Goddess in Time (8 page)

“If you seek such a gift,” he finally says, “you must give a gift in return.”

A gift? I didn't think to bring anything with me. I'm lucky I even thought enough ahead to leave my phone in my room. I tend to act first and figure it out later—shocking, I know.

“I'm sorry,” I admit. “I don't have anything.”

He smiles. “But of course you do.”

Now why is the hair on the back of my neck standing up again?

He waves me closer to his desk. I inch forward, more than a little nervous to find out what he has in mind. I've heard plenty of stories from the old days—the
really
old days—when the gods were pretty much full-time hound dogs. How do you think we got so many
hematheos
in the first place? If he tries something, I'll have to break out some long-lost martial arts moves.

But when I approach, he does nothing more than pull a silver seashell from his drawer and set it on his desk. I stare at the shell, seriously calculating the odds of grabbing it and getting out of the palace before he can stop me.

Very, very low.

“I have a daughter,” he begins, then laughs. “I have many daughters, but there is one.”

His eyes get this far-off, dreamy look, and I can tell that he loves this daughter more than all the others combined. Kinda sucks for the rest of the family, but she must be one special girl.

“She is an angel,” he continues. “Sees no evil in men.”

And by
men
he means one man in particular.

I get it. Naive daughter of one of the most powerful gods who ever lived. Less-than-naive guy who wants her for less-than-honorable reasons.

“You think she's being conned?” I suggest.

“I—” Poseidon smiles and shakes his head. “Yes, that is it precisely.”

I watch him, waiting for him to explain what this has to do with me getting the seashell. What this has to do with my forgetting a gift.

He doesn't speak, just sits there staring at the shell like he expects it to start talking to him.

“I'm sorry,” I finally say, “but I don't get what that has to do with me. How can I possibly help?”

I have a sudden image of being asked to play cheat-catcher, acting as bait to lure the suspected con artist into hitting on me. So not my area of expertise. I'm better at scaring boys away.

“I would like you to tell me her future,” he says.

I twist my head sideways. Tell him her future? What am I, a fortune-teller?

“You've made a mistake,” I explain, backing away a step. “I can't see the future.”

No, I'm trying to go back and fix the past.

“You have powers you do not yet realize.”

Poseidon reaches out and takes my hand, stopping my retreat. The moment his fingers touch me, my brain explodes with an intense image. I see a girl—a breathtakingly beautiful girl who could only be the daughter of a god—walking on a beach. As the image focuses in my mind, I see that she is walking hand in hand with a boy.

“What do you see?” Poseidon asks softly.

I don't stop to ask how he knows I'm seeing something.

“A girl with pale blond hair and pretty green eyes,” I describe.

“My daughter,” Poseidon confirms. “What else?”

“She's walking on the beach with a boy.” I squint my eyes, as if that will make the mental picture clearer. “He has dark blond hair and”—the image zooms in on his face—“a tattoo on the back of his neck.”

“That is the boy.” Poseidon releases my hand. “The
con
artist.”

The modern term sounds awkward in his accented voice.

The image fades and I open my eyes. “I—” I shake my head, not sure how I could possibly know this, but I feel it like a certainty in my gut. “He isn't a con artist.”

“No?”

I shrug. “They seem . . .” I study the picture of the girl and the blissful smile on her beautiful face. “Happy.”

“Happy,” Poseidon echoes.

I can't tell if he's relieved or disappointed. Personally, I'm confused. What the heck just happened? One touch from a god and suddenly I'm seeing things I shouldn't be able to know?

“Thank you,” he says, picking up the silver seashell and offering it to me. “It was not the answer I sought, but it is . . . acceptable.”

I let out a huge—water-filled—sigh of relief. Seems like I passed the test.

I reach out to take the seashell. Before I can grab it, Poseidon moves his hand back a few inches. When I look up, ready to call him out for pulling a dirty trick, he is giving me a serious look.

