Chapter Twelve

Emily looked at the clock in the dashboard of the Mustang. Six. The clock read six, as in SIX, in all digitized letters, no numbers. “Simeon? Is it only six at night?” It felt later. Much later. But, then again, they had been hanging out with an immortal (beautiful, curvy, healthy-looking) goddess who had lost all concept of time.

They sat with Demeter for three cups of tea, some rhubarb pie, and a plate of scones. Scones that Demeter served while wearing her summer-goddess body, fresh out of her immortal goddess oven. Simeon kept looking at her with a look Emily was all too familiar with.

He looked at me like that once. Naked lust and longing. Sometimes I still catch a flash of it in his eyes, but not often. I told him there was never going to be anything between us.

I’m not jealous.

Confused and a little envious, maybe, but not jealous.

“I took my mum scones like that after I got my first proper job with Heatherington. Cook let me have the extras, and I took them home to her.”

“Simeon! The clock?”

“Huh? No, it’s about midnight, Luv. In—” Simeon stopped talking. The Mustang’s clock suddenly flickered. FIVE.

“What’s five? Is that incoming souls or something?”

Simeon’s pale skin was somehow an even starker shade of white. “Five days until November 1st, at midnight. Immortals tell time based on deadlines, I guess. Never noticed before.”

Five days until Simeon might die in the permanent way. Until she would never see him again. Never see Mr. Minegold again, either. Her heart twisted, and her brain stopped cold. She felt an eerie “the world is wrong” sensation. It was too familiar, the one she’d had when her mother never came back to get her, the one she had when her father screamed at her for almost dying because she wasn’t smart enough to figure out his wordless challenges, and the one she had when her father was taken, not by a vampire but by his own addiction.

She should say, his other addiction.

It was the shattering feeling of nothing making sense and not knowing what to do, or how to fix it—and knowing she was never allowed to show her confusion. Confusion was weakness, food for the enemy.

Simeon was still talking, like nothing had happened, like they hadn’t just shaved off a day of precious searching time.

“Didja notice how she seemed real unsure about time? Every time we mentioned it was a thousand years or we got down to the nitty-gritty, askin’ for clear details, she faded in and out of reality. It reminded me of my grandmother. She passed when I was just a little thing, but she lived with us for a bit. People did that back then. They wouldn’t stick you in a home. The family would rally ‘round and sit by the bedside, even if you were dirt poor.” Simeon shifted in the car’s seat. “ I’d come in and read my lessons to her, poetry and Latin. Grandmother would do that, what Demeter was doing. One minute it would be ‘time for tea and why weren’t there any boiled eggs’, and the next she’d be talking about how I’d better hurry or I’d never see Perceval passing in his coach.”

“What? Who?”

“The Prime Minister when gran was young. She’d skip back to childhood, back fifty years, in the blink of an eye.”

“She was old. It sounds like she had dementia, but I guess they didn’t say that back then?” Emily shrugged, privately touched by the idea of a little Simeon in old-fashioned clothes, reading to his ailing grandmother.

“Demeter is ageless.”

“Yeah. A goddess and a vampire could totally hook up, why not?” she muttered to the seatbelt.

Simeon pretended not to hear her. “Does it seem to you like Demeter’s memory was off? I don’t think it was age, Emily. I think it was a spell or something.”

“What could keep a goddess from accessing her memories for a few centuries?” Emily didn’t buy it.

“What could keep a goddess hidden for just as many?” Simeon challenged. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We’ll talk on the way.”

They had unanimously declined Demeter’s invitation to sleep at the farmhouse. Simeon said they’d get a room in Boise and report back if they learned anything.

“Only another immortal. Zeus could do it. But why would he?”

“To have his way with her, Van Helsing. Mythology is full of his unsavory liaisons.”

“Okay, to play devil’s advocate here—”

“That’s what you’re doing. This whole trip, bein’ my knight in shining armor.” Simeon fluttered his lashes at her as he put the car in reverse. He checked again that the H-Drive was off, and then whispered in a hesitant voice, “You do want to stop and get a hotel room in Boise, right? We could pop home?”

“No. No, we should stay focused. Which means you can’t interrupt me, Crow .” She flounced her hair. Simeon’s eyes lingered on her. Still got it.

Damn it, why do I want to have it??

“Right, sorry. Be my advocate.”

“If Zeus can mess with someone’s memory, why wouldn’t he do what he wanted to her, then make her forget?”

Simeon pulled the car off the dark, rural road which twisted and dipped. “Hang on. Got a thought. Want to make a call.”

Emily nodded and waited as Simeon tapped the cell phone Hades had told him to carry. In a second, the god’s magically magnified voice boomed throughout the car.

“Well?”

“Quick questions. Can Zeus modify people’s memories?”

