An Undertow of Sand

I don't think I've ever been this angry before.

I have a temper and a lot of things to get mad about, especially this past week, but this? I felt violated, like I could still feel the slimy lingering stench of tendrils rifling through my memories. Suppressing some, pruning others, all to make sure I wouldn't want to leave.

I accepted that I would have to pay the toll. I knew what the Price was and I accepted it.

I felt betrayed. I felt like I had just seen Dylan again.

Right where Mom said he would be.

It wasn't quite the same, because my anger then had been made up of a lot of different pieces. Shame and guilt and a desperate need to do something to make Eva's missing arm right and knowing there was nothing I could do. It had been a done deal. Everyone in the Celtic pantheon of the Tuatha de respected Eva's Price.

Even Mom.

I had been a bit scared too, because Dylan was so much older and better than me with the spear. I had been worried that his dad, Donn of the Dead would intervene even with what his son did to the daughter of his King.I had still been lost, drowning because Mom had just come back after a year of being gone and I didn't know how to feel or what to do about it. All of those feelings mixed into a toxic cocktail of rage so black, I almost couldn't even see. I moved to attack him with my new unnamed sword immediately. He deflected it with the pitch black and silver javelin and maybe he looked sorry.

Maybe he even said he was sorry.

I can't remember. It had been really hard for me to think.

My next attack he had parried, reached for the sword he dual wielded and it was the exact same movement he had made when he parried Evangeline's long dagger when she realized he had given us up -

And I had stopped thinking at all.

I was on the edge of that. I could feel it. I could imagine the fluttering of the blinds in my apartment in the Dreamlands, glimpses of the black beach of razor fossils and the dark tower on the horizon behind the drapes. On the part of me that I locked away.

As I leisurely walked behind the lifeguard (heh, lifeguard, get it?) my back rippled under the coating of pool water on my skin as everyone stared. No one got in my way. I didn't know what I would have done if anyone did. I was still smiling when we came to the front desk and the receptionist was back between one blink and the next.

She looked worried. "So, you wanted to see the manager again, right?"

"Yup."

She fidgeted and shared an unseeing closed eye look with the lifeguard. "...do you mind waiting? He's in a meeting right now."

"I think," I said very slowly as I leaned in. "That he has taken enough of my Time. Don't you agree?"

She obligingly bobbed her head as the lifeguard grimaced and backed away from the desk. "Wholeheartedly," the receptionist said. "Unfortunately, I just don't have the clearance to interrupt him like this."

"Just bring up the elevator," I said. "I can take it from there."

"...is there anything you would take in recompense instead?" She frowned. "I can't call the elevator right now."

"You can't," I repeated blandly.

She shook her head and bit her lip.

I considered this blankly, like I was thinking without really thinking. It felt familiar. A vague sense of

'Going, going, going….'

I looked around the lobby and felt the world tilt.

That kid again. Black hair and sea green eyes dragged what looked a lot like Annabeth and Grover past me towards the hotel exit, sparing me a confused, alarmed glance. He opened his mouth, thought better of it and kept moving. One of the bellhops broke off from the crowd and I couldn't tell if he was here with me or there with him.

Well now, are you ready for your platinum cards? He asked the kid.

We're leaving, was the reply as the Annabeth look-a-like snatched the Grover-look-a-like's hand back from the card. I watched as he vanished out the door, a heavy backpack warping its way onto his back as they spilled out into the Las Vegas street.

He cast one last look back through the Lotus Hotel and Casino doors at me and the vision broke.

I could do that. All of the servants were scared of me. They would let me leave. They probably wanted me too and this wasn't an offense that caught Mom's attention. We would all know if it did.

Luke and Artemis were here too, I remembered distractedly. I should go find them before too much time has passed. Then I should grab Nico and his sister, Bianca and leave.

I should leave.

Run away, like the little mortal I am. My stomach twisted. I was going to have to face my cousin, Persephone again after this. I didn't want to do that, still afraid. Part of me acknowledged that being afraid of the Priestess of the Endless Abyss was the sane response, but most of me didn't care right now. Aren't you supposed to face your fears?

'Fear' didn't feel like it meant the same thing I thought it meant just minutes ago. Like the definition had changed to something just two dimensions to the left. I felt like my thoughts were floating on the surface of a reflective pool, but I didn't know what it would take to drown them.

No time like the present.

I made myself approach the wall behind the front desk. The elevator had been right here. I thought about the doorman when he pointed me towards the front desk.

There's no one there?

There will be.

It was just a wall now. I stared at the smiling poster of the beach goer with a pina colada in their hand taped to the blank white plaster. I couldn't help thinking, I choose my own destiny. To this day, I still don't know why I thought that. It had nothing to do with this. The Lotus Hotel and Casino were just beside reality and I already knew the elevator was there. I paused for a second, thinking again that I should just leave, but it was like my brain was running on a parallel track to my actions. I raised my right hand.

There was nothing there.

There will be.

I reached out and pushed the button.

The elevator made a dinging noise as it opened.

"It's fine," I said as the receptionist choked. I looked back and her eyebrows were so high up her forehead, her eyes were even open a little. Just enough for gossamer thin white legs to fold out and curl up to the top and bottom like eyelashes. "I got it. By the way." I got in the elevator. "Do you want his job?"

"What?" She said faintly.

"His job. Want it?" I waved a hand as the doors started to close. "You have a better business sense."

That freebie would have saved us all so much trouble.

I hummed along with the elevator music as it screeched like cold metal shearing under the twist of the vice. Down and down and down I went. When the doors finally opened again, I felt my smile wilt a little.

Lining the hallway in front of me were faceless men in suits wielding batons, walkie talkies and sunglasses all with identical haircuts. By faceless I meant faceless, like moving mannequins directed to block the corridor.

Hotel security.

"You really don't want to do this," I said slowly. They advanced, all taking the same exact step forward.

Guess we're doing this.

I leapt right into them, pulling Damocles from its necklace while in the air and the first guy went down with the bone blade through his forehead. I was immediately smashed over the head with a baton as all their radios screeched with static. I fell with the blow, letting my weight help me free my sword as I fell right into the middle of them.

"Hi," I said, head pounding, then I lashed out with Damocles aiming for their ankles.

I wasn't interested in killing them. I just had to get through.

The entire slog through the corridor was like that, exchanging blunt hits with more permanent bladed solutions. They were built to deal with the average hotel enjoyer. They were trying to restrain me. My water reflexively surged up when I was caught around the neck and lifted off the ground, churning until it was a pressure hose and then lashing back.

More blood mixed in with the water I was wearing as armor, turning it pink. I was under no obligation to hold back. My Spidey Sense was silent, so I knew I was perfectly safe.

'No one can die in the Lotus Casino.'

I swung my hand and my water extended my reach, crushing a few guys against the walls. I was knocked into the wall myself from a vicious kick to my side from my blind spot and I swung Damocles blindly in the direction it pulled in, water coming off the edge just as sharp, cutting through limbs.

My sword sang.

I pushed off the wall, blinking the eyes that had opened in my shadow. No more blind spots. I launched myself back at them like a human blender. I just swung and swung with absolutely no skill, because everything I touched came apart. My water started gaining shape, lifting off my body as crude battering rams, to sharp tendrils moving like I had a second mind I wasn't consciously aware of.

I took a sharp punch to the face, flooding my mouth with an iron taste that turned to saltwater, washing the pain away as my water took the offending arm off. I turned, seeing another approaching behind me and Damocles hit air as he suddenly backed off when his radio crackled.

They all did, standing still like statues in an art museum.

I blinked and realized I had made it to the other side of them, my back to the rest of the hallway and it was empty.

I let out a long breath. "Are we good?"

They didn't respond.

"O…kay then." I felt like nothing had happened at all. I knew I'd been hit. A lot. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe I just healed a bit faster than I thought I did.

I spared them one last wary look and then turned away to get out of the foyer. Right on the other side of the narrow opening into the mural filled hallway was a familiar face.

Kind of.

"Oof, that's rough, buddy." I had kind of been wondering where he went.

The doorman wheezed through his open chest cavity from where he had been impaled to the wall. His face was shredded to the bone and so was most of his torso. One of his arms was straight up gone, sluggishly bleeding from where it had been bit off above the elbow and the other had a flayed forearm. His uniform was just barely holding together. He looked like he had tried to hug a wood chipper and it hadn't appreciated the violation of personal space.

