Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) (35 page)

The police surely told Jacob that all she’d done was mention his name, as part of the circumstances regarding where she’d been right before the attack. A good friend would get that, and would make sure she was all right, not complain about being interrogated.
Good riddance
, she thought.
You said it, man.

“What’s he say?” Adrian asked, from beside the stove.

Sophie sighed, and began tapping menu items. “He is not amused.”

“Ah. You calming him down?”

“No.” She tapped another button that came up on the screen. “I’m deleting all the texts he ever sent to me, and taking him off my contacts list.”

Adrian poured the pasta into the boiling water, stirred it with a wooden spoon, and lowered the heat on the burner. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Okay then. Tomato sauce all right with you?”

A
FTER DINNER, FINDING
herself exhausted, she returned to the dorms. Adrian walked her to her door, despite her protestations. With scarcely a word to Melissa or anyone else, Sophie went to bed.

Her dreams continued through Persephone’s phase of lessons with Aphrodite, which involved plenty of laughter but always carried the undercurrent of loneliness from missing Hades.

In the morning, after Sophie’s first class, someone called on her cell. It was the male police officer who had talked to her last night. Jacob was almost certainly uninvolved in the attack, he said, and they couldn’t find any Betty Quentins staying in the area. They doubted she was involved either, so far. They’d issue a public warning that a pair of unknown assailants were on the loose, and they’d keep looking for them.

“Thank you,” said Sophie, and hung up with a sigh.

But that evening she was feeling rather better about the world, as she leaned against the kitchen counter in the Airstream, with Adrian pressed up and down her front, his arms around her, their mouths involved in what she figured definitely counted as “pashing.” A small lightbulb glowed above the kitchen sink. Rain poured against the windows. Their computers sat open but neglected on the table.

“If you’d just let me steal you away for good, to live in this realm forever,” he murmured, “I could keep you safe. I’m merely pointing that out.”

“Mm-hm. No problems with that arrangement.” She wriggled into a more comfortable angle, and nibbled his damp lower lip.

His hands roamed around her waist. “None at all. Can’t think of any problems. This whole situation, it’s quite low-stress.”

She broke into laughter and hugged him closer, not only for the wry humor but for the delicious way his accent turned “stress” into “striss.” Resting her forehead on his neck, she thought of Thanatos, and then of Demeter’s treachery, and sighed. “Why do people want to keep us apart?”

“Scared. Jealous. Both.” He groaned suddenly, sounding annoyed.

Puzzled, she tilted her head at him.

“Niko’s coming,” he said. “Just sensed him. Another person getting between us, temporarily at least.” He let go of her and moved to the door right before the brisk knock sounded. “Hey,” he said, opening the door.

“
Kalispera
,” greeted Niko—”Good evening” in Greek, as Sophie now knew. He stepped in, wearing a dark red fleece and snowboarder-style knit hat complete with earflaps. Every inch of him dripped with rain. He took off the hat and tossed it onto the kitchen counter, glancing from Sophie to Adrian. “You weren’t in the middle of getting each other off, were you?”

Adrian cringed. “Charming, Niko.”

Sophie sat at the table, near her computer. “We were waiting for you,” she told Nikolaos. “So you could watch.”

Niko grinned, and told Adrian, “I like her.”

“What do you want?” Adrian asked.

“Some gratitude. I spend all afternoon lurking around Bill Wilkes’ house in Salem, in the drenching rain, waiting for a chance to dive in there and download his hard drive, all because you ask me to, and do you even thank me?”

Adrian folded his arms. “Thank you. Did you succeed?”

Niko whipped a small portable hard drive from his pocket and held it up.

Finally smiling, Adrian took it from him. “Ah, sweet as. Let’s have a look.”

“I already did,” Niko said as Adrian plugged the drive into his computer. “You might be interested in the little vacation Mr. Wilkes took back in February. Seems he heard it was summertime in New Zealand, and decided to warm up his toes in Wellington.”

Adrian stopped in the middle of clicking through files, and looked at Sophie, then at Niko. Then at Kiri, standing nearby, sniffing Niko’s wet shoes. “He’s the guy who shot me and Kiri?”

“Yes, to judge from the email he sent Quentin that very night, saying something like, ‘Found our friend. Delivered the message. As suspected he’s recovering fast, and left for his other home.’ ‘Other home’ is apparently their oh-so-clever code phrase for the spirit realm.”

Sophie imagined Wilkes shooting Kiri and Adrian without warning in the park at night. She’d heard the story already, but having been assaulted herself now—possibly by the same man—made it twice as horrifying. Fear chilled her stomach, then the temperature raised itself to simmering hatred. “If I ever see him, I’m pepper-spraying him and kicking his head in.”

Niko looked up from petting Kiri to grin at Adrian again. “I
really
like her.”

Adrian sighed, gazing across the table at her. “Thanks, love, but that wouldn’t be the greatest way to show you’re unaffiliated with us.”

“Fine,” Sophie grumbled.

“He’s right, I regret to say,” Niko added. “Your best course is to lie, lie, lie. I say that as someone with the greatest respect for lying. It’s saved my life many times. But pepper spray, that reminds me…” Niko drew a small black plastic bag, wrapped around something rectangular, from the inside pocket of his coat. “Present for you.” He handed it to Sophie.

She unwrapped it. “A flashlight?”

“Not just that.” Niko turned it in her hands, and showed her a button on the side. “A stun gun. Press this end against the next freak who grabs you, push the button, and zap. Million volts. Down he’ll go, and it won’t hurt you. But if someone
does
grab it from you, they can’t kill you with it, at least.”

