As he scooted to my side, I gripped the twisted shaft, and in a burst of salt, drew out Persephone’s scepter. Downing a neutralizing potion would have been smart, but there wasn’t time. The scepter’s potent energy filled me immediately. I aimed its crown at the undead horde.

  “What life you have,” I said in a cold voice that sounded little like my own, “I withdraw!”

  I yanked the scepter back. The zombies jerked forward as though on ropes. When they hit the floor, their bodies scattered back into bones, the energy that had sustained them now swirling around the scepter in my grip.

  Bree-yark barked a surprised laugh, then took another look at me. “Hey, you all right, Everson?”

  The answer was no. Like the last time, I was transfixed by the scepter’s power. It pounded through my pleasure centers, inflating me with a ridiculous sense of importance and purpose, of dominion over life and death.

  Put the scepter away, I urged myself. Stuff it in the sack and finish closing the damned rift!

  I was teetering on the precipice between impulse and control when a slender figure came wading through the bones. A pair of green eyes glimmered from the depths of his hood.

  I brought the scepter forward, but Hermes beat me to the draw, hitting me with a brilliant burst of light. The force threw me from my feet and the scepter from my hand. I landed over a metal tube, grunting as my back cracked and the air left my lungs.

  Bree-yark swung his shotgun around, but Hermes shoved him aside with an effortless invocation. Struggling to sit up, to breathe, I dug desperately inside my pockets as Hermes strode toward me.

  But my wands were gone.

  40

  Hermes didn’t speak. I couldn’t see his face inside the gray hood, just the green points of his eyes. I struggled to sit up from the pipe, but pain gored my side and my weight slid me back until my head met the floor.

  Pushing a hand toward him, I gasped, “Vigore.”

  He waved away the branching invocation with whatever he was carrying.

  I tracked the faint blue light of the room to its source, one of my fallen wands, and stretched a hand toward it. But Hermes was almost to me now, and from my inverted position I could see what he gripped in his hands.

  A staff and a rune-lined sword. My staff and rune-lined sword.

  Thanks to the fact Alec and I shared the same blood, Hermes could cast through both.

  With a hissed word, he brought the sword down. Brilliant white light erupted from the blade, swallowing me. I thrashed from the anticipated pain, but none arrived. If anything, the goring in my side eased, and I felt the last of the influence of Persephone’s scepter evaporate from my system.

  I threw my legs to the side and pushed myself upright.

  Hermes stood between me and my fallen wand, but he was peering along the length of the blade as the light faded from the first rune, the one for banishment. With a small noise of interest, he slotted the blade back inside the staff. Still not speaking, he set it on the ground beside me, and turned away.

  Huh?

  I stared, dumbfounded, as he walked over and retrieved Persephone’s scepter from the floor. Bree-yark, who had regained his feet, circled back from him, shotgun aimed.

  I took the opportunity to rush forward and grasp my cane. I didn’t have to look at it closely to know it was mine. I knew the worn grip, the familiar weight and energy. I felt an urge to hug it to my chest, but now wasn’t the time.

  “You all right?” Bree-yark whispered, arriving beside me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “How about you?”

  He nodded as we watched Hermes. He was regarding the scepter now. If he was aligned with Persephone, he’d be able to wield it, combining his powers with hers in an unholy trinity of speed, trickery, and death.

  I released my sword from the staff, blade glimmering with light, a protection on the tip of my tongue. I readied myself for the moment Hermes would swing the scepter toward us, unleashing the weight of its power. But he only sighed.

  He placed the scepter in the sack, giving it several jostles to bury the scepter deeper in the salt. Inexplicably, he set that down too and backed away. “Well?” he said, dusting off his hands and drawing his hood back.

  I swallowed, adjusting my grip on sword and staff. “Well what?”

  “Are you going to finish closing that, or do you want me to?”

  I followed his nod to the tear, sealed save for the final needed stitches. Energy continued to seep in from the shadow present.