No wonder the servants all seemed wary of touching me.

I gave awful haircuts.

…the manager… The quivering black barb through his guts was one that I recognized because it was mine. …will see you now.

"I bet," I snorted as I called more of the water to me and it rose from the ground. "I gave you a hard time, huh?"

The man nodded weakly.

"I'd apologize, but you know how it is."

The hallway I was standing in was really different from the room right outside the elevator. They were scoured like a sandstorm had blown through for hours. It had completely wiped the murals clean until all that was left was pitted sandblasted stone and seeping pockets of brackish water. I pulled on the barb. The doorman fell to the floor with a silent groan as the inky viscous material of the spine sunk back under my skin.

An echoing whale song roared up the hallway as I started walking.

It took no effort at all to dig into the well of nothingness in my stomach. "You speak to Perseus of the B̸l̴o̸o̶d̶y̵ ̴T̷o̵n̷g̴u̶e̷."

The walls vibrated loud enough to hum with the second call.

What was up with the misgendering? I did not have the time nor the inclination for a Tolerance and Diversity session.

"You did not cross my parent," I admitted as my voice resonated with a dark whooshing howling. "You should have been more concerned with crossing M̵̨͒E̷̙͑."

The next call was louder. The floor shook.

"Your Price was Time, amadán," I refuted, the Irish just slipping out. "I do not care that you 'only' nibbled on my memories. I did not agree to that."

The manager wailed.

I trailed a hand along the wall and the rock crumbled before the churning water on my fingers. "But do you have the receipt?"

The walls shook and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I came to the glass corridor at the bottom of an alien ocean.

'No one can die at the Lotus Casino.'

My Spidey Sense was for what would kill me.

I stopped politely at the opening and slowly, a giant sickly pale finger emerged from the dark water to gently rest on the glass. It reminded me of the finger of a frog, or maybe a Roswell Gray with an enlarged pad and a bony triple joint before the rest of the finger extended out of sight. Just that single joint dwarfed me by at least fifteen feet. I could feel the water beyond the glass somehow. The impression of vague movement, of hundreds of tentacles waving through the water and a greedy, grinning snout filled with shark teeth.

Then came the silent touch to my mind.

Oh.

The manager, duh.

Middle management was always incompetent. As Mom always said, if you want something done right, sometimes you just gotta do it yourself.

If you really wanted to make yourself heard, take it to the owner.

"Sorry for interrupting your meeting with your employee." I told the Lotus Eater as I opened my mind further and felt the sickly sweet smell of lotus flowers worming their way through my perspective of what happened. "But this really couldn't wait? I am o̶w̷e̷d̵."

The finger dragged on the glass. The impression of the grinning shark-like snout flickered again in the dark water as a far, far off ghostly light drifted into view.

I crossed the corridor of glass, aware of death screaming at the back of my neck. I opened the door on the other side and saw that it looked like the aftermath of Woodstock. Everything was smashed and broken and sandblasted clean. The basin that had been in the center looked like a bomb had gone off in it, scattering pebbles all around the room still etched with the geometric designs.

The statue holding the gem was untouched, but it wasn't smiling anymore.

There was a squeal of fear.

An astonishingly small ugly grub-like creature in fluorescent yellow robes and a flowery straw hat made a break for it out from under the statue's shadow, wriggling for the far corner. I don't remember even taking a step before I was suddenly just there behind it. My own hand was too small to fit around its sunken, misshapen skull, but the water surged up from the pool to ensnare it. It looked like it had gone through a meat grinder, with one side of its body bandaged up in seaweed under the robes.

"I'd ask for a refund, but your boss is actually a pretty cool dude, from one big eater to another," I said. "And really, Time was the actual payment. It's what you skimmed off the top that I have a problem with. You had all the Time in the world to tell me you wanted a tip."

The water dragged the manager backwards as it futilely struggled, scrabbling at the floor with all six of its backwards limbs.

My stomach opened wide.

"So I'll just have to settle for a little charge back."

I left the room, burping.

Why did everything always taste like pork or calamari?

Or both.

