Ghost Town (Hound of Hades Book 3), page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Up Next: Night Terrors
More Books by Zoe Cannon
About the Author
Ghost Town
Hound of Hades: Book 3
Zoe Cannon
© 2020 Zoe Cannon
http://www.zoecannon.com
All rights reserved
Cover by Fiona Jayde Media
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
I studied the opponents in front of me, weighing my options. If I used my full strength, it would be easy enough to knock them down and send them scattering—but I couldn’t risk it. With so many civilians around, subtlety had to come first, even if that ultimately meant defeat. As much as I hated the thought, I was going to have to pull my punches.
I sent the ball rolling down the lane. At my true strength, it would have smashed into the pins and sent them flying into the neighboring lanes in pieces. That was what I told myself as the ball rolled anemically toward the pins for about two feet before swerving abruptly into the gutter like it had given up on me.
“Gutter ball,” Kimmy crowed from behind me.
I sank into the sweat-stained chair Kimmy had vacated as she stepped up to take her turn. “I shouldn’t even be here,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the noise of the birthday party next to us. “I still have to figure out if Ishtar is making some kind of deal with Sekhmet. And stop Hades’s newest allies from killing each other before they blow up half the city. And maybe get a couple of hours of sleep sometime this week. I can’t afford to waste time clomping around in rented shoes and throwing balls at enemies who can’t fight back.”
“It’s a good thing they don’t fight back,” said Kimmy, “or you’d be losing.” She hefted the ball in her hands, testing the weight. “Losing worse than you already are, I mean.”
I scowled. “You’re not doing a great job of convincing me to stay.”
“We’re connected now,” said Kimmy. “All three of us. We’re not getting rid of each other anytime soon. If we’re all going to live together without killing each other, we’re going to have to start bonding.” She said it like she was talking about a school assignment and she was determined to get an A.
“But did it have to be bowling? Couldn’t you have chosen something less…” Humiliating was the first word that came to mind. I rejected it in favor of a weak, “…noisy?”
Kimmy’s ball flew down the aisle as if it had sprouted wings. The pins toppled, one after the other. Another strike. I wished I could say I was surprised.
And I couldn’t even argue with her. It wasn’t as if the three of us were at each other’s throats, but as far as domestic harmony was concerned, our apartment left something to be desired. Kimmy had chosen me as a roommate based on the fact that I was quiet, didn’t date, and cleaned up after myself. I had neglected to tell her that I worked for the god Hades, that my enemies included everyone from rival gods to mortals who thought the human race should rule itself, and that, by the way, I might need to turn the apartment into a permanent temple of Hades at some point. Not that I had anticipated that last part, until the aforementioned mortals had blown up the old temple.
Lissa, Hades’s last surviving Guardian, had moved in as part of the package. I had expected Kimmy to look for a way to get rid of us; instead, for reasons I still didn’t understand, she had risked her own life to save Lissa’s by creating a blood bond between them. We were all in this together now, whether we liked it or not. And when Lissa was keeping us up at night with her chanting, or I was inconsiderate enough to come home with a gunshot wound and bleed on the carpet, or Kimmy got in the shower before me even though she knew I had to leave in ten minutes, the needle tended to land on “not.” We had to try something, or Hades was going to be getting an unwanted blood sacrifice before too long.
But… bowling? Really?
“You somehow always managed to have other plans every time I tried to hold a meeting for the three of us to discuss and resolve our concerns. And I understand that whatever Lissa is doing is very important, but I doubt Hades really needed her to be chanting or meditating or staring at the altar whenever we had a meeting scheduled.” Kimmy sent the ball down the lane a second time. Another strike. Of course. “So I thought we could make things a little more fun. And it worked, didn’t it? You’re both here.”
The fact that she had ambushed us with her plan right after we had both told her we were free tonight probably also had something to do with it. “That still doesn’t explain why you chose bowling.”
Kimmy strutted back to sit in the chair next to me. If she had any inkling of how many sweaty butts had sat in that chair before her, she didn’t show it. “Come on, you’re having fun. Admit it.”
“I had more fun tracking that rogue gnome through the sewers last week.”
Lissa picked up the ball that was waiting for her. She was wearing civilian clothes tonight instead of her usual robes—more specifically, a gauzy dress borrowed from my friend Ciara, which threatened to drown her but still suited her better than my wardrobe of torn jeans and chaotically-patterned t-shirts. She sniffed the ball, made a face, and put it back. Instead, she picked up one that looked like it weighed about as much as a small car. I raised my eyebrows, impressed, as she managed not to drop it on her foot.
Then my eyebrows leapt up to the ceiling as the ball rolled down the lane without so much as a wobble. When she walked back to us, not a single pin was left standing.
“What—how—” I glared at Lissa like she had betrayed me. I had thought Kimmy was just weirdly good at this stupid game.
“My family used to go bowling a lot when I was a kid.” She made a face. “I always lost.”
It threw me a little every time Lissa mentioned her life before she became a Guardian. Of course I knew she hadn’t been born serving Hades, but seeing her outside the temple was a bit like seeing a unicorn walking down the middle of Fifth Avenue. The thought of her growