Page 52

We useda transport charm to get back to the Protectorate. On the way up to the castle, I explained my adventure with the wolf, and Maximus agreed that my powers were growing.

Once inside, it didn’t take long to gather the group for a meeting. Fortunately, Ana was back from her shift guarding the entrance to Tartarus. Though Bree was gone, Jude was at the castle. We agreed to meet in the library, since we had some research to do.

Jude and Ana hadn’t arrived yet, and the library flickered with warm firelight as I entered the book-filled space. It was like a fantastic cavern, full of thousands of beautiful leather-bound books. They were all different colors, each of them lovingly cared for. The squashy armchairs in front of the fire beckoned, but I took a seat at the big wooden table in the middle.

Maximus joined me, looking around at all the books, an awed expression on his face. “I’ll never get over this place.”

“Amazing, right?”

“Truly.”

“Not a lot of books in ancient Rome, I suppose?”

“None at all. Only scrolls. And there weren’t many of those. Not for a slave, at least. I only ever saw parts of an old copy of The Odyssey.”

I nodded, grateful to live in the modern day. I reached for his hand and squeezed, delighting in the casual contact.

“That one might come in handy, though. Didn’t Odysseus go to the Underworld?”

“He did.”

The Pugs of Destruction lazily raised their heads from their spots in front of the fire and stared at me. Mayhem, Ruckus, and Chaos were a staple here, and I loved them from their tails to their horns. Or horns, in Chaos’s case. Wings for Mayhem.

Florian, the ghostly night librarian, drifted out from the shelves, appearing right through the books. His curly white wig rose tall on his head, and his fancy coat made him look like he was about to head to a ball. He grinned widely when he saw me, and I counted my blessings that it was nighttime. Had we come in the day, we would have gotten Potts, the day librarian. True, he was alive, whereas Florian technically was not, but he was also a grumpy old bugger and I liked to avoid him.

“Here again so soon?” He drifted up to the table, his grin wide.

“Yes, we need some help figuring out which entrance to Hades is still open.”

“Ah, yes.” He nodded. “I’ve got quite a lot of firsthand accounts about trying to reach Hades. They’re quite old, but one of them will have something.”

“We need to meet with Jude and Ana when they arrive, but once we’re done, we can help.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, I’ve got it under control.”

“Never doubted it for a second.”

He gave a pleased bow and drifted away. Mayhem fluttered up from her spot by the fire, little wings carrying her chubby ghost body high. She yipped.

“Yes, of course you can help, Mayhem,” Florian said.

She flew after him.

I turned toward the library entrance just in time to see Ana enter. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair messy. She carried four paper sacks in her hands.

“Did you find something?” she asked as soon as her gaze met mine.

“Yes.”

“Good.” She sat and tossed a sack to Maximus and me. “Courtesy of Hans.”

My stomach grumbled at the mention of the cook’s name. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. I tore into the bag as she did the same. Maximus had better manners, but that was par for the course. I didn’t like to let anything get between me and food.

We chomped into the sandwiches—ham and cheese—and chewed silently for a moment. Muffin, Ana’s hairless winged cat, sauntered into the library. A little green jewel gleamed in his ear, a memento of his cat burglar days. Ana handed him a piece of ham from her sandwich.

By the time I polished off my sandwich, Jude had arrived. She looked exhausted, with heavy circles under her starry blue eyes. Her dark braids were pulled back from her face and her clothes looked like they needed a good wash.

Not a surprise, given that we were up shit creek.

She sat with a sigh. “Tell me you have good news.”

Ana pushed the fourth paper bag at her, and Jude looked down at it like it was entirely unfamiliar.

“It’s food, and you should eat it,” Ana said.

“Of course.” Jude unwrapped the sandwich, and I had a distinct feeling that she hadn’t eaten in at least twenty-four hours. The leader of the Paranormal Investigative Team was the de facto leader of the Protectorate when dangerous things like this went down. Even though there were five heads of department, she bore the heaviest burden when things hit the fan. She took it seriously, too. “What have you got for me?”

