Page 4 of Winning Back Persephone (Jinx Paranormal Dating Agency #9)

PERSEPHONE

I slipped my key into my front door and let myself into the flat I'd called home for the past two years. The silence was oppressive, especially without the pitter-patter of paws scampering towards me, and the darkness only added to the loneliness.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I did my best to blink them away. I wasn't made to live on my own. Even before Hades, I'd had my mother around, and even if she was infuriating and overbearing, she'd been someone to talk to.

Now it was just me and my plants. I flicked on the light and reached out to touch the nearest leaf. The monstera reacted immediately to my touch, the leaves growing greener and the stalks standing taller. For most people, it would be a matter of imagination, but I knew that it was real. I might have become a goddess over two and a half thousand years ago, but it had never overridden my dryad nature, and plants tended to respond to me when I was around. And especially when I touched them. My flat might be empty of people, but it was full of plants, and they were all I really needed.

I hung up my coat and grabbed my phone from my handbag, leaving everything else by the front door in case I decided to go out again. Maybe today was the kind of day when I needed to take myself out to a nice restaurant instead of sitting around with a ready meal, feeling sorry for myself. I could cook the basics, but I was often too tired to manage.

At least I had good coffee in the kitchen and some baklava left over from when I had dinner with Nyx the other night. It wasn't much, but it would serve as a pick-me-up.

I made my way through to the kitchen, glad there was a plan forming. Everything in here gleamed, reminding me of how little I cooked. I'd never been very good at making anything fancy, whereas Hades loved to find his way around the kitchen. Except when it came to breakfast, then it was only cereal for him, as if he was a seven-year-old child instead of a two-thousand-eight-hundred-year-old god of the dead. He'd particularly enjoyed the time when they'd come with free gifts about ten years ago and had a whole shelf dedicated to the things in his home office. At the time, I'd rolled my eyes, but now when I thought about it, I smiled. It was strange how the little things that were easy to take for granted became the things that were easy to miss. I never imagined how much I'd miss hearing his opinions about the mundane things or having someone to share my own mundane thoughts with.

I set my phone down on the side and started making myself coffee, trying not to think about Hades and all of the things I missed about living together. I didn't feel bad about the fact I didn't have a dog under my feet right now or that when I fell asleep on the sofa, there was no one to carry me to bed. I liked my independence, and I liked being able to pursue my businesses.

A small voice in my head whispered that I'd still been able to do that when I'd been with Hades, but I shut it down. I hadn't ended things because he hadn't let me be me, I'd walked away because sometimes, I wanted him to do things with me, to move out of his safe shell and show me that he was capable of more than just sitting in the same club he'd owned for thousands of years. It made money, but I needed more of a challenge than that.

My phone lit up, and I grabbed it, assuming that it was something to do with the new handbag shipment I was expecting in time for my launch event.

I bit into a piece of baklava while I tapped through to my emails. My eyebrow raised as I realised it wasn't anything to do with handbags but was an email from Jinx instead.

My heart raced as I opened it. Despite signing up and filling out all of the forms with the matchmaking department, I was nervous about seeing what had come from it, and I wasn't really sure I even wanted to go on a date. But I had to move on, and the only way to do that was to go on a date with someone who wasn't Hades. I took a deep breath and read the email twice just to make sure I'd understood.

I'd been set up on a date. It didn't say with whom, but it assured me there was a high match rate with the person I'd been set up with.

The bright pink accept button was in the middle of the email, but my thumb hovered over the smaller decline button.

"Come on, Persephone," I muttered under my breath. People knew me as the goddess of spring and the queen of the underworld, I wasn't someone who should be scared about clicking one button in an email. If the date went badly, it would be the end of it and I wouldn't have to see the other person ever again. It was as simple as that.

I set down my baklava and hit the pink button. I stared at the screen as if I expected something to happen. Maybe for it to burst out in a shower of pink sparks or something like that. It wasn't really my thing, but it seemed like something Jinx would do.

A second email notification popped up on my screen, and I clicked on it, taking me to a new email with more details about my date, including where it was and what to wear, though it still didn't tell me anything about the other person. I supposed that was going to be a surprise when I got there.

I just had to hope it was one I was prepared for.