"No hard feelings?" I asked the Lotus Eater, just to make sure. I smelled lotus blossoms. "Sweet. If it helps, your receptionist is A tier, just a bit unpolished."

The acknowledgment brushed the inside of my skull and then the pale finger slowly fell out of view.

I backtracked through the halls and to the elevator. I felt a little bad for having ruined most of the murals on the walls. It wasn't really my fault and I didn't have the memories anymore, but it was the principle of the thing. Tens of thousands of years of history, gone just like that.

Everything ends eventually, I thought. A stray half-thought/feeling/impression made me pause before entering the now empty and clean foyer. "Hey, has there ever been another boy that looked like me, staying here?"

The doorman wheezed a dubious negative.

"There could have been?" I clarified and he nodded weakly from the floor.

"Huh," I said. "Thanks."

I got into the elevator. I wondered for a moment at the two buttons, because I clearly remembered there only being one when I first came to the Hotel. I shrugged it off and pressed to go back up. At least this time, there was better music playing.

When the elevator opened again, Luke was there, holding my backpack in one hand and my jacket in the other with Artemis still out of it in his vest.

"I hate…" he began slowly. "...everything about this Quest."

"We didn't know you were a prince," the receptionist insisted with the air of having already said it multiple times and was now wondering if his IQ surpassed the room temperature. Her closed eyelids scrunched further like she was squinting. "Or half of one…? Semi - demi…?"

There was blood leaking down his face from his shattered eye.

The left looked the normal cloudy blue. The right looked broken. It resembled one of those perspective puzzles. Looking at it head on made it similar to the left, but as soon as you paid any actual attention, you could see the half-dozen blearily staring blue irises reflecting off each other making the eye gleam in the bright Hotel lighting.

"Huh," I said again. I turned to the staring Nico and his looking-like-she-was-going-to-pass-out sister. "Hi, I'm Percy and was actually here to rescue you."

Bianca flinched, clinging to her brother tighter like she was seconds from snatching him away and forgetting I ever existed. "Rescue…?"

"Something came up," I said. "Your stepmother sent me on your dad's behalf." Her mouth fell open into a little 'o.' "Yeah, I got turned around."

"Stepmother?" Nico said quietly, eyes black as he mournfully gazed between his sister and me.

"Not yours," I said gently. "Because we're going to see your mom too."

His eyes lit up. Literally.

"Please?" He turned to his sister. "We can always come back."

"We're not supposed to - " Bianca was hyperventilating. "We can't just walk off with anyone that says they know our parents - !"

"He's not a stranger!" Nico protested. "He's nice - '' He winced when Bianca swayed on her feet. I then realized that maybe the dark spines poking out from my shoulder blades, the blood on my T-shirt, my shadow full of burning green eyes and all the tentacles made of water waving around me was not the greatest impression I could have made if I wanted the 'Come with me if you want to live' thing to work.

My bad.

"Change of plans," I said. "Luke - "

He was already gone, appearing behind Bianca in a blur of motion, picking her up and cutting off her scream by turning on his heel and fading away. Nico gaped.

"Trust me?"

He nodded slowly.

"Then let's go." I retraced the steps of the other boy through the Lotus Hotel and Casino lobby, holding Nico's hand. I felt the weirdest sense of deja vu when one of the bellhops plucked up the courage to call out before we hit the door.

"You sure you don't want to say a little longer?" He said plaintively. "We just added a new floor of games for platinum card members and VIPs."

"We're leaving," I echoed. "But I'll probably come back, it was fun without the whole…" I circled my head with my free hand vaguely.

He nodded sadly and then we were out.

I had barely taken two steps into the humid Nevada air when a newspaper was shoved into my face. When I finally managed to pin the floating numbers down, my heart sank.

June 19th.

Forget only being in there for twelve hours or my limit of two days. I was there for four.

"Two days left," Luke snarled.

"So that's bad," I agreed. The water I was holding splashed onto the ground. "But, look, I am about to fucking pass out - "

I woke up mid sentence.

" - so I would appreciate it if you could get us someplace…" I peered around dizzily at the blobs of color, finally recognizing that I was in a completely different location. And laying down on something soft. "Oh, come on!"

