“I-I apologize,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  I cut my gaze to the pool, where the gurgling moans of the undead were growing. At any moment a zombie horde was going to explode from the muddy water, and I had nothing with which to defend myself.

  “Persephone, hon?” someone called.

  A short figure materialized from the shadows near the paneled doorway and hurried toward her. It was the mayor. With a nervous laugh, he arrived beside Persephone and rested a hand on her low back.

  “You’ve had a long morning,” he said. “Why don’t you go to your bedroom, huh? Let me deal with him.”

  She remained staring at me as though willing my insides to combust. Then her gaze saddened suddenly. The arm holding the scepter sagged to her side, and the storm ended. The water stilled and cleared. Her features softened until she was fair Persephone once more. Wordlessly, she separated from Budge and sulked from the room. He watched her go, then smiled at me apologetically.

  “What’s with these gods, huh? The smallest thing and they go flying right off the handle.” He shook his head. But beneath the nonchalance, I picked up an edge of nerves. “Anyway, how you been, buddy?”

  I double-checked to ensure no zombies were climbing from the pool before standing again. “A lot better if I wasn’t trapped in here.”

  Seeing a familiar face, even if it didn’t belong to the Budge I knew, calmed me slightly.

  “We’ll see what we can do about that in a sec, but first I gotta tell you…” He lowered his voice. “I agree with every word you just said. This whole thing is nuts, right? Cooler heads need to prevail, and that’s yours and mine, champ. You really wanna end this thing? Persephone’s scepter isn’t the answer. Neither is appealing to her sweet nature.” He made an aggrieved face. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  Like the night I’d first met him, I marveled at how adeptly he finessed his way into my trust centers. The skill surpassed the actual Budge’s by a mile, which was saying something. It also cued me to be extremely wary.

  “What does that leave?” I asked.

  “C’mon, Everson. You’re too young to claim senility. We talked about this a couple weeks ago.”

  “The Tablet of Hermes.”

  “Right, ’cause it’s ground zero. It’s what’s bringing all this stuff to my city, including you-know-who.” He bounced his eyes toward the panel the goddess had disappeared through. “I mean, I enjoyed the Greek myths when I was a kid, ate them up, but this is ridiculous. And I’ll tell you right now, her Iron Guard is freaking me the hell out. She couldn’t give them even a little personality? Make them smile now and again? And you should see these mutts she keeps around for security.”

  I remembered my earlier encounter in the tunnel while affecting a questioning look.

  “Anyway, his tablet is the glue that’s holding this whole dog-and-pony show together. We get rid of that, and it all falls apart.”

  He edged closer until I could smell his bracing cologne. “Look, I don’t know what Hermes is telling you, but I can guess. He’s going on about the scepter, right? I mean, obviously, ’cause you just tried to steal it. But if you had managed to destroy it, then what? You think Hermes is gonna go quietly into that good night.” He laughed. “Sure, and I’m gonna run five miles before breakfast and cut out carbs.”

  I was listening cautiously, skeptically, but damn if he wasn’t making sense.

  “He has power ambitions of his own. I can’t say what they are exactly, but I can tell you that he tried to join forces with her.”

  A fist landed in my gut. “Hermes? When?”

  “This past week. Yeah, we had a summit right here in City Hall.”

  Did that explain Hermes’s absence? His elusiveness?

  “Well, I’m going to need more than your say-so.”

  “Fine.” He pulled a folded square of paper from his pocket, flapped it open, and held it up to reveal a flyer for the referendum vote. With a finger, he jabbed the siphon sigil beyond his grinning mug.

  “Who do you think designed that?”

  For the first time, I studied the elements up close. Not a slam dunk, but a little too close to Hermes’s style for comfort.

  “Persephone came up with the idea for the referendum to capture public support,” Budge continued, “turn it into worship for Cronus. But that meant I had to be popular. In this city?” He made an aggrieved face. “But then Hermes designed it so that any reaction would work, good or bad.”

  “Then why’d he send me after her scepter?”

  “Why else?” He returned the flyer to his pocket. “He didn’t get what he wanted.”

  “And what was that?”

  He held up his left hand. “A ring on her finger.”

  “Marriage?” I knew about Hermes’s infatuation with Persephone, but would he really have gone so far as to propose to her? Align with her?

  “Hey, can you blame him? There’s a reason every god and his father’s fallen for Persephone, and if you can’t see it, you’re either blind or missing a pair. But she’s already pledged her hand to Cronus.”

  I squinted at that. Not only was Cronus her grandfather, which wasn’t so unusual in the ancient myths, but he’d once swallowed her mother. I couldn’t see where Zeus lying to her mother was the greater offense.

  “Yeah, part of some power-sharing arrangement they worked out,” he continued. “Persephone wouldn’t budge an inch on that, even after Hermes designed the symbol, so he went back to wanting her out of his way.”

  “Then why didn’t he finish the job?” I challenged. “We had her scepter.”

  Budge shrugged. “I’m not privy to everything around here, but I have a theory. The second her scepter went missing, I think he contacted her. Told her he could return it in exchange for,” he circled his hand, “some concession. She must have agreed, because the Iron Guard dropped on you like flies on stink, and she got her scepter back.”