“We spoke to a seer—Tiresias—who has told us we must go to Hades to find Hecate. The Stryx worship her, and she’ll know where they are.”

Jude nodded, her expression clearly impressed. “Tiresias. He’s quite well-known for the accuracy of his prophecies.”

“Exactly.” I turned to Ana. “You crossed the River Styx once. Do you know how to get into Hades?”

She shook her head. “No. I crossed the river in Dante’s Inferno. It flows from the Underworld to the Inferno—or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, I don’t know which way you should go on the river.”

“That’ll take too long, then,” Maximus said.

“Florian is looking for a proper entrance,” I said. “One that still works after all these years.”

“I actually know someone who might be able to help, though,” Ana said. “Nix, the FireSoul. I’ve heard she’s been to the Greek realm of the gods.”

“Really?” I didn’t know Nix as well as my sisters did, given the fact that they’d met the FireSouls while I was still in captivity.

“Let me call her.” Ana stood. “Be right back.”

She left the room, and I looked at Jude. “How’s it going at the gate to Tartarus?”

“Fine. No sign of the Stryx, and the Order of the Magica is working on solidifying the gate with magic.”

“The Order has informed you of the Titans’ growing dark magic?” Maximus asked.

She nodded. “They have. We’re working together to create a weakening spell that will stop their magic from expanding. It will debilitate them enough that we can deploy a binding spell. Once bound, they’ll be helpless, and we can throw them back into Tartarus.” Her expression turned serious. “If you can find them, we can stop them. We’re counting on you.”

“We’ll find them,” I said.

Maximus nodded. “Have you had any luck tracking the source of the dark magic?”

“We haven’t. And we don’t know how their power is growing, or what they intend to do with it all.” She looked disgusted with herself. “We assume it’s because they aren’t bound in Tartarus anymore, but we just don’t know.”

It was the million-dollar question that ate at me. What the heck were they planning with all that magic?

Ana sailed back into the room. “Speaking of getting into hell, I have our expert here.”

Nix entered behind her. She was a slender woman with dark hair and flashing green eyes. Her blue T-shirt was decorated with a cartoon cat, which was a nice contrast to the beat-up motorcycle boots she wore. The FireSoul was immensely powerful, though you wouldn’t have known it from looking at her. She lived in Magic’s Bend with Cass and Del, her two best friends and fellow FireSouls.

She grinned as she spotted me. “Rowan. Maximus. Good to see you.”

“Hey, Nix. Thanks for coming.”

Maximus nodded in greeting. They’d met each other at the end of the last battle, though only briefly.

She sat at the table, and her gaze met mine, suddenly turning serious. “So, you need to get into Hades?”

“We do. Do you know how?”

“I know how not to,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I assume you need to sneak in? That you don’t want to alert Hades or Persephone or any of the other gods? Because if you do, they might want to know why you are there. And that could become a problem for you.”

“Sneaking in is best. We don’t need any of the wrong gods slowing us down or taking issue with us being there.”

“Then you need to go in the normal way. Like a human would.” At my blank look, she leaned closer. “You need to be dead.”

“Wait, what?”

“Here’s the situation—there are several entrances to Hades. I used my dragon sense to get there, which meant I went in a weird way. But if you sneak in through a back way as a living person like I did, the gods are going to notice. Hades or Persephone, maybe even Hecate.”

“That’s who we’re going to find.”

“Hecate?” She winced. “Yeah, you’re going to want to sneak up on her, from what I’ve heard.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Okay, well, you don’t want the gods to know you’re there. Even if you are the Greek Dragon God. Maybe they wouldn’t have a problem with it, but maybe they would. It’s not a place for the living, and you would upset the natural balance.”

“Okay, so we need to find an entrance that leads us to the River Styx. We’ll pretend to be dead people—magically somehow, since I don’t want to die quite yet—and we’ll sneak in that way.”

