Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

P ersephone

The first thing I notice upon arriving in Greece is the scent of salty, somehow sandy, heat. You might think you can't smell heat, but you can. There is a wafting plume of it that rises from the ancient stone land, swirling in the air from the creamy, sometimes shockingly white, buildings and cobbled stone. Under the heat, or maybe enriched by it, is the scent of fresh herbs.

Originally from Canada, and an Alberta farm girl at that, the city feels incredibly, hypnotically old. It's nothing like the young country that birthed me, and yet, nowhere I've ever travelled has ever felt so much like coming home.

I inhale another big breath of heat and herbs deep into my lungs, and sigh. My body hums under the high, hot sun. My soul titters. Yes, my soul titters.

It's like nothing I've ever experienced, my arrival into this country. This ancient place. I have yet to explore. To sink my hands into the earth or my feet into the sea. And yet I've never felt a sense of belonging such as this.

This place, this country, it is where my soul is meant to rest.

It's a bizarre thought for a woman of nineteen to entertain. The resting place of my soul should have no bearing on my youthful desires. Yet the thought is there in the forefront of my mind. A realization I can't deny.

Maybe it's the old soul that burns inside me. The soul Grammy always said was too wise, too guarded to have lived just this one life.

My old soul recognizes this place. With every deep, salty breath. In every blade of sand, there is recognition in the great fabric of the ethereal design that weaves me.

I was meant for this place. I am meant for this place.

I flop down on the narrow, too hard bed, and loose a sigh from the deep of my belly. I'm still wearing the broad brimmed straw hat that I wear during my days in the sun. The buttons of my light, billowy blue and white striped long sleeve shirt are undone to display the white tank I wear underneath. I've been here for a week. I've explored what a career might mean in archaeology during the day under the blistering, delicious sun. And at night I've explored the city, called to it like a moth to flame.

I've enjoyed authentic food and trapsed through the most adorable shops that line winding, narrow roads. I've stopped to talk to people, engaging for hours in conversation about this great city, the ancient history, and the lore that remains today. Every day, I've fallen a little more in love. I honestly don't know how I'll ever go home again.

Home doesn't feel like home anymore.

"You should stay in tonight." My roommate throws me a mocking smile. "Get some sleep."

With a groan and quite possibly a rattle of my bones, I roll to my side. Flicking off my hat, I prop my head on a fist and give Willa a look.

She laughs. "Okay, okay, since you're not willing to sleep, you should come out with us."

I'd heard the chatter about tonight while engaged in examining newly discovered artifacts with my supervisor, Beth, and a boy touch older than me, Addison, at the Eleusis site. Everything I touched, everything I saw, it all felt oddly familiar. Like triggering a memory from a time I couldn't possibly have lived.

Even Addison's shocking blue eyes feel familiar. Every time they land on my skin, recognition burns. The kind of deep recognition that rattles the bone with a chill, even under a blazing heat.

Being here is like being hit by a big brick wall of déjà vu.

The longer I'm here, the more potent my madness feels. The louder the call of his pained cry echoes in my mind.

The longer I am here, the more I feel I know this place. These ancient things lost to the earth and buried by time.

Only today I touched a stone swept clean of sand. There are theories that the rubble of the once illustrious temple belonged to Hades, God of the Dead. But when I touched the stone with my naked fingertips, my gloves discarded, heart pounding, I'd been assaulted by visions of a time I could not possibly know. A woman kneeling in respect to Demeter, Goddess of Harvest and Agriculture, before she was given a single grain of wheat.

I'd pulled my hand back, severing the vision along with my touch. Inside my heart, a spear of pain had me gasping in shock. I felt— I ached at the thought of the Goddess. A betrayal unlike any I've ever known. Unlike anything I could imagine. It swept through my veins like a violent and terrible tsunami, threatening to wash all of me away.

Hesitantly, I'd touched the stone a second time to experience only the sensation of sunbaked sandstone centuries old and assaulted by time.

I'd excused it all away the same way Mom excuses my oddities. It's my overactive imagination .

I clear my throat, giving my head a shake as I refocus on Willa. "You mean the club?"

"Yeah, The Tower of Pluto. It's not far from here."

"I've seen it." It's hard not to when it lights up the night sky. Its show-stopping ring of fire at the cloud-scraping top ignites the city in a blazing glow of red embers. They spark and fall like stars dipped in blood against an obsidian night, winking out before they ever connect with the ground.

I've caught myself making wishes on those falling embers as one might wish upon a star.

Willa tosses the small closet wide. "I've heard it's owned by a man named Hades Pluton."

I snort, my eyes snapping wide. "Seriously?"

Willa giggles, as knowledgeable in Greek Myth as me. "Right? His parents must have hated him." Her nose wrinkles. "Or maybe they were just goofy people, and they didn't mind their son being the butt of a crappy joke for the rest of his life."

I shrug. "At least he made something of his name, I guess."

I mean, the guy clearly used it well, what with the Tower of Pluto. In a city of white stone and blue topped roofs, the bleached stone Tower of Pluto is veined in black obsidian that abducts the sun's prisms every day, and a torched top that sears the stars at night. It's a clever mockery of the untouchable Olympus, I can't help but think, scorched by hellfire. Or, more accurately, the fires of Tartarus.

"Apparently, he lives in the top of the tower, and, like, never leaves," Willa continues. "He's an artist—a painter—and it's said one should never visit Athens without also visiting the Tower of Pluto. His art is displayed on the walls, never for sale, so it's the only place you can see it." She pulls a dress from the closet. "Apparently, Hades takes tortured artist to a whole new level."

"With a name like his, I can see why that might be," I say, but my interest is piqued. I've never been one for clubbing, and outside of sharing a glass of wine with Mom over the holidays, I don't drink. But art—art is something I have an incredibly hard time refusing. "When are you leaving?"

"A couple hours," Willa says, holding a black dress up to her body in the mirror.

"Good." I push up from the bed. "I have time to shower."