I was annoyed at myself for interrupting myself by fainting. I had been in the middle of a fucking conversation -

I blinked as my vision cleared up and I realized the monochrome blob I was staring at was actually a very annoyed looking Bianca di Angelo. I wasn't sure if her irritation was because she had just been kidnapped, because I had keeled over or because she had duct tape over her mouth.

It was probably the kidnapping. What kid would want to be pulled away from all those awesome games and food?

"Luke," I sighed. "You could have just stolen her voice?"

"Did that." Luke came into view then too. I was lying down on…a restaurant booth? There was a table low enough to nearly brush my nose when I turned my head. "Turns out, it makes me sound like a little girl so I gave it back." Bianca's left eyebrow twitched as her dark eyes pinned a glare on him. He ignored her. "How are you feeling?"

I rolled over onto my side and threw up all over his sneakers.

"Oh," Luke said.

I passed out again.

I woke up into the middle of a conversation over my head.

" - can't be, gods aren't real!" That was Bianca.

"You know what, I think I agree with you," my mouth said and she blinked down at me. "What?"

"What?" Artemis said, a fuzzy face peering over the table at me too.

"What?" I said. "Where are we?"

"Still in Las Vegas," Luke's voice said slowly. "Las Vegas is Spanish for 'The Meadows' in case you were curious."

"That's cool," I said, vaguely remembering what he was even talking about. Hecate's riddle. "So we just need to find the sunlight and new construction and shit?"

"...you gonna explain that god thing?" Luke asked as Nico loudly slurped up his soda from a can. "And yes."

"Sure," I said. "So the thing is, gods are like, a political term - "

And I was out like a light.

" - almost eight thousand years ago so Mom doesn't really pay attention to things like that anymore." I woke up to finish my thesis and then noticed that everyone but Nico had left.

Jerks.

"I am sure that was very interesting," the little shit said as he munched on a twinkie in the restaurant booth across the aisle from me. "In your head."

"Shut up," I rasped. I had a fever blazing out of control again making my head feel like it was a radiator on max settings and a bone deep cold pain in my shins. "Gimme a twinkie."

Nico hesitated as he pulled Luke's backpack closer to himself. "Are you going to sick up again?"

"Probably," I admitted, feeling my stomach gurgle unhappily. I waved a hand. "Help me up."

My head swam a little, but all in all, I could tell that I was doing much better than I had been at Rhea's. Like instead of being knocked out with pneumonia, I was getting over a cold or the annual flu and was just tired, achy and a little nauseous.

Progress!

"Where is everybody?"

"Bianca is talking with the…rabbit," Nico said with his face scrunched up. "You didn't tell me there were rabbits on the moon," he accused.

"The hotel manager took my memories." I gave up before I even started. "Couldn't exactly tell you what I couldn't remember."

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I…wasn't really paying attention earlier, but…" He looked at me with sad black eyes. "We were in that hotel for a very long time, weren't we?"

"I - yeah." There was a lump in my throat as I considered what it would be like going to sleep for a bit and waking up to find out that everyone I knew and loved had died ages ago. Mom solved that problem by rarely loving anyone that wouldn't last.

"World War 2 against Hitler ended about sixty years ago."

He blinked rapidly and then looked away, sniffling. "I'm an old man now," he tried to joke. His eyes shined wetly. "Nonno always used to say I'd know everything about everything when I got to his…age…" He sniffled again and rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his bright yellow shirt. "...we missed Mama's funeral. It was only supposed to be for three weeks…"

"Sorry," I said helplessly.

"...not your fault," Nico said almost thoughtfully with a dark whisper and tears in his voice. "Not your fault." He buried his head in his hands as it had finally all sunk in. His shadow spoke up for him instead.

it is Zeus' fault

"Is he lucid?" Was the first thing out of Luke's mouth when he came back inside the restaurant.

"Uh, excuse me?" I'd been lucid this entire time!

"English!" He exclaimed as he shuffled over to my table. The place we were stashed in was a brand new building, so new it wasn't even open yet with appliances in the kitchen still missing and everything but the plumbing turned off. Rhea's torch was providing the light, wedged in the design of the chandelier above us by someone who was too tall for his own good.

"You were talking in your sleep."

I shrugged. Honestly, not the first time someone told me that and it probably wasn't going to be the last. "What'd I say?"