“Yes. You’ll go through all the steps a human soul would go through, ending in judgement and your assignment to your afterlife realm. Once you’ve made it that far, you should have some relative freedom to sneak around and do what you need to do.”

“Okay, we can work with that.” I looked at Maximus, who nodded.

“Do you know of any entrances that are still open?” Maximus asked.

Nix shook her head. “I don’t know exactly how you should get to the River Styx. Tartarus is the only part of Hades that is actually underground, so you don’t want to enter that way.”

“The rest isn’t underground?” I frowned.

“No. Human interpretation puts them underground because the entrances are generally through caves and in lakes. They’re portals that make it look like you’re going underground. But in reality, they’re taking you to Annatlia, the magical realm of the Greek gods. It’s located roughly in southern Greece.”

“But what about Mount Olympus? Does only Zeus rule there?” I asked.

She nodded. “Exactly.”

Okay, this was starting to make sense. I’d learned a bit about the Greek gods and their realms, but it had been only what I’d managed to read in the last few weeks. Though I’d spoken to a couple of the gods, they hadn’t explained all this to me.

“If we’re going to cross the River Styx with Charon, we need ancient Greek coins to pay him,” Maximus said. “I could conjure replicas, but they wouldn’t have the patina of age, so I’m not sure they’d work.”

“Where the heck will we get those?” I asked.

“I have a contact at the Museum of Magical History in Magic’s Bend,” Nix said. “If I explain what it’s for, he may let you have two.”

“Oh, thank fates.” I really didn’t want to go robbing any ancient sites to get the coins I needed. Not that I’d know how to find one anyway. “So the next thing we need is a potion that can make us appear to be dead so we don’t set off the alarm when we enter.”

Jude nodded. “I think Hedy can help with that.”

A little thrill of excitement surged through me. This sounded like a very cool potion, and I wanted to watch Hedy make it.

“I’ve found something!” Florian’s voice echoed from the back of the stacks.

I turned to see him hurrying out with a large book in his hand. He rushed to the table and set it down, pointing to an old pen and ink illustration. “There. You need to go through the bottomless Alcyonian Lake at Lerna. That’s how you’ll get into Hades.”

“Well done,” Jude said.

Florian beamed.

I looked at Maximus. “Looks like we’re going to hell.”

* * *

After Nix explained a bit more about Hades and what to expect, she headed to Magic’s Bend to try to get us a couple of ancient Greek coins.

I went to my apartment to take the fastest shower in the history of time. All clean, I hopped out and scrubbed myself dry, then hurried into the bedroom. I leaned over the spiral stairs that led down to the living room and shouted to Maximus, “Your turn!”

His footsteps were silent on the stairs up, but he appeared quickly. I tugged my towel closer around me, heating under his quick but appreciative gaze.

“That way.” I pointed to the little bathroom.

“When I’m done, I’ll get the scuba equipment we need to get to the bottom of the lake and meet you at Hedy’s workshop.”

“It’s a date.”

“I wish.” His gaze didn’t travel any lower over my barely clothed form, but it did heat.

I blushed and turned away, waving my hand. “Go on. We need to get a move on.”

While he showered, I tugged on clean clothes. It was now nearly midnight, and we were about to start off on another long adventure. Hopefully Hedy would have a pep-up potion of some kind.

I strapped my fully loaded potions belt around my waist, then grabbed a slim backpack that I loaded full of potion bombs. As I hurried down the stairs and into the living room, I looked over at the kitchen.

Romeo, Poppy, and Eloise sat on the counter. A normal person might think it was gross to have animals on their kitchen counter, but I never cooked in there. Every square inch that wasn’t covered by the Menacing Menagerie was littered with potions equipment.

Going somewhere good? Romeo asked.

“Hell.”

Ohhhh.

Eloise’s eyes brightened.

“Lots of fights in hell, Eloise.” I grinned at her, knowing the badger’s love for a good battle.

She nodded, excited.

We’ll be there if you need us.

Poppy nodded as if she agreed with Romeo, the little flower bobbing on her head. The possum always wore a flower behind her ear, and today, it was a tiny pink rose.