“What? No. No, that’s not something any of my siblings can do. Not even my nephews or nieces, and thanks to Mr.-Can’t-Keep-It-In-His-Tunic, I have lots of them. Milly and Zag are your best bet at gods who can manipulate the mind, and believe me, they’re not doing this. I— Cerby! That’s not your bone! Go give that back. Well, bury it in the Asphodel. Good boys! Spawn of Lilith, if you’ve called me, you’d better have a reason.”

“Your mum-in-law seems awfully confused, but she remembers that Zeus showed up that day. I don’t want to upset you, but... Do you think he might have her someplace?”

“No. No, I made him swear on the River Styx that he hadn’t touched her. I made him swear he would never lay an unwanted hand upon her, or his immortal soul would be mine to punish.”

Emily tapped Simeon’s elbow frantically. She mouthed, “What about a wanted hand?”

Simeon ignored her. “Question two. I thought she had to come back every six months. The food of the dead, the pomegranate seeds, and all that?”

“Quite right. That’s how it works. Every six months, she was supposed to journey to the mortal world to visit Demeter. But that was an arrangement we put in place to appease Zeus and make him feel that he’d negotiated a deal. Seph went to see her mother whenever she wanted. She almost always came home at night, or every other night. We... I’m a busy man, but I always made time for—hr-hrm. Romance was important.”

“Aww.” Emily felt an unfamiliar sensation. If she were to use terms from her recently acquired hobby of reading romance books from the Pine Ridge Library, she’d say her insides “went gooey.” “That’s adorable.”

“Is that Miss Van Helsing? Hello, Miss Van Helsing. Nice to hear from you again.”

“Again? I ... Right. Near-death adventures. Mr. Lord of Darkness, if Persephone has to return to the Underworld every six months, how is she surviving?”

“I don’t know. If she doesn’t come home, she’ll get weaker. The only thing that might... that might help her is ambrosia!” Hades sounded as if this idea had just occurred to him.

“The salad with fruit cocktail, whipped cream, and marshmallows?” Emily demanded, nose wrinkling. “My mom used to make that sometimes. My father hated it.”

Simeon rubbed his temples. “The food of the gods, you ninny. Hades, a god has to be in on this. A god who has ambrosia and who can mess with people’s minds.”

“I agree. It’s a god. Find me which one. I’ve searched Zeus’ palaces. I have souls everywhere, reapers, and your kind, too. No one has found a trace of her. That’s where you come in. I think— Oh, damn it all to here! I have to go. 6.8 earthquake in Java. Incoming! Zag! Put on a pot of coffee for Charon!”

“The line went dead.” Simeon looked at the phone as it blinked off. “Ha. Went dead. Get it?”

“I get that Hades is missing a few pieces. He made Zeus swear that he hadn’t touched her. He made sure Zeus wasn’t holding Seph in his palaces. Hades made Zeus swear he would never lay an unwanted hand on her. Don’t you get it? Seph ran off with Zeus on her own. There’s no kidnapper, there’s no unwilling kidnapping. Demeter is lying to protect her daughter and her more powerful brother. Seph is changing her appearance so Hades’ spies can’t find her, and Demeter and Zeus are giving Persephone ambrosia to keep her healthy.”

Simeon digested her words slowly. “No. I don’t buy it. I don’t... If you had seen what he showed me... She loved him. Loves him. Loves her children. I can’t believe this. I can’t just stop looking for her because you’re sure it’s an affair of epic proportions.”

“Stop looking? Oh, hell no. No, we’re going to find this girl and march her back to her undead living room and have her work out a divorce, or the immortal version of marriage counseling, or whatever. She’s not going to get you sucked into hell just because she married the first dark, handsome, mysterious older man who appeared in a dark alley and whisked her away with rumors of danger and the first real... chariot she’d ever had.”

Simeon stared at her for a full five seconds. “The first real chariot , pet?”

She hung her head and sighed. “Kiss.”

“Project much?”

“Not more than you.”

Another silence. “Fuck this.” Simeon slammed his hand onto the H-Drive. “Put us down in an empty parking spot in front of a nice, clean hotel with a vacancy in Boise.”

Emily braced and found her nails digging into Simeon’s hand as the car soared through time and space.

It crashed in front of a Good-Nite Inn with a flashing neon sign that read “Vacancy.”

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Emily wheezed as her lungs returned to their normal position in her ribcage.

“Grab your bags. I’ll get the cooler.”

“Look, I’m sorry! We can get back in the car. Won’t take us ten seconds, Emily.”

“A vacancy, you said. A . As in one. Not a ‘nice, clean hotel with two bedrooms.’”

“Next time, you tell the bloody car where you want to land,” Simeon threw his bag on one side of the king-sized bed. “You stay here, I’ll go drive around and find a second place for the night.”

“No. You have the phone and the credit card. You have the car. We stick together.”

Simeon rummaged by the coffee pot and found one of the hotel’s mugs. “I’m going to heat up some blood. Want something?”