“You of all people, Nicole Matios,” he says, shocking the ever-loving crap out of me by knowing my name, “of all
hematheos,
should know that some things happen for reasons beyond our control.”

“I, um . . .”

Crazy guy says what? What kind of cryptic nonsense is that? Sure, the old guy gets points for knowing my name, but that ominous threat is filed under
none of his business.
He must be totally off the rails. If this all goes wrong at the last moment, I'm going to be seriously annoyed.

But Poseidon doesn't spout any more of his crazy talk. He holds the seashell back within my reach.

I snatch it before he can yank it away again.

“Thanks,” I say, clutching the seashell in my fist.

I turn and swim for the door as fast as my mediocre swimming skills will take me. It's not until I'm out of the palace, through the canyon, and kicking to the surface that I let out a sigh of relief. I did it. I actually got the silver seashell.

As I break through into the salty air, I don't hesitate. I
autoport
back to Serfopoula, back to my friends, with the edges of the shell digging into my palm.

I
t's late when I get back and the beach is deserted, so I go ahead and
autoport
back to my room. After placing the seashell in the desk drawer next to the feather, I grab my phone and send the gang a quick text to let them know I'm back safe.

A phone beeps from the vicinity of my always-messy bed.

Scowling, I cross the room and yank the comforter away. There's Troy, sprawled across my sheets, sleeping like a little baby.

“Hey,” he says, rolling over and squinting into the light. “You're back.”

I don't bother confirming the obvious. “How did you get in here?”

I swear I reset my protections after last time.

He sits up, rubs his eyes with one hand, and waves at the window with the other.

“I'm on the third floor,” I argue while he stifles a yawn.

“I know.” He gives me a lopsided grin. “I
neofactured
a ladder.”

I give up. With a resigned shake of my head, I drop into the chair at my desk. “Clearly I need to up my security.”

Troy ignores my grumble. “Did you get it?”

I yank the drawer back open and hold up the seashell.

“How?” he asks. “Was it hard?”

“Not really,” I answer.

All it took was a bizarro mental movie of Poseidon's daughter. I have no idea what that was all about, and part of me wants to share that with Troy. Not that he would understand any more than I do, but it's making me a little crazy to keep it inside.

What would I say? Poseidon touched me and I saw—what? The future? The past? I don't even know.

It had to be something supernatural. I've never seen this daughter of Poseidon before, but according to him I described her—and her boyfriend—perfectly. And whatever I saw, it was enough to appease the sea god.

Still, it's . . . weird. To say the least.

Instead of telling Troy something I can't explain, I tell him the rest of the story—from the moment I left the beach until I
autoported
home.

“All I did was ask for it,” I say. “He was pretty reasonable, as far as Olympians go.”

“Wow, that's—” Troy shakes his head. “Wow.”

I nod my head. “I know.”

He reaches for the seashell and I let him take it. It doesn't look like anything special. Just an ordinary seashell that happens to be silver. I get the feeling the offerings are more about the effort than the objects themselves. While Troy turns the shell over in his hand, my mind drifts to the next step.

Apparently, so does his.

“So . . .” he says, holding the seashell up for a closer look. “Hades?”

I draw in a full breath. “Hades.”

“That's going to be—”

“Impossible,” I interrupt. “I'll add it to the list.”

I grab the seashell back, drop it in the drawer with the feather, and slam the thing shut.

“This isn't the same as Poseidon's palace,” Troy says, reclining back on my bed. “The underworld is a whole different ball game.”

I sigh. “I'm trying not to think about that.”

Hades. The underworld. The land of the dead.

Not exactly a choice vacation spot. In fact, other than descendants of Hades and his too-stupid-to-live bride Persephone and participants in a ridiculous survival game held on the island every summer, no one but the dead ever enters Hades because no one can ever leave.

“There has to be a way,” I insist. “Otherwise why would that be a required step?”

“I don't like it,” Troy says. Before I can tell him I don't care if he doesn't like it, he says, “But we'll figure it out.”