"No idea!" Luke said with mock cheer. His right eye was still shattered and looked almost bloodshot. I opened my mouth to ask about that, because what the fuck but Luke kept going. "I heard Egyptian, some kind of Gaelic, Persian, something my brain only registered as Aboriginal Australian, Sumerian - "

"I understood that one," Nico spoke up from where he fiddled with my Gameboy. Don't judge me. Nico was practically a baby. That was the only thing I knew what to do with miserable little kids: throw some video games at them. His cheeks were still puffy and red from crying. "You still didn't make any sense."

"Greek - "

"And I understood that," Bianca admitted miserably, clutching Artemis to her chest from where she stood behind Luke.

"And fffff - " Luke cast a glance at Nico. "Freaking Chinese."

I really didn't know what to say to that other than, "So… what Name gives Hermes god of Diplomacy again?"

He flicked my forehead. I nearly threw up again. He looked a bit ashamed. "You've been out for about three hours, I just had to kill this…thing sniffing around four demigods and a rabbit in a bar so I am a little on edge," he explained in a Not Apology.

"I get that," I gasped as I tried to make sure whatever was trying to crawl up from my stomach didn't make its way out. Demigod scent. Hera's Curse was stil a thing. "Let me just - " I closed my eyes as I tried to beat the nausea back down. I Called out in Ancient Greek, "Persephoneia?"

I was a bit disappointed that nothing seemed to happen. When I was sure I wasn't going to spew, I opened my eyes to see Luke eyeing me in concern. "Is that…all it takes?"

"Yeah," I said. "But they've got to be - "

"Listening," Persephone finished from beside me and I nearly jumped an entire foot out of my skin when her cold hand rubbed my back. My Spidey Sense screamed. "Oh, you are adorable."

"You couldn't have…given a warning, cuz?" She let out a small, musical laugh as my heart tried to beat out of my chest and Luke did jump nearly a foot in the air with a yell when he registered the goddess sitting next to me.

"You Called me. Why weren't you prepared?" She looked the same as before, with long dark hair strung with rolling eyeballs in glass cages, but with a black and white dress and her pomegranate flower broach on her collar already withered and dry. She turned her face to 'look' across the table when Bianca gasped, taking a short step forward before she faltered and her face fell.

"Let me guess," Persephone said. "I look like your mother?" Bianca nodded hesitantly, like she wasn't sure if the woman would take offense to that. "Honestly, that man," the dark goddess sighed fondly. "And you," she said a lot less fondly as her face turned to Nico. He stiffened in his seat as all of the eyes in her hair focused on him. "You look like your mother," Persephone offered gently, but the skin where her eyes should have been was tight. "Hello, nephew."

Nico slowly relaxed. "Hello," he said shyly. "Aunt Persephone?"

The woman inclined her head.

Luke opened his mouth, blanched and closed it again, backing up a few panicked steps when Persephone stood up, ghosting right through the table like she was just an illusion. I pressed back into my seat.

My stomach hurt.

"Bianca," she said and the girl jumped. "I already prepared your rooms. Don't worry about missing anything, trust me. I missed nothing." She raised her hand, fingers pressed together like she was about to snap them. "Ah, please put down the rabbit," she said dryly.

"Oh!" Bianca rushed to put the shivering Artemis down on the nearest table and then paused. "What about - "

"Your half-brother?" Persephone flashed a charming smile as the siblings stared at each other. "He is no longer your concern."

Bianca bit her lip. "I…I don't understand any of this - "

"Can you not feel it?" The goddess interrupted her. "The comfort in stillness, the ease with the cold, how I feel safe to you?"

Hades' demigod daughter stared with wide eyes. I didn't blame her. My demigod sense was constantly shrieking that I was looking at Death.

Then again, Hades was the God of the Dead.

"It means 'welcome home,' girl. Your father and I will teach you what you need to know, I promise." Everyone ignored Artemis' small gasp of surprise. "Now, are you ready to go?"

Bianca nervously brushed some of her long hair back behind her ear. Nico hugged himself when she nodded, not sparing him a glance. "I am."

She was gone in a snap of the goddess' fingers.

