rehearsed it, they sank into their chairs at the exact same moment. There were three chairs on their side of the table. The chair in between them was still empty.

Together, they motioned for us to sit. I shivered at the sight of their identical gestures.

We all covertly looked to Ginevra. She gave us a slight nod, then took the seat in the center. Lissa sat beside her, and the rest of us arranged ourselves to either side. I found myself with Lissa to one side and Ravi to the other. Great. More potato chip breath.

When we were all seated, Ginevra steepled her hands in front of her. “Are we waiting for someone else,” she asked, nodding to the empty chair, “or are we ready to begin negotiations?”

One of the Marked across from us smiled slightly at that. It wasn’t a kind smile.

Ginevra added another layer of ice to her voice. “Do something amuse you?”

His smile broadened. “Only the fact that you think this is a negotiation.”

With a crack of thunder, the door slammed shut behind us.

I reached for my weapon, then remembered it wasn’t there. Beside me, I could see Lissa preparing to call on Hades’s power, and coming to a similar realization.

At the other end of the table, Alex stirred to attention. “The gates of the underworld are opening.”

Well, that wasn’t ominous or anything. Not that we needed him to tell us something had gone badly wrong.

He rose to his feet and faced the door, head bowed, like he was greeting a foreign dignitary. “They’re opening for her.” As the door opened, all his solemnity fell away, and he stared in naked longing, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

A woman stepped into the room.

I didn’t know clothes, but even I could tell her suit had cost more than I could ever hope to afford. The fabric was an understated gray, perfectly chosen to match the storm outside. Her hair fell just past her shoulders in soft, perfect curls. It was only a few shades darker than the warm brown of her skin.

Despite the evidence literally staring me in the face—at least until her gaze darted away—I told myself, at first, that my eyes had to be lying to me. Until I saw the way she couldn’t look at me for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Until her confident smile faltered for a second as she glanced back up at me and met my hard stare.

Ciara had never left.

She nodded to the two Marked of Zeus. In that simple gesture, she somehow managed to communicate both that she knew she knew she was on their turf and that, until she chose to relinquish it, she had control of this room. She strode to the empty chair and sat.

“What is this?” I looked first at Ciara, then at the two Marked flanking her. Nobody gave me an answer. All three of them sat with placid expressions—although I saw, with a surge of triumph, that Ciara flinched for a second.

“Instruct your Marked to be silent,” one of the Marked of Zeus said to Ginevra, “or she will be removed.”

I pushed myself to my feet. “What is this?” I demanded, louder this time.

“Quiet,” barked the Marked who had spoken before. This time, a roar of thunder accompanied his words, rolling across the room to slam into me like a punch to the gut. I fell heavily back into my chair.

As if nothing had happened, Ciara swung a gray leather briefcase onto the table and opened it. She took out a slim stack of papers and set it down in front of her. “These are the terms of your exile,” she said, “as agreed upon by the temples of Zeus and Persephone.”

“Exile was not what we agreed to,” Ginevra protested.

A ghost of his earlier smile spread across the face of the Marked again. “Which is why Hades’s temple was not mentioned.”

I felt like I was staring at the pieces of two different jigsaw puzzles and trying to turn them into a coherent whole. Ciara had made the deal with Zeus’s temple. That deal was an agreement between Zeus and Persephone for Hades’s exile from the city. Therefore, Ciara had been working against us, on Persephone’s behalf.

Except that Ciara had helped us. She had saved us from the initial attack. She had rescued Ginevra. She had helped us with the ritual, helped us look for allies, and, when we had no other options left, helped us run. Why would she do all that, and put herself at so much risk, only to turn around and betray us?

“For the duration of your lives,” Ciara continued in a smooth, authoritative voice that sounded nothing like the soft and gentle person I knew, “you will remain in the portion of the mortal realm controlled by the god Zeus. To prove you haven’t left his territory, you will report to his temple weekly in person, and report any change of address within twenty-four hours. While you abide by the terms of the agreement, Zeus and any gods allied with him, as well as Persephone and any gods allied with her, are forbidden to harm you except in self-defense or the defense of their territory.”

“I don’t understand,” Imogen said in a small voice.

Ciara kept going. “For the remainder of your lives, you are barred from entering New York City, and any other territory the god Hades or any of his allies lays claim to now or in the future.”

Was I supposed to be watching for some sort of secret signal from her? Had I fallen asleep during that part of the plan? It had been a long and boring drive. But Ciara’s fingers didn’t twitch in any kind of pattern, and neither did her face. Her voice remained smooth and steady. If she was giving me a secret signal, she was doing too good a job of keeping it secret.