  “If you don’t hurry it up, I believe the dead will take matters into their own hands.”

  I dropped my gaze to the floor where several of the bones were starting to jitter. I even caught a moan.

  “I’ll cover you,” Bree-yark said, not seeming to care if Hermes heard. Not that it was much of a threat. I nodded at him and approached the rift. Hermes backed away, as though to give me plenty of space.

  I took a final look at him before returning to my wizard’s senses. Using my sword and staff—the implements I’d practiced with—the remainder of the repair went quickly. As the inflow trickled to a stop, Hermes clapped and came forward.

  “Well done!”

  I leveled my blade at him, my fear and confusion replaced now by a seething anger. “Why weren’t you at the meeting spot?” I demanded.

  He grinned and patted his hands toward the floor. “Now, now. You have a right to be upset, but there’s no need to threaten me. I’m going to explain everything.”

  “And make it sound completely above board, I’m sure,” I growled.

  He turned his hands out. “That will be entirely for you to decide.”

  “What are you even doing here?”

  “Well, helping you, for one. Nothing good ever comes from wielding that.” He nodded at the sack holding the scepter. “I thought you would have learned your lesson, if not in the alleyway, then in Sicily.”

  How in the hell did he know about that?

  His eyes danced mischievously. “I’m a part of you, remember?”

  I’d known about the scattershot of Hermes’s essence in my system, of course, but I hadn’t thought it was fully conscious. Did that mean he knew everything I’d been doing, even my wish to destroy him?

  I kept a poker face. “How did you get here?”

  “Ahh, you mean how did I get around your obfuscation sigil? Your son figured it out, actually.”

  “Alec?”

  “Your discussion on numbers tonight got him thinking. Your sigil oscillates, you see. He sensed this and designed a rune to measure its cycles. It appeared the sigil could be disrupted at the cycle’s very bottom, when its power was weakest. Don’t be cross with him. He wasn’t trying to help me. He was merely curious, and, yes, I may have nudged him a little, but you can’t keep a curious mind caged. Not one like his.”

  “I agree. Let him go.”

  “Now?” He assumed a look of surprise. “But war is coming, my friend.”

  “Really,” I said skeptically.

  At that moment, someone slipped down the steps and into the boiler room, scattering bones every which way. I pivoted my sword and staff slightly, and Bree-yark raised his shotgun to chest level.

  “Ah, there they are!” Claudius called.

  He was leading a group of Sup Squad members. I lowered my arms and signaled for Bree-yark to do the same. As the group searched the room, their weapon-mounted lights flashing behind tanks and pipes, Trevor came forward.

  “We saw the zombies infiltrate the building,” he said. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah, for now.” I slotted my sword. “We sealed the rift that was animating them, hence the ossuary. How’s it looking out there?”

  “No more zombies, but take a look at this.”

  He brought his forearm down so I could see the flex tablet mounted in his armor. It showed a drone feed of Lower Manhattan. My eye was immediately drawn to the flames licking across Upper Bay.

  “Is that a fuel spill?” I asked.

  “No, it’s not. I was hoping you could tell us.”

  Persephone’s connection to the underworld had me thinking of the Phlegethon, the fiery river in Hades. “Possibly a result of the bleed-through,” I said, wondering what else may have imprinted on Lower Manhattan.

  “It’s going down now,” Trevor said, “but it blazed up so hot, Harbor Patrol said dead fish actually came bubbling to the surface.”

  If ye should fail and war should come

  If seas should boil and lands should run…

  I glanced over at Hermes, who raised his eyebrows.

  “Maybe it’s time we talked,” he said.

  41

  At The Metro, downtown’s only twenty-four-hour diner, I sat impatiently across from Hermes at a back booth while he studied the menu.

  “I’ll have your twin beefburger, cooked rare, and a side of… let’s see… how about the onion rings for a change? Oh, and a piece of your strawberry shortcake for dessert. What about you, Everson?”