“Yikes.” She lifted her eyebrows, examining the weapon. “Well. Thank you. I admit, I’m sort of looking forward to trying it on these douchebags.” She glanced at Adrian. “Was this your idea?”

He looked guilty. “Kind of. Though I hope you never have to use it.”

She unfolded the instructions she found in the bag, and glanced over them. “When you’re friends with dangerous immortals, guess this is part of the deal.”

“Indeed. So.” Adrian drummed his fingers on the table, exchanging a look with Nikolaos. “It was Wilkes who shot me. Now what? I can’t turn him in for it. There’s no evidence. Kiri and I were fully recovered in hours, and we didn’t report it back when it happened.”

“We’ll keep watching him,” said Niko. “Turn him in if he does try anything.” He pointed at Sophie. “For example, if he lays a single finger on you, darling. 911. Or rather, stun gun,
then
911.”

“I will,” said Sophie. “But we still aren’t sure how much he knows about me, and my hanging out with you guys or Rhea. Right?”

“Well…” Adrian clicked on files again. “We might get a hint. Niko, did you find anything in the messages?”

“Yes, the most recent ones have Wilkes seeing Sophie yesterday in company of someone who ‘resembles Ms. R,’ though it doesn’t mention the disappearing and reappearing.”

“So it
was
Wilkes who followed me,” she said, feeling queasy again.

“And a week or so back,” Niko added, “Quentin and Wilkes got rather excited about some ‘texts’ and ‘meetings’ between some girl and some troublemaker. That’d be you two, is my guess.”

She shivered. “So they know we’re texting each other? How?”

“Let’s see your phone.” Niko held out his hand.

Sophie handed it over. “I’ve already checked for spyware. I didn’t find anything.”

“That’s the thing about good spyware. You wouldn’t notice.” He tapped at the phone’s screen. “Usually, for spying on texts, someone would have to get hold of your phone physically, and install something.” He lifted his gaze for a moment to examine her. “Who’s been close enough to do that?”

“Well,
you’re
the only one who ever actually
stole
my phone,” she retorted.

Nikolaos laughed, glancing at Adrian, who still gazed at the files on his computer. “Only in the service of love, and I swear I didn’t tamper with it. Who else?”

Adrian met her eyes briefly, then looked at his screen again. She cleared her throat and hedged, “I suppose…Jacob might have. My ex-boyfriend. Thanatos did approach him.”

“Mm-hm. I’d consider that.” Niko danced his fingers across the phone, eyes rapidly taking in information. “And who do you live with? Girls in the dorm?”

“Melissa’s my roommate. But she hardly pays any attention to me. And I keep the phone pretty close.”

“Looking at these emails,” Adrian suggested, “they possibly haven’t read the actual texts. There isn’t much detail. Just ‘From what source says, it sounds like they’ve met, and exchanged texts.’ And if they knew the exact times Sophie was going out to meet me, surely they would’ve simply followed her straight to me, and grabbed me then.”

“Right.” Niko held up her phone. “So my guess is, someone’s watching you from a distance, or from fairly close, even; and they occasionally had a look at these while you were asleep or out of the room. You probably don’t have spyware transmitting your every text to someone else. That is, I don’t see any. But just in case, let’s do a little factory reset, shall we?”

“Go ahead. I don’t think I have any important stuff to back up.”

“Brilliant.” While Niko touched the options that sent the phone into its reset operation, Sophie squinted at him.

“Do I want to know why you’re so informed about spyware?” she asked.

Nikolaos gave her a charming, dazzling smile. “No, my dear. You do not.”

U
GH,
SAID THE
text from Sophie the next morning, arriving in the middle of Adrian’s breakfast.
Sore throat.
I’m getting a cold. Damn dorm food and its lack of nutrition!

His spirits sank, mainly out of sympathy for her, but also (he had to admit) because it would mean less making out for a few days, and he had thoroughly enjoyed those kisses lately. Shoving aside his hormones in guilt, he typed back,
Oh no. Poor thing
.
I’m sorry.

Guess it wasn’t just the pashing making me feeling lightheaded. ;)

No, that isn’t amongst my powers, sadly.

I’d say I hope you didn’t catch it, but I guess you can’t get sick.

Yeah,
he texted
, that is one of the perks.

Okay, I’ve decided. Sign me up.

Ha. Why not think about it a little longer. Anything you want me to fetch you in the meantime?

No thanks. I’ll take it easy today and soak up some Persephone as therapy.

Do that. Feel better soon. xo.

Chapter Thirty-One

P
ERSEPHONE DIDN’T SEE
H
ADES AGAIN
for over a month. Their next meeting was at a feast at the autumn equinox, at Zeus and Hera’s palace. Demeter and Persephone both attended. By that point Persephone had gained enough poise from her tutoring sessions with Aphrodite that she was able to greet Hades with a cool smile. Still, her heart pounded, reminding her full well that her crushed pride had not recovered.

“Hello, Hades.”

“Persephone.” His smile was cordial as well, though his gaze soon slipped away from hers.

“How is the Underworld? I’ve been meaning to visit, to see my plants.”

“It’s fine. They’re doing well. One in particular of your fruit trees has grown quite tall.”

“Good. I’ll be curious to hear what it does.”

His glance moved to Aphrodite, who stood across the room with her arm around the waist of her guest—Adonis. “And how are your new lessons?”

“Quite interesting.”

“Dare I ask what she has you doing?”

“We’ve only lately begun any ‘doing.’ Before that it was mostly explanation—things like anatomy, and the way everything should work, and how to practice independently so I can be ready when it’s time.”
There
, she thought.
Try not to think about that, I challenge you.

It seemed to work. He took a few moments to answer, rotating his wine cup in his hands and frowning at it. “When it’s ‘time’?” he echoed.