"Well done, Perseus," Persephone mused and a shiver went down my spine hearing my name when she turned back to me. "It will take her, hmm, perhaps a few months to reconstitute from perishing so suddenly - "

What!

"You killed her!?" Nico burst out.

"Technically," the goddess said. Nico jumped to his feet, but he only made it two steps before suddenly falling into a dead faint right into her arms. "You are definitely your mother's child."

I found my voice. "You killed her? You said - "

"Exactly what I meant," Persephone said coolly. "Oh, don't give me that, I adopted her, silly boy."

"You - " My mind went blank. "You adopted her," I said slowly. Persephone's dad was Tartarus, an Elder God. I would bet money that she was like Hypnos, an Elder God as well. They adopt? That happens? "And for that she had to - "

"There is only so much her gifts from my husband will do for her in the Underworld," the Priestess of the Endless Abyss said easily as she cradled Nico on her hip with his head against her shoulder like she was just taking him to bed. "The human condition is a hindrance."

Artemis scoffed tightly. "You would say that."

"Because it is true," Persephone said just as tightly. "The same way Nyx will have to put in a bit more work into this one to make sure he doesn't drive himself mad - well," she corrected herself, looking down at Nico's sleeping face dubiously. "She might not have to, but to be on the safe side - the safe…"

She trailed off with dawning horror on her face.

"The safe - I'm turning into my mother!"

Persephone quickly turned around and headed straight for the back door of the restaurant without another word.

I looked at Artemis. Artemis looked at Luke. Luke looked at me.

We all bolted for the door after her.

Outside in the empty parking lot, the Night sky overhead felt low and oppressive. Like the darkness was just a few feet over our head instead of hundreds of miles away. Even the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip in the distance seemed muted and hollow. Persephone stood against the darkness with her head tilted up, the white diamond patterns on her long dress glowing like the sun.

"She suspects," Persephone said as we approached, turning her head just enough to show the curve of her cheek. "She will recognize him, but does not truly know who the boy is, so you will let me do the talking, understand?"

"Yeah," I croaked as pitch black shadows started to gather in the center of the lot.

I heard Luke whimper as a figure rose from the black as the void closed in until we were standing in a small patch of tar and pavement, just like when I had Called Apate. At first glance, the feminine figure looked like Deception too with stars in her eyes and a dress splattered with the colors of a cold nebula and developing stars. A pressure was building behind my eyes and pounding in my head as the shadow at her feet got bigger and bigger, at twenty feet tall and then fifty and then a hundred before the mouths sprouted.

Too close, my brain gibbered. Too close.

"Sister," Persephone said. Her voice was very, very even in that way people who are spitting mad and determined not to show it sounded. She stepped forward. "This is the boy you forced my husband to sire. Do you recognize him?"

The star eyes blinked slowly.

Mine

The darkness whispered with all of her thousand mouths, scraping at my ribs.

"It is within my right as my Father's Priestess to Claim him - '' She broke into an eerie multi-toned gurgling rasp of grinding bones and the Night pulled back from where She had moved. "Do not be rude. Our cousin went through the trouble of retrieving him for you. You owe him."

The weight of Night's attention fell on me.

My knees buckled as I choked. It was nothing like and exactly the same as when I was Dreaming. I didn't know how much of it was Hypnos shielding me or if my Sleeping Soul was just more resilient, but I could swear I heard my entire skeleton creak. The unrelenting pressure was like I was falling into the center of a star, endlessly on the verge of swallowing me whole, but satisfying itself with simply tasting my soul.

After a few deep breaths, I was able to stand through it again.

Nyx projected something like affection and something like pride at me before letting Persephone command her attention again.

Favor

"Remove yourself from this plane of existence for a Gaian cycle," Persephone said sharply before softening. "You have a demigod to take care of, sister. Just like you wanted."

Joy glittered in the shadows as the pale woman with dark hair finished taking shape.

Nico did look like her.

He and Bianca shared a chin and ears, but it was something about how his features were spaced and the shape of his face that really made me think he was Night's son.

Persephone woke Nico up, setting him on the ground. Before he could yell, she knelt in front of him with her hands on his shoulders.

"Your mother is right there," she said and his mouth snapped shut as he whipped his head around, his monochrome eyes white and surprised. "Go to her."