  “Coffee,” I said brusquely.

  Hermes chuckled. “Like father, like son. His boy hardly eats,” he explained to the waitress, “so it falls on me to make up the difference.” He patted his lean stomach, drawing a confused look as she took our menus.

  “Lovely girl,” Hermes remarked when she left.

  It was just the two of us. Bree-yark was driving Mae back to the apartment, despite his insistence on coming. He only relented when I entrusted him with returning the scepter to my safe. Claudius had remained behind with the Sup Squad to ensure the integrity of the courthouse’s sub-basement. If it had breached once, it could breach again, especially as Persephone continued gathering energy.

  I leveled my gaze at Hermes. “Talk.”

  “I assume you want me to clear up the matter of our little operation.”

  “For starters.”

  He was seated casually, his back to the wall, a battered Converse Chuck on the bench seat. “I know you’ve already made up your mind about me. It’s only fair. I failed to show, and it wasn’t because I was in any danger. You were my coin flip.”

  “Coin flip?”

  “If you’d found the note behind the painting and reached the park, heads: I would destroy the scepter. But if you failed to reach the park, tails, and I would take more time to consider the matter.” He shrugged. “Tails it was.”

  That sealed it for me: human life meant nothing to him.

  “You promised you’d be there,” I fumed. “I got the scepter. I kept up my end.”

  “Yes, and I applaud your commitment. But the promise wasn’t binding. Your decision.” He affected a sad face. “And keeping my word isn’t exactly something I’m known for, is it? There’s a reason I’m referred to as mercurial.” He chuckled at his own joke. “I knew you recovered her scepter, of course. Knew it the moment you seized it with my glove. And that’s where my suspicion was confirmed.”

  “What suspicion?”

  “That our opponent isn’t Persephone. Not entirely.”

  I’d come to a similar conclusion, but I returned a straight face.

  “Oh, come now, you felt it, too. I’m not privy to every little thought in your head, but I know when you feel something strongly. It hums in those little bits of me.” He wriggled his fingers toward my chest, exciting the Hermes particles in my system.

  “Stop it,” I snapped.

  He lowered his hand. “The point is you felt it both times you wielded her scepter. There was a malice at odds with Persephone’s nature. It’s a product of worship, yes, and that’s what threw me. I believed the worship to be for her, but no. Worship for another being had penetrated the scepter, corrupting her. It stoked the aspect of Persephone that had been wronged, fanned it into a violent blaze and put her on a path of revenge. But not revenge of a sort that would benefit her. One that would benefit him.”

  Another way? I remembered Persephone seething at me. There is no other way!

  I collected myself. “Oh, cut the crap. I know you tried to align with her. I know you drew the siphon sigil that’s channeling the public’s emotions into worship for Cronus. And it’s already blowing goddamned holes in our reality.”

  He looked past me at the waitress, who was standing to one side with a tray. “You’ll have to excuse my friend. He’s under a great deal of stress, though I suppose I’m partly to blame. So do accept my pardon as well.”

  She distributed our orders with a tight smile and left.

  Straightening, Hermes took a large bite of his burger. “Mmm, that’s good.” He wiped his chin with a napkin and nodded. “I did design the sigil, yes. And I did propose we align. It was a gambit to get close to her, to earn her confidence. But she remained determined to marry Cronus and wage her war against the Olympic order.”

  That conformed with shadow Budge’s version of events.

  “It was then that I chose to proceed with the plan to destroy her scepter,” he continued. “But when the moment came, I had second thoughts. I turned it into a coin toss, and, well, you didn’t turn up at the park.”

  Trickster or not, he was filling in all the holes, and that bothered me.

  “Destroying the scepter would have taken care of both of them,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, and bound the two of them together for all time—my beloved Persephone and this… this monstrosity. Not to mention the discord it could seed, even in the cosmos. I couldn’t allow that.”

  “What a saint,” I scoffed.

