I make my way down the hall to the warden’s office. I don’t bother to knock before I enter.
Greg looks up at me with a flustered expression. His desk is piled high with papers, his baby face and big, innocent eyes barely clearing the pile. He’s not that much younger than me, but too kind to be in this job. He’s not exactly the person you’d think would be running a reformatory for supernatural creatures, but he kind of got stuck with it. It’s a long story.
“Mavis. How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I say, sweeping papers from a chair so I can sit.
“Any issues with the new supe?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Supe?”
“Yes. Supe.” He bristles. “Short for supernatural being.”
“That is so not a thing.”
“It is,” he insists. “Ask Cassie. She’s been researching current slang…”
“Oh, I would ask Cassie. Except your girlfriend didn’t show up to work today. Not that it mattered. That vamp is not getting rehabilitated. Truth time—I don’t even know if we can keep him safely contained. Maybe we can use his sister—who is also here, by the way—to get him to cooperate, but—”
Greg stares at me wide-eyed. “Cassie didn’t come to work?
“No. I thought she was sick or something.” I sit up, suddenly worried. Cassie and Greg are a couple. Totes co-dependent. The kind of couple that basically live in each other’s back pockets. If Cassie was sick—he would know.
Greg jumps to his feet, clearly concerned. “She hasn’t sent me a thought since…” He studies the ceiling, clearly trying to remember. “Not since yesterday. I brought her tea.”
“Oh, right,” I say, “I keep forgetting Cassie has ESP now.” And by “has” I mean she randomly sends thoughts to people she knows. I grimace.
Greg nods and gives a watery smile. “She calls it ESPN. It’s adorable.”
Is it? I bite my tongue to keep from saying it out loud.
Cassie was raised at Mount Olympus Academy, a school run by Greek gods. There was no television or cell phones or modern conveniences. She constantly gets confused about phrases that everyone else knows.
You’d expect someone with the power to see the future to be a little less flaky, but Cassie is a lot like her power. Her visions are unpredictable and often useless. At school she was famous for predicting the lunch menu. After touching a seer stone, her power increased, but was still fluky.
Recently, she’s started being able to telepathically project her thoughts. But as usual, she has no ability to control it. So, sometimes she accidentally tells some rando that she wants to meet in Greg’s office in ten for some afternoon delight. That got awkward for all of us when one of the First Broods showed up wearing nothing but her cuffs and a smile.
“Maybe she just needed some me-time,” I say.
Greg shakes his head. “That doesn’t sound like Cassie. She loves practicing her ESP with me. She’s sending me her thoughts constantly. Last week—”
“Uh-huh,” I say, holding up a hand to stop him. “Insert cute Cassie story here. Look, are we worried about her, or not?”
“I just can’t imagine her skipping out on work for no reason,” Greg says.
I have to agree. Cassie takes her job very seriously. She advocates for prisoner rights and puts each offender in a custom-made rehabilitation program. Even the ones that I deem to be too bad to ever get parole, she fights for. We both have experiences being imprisoned, but hers somehow made her a better person.
Mine? Well…mine landed me with trust issues and happy pills in my bra.
“Maybe she just overslept or met a guy who doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life in the underworld—” Greg says, clearly spiraling into panic mode.
“Maybe we should send the harpies to look for her?” I suggest.
Greg’s face goes red. “You think it’s that serious?”
Oh shit. His eyes bug out.
“She’s been murdered and kidnapped!” And just like that—he’s totally freaking out.
I need to backpedal a bit.
“I’m totally sure everything is fine and absolutely nothing is wrong. Besides, Cassie was already kidnapped a few years ago. Nobody gets kidnapped twice in the same lifetime. It just doesn’t happen.”
Which is absolutely not true, but why tell Greg that? As I’d hoped, my overly optimistic, clearly made up proclamation makes Greg look a lot better.
“Yes, you’re right…” He smiles at me weakly.
“Try and give her a call, but maybe also get the harpies on it just in case.”
“She never answers her phone,” he tells me. “And the other week she had an apple, like the actual fruit, in her hand and kept saying, ‘Siri face, call Edie.”
“Adorable,” I say, because I know it’s what Greg wants to hear.
Greg nods in agreement, and then reaches for his phone presumably to call in the harpies. I let him get to it.
Do I think something happened to Cassie? Probably not. She’s a bit ditzy and sometimes gets ideas in her head about certain things. It’s also possible my sister Edie grabbed her for a mission.
Edie is a dragon-shifter who accidentally broke the world and is now obsessed with doing everything she can to fix it. Cassie is her BFF and Edie wouldn’t hesitate to bring her in on a job if she thought Cassie might be helpful. Speaking of my sister…
When I reach my office I grab the phone, an old-timey looking rotary thing. Supernatural beings are not great with technology. The ancient phone isn’t even hooked up to anything. It’s spelled to call out whoever you think your call toward.
