Chapter 14

Chapter

Fourteen

P ersephone

Willa shrieks when she sees me hiking to the dig site. Her mass of black hair is piled into a now frizzy bun on the top of her head that gives me a nod with every jump she jumps. I’m still too far to hear much more than shrieky chirps, blended together in a string of excitement I can’t yet decipher. But I can’t help myself from smiling when her hands connect in front of her chest in quick, overeager claps that speak of bursting joy.

Growing nearer, I’m finally able to make out her words. “You were right! Annie, you were freaking right!” I have no idea what she’s talking about. “I’ve been calling your phone and lighting you up with texts. What the hell, girl?”

“Hades took it,” I explain. “He wanted me to—um—rest.”

And I forgot to ask for it back before I left. Oops.

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” Willa catches my arm in her excited grip to drag me closer to the dig site. She bends low to speak into my ear, as though the words she has to deliver are pure gossip-gold meant just for us. “You’re not going to believe this.”

Her energy is starting to get to me, and I feel myself smiling, too. “Believe what? What happened?”

“You’ve been gone almost a week. A lot has happened.”

“Um…” It hasn’t been a week. I don’t get the chance to say as much before Willa is filling me in.

“After everything that happened with you last week, with the new temple base—” I tense, swallowing hard. She doesn’t seem to notice. “Ralph decided to use Ground Penetrating Radar to take a look into what might be down there and voila —holy shit—because—you. Were. Right !”

I freeze, my heart slamming in my chest as I struggle to follow her excited words. “I was right?”

She can’t mean I was right about the stone not being the base of a temple, but the header to a very large mouth of stairs. It can’t be…

I can’t have been right. How could I be right?

“Yes! Keep up, Annie, you crazy brilliant bitch!” Willa is bouncing again, her excitement bursting from her very pores. “You were right about it not being a base. It’s an entrance, like you thought. The radar shows stairs, just like you claimed. We’ve had the whole team on this one since.”

“I was right…” I gasp. A warm breeze swirls around us, but I feel chilled to the bone. Dread like nothing else fills me as I recall the vision that had thrown me into unconsciousness. A vision that shouldn’t be real. Shouldn’t be possible.

It’s another trick of my disturbed mind.

Like the woman giving the wheat, the man in the sea, and the voice in my head…

They’re all fabrications of my twisted, untrustworthy mind.

Or maybe they aren’t.

“Are you sure?” The words come out breathlessly.

Willa nods excitedly. “I don’t know how you knew. Beth thinks there’s ancient magic inside the stone and somehow it transferred to you—gave you a glimpse of what it was.” She shakes her head in marvel. “Whatever it was—it’s cool as shit. And real !”

I can’t speak. It’s no problem, Willa speaks for me.

“Everyone wants to uncover the stairs and see where they lead now. Ralph says there’s no ancient texts depicting what this temple might be, but I think the ancients believed it would lead them to the Underworld, you know, because the stairs go down and all. Addison agrees with me. Beth thinks it’s another temple for Demeter, or maybe even Persephone. A place where she might have passed between the realms to fulfil her part of the deal Hades and Demeter made.”

“Deal?” My mind can’t quite catch up to all that she’s saying. I’m on a loop, replaying everything I saw in my frightening vision the last time I was on site.

“You know, the deal that she spends so many months up here with her mom, Demeter, and so many months in the Underworld with Hades, as his Queen.”

We’re getting closer to the spot now. Close enough that I can see the hoard of people clustering around the new tent that’s been erected while others pick away at centuries of packed earth and sand in a jittery attempt to reveal a set of wide, dark, looming stairs into a tunnel that leads... where?

Spotting us, Addison dusts his hands on his beige shorts. A lopsided grin tips his mouth, but it doesn’t meet his eyes. He studies me for a moment too long, breathing a sigh of warm air. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” I croak, my eyes drifting between Addison, and the new site. “You?”

“I’ve been worried about you. I tried texting—calling.” He pushes his hand through golden hair. “I—I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“Hades took her phone,” Willa explains. Addison’s eyes narrow. “He wanted to make sure she was resting after everything last week.”

“About that—” Addison twists to flick his gaze toward the site. He looks back to me, a wrinkle of something between his brows. Concern, maybe. Suspicion, possibly. “How’d you know?”

I shrug, shaking my head. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Beth thinks it’s magic. An enchantment of some kind.” The giddiness hasn’t left Willa’s voice. “Maybe it’s some temple for Hecate, enchanted by her dark magic.”

Addison’s studious eyes never leave mine. “Is that what you think?”

“I have no idea.”

“Beth thinks it was some passage for Persephone to travel between the realms.” His words have every hair standing on end. Goosebumps rise on my skin, and his eyes fall to them before rising slowly back to mine.

His eyes are so blue. The kind of blue a girl could drown in, if she wasn’t careful.

“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” Addison presses. “A temple for Persephone.”

I shake my head again. “I don’t know.”

He rolls his lips. “I think you do.”

“How could I know?”

His jaw is hard for a long moment. He says, “I think you’re connected. Somehow.”

“That’s insane.”

“Is it?”

“Addison, you’re a lunatic,” Willa huffs, tugging on my arm. “C’mon. ”

“How else did she know there was stairs when we all thought it was a temple in ruins, like all the rest?”

I dig my heels as we pass Addison, standing close now. He’s so tall, I have to tip my head back to meet the shocking blue of his eyes. I mean for the words to sound sure and strong, but they fall between us on a small whisper that bleeds insecurity. “I feel like you’re accusing me of something.”

His head falls back as he releases a long breath to the sky. “I’m sorry. I’m—edgy.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain it.” He tips his head to meet my eyes again. “Just am.”

“It’s okay.” I offer him a small smile of understanding. “I get it.”

“Yeah.” He nods. “S’pose you do.”

“Let’s go check it out.” I nod my head to the site and, reaching out, I touch his arm. The moment my skin meets his, there’s a crackle of something that shouldn’t be. A sensation of more. A spark of history that doesn’t exist.

Familiarity.

Attraction.

My skin heats even as I frown.

Addison sees it. More, I sense he feels it, too.

Pulling my hand back as though I’ve been burned, I turn to take stuttering steps away from Addison, toward a site that confuses me a whole lot more.