  I knew he’d had the Kleftians build his box to attain immortality. I knew he had them killed, as the dryad had told me. But I also knew he’d have an answer for every charge I leveled at him. I could already hear them:

  Immortality? What god doesn’t aspire to immortality? It’s in our nature by our very nature.

  Of course I had the Kleftians killed. Being their patron was fun at first, but they got greedy and did dishonorable things in my name. I could no longer allow it.

  While the imagined conversation ping-ponged back and forth in my agitated mind, Hermes took another bite of burger. “Mmm, this is truly divine. Are you sure you don’t want some? How about one of these?”

  I slapped the offered onion ring from his hand.

  He watched it fly away. “A simple ‘no thank you’ would have sufficed.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a little goddamned short on etiquette right now. You went back on your word, you left me for dead, and you’re using my son. You’ve given me no reason to believe you, none, much less treat you decently.”

  “Well, I’ve explained myself, and that’s all I can do. I thought returning your cane would make you more reasonable.”

  Though I could feel my cane across my thighs, I touched it again to reassure myself. “You know Persephone wants me to destroy you, right?” I said, partly out of anger and partly to gauge his reaction.

  “Persephone, no.” He paused to lick his fingers. “The other being, yes.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Why should it? You can’t open the box without my consent, not without being destroyed in the process. And I fully intend to give that consent once we free Persephone and dispose of her tormentor.”

  “So this is a rescue mission now?”

  He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “I knew you’d come around, friend.”

  “I haven’t ‘come around’ to anything, and I’m not your friend.”

  “Well, you haven’t much time. Less than twenty-four hours by my count.” His lips quirked up on the same side as his cocked eyebrow. He knew about my ashes and the bonding potion, making his playfulness all the more infuriating.

  “Why did you let me get captured?” I demanded.

  “That was rather fortuitous, actually. With all the attention on you, I was able to poke around undetected. And a good thing. When I stepped out to give your son a breather, you slapped that annoying sigil on us, made it so I couldn’t use him adequately. Fortunately, he sprang us in the nick of time.”

  Every time he brought up Alec, I pictured the bonds biting into his soul more deeply, causing my own hands to draw into fists.

  “You haven’t asked me who the being is yet,” he said.

  “I assume you’re still talking about Cronus,” I said dismissively.

  “Errnnnt.” He crossed his forearms into an X as he made the buzzer sound. “Care to try again?” He regarded my dead stare and lowered his arms. “All right, I’ll tell you. But I want you to check the answer against the evidence you’ve gathered—evidence I’m not privy to, mind you—and you’ll not only see that I’m right, but that I gain nothing from aligning with this being.”

  I nodded grudgingly. “Go ahead.”

  He’d pushed the last of his burger into his mouth and held up a finger as he chewed. I sighed through my nose.

  “Typhon,” he said at last.

  I repeated the name, recalling what I knew of him. Half-man, half-serpent, and all monster. By some accounts he sported a hundred serpent heads. By all accounts he was the deadliest monster in Greek mythology. When he attacked Mount Olympus, the major gods fled, terrified, until Zeus met him in battle and won—barely. Thanks in part to a thunderbolt delivery by none other than Hermes.

  Depending on the author, Typhon was either imprisoned in Tartarus or buried beneath Mount Etna in Sicily. I slapped a hand against the table, causing some coffee to lap over the rim of my untouched mug.

  Of course!

  Franco had said the scepter was recovered from a quarry north of Catania, which would have been right in the shadow of Mount Etna. Cults to the monster must have sprung up around the mountain. In the millennia that followed, their objects had broken down and their worship for Typhon flowed into the mineral-rich layers of the volcanic mountain’s slopes, eventually infiltrating the buried scepter to Persephone.

  There were deposits in the scepter—I’d seen them. It explained the human sacrifices at Pergusa as well as the serpent summoned from the lake. It also explained the strange sounds Franco and I had both heard. Typhon was originally a wind god.

  Hermes, who was already halfway through his cake watched me closely.