“You will each be allowed to choose your own residence and occupation, provided you no longer act through word or deed to promote the interests of the god Hades or his allies, or to undermine the god Zeus, the goddess Persephone, or their respective allies.”

I slammed the hand down the table, and took satisfaction in watching Ginevra jump. The papers slipped from her hands and scattered across the table. Without meeting my eyes, she tried to gather them together.

“What did Persephone offer you?” I asked her, raising my voice to be heard above a clap of thunder. “What did you sell us out for?”

When she met my eyes, I finally saw a message there—but it was one I didn’t know how to read. And it only flashed across her face for second before she put her mask of neutrality back on and continued her speech. “These terms are acceptable to the temple of the goddess Persephone. Is the temple of the god Zeus in agreement?”

“We are,” Zeus’s Marked said in unison.

“Representatives of the god Hades.” Ciara’s voice softened. She set the papers down in front of her. “This agreement represents your best and only chance for survival. I regret the deception necessary to bring you here, but—”

“But nothing,” I interrupted. “Fuck off. We’re done here.”

“If the representatives of the god Hades do not agree to these terms,” said one of the Marked of Zeus, “they will live out the remainder of their days imprisoned by the god Zeus, protected by no agreement. Their lives will be his to do with as he sees fit.” He sounded like he didn’t care one way or the other what we chose.

“You’re the one who knows diplomacy,” I muttered past Lissa to Ginevra. “What loophole am I not seeing?”

“As far as I can tell,” she murmured back, “there is none.” She rose to her feet and growled in a voice loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “We do not agree to your terms.”

She shifted her weight, preparing to fight. To either side, the rest of us followed her to our feet and did the same. Even Lissa stood, and Alex, although they were even more defenseless than the rest of us. Kimmy extended her palms outward, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried for a spark of magic. Imogen was the last to rise, but in the end, she joined us.

“Don’t do this,” Ciara pleaded. For the first time since she had sat down in this room, I heard real emotion in her voice. “You don’t know what it took to make this happen. Don’t make it all for nothing.”

“Take your seats,” one of Zeus’s Marked ordered, “or these negotiations are over.”

“These are generous terms,” the other Marked put in. “And you will not receive a second chance.”

Ginevra bent down. I didn’t understand what she was doing until, in one fluid motion, she broke a leg off her chair, stood up, and hurled the wooden projectile at the Marked who had spoken. One end hit him squarely in the forehead, leaving a round red mark. He sat perfectly still for a second or two, unblinking, then toppled sideways from his chair.

I only had room for a single approving thought before the second Marked of Zeus flicked his index finger toward us.

Lightning arced from his finger to hit Ginevra in the heart. From her, it traveled outward to either side, racing down the line. I only had a fraction of a second to understand what was happening before it reached me.

I didn’t feel myself fall. I didn’t feel anything except the pain as every nerve in my body lit up at once. I hadn’t thought anything could approach the agony of a blast of raw Humanity Ascendant magic, but this came close. Even as the pain began to recede, and I became aware that I was lying on the floor and staring up at the rain, I couldn’t move. I tried to stand, but my muscles wouldn’t obey my orders. I could twitch one of my pinky fingers, but that was about it.

As I focused on regaining control of the rest of my fingers, then my hands, then my arms, I watched the two Marked of Zeus file past us and out through the door. Ciara was the last to leave the room. As soon as the door closed behind her, a bud formed in the center of the door, and grew as it unfurled. And grew. And grew. The flower was obscenely large, like nothing that existed in nature. Its petals, a purple so dark they were nearly black, brushed both the floor and the ceiling. The flower undulated rhythmically, like it was considering swallowing one or all of us whole.

But it didn’t reach for us. Instead, it gave an almost human sigh. A rich scent spread through the room, like rancid roses. I coughed. Around the room, so did everyone else.

I began to push myself to a sitting position. But in the next second, my arms went rubbery underneath me, and I found myself staring up at the skylight again. The rain had gone blurry, zigzagging across the sky like tiny butterflies. I squinted, but couldn’t make my eyes focus.

The smell of the flower sank deeper into my lungs, and spread through my limbs, and coated my brain like a sticky film. My thoughts swirled in sluggish circles around my head.

This had to be some new experiment of Ciara’s, I thought fuzzily. I might even have been impressed, if not for the whole betrayal thing.

That was my last thought before another lungful of poison dropped me unconscious.