  I sat heavily on the couch and studied the floor between my shoes. Had I been gullible to trust a mercurial god like Hermes? I remembered how Alec had been preparing to tell me something the night before when Hermes showed up. Or was I being gullible now, allowing this ridiculously charming version of Budge to seed doubts.

  “Hey, don’t beat yourself up,” he said, hunkering so we were eye level. “Dealing with a god who’s wearing your son as a skin suit can’t be easy. No disrespect, but that’s the long and short of it, right? By using him, Hermes is using you, too.”

  “How do you know his tablet holds everything together?”

  Budge didn’t miss a beat. “He said so himself, during the meeting.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Hey, I’m in the position I’m in ’cause I can read people like a book.”

  “He’s not exactly a person,” I pointed out. “And why would Persephone go along with this tablet-destroying ruse if it means her demise?”

  He peered over a shoulder. “Well, she’s not exactly in the know. Powerful goddess—damned powerful—but all kinds of naïve. She thinks we’re after the tablet so she can lock it away in the underworld, get Hermes out of her hair.” His expression turned grave. “And the tablet would still be attached to your boy.”

  I thought of Alec spending eternity in that hellish limbo and stood again.

  “But that’s only if she gets her way,” Budge hastened to add, joining me upright. “Destroy the tablet, and your son’s safe.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “I won’t lie to you, Everson. That very question has kept me up at night. But I figure if I’m right, this all goes away, and I get back to running my city. Before Persephone showed up and turned this place into frigging Mordor, I was this close to signing a bailout package.” He brought his thumb and first finger together. “I had monster-clearing operations planned, large-scale redevelopment projects in the works… I was gonna put New York City back on the map, baby!”

  It may have sounded like a pipe dream, but the actual Budge had succeeded in bringing about those very changes in the actual present.

  “And if I’m wrong…” He shrugged. “It was worth a shot. Because either Hermes or Persephone is gonna take over, and neither one of ’em gives a rat’s ass about us. I mean, they’ll use us as long as it suits them and then”—he released a sharp whistle and hooked his thumb—“out like yesterday’s garbage.”

  I massaged my temples. It was too much to process. I needed space to think, and Budge’s gabbing wasn’t helping. Neither was his overpowering cologne, which was starting to make me nauseous.

  “Well, I can’t do anything from in here,” I said.

  “Of course not. That’s why we’re sending you back.”

  I looked up at him carefully. “Back where?”

  “To your reality, but not without some insurance.” He turned toward the bedchamber and called, “Persephone? Sephassa? Can you grab those ashes?”

  She appeared moments later, no hint of wrath or malice in her eyes. She glanced from Budge to me inquisitively, then strode to her laboratory. Until today, I’d assumed she was manipulating the mayor, but he appeared to have flipped the script. Or had he? I caught his tongue dart out to dry his stiff smile, as though he knew he was playing a dangerous game. One he might not pull off.

  “Can you tell Everson what you have?” he asked her.

  She caressed what I recognized as a marble urn.

  “His remains,” she replied simply.

  19

  My face prickled with heat. “My what?”

  “Yes, your wife had your cremated remains interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.” He meant the wife of my shadow, Jennifer DeFazio. That version of me had died in Venice when Alec was three. “Not hard for someone like me to get my hands on. I’m sorry, Everson, I really am, but we’ve gotta keep you honest.”

  My gaze shifted to where Persephone had placed the urn on a counter. She removed the lid and from a bottle began pouring in a dark liquid. An unmistakable coldness spread throughout my body.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “That’s a bonding potion, Everson,” he said.

  Persephone hummed a lyrical tune as she stirred the potion into my powdery remains.

  My hand reflexively shot toward her, only for it to be struck down by the circle trap. “Hey!” I shouted. “Stop!”

  Weeks earlier, the same potion had been used to bond several explorer club fellows to their shadow selves. One of Persephone’s minions, Eldred, had then extracted the victims’ organs for the Cronus ritual. Their deaths in the shadow realm had resulted in their deaths in the actual present. By bonding me to my shadow’s remains, Persephone was threatening me with the same fate.

  I rubbed my arms, half expecting them to turn to ash and crumble.

  “Relax,” Budge said. “The potion is inert. For now. We’re going to give you three days to deliver the tablet.” He said the word deliver as though he were sharing a wink between us. He was telling me to destroy it. “After that, the potion stops being so inert. We’ll say by Wednesday at midnight?”

  “How do you know I’ll even see Hermes again?” I asked, not moving my eyes from Persephone.

  “Oh, you’ll see him,” Budge assured me. “He’ll want to know what happened.”

  “Won’t he be suspicious that I’m back?”

  “No question. Tell him whatever you want, you just need to convince him that you’re still on his side. Shouldn’t be hard. Guy has an ego the size of Jersey. Probably working on another scheme to extract another concession. I know the way these jokers operate. Just go along. That’ll be your best chance to get your hands on the tablet. Look, I’m sorry about this, but the tablet is non-negotiable. It’s too important.”

  He turned to Persephone. “He’s ready.”

  “Wait,” I said, then lowered my voice. “I want something in return.”