Nico looked at me with wide black eyes.

I tried to smile confidently. "Auntie's great."

He stared for an uncomfortably long time. His eyes flashed between white and black before he eventually smiled a trembling smile back. "I'll see you again?"

"Definitely," I said. "We're friends and family." Some fucking how? "Count on it."

The other child of Prophecy took in a deep breath, then before his courage broke he ran to his Mom who gathered him up in her arms. The void retreated from around us, sinking back into the sky and the ground and the spaces in between as he babbled to Her, crying.

My

The entire Night sky sighed.

Baby

Nyx's toothy shadow collapsed over top of them and then they too were gone.

In the silence that followed, Artemis' whispered from the ground,

"He is Hades' demigod."

"My husband made a deal," Persephone replied. She folded her hands in front of her and they were trembling. "That boy was his payment for this millennia and he is no more capable of resisting than any random human on this planet." She smiled coldly. "Wonder what it is like to have a child you know is yours and at the same time you know they aren't. You can feel it. You can see it!"

The eyeballs spinning in their glass cages swept over me.

"I would have said nothing. I did say nothing when he chose to pass the boy off as his own. He would have made sure the Night in him was buried, even if it meant dipping the boy in the Lethe."

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with Persephone's presence.

The Lethe.

The Lethe was a river in the Underworld, the one where souls that wanted to be reincarnated took a bath in so that they forgot everything about who they used to be. To do that to someone still alive by force was dangerously close to what 'being unmade' meant. To have everything that made you you stripped away, not just exposed.

Scoured clean.

And you remembered it happening. At least the Lethe would make you forget.

"Anger no longer means the same to me," Persephone said almost airily. "But if there is one thing that still infuriates me is someone - "

Her body split apart like a 3D puzzle and there in the center were her eyes.

"F̷u̸c̸k̴i̸n̷g̷ ̷w̶i̸t̴h̴ ̸m̶y̷ ̷h̷u̶s̴b̵a̵n̸d̵!̵"

There was blood in my mouth and dark spots in my vision as I reeled back from her, unable to recall what exactly I just saw. My head was pounding. I felt like I had just taken a rusty spoon through my ear to scoop out a few tablespoons of my brain. There was a thud as Luke hit the ground with a groan, a hand over his shattered eye as blood streamed from it. Artemis convulsed on the ground, teeth clattering.

"Competent demigods are so rare these days and all so weak. I will remember this. Your mother must be proud." Persephone clicked back together primly.

"She is," I slurred, dead on my feet. "Really proud."

"The Night is retreating, but it will take some time for the natural order to reassert itself." That old Hollywood movie star smile and chuckle from the daughter of my uncle, the Priestess of the Endless Abyss and the Goddess of Murder. "Three villages, one plague! A pleasure doing business with you, cousin."

As I wondered what exactly she got from this, grasping bony fingers erupted from the ground and dragged her under.

I wasn't sure when I passed out again, but when I woke up this time it was to a skinny black dog draped over my legs back in the restaurant we broke into. I was leaning against someone that I assumed was Luke and I grunted as my head throbbed like I'd taken a brick to the face.

Maybe I did take a brick to the face.

Or at least a parking lot.

"And so the prodigal son awakes," Hecate murmured.

"Shit," I said.

I had been sleeping on her.

"Wait - "

"I said that you will not be late," the goddess of the Crossroad said softly. "And what is sunlight, but that which banishes the darkness? You are where you should be."

My mouth hung open.

Really?

That was it?

I looked around the new restaurant to see a Luke curled up in that minimized space kind of way in Hecate's white cloak on the floor and her polecat was cuddling an auburn bunny rabbit on the table.

"What do you want?" I asked warily, feeling exhausted.

It's been a long fucking day.

"A key," she replied. "But not right now. Go back to sleep."

I eyed her.

What I could see of the goddess' chin and mouth under her white cowl looked amused as she pulled me back against her. She started humming and against my will, I felt my eyes droop. Has she ever done this for Alabaster or any of her other kids? I was vaguely aware of her handing me a Mythomagic card.

"She knows where it is."

Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon.

"Now, sleep."

I could have cried in relief.

Hypnos was finally there to carry me away.