He pats the bed and I move to sit next to him. Our arms touch and I feel myself relax. I've never felt as comfortable with anyone as I do with Troy. Suddenly, the exhaustion of the day—of this whole quest—hits me and I find my eyes sagging.

“We'll get everyone together tomorrow,” he continues, his voice lulling me to sleep. “We will figure out how to get you to Hades.”

“And back,” I murmur, letting my head fall onto his shoulder.

“And back,” he repeats.

As I drift to sleep, images of golden feathers and silver seashells dance in my mind. With my friends at my side—with Troy at my side—I have no doubt that ruby pomegranate seeds will be mine before long.

Redemption, too.

Just as the last of my consciousness succumbs to sleep, I feel Troy's hand slide under mine. I smile and then I'm out.

We decide to meet at Phoebe's house the next morning. Mostly because the idea of having so many people in my room makes me itchy. Also because we are less likely to be overheard here than in the dorm or the library. Even on summer break, there are still some students on campus.

At Phoebe's, we only have to worry about her mom—not really a concern, because she doesn't know enough about this world to freak out; her stepdad—a major problem, because Headmaster Petrolas knows everything about this world, but luckily he's in Athens on business; and her stepsister—another major know-it-all problem, but Stella tends to make herself scarce when we're around. Besides, she's busy getting ready to leave for Oxford in a few weeks.

Phoebe and I are counting the days.

“I found a site that says the Romans believed the entrance to Hades was through Lake Avernus in Italy.” Phoebe looks away from the computer screen and smiles at us. “Road trip?”

I shake my head.

“Can't trust anything the Romans say,” Troy says without looking up from the atlas he's reading.

Griffin looks up from the prehistoric-looking book on mythology he found in the nonsecret collection at the library. “They got everything wrong.”

I flip through another useless book, filled with all the standard mythological stories about Hades. Kidnapping Persephone, Odysseus's odyssey, Orpheus trying to bring Eurydice back from the dead. Nothing helpful.

“Here's something,” Griffin says. He reads from his book. “Supposedly, there is an entrance to Hades in Abyssos, the realm of monsters.”

“Realm of monsters?” I ask. That doesn't sound fun.

“I've heard of that,” Troy says. “It's where all the gods banished monsterkind after Medusa's murder.”

“Murder?” Phoebe asks.

“It's a long story,” I explain. “But how would we get to Abyssos?”

“It says there's a door . . .” Griffin reads ahead, and then his face falls. “Oh. It says the door has been lost for millennia.”

“Great,” I mutter.

Square one.

“You know,” Troy says, “Hades isn't the only god with access to the underworld. You could always call—”

“Shut it,” I growl before he says too much.

He should know that what he's suggesting is not an option. Not. An. Option.

“Are you sure your
girlfriend
can't help us out?” I ask, just to torment him.

Phoebe sits up straighter. “Troy has a girlfriend?”

“A
secret
one,” I tease.

“I don't have a girlfriend,” he says, turning his attention back to the atlas.

I smirk. Score one for Nicole.

Everyone returns to their searching. I'm about to read the story of how Hades kidnapped Persephone, how the biggest idiot in all of mythology cursed herself into spending three-quarters of eternity trapped in the underworld with her kidnapper—Stockholm syndrome much?—when Phoebe's bedroom door swings open.

“Phoebe, did you take my—”

We all freeze at the intrusion of Phoebe's stepsister into our lair.

Stella stops midsentence when she sees us scattered around the room, guiltily trying to hide the evidence of our research. She scans her steely gray eyes over the crowd and when her glare gets to me, it narrows.

I growl. We don't have the best history.

“What's going on here?” the queen
B
—and I don't mean the bumble kind—demands.

“Nothing,” Phoebe, Griffin, and Troy insist.

“Seriously?” Stella rolls her eyes. “You three fail at lying.”

She studies each of us in turn, giving Phoebe, then Griffin and Troy, her most withering look. Choosing her victim wisely, she walks up to Troy, who is—literally—starting to shake.