  “Is your hearing going? I just said this is non-negotiable.”

  “Not about the tablet—I’ll take care of that—it’s the Street Keepers.”

  “Oh, those guys.” He rolled his eyes as if they were a chronic nuisance. “What about ’em?”

  “When this is over, I don’t want them making trouble for my son.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He gave a flippant wave. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “No, I need better than that.”

  He appeared to gauge the seriousness etched in my face before nodding. “We have an agreement that lets them patrol the city, help out with citizen safety. Nothing official, but it keeps the NYPD out of their hair. I’ll make it crystal clear that if they bother your boy, the agreement’s off, and the NYPD can deal with them however they see fit. It won’t be gently. There’s bad blood between them.”

  I’d seen the bad blood up close, so I believed that much of what he was telling me.

  “Where did they come from?” I asked, still wanting to know. “Who sponsors them?”

  “They’re part of some extreme law-and-order group that started God knows where. Have offices all around the world. They’re listed as a religious nonprofit—my people looked into them. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  I didn’t trust shadow Budge any farther than I could throw the actual Budge, but I didn’t have much choice. “Okay, but if you don’t follow through, and something happens to Alec, I’ll find you.”

  His cheerful eyes assumed a hardness that told me he didn’t care for the threat. He grinned tightly before turning to Persephone.

  “Everson’s ready to go,” he called.

  I watched apprehensively as she tapped the stirrer against the rim of my urn, signaling that my ashes were prepped. If I didn’t destroy the tablet by Wednesday night, I’d crumble wherever I happened to be standing.

  Persephone crossed the room to the pool and reached into the water, smiling as though fascinated by the tiny ripples. When she withdrew her arm, she was holding a sickle-shaped blade.

  A charge jagged through me. I’d destroyed an identical blade at the explorers club.

  They’re objects, powerful objects, Arianna had told me, but they came from Forms that still exist in their original realms. They could reappear, in other words, and I was now looking at the proof.

  The Scythe of Cronus swam with blue time-bending power.

  Budge nudged me, and I turned to find his hand extended into the circle trap. I gripped it automatically. The shake he gave me was almost as hard as his stare. “I’m counting on you, Everson.”

  And then the room shifted.

  I squinted around a dusty office being taken over by storage and released a shaky breath. The Scythe of Cronus had yanked me to the shadow present before, and Persephone had just used it to send me back to the actual present. I was on the top floor of City Hall.

  Alive, yes, but I had a lot of work to do if I was going to stay that way.

  I hurried toward the wall that had divided Persephone’s sanctum from her bedchambers. Here there was an actual door, but halfway to it, I caught a soft moan. The sound sent my hand to where my cane would have been had I not handed it off to Hermes. The moan morphed into a panicked whisper, answered by another whisper, the exchange coming from behind a line of filing cabinets in the office’s far corner.

  A moment later, a young couple emerged, tucking in their shirttails. They rushed past where I stood, eyes avoiding mine, the woman hooking a pair of heels. As they disappeared through the door, I shook my head.

  Office romances.

  I followed at a distance, using them now as my sentry. We were all somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.

  With the third floor clear, they left “Persephone’s bedroom”—another old office—and disappeared into the stairwell leading down. I arrived there just as the couple passed through the door leading onto the rotunda. By the time I emerged through the same door, the two were blending into the light-suffused bustle of civil servants.

  In my clean suit, courtesy of Persephone, I looked the part enough to blend in, too. I hustled down the rotunda steps, already planning my next moves—a return to the apartment, for starters. Would Hermes be there?

  I desperately needed my cane back, but I also needed to think up an explanation for how I’d returned to the actual present. Beyond that, I just needed to think.

  Trust Hermes? Trust Budge? Or trust neither and figure out a third way?

  With the main entrance of City Hall in my sights, a door opened and I nearly ran into the actual Mayor Lowder.

  We both drew back and stared at the other. My brain was struggling to reconcile this dumpier version of him with his slimmed-down, slicked-back counterpart. He was likely recalling the stern note on which our last meeting had ended. His assistants emerged from the conference room and looked back and forth between us.

  At last he wiped the cowlick from his pudgy brow and broke into his aw-shucks smile. “Everson, buddy. How ya been?” He clapped my shoulder. “I’ve been meaning to jaw with you. Hey, Janet, can you clear my schedule for the next twenty?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I told Janet.

  I stepped around Budge, but he hustled to catch up.

  “Hey,” he said, arresting my arm. “I get that you’re still sore at me, but I was hoping we could bury the hatchet.”

  The month before, he’d crippled our task force on missing persons, manipulating data to divert our attention from the rivers, all so he could promote a major waterfront concert for the following spring. As a result, we didn’t stop the threat—an ancient sea creature—before it devoured more victims. But I had too much going on to relitigate that shitshow. I just wanted to go home.

  “Keep up your end of the deal,” I said, “and we’ll consider it buried.”

  The terms of the deal were that he would not punish the detective he’d pressured into fudging the data; that he would never, ever pull a stunt like that again; and that he would tell me if he started experiencing losses of consciousness, an indication Persephone was sending shadow Budge into our reality.