I dial Edie’s number while thinking about her. That seems to work the best to avoid a wrong number. Edie. My sister, the famous demi-god and dragon shifter. Cassie’s best friend. Saver of worlds. Killer of gods. Bringer of sass.
“Hello, you’ve reached Edie’s phone. I probably can answer but I don’t want to talk to you right now. So leave a message and if I don’t call you back, you know why.”
“Hilarious message, Sis,” I tell her voicemail. “Don’t freak out, but Cassie didn’t show up to work this morning. Is she off adventuring with you? Call me back when you can.”
I hang up and dial Merilee, Cassie’s mom. She was the keeper of records at Mount Olympus Academy, but when MOA sunk into the ground she stayed behind to protect and recategorize the artifacts. Normal phones don’t work there, but Cassie insisted they have a magical one installed so she could talk to her mom.
It’s not Merilee who answers, though, it’s Themis. Themis is the Greek goddess of justice. She was the second in command at MOA; now she mostly just hangs out there, helps Merilee, and sulks.
Oh...also she was my adoptive mom for a while. Again, long story.
“Themis, it’s Mavis…” I pause. Yep, totally awkward, she’s definitely not over the fact that her Academy was blown to bits because of some things I was peripherally involved in. Okay, maybe a lot involved in. “I was looking for Cassie…”
“Cassie hasn’t been around here in a while. UWR keeps her busy.” She says busy like there are finger quotes around the word. My sister isn’t the only one with some sass. Themis thought Underworld Academy was a joke when it was still a school. Now that it’s a prison, she has even less use for it.
“How have you been, Mavis?”
“Fine,” I say tightly. I don’t want to get into the nightmares or the panic attacks.
“Mmhm,” she says in this knowing way. “Have those tablets I gave you helped any?”
A few months back, I went to MOA hoping to banish some old demons. Instead I had one of my worst panic attacks ever. Themis found me. Once I got myself under control again, she gave me the pills that I carry around in my bra now. She said to think of it the same way I would a hangover cure. A ‘hair of the dog’ type thing.
“Yeah,” I say after a long pause. “They’re helping.”
“That’s good at least. This world has become so unbalanced.”
“Believe me, I know,” I tell her. “I see it every day.”
“I told your sister not to kill Zeus,” she says tightly. “I warned her what would happen. And now his powers are split into three people.”
The Triumvirate. Zahara the harpy, a stuffy fae aristocrat, and a Wisconsin beauty queen. Yep, you guessed it. That’s another long story.
“This Triumvirate nonsense is not working,” Themis is saying. “The Underworld Reformatory is not working. None of it is right.”
It’s not that I disagree with her. Everything is a mess. And I’m not the Triumvirate’s biggest fan. But I also know that this is Themis’ favorite topic and if I give her a chance she will go on and on and on and on.
“Look, I gotta go…” I say.
“Mavis, just...stay safe,” Themis tells me.
“I’ll try,” I promise her.
I grab my bag and start to head out the door when I catch sight of myself in my office mirror. I’m wearing the head-to-toe skintight suit that I always wear to work. It’s lightweight, breathable, and bulletproof.
It’s also magical.
I close my eyes and think of what a young professional would wear. Fern taught me a spell last year to change your clothes in a jiffy if you need to. I look pretty good at the moment. Black pencil skirt, white blouse. My bag becomes a purse, pink for that splash of color. A pair of high-heeled sandals complete the look. I’m ready.
The only piece that doesn’t fit is the neon bracelet on my wrist. But I’ll remove that once I’m above ground again. This bracelet is what allows someone living—like me—to be in the Underworld without giving up my life. I never snap it on without feeling like it’s a shackle. And I never take it off without giving a little sigh of relief.
On my way out I check in with Greg and tell him Cassie’s not with her mom, but I couldn’t reach Edie either so that looks promising.
“You know how the two of them are when they’re together,” I say with a laugh. “I’ll call her again after I do this thing I’ve gotta do.”
Greg eyes me and my get up. “Are you going to a job interview? Are you leaving UWR?” he asks, unable to hide the obvious desperation behind the question.
Guilt digs into me.
Unlike me, Greg doesn’t wear a bracelet; he’s a part of the Underworld. He can’t leave. I know he’s constantly worried that Cassie and the rest of his friends will forget about him down here and leave him behind.
They would never, but I get that all fears aren’t rational.
I force myself to bark out a laugh and sidestep the question. “No. I’m going to the one place that is worse than being in actual hell.”
“Where’s that?” he asks.
“A baby shower,” I say. And with that, I’m gone.