“Thanks, guys.”

I left them to do whatever the heck it was they were doing and hurried down the hall and through the castle. I’d been here less than a year, and I still couldn’t believe it was my home. The huge, ancient structure was as comforting as it was magical, and I loved it.

The night was dark and crisp as I stepped out onto the main lawn and headed for Hedy’s workshop at the edge. The round tower sat off on its own, just in case one of Hedy’s experiments went wrong.

And by wrong, I meant boom.

Golden light glittered in the windows, and smoke billowed from the chimney. I knocked on the heavy wooden door, drawing in the scent of roses that bloomed there even in the winter. Some kind of magic of Hedy’s, I was sure.

“Come in!” Her voice echoed through the door.

I pushed it open, stepping into a potion-maker’s wonderland. The round space was cluttered with tables, which were covered with hundreds of bottles of ingredients and dozens of little tools and bowls. A cauldron bubbled over the hearth, spewing out a glittery white smoke that smelled of lavender and honey. Three miniature cauldrons sat on a table on the left side of the room, each emitting a colorful smoke. Drying herbs hung from the rafters, hundreds of types.

I grinned at Hedy, who wore a flowy dress made of spangly silver fabric. Her lavender hair hung loose down her back, full of tangles and herbs. Normally, it was smooth and shiny.

She turned, revealing that she, too, was carrying an impressive set of luggage beneath her eyes.

“Tired?” I asked.

“Always, these days.” She shook her head. “But it’s fine. Until we’ve stopped the Stryx, it’s worth it.”

I nodded and stepped toward her. “What can I do to help?”

“Here.” Hedy handed me a silver spoon that sparked with imbued magic. “You can stir. And be careful to go at a three-quarters speed with a fluttering wrist flick.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

No matter how good I became with my magic, I’d always love potions. Mastering potions had given me confidence and strength when I’d needed it most, and I’d be forever grateful.

Hedy and I worked together in silence, making something called the draught of living death. By the time it was done, my wrist was sore but my heart was full.

Hedy poured the potion into two little glass vials and handed them to me. The rest of the potion went into a third vial that she set on the table. “That should do it. Drink it right before you enter Hades. You’ll still be alive, but it will appear to others as if you are just a soul. Don’t let anyone touch you, though. It’s just an illusion. You won’t actually be as transparent and incorporeal as you look.”

I took the vials. “Fantastic, thanks.”

“It will only last about twelve hours, so be quick.”

“We will.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small black stone, then pressed it into my palm. “That is a very rare transport charm that will get you out of Hades when you’re done with your mission. One of a kind and hard as hell to make. Use it only if you need it.”

“Thank you.” I stuck it in the pocket of my jeans, which were so tight that the stone wouldn’t go anywhere without my permission.

“Oh, and here.” She turned and picked up two more vials. “Magical caffeine. Given that it’s after midnight and you have a full day’s work ahead of you, I think you need it.”

“I do. Thank you.”

“Use it wisely,” she said. “You can’t take too much. It’ll send your system into overdrive. So this is pretty much it.”

“Okay.” Now was as good a time as any.

Hedy and I left her workshop. As soon as we stepped out onto the lawn, I spotted Maximus and Nix. They approached from the castle. Maximus was carrying a big bag over one shoulder and a strange, torpedo-like thing in the other hand. The little machine was roughly four feet long and had a propeller at one end. Cool.

Nix raised her hand in the air. “Got your coins!”

They stopped in front of me, and she handed me a heavy gold coin.

I studied it, impressed by the age and importance of it. I looked up at her. “Are you sure the museum doesn’t mind?”

“They don’t make a habit of handing out artifacts, but considering that the original purpose of this coin was to be given to Charon to cross into Hades, they are making an exception.”

“And it will possibly save the world,” Maximus added.

Nix grinned. “That too. Both compelling reasons.”

“Well, then.” I looked at Maximus. “Ready to get dead?”