So I've noticed that I have this bad habit losing interest in my stories for a couple of weeks before feeling guilty and coming back to them. Sorry!
Hope y'all enjoy this chapter.
"Nope," Jake told me. "It won't work."
"Oh, for the love of the River Styx!" I shouted at the cavernous ceiling, ignoring the odd looks that the other spirits were giving me.
That had been my best idea yet, and yet Jake had told me that it still wouldn't work! How exactly did he know so much about escape routes, anyway? It wasn't like he had earth-shattering information in his brain that he had to get to his loved ones. He had never attempted escape before.
A part of me wondered if I should just ignore Jake and go through with the plan anyway—I seriously thought that there was a good chance it could work.
No, a voice whispered in my mind, and my memory was so foggy that I couldn't remember if it was mine or not. You don't want to do that. He hasn't led you stray so far.
I sighed and sat down in the shade of a black poplar tree. I had been here so long that I couldn't remember if I'd been in this specific spot before; then again, everything looked so similar down here, it would have been hard to tell even if my memory had been in prime condition.
I realized it slowly. At first, it was just simple stuff, like the names of my sixth grade teachers, or my childhood friends. Then the memory loss had started to snowball. I forgot the name of my caretaker in foster care, and I still can't remember. I can remember his face, and why I hated him, but I couldn't figure out what his name was. And no matter how many times I tried to refresh my memory with Jake, I couldn't remember who Bobby's real father was. It was like somebody had taken whiteout to my brain. To make matters worse, I had started to resemble the other spirits as well. While I was still wearing my normal clothes, it was like all the color had faded out of them, leaving everything an ugly gray.
I'll admit, I was slightly panicked. What good was having an afterlife if you forgot who you were? I was afraid that sooner rather than later, Alex Clayton would fade away, and a confused girl would take up residence in her body, wandering around the Fields of Asphodel for all eternity.
"Why?" I demanded. "Why won't it work? Why won't anything work!"
Jake sighed and sat down in the long grass next to me. "I don't know what to tell you. No one has ever really done this before."
I straightened. The teacher…Mr. Brunner? No, Chiron—he had taught us something about escaping the Underworld in his Greek class. What was it?
I knew we'd gone over a lot of myths. I banged my palms against my forehead in an attempt to remember.
"Aha!" I nearly shouted. "I've got it! Orpheus and Eurydice!"
"Who?" Jake asked.
"Long story short," I said, racking my brain to remember the important details, "Orpheus's girlfriend died, and he went into the Underworld to save her. He played harp…no, the lute! He played the lute so well that Hades let him try to bring Eurydice back up to the mortal world, as long as he didn't turn around and look at her on the way up. But he does, and she stays in the Underworld. Cheery story, really."
Jake looked confused. The expression was similar to something that Liam would have done, with all the furrowed brows and frowning. "How is that supposed to help?"
"Well, other than the fact that her boyfriend was an idiot, Eurydice would have made it out of the Underworld. She had help from someone living! That's the answer, Jake!"
Now Jake looked troubled. "I don't know, Alex."
I ignored him as I stood up to pace, my brain working overtime. If I could just contact one of my friends from above…but an Iris Message wouldn't work. And I didn't know anybody living who could serve as a messenger for me.
Wait a minute. I might not have known someone, but Percy did. All I had to do was call her.
I snatched a black blade of grass from the ground and tried to remember something that my mother's huntresses had taught me when I ran into them last summer.
"Got it," I muttered. Lifting the blade of grass to my lips, I blew hard. A long whistle came out, sounding a bit like a strangled kazoo.
They'd told me that a blade of grass could be used to call a timber wolf to my aid, as long as it knew me. But that was up in the mortal world; down here, I was hoping that it would call a much bigger dog.
For a long moment, nothing happened. A couple of ghosts looked at me like I was nuts—and maybe I was. Usually, nobody wanted to summon these creatures.
Then a large shadow appeared on the ground a yard away, even though it was nowhere near a tree. A large creature jumped out of it, wagging her tail happily. A spirit screamed and ran away, and more followed suit.
Because the creature I had summoned was a hellhound. A big one, too. It was about the size of a small baby elephant, with pitch black fur and glowing red eyes. I'd tangled with them enough times to know that their teeth and claws were as long as daggers and just as sharp, but lucky for me, this one was friendly.
"WOOF!" Mrs. O'Leary barked when she saw me. She bounded forward, attempting to say hello to me, but she just went right through my body, which I found a touch depressing, yet relieving. Percy had introduced me to her once or twice, and it had taken me a while to clean all the hellhound slobber off of my clothes.
"Hey, girl," I told her, smiling. If I were still alive, Cooper would have been insanely jealous to find another dog's scent on me. But it was just another painful reminder that I was not.
"Wanna do me a favor?" I asked the hellhound.
"WOOF!"
"I'm gonna take that as a yes," I said, ignoring the urge to scratch Mrs. O'Leary behind the ears, just how Cooper liked it.
Quickly looking around, I grabbed another, thicker blade of grass from the ground. Thinking fast, I scrawled a quick message on it by using my fingernails to carve into it. Hopefully, the others would receive my message, but there were a lot of unknown factors. Mrs. O'Leary could get lost. The blade of grass (which was a plant from the Underworld) could crumble into dust as soon as it reached the mortal world. The others could attack the hellhound, thinking she was hostile.
I took a deep, calming breath. Trust. I needed to trust Mrs. O'Leary, trust my friends, and trust myself. This would work. It had to.
I turned back around to find Mrs. O'Leary sniffing around Jake curiously. The poor boy looked terrified. When Mrs. O'Leary began to growl menacingly, I decided it was time to intervene.
"Hey!" I told her, drawing her attention back to me. I wasn't sure what the attention span of hellhounds was, but Mrs. O'Leary immediately lost all interest in Jake when I called her over.
I crouched down so that I was face-level with her. Under normal stances (AKA if I were still alive), I never would have put my face anywhere near a hellhound, friendly or not, but these were desperate times.
"Mrs. O'Leary," I said, my voice deadly serious. I held up the blade of grass with the message on it. "I need you to take this to Percy and the others. Find Liam. It's really, really important. Can you do that for me?"
"WOOF!"
"Great." I carefully maneuvered the blade of grass between her teeth, which is not easy to do when your fingers are basically transparent. When she was ready to go, I bid her goodbye.
She woofed again one more time before jumping into another shadow and disappearing.
"Now what?" Jake asked after a moment.
"Now," I said with a sigh, "we wait."
What do you call a dog that does magic?
A labracadabrador.
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