“Well, not that . I figured you’d be full after four scones and two pieces of pie. Maybe you didn’t even notice what you ate. You were too busy staring at the farmer goddess.” Emily dug into her suitcase.

His jaw dropped as he squeezed the cold blood into the cup. “Are you jealous ? Emmy, the last immortal I met tried to flambe me. This one was pretty and sad—”

“And so you ride in to save the damsel!”

“May I remind you that you come in and save damsels all the damn time? Or you used to?” Emily scowled at him and he continued, “Or would you like me to remind you that I’m doing this because of a strikingly handsome, very married bloke? Or—” Simeon glared Emily to silence as she tried to speak over him, “that I did come riding to your rescue once?”

Emily’s face tightened. “Thank you.”

Had she ever thanked him before?

Simeon sat on the edge of the bed and watched the mug make its lazy circle in the microwave. “Every night, I wish I could rescue you just a little bit more. A little bit better. I dunno what’s wrong, sometimes, if it’s me, or the town, or your parents bein’ gone... But every night, I wish I could do more. I got you out of that car, and they fixed your broken bones. Call me crazy, but I still feel like there’s something broken inside, maybe something they missed—or maybe something they can’t fix with plaster and stitches.”

“Simeon, stop.” Her voice was a whisper as she stood frozen in front of the mirror that would never show his reflection.

But he didn’t. It was all coming out now while she was his captive audience. “In my head, somehow I figure it out. I give you just what you need, what you want. I fix all the cracks and hidden fractures. I’m the right blend of man and monster, even without a soul. I—” He stopped short of telling her how he’d gotten Hades to promise him whatever he asked for if they found Seph.

Hades thought Emily was pining for a lover. Maybe the god would call Aphrodite and have her soulmate delivered.

Maybe he would be that soulmate. Hades had said anything . Simeon planned to ask for the return of his human soul, hopefully refurbished or in like new condition.

But you can’t tell Emily that. She’s already working as hard as she can. No sense adding more heartbreak if we fail.

Besides... Emily didn’t even know about those secret offers—and she’d just joined him on the edge of the bed. She was patting his knee as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

For a second, he was so startled that he couldn’t speak. The microwave beeped, and he ignored it. He would never move again if it meant Emily could stay beside him.

“Emily?”

“Hm?”

She was killing him. Women were supposed to be the talkative ones. His past dalliances had never shut up.

But Emily... Now, when it mattered, when this might be his last week on the mortal coil, when he was on the verge of combusting with confusion and tension, the woman didn’t speak. She made a damned humming noise. He swallowed a thousand questions and narrowed it down to one. “This is nice, init?”

She chuckled, but the noise was melancholy and thick. “When I started to like someone or make a friend—my father would make sure we moved, or he’d find some other reason that I couldn’t see them anymore. He said I was like my mother, weak and using my heart instead of my head. My mother died because of me, he said, and my friends would die, too. Vampires like to take people as bait.”

“Oh, love. No. That’s wrong. Not about vampires in general, but about blaming you—”

“Somehow, in my head, this is all twisted. The vampire is the one I like. The one I want to save. He wants to save me. And now you’re in danger. Some part of me believes it’s my fault. That what my father said is true. I liked a guy, and something bad happened to him. I feel... I feel like this is my fault. If I hadn’t kissed you, you wouldn’t be in danger.”

“One, we kissed each other. Two, this deal has been going on for a thousand years. I’m just the one who drew the short straw. Buuut,” he cautiously squeezed his arm around her back, “I’m the lucky one, ‘cause I have you to help me.”

“I’m no help. We don’t even think the same way about this mystery. Or... about anything, really.”

“That’s not true! We think the same way about a lot of things.”

“Name one.”

“J.J..”

Emily glared. “No fair. You’d have to have a heart of marble not to think he’s adorable and so bright.”

“See? Proves I don’t have a heart of marble, then. Um. Maple glazed donuts.”

“Mmm.”

“Hunting bad guys is an adrenaline rush.”

“Well... Yeah.”

“And I like you. And you like me.”

Emily lifted her head. Words came—brokenly, slowly, as if she were afraid to let them escape. “That makes us friends. You and me. That makes us friends.”

That was better than enemies. It was a good place to start. Simeon told his tongue to keep still.

It disobeyed. “I guess friends is better than nothing.” He forced a brave smile on his face and rose as the microwave gave another impatient-sounding beep, reminding the occupants of the room that they’d left something inside.

Her hand grabbed onto his, keeping him on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t say we had to be just friends. I was thinking... it might be nice to have a f-friend who is more than a friend. I’m thinking it. I’m in the thinking stage, you get that? But I wanted you to know. That I was thinking it,” she concluded lamely and let go of his hand.

It’s because she’s jealous of Demeter.

It’s because she’s off the leash, free for a day, maybe a week.

It’s because hotel rooms and magic sports cars do something to people.

It’s because she can hear the clock ticking, and she knows this is our last chance. Maybe.

I’ll take it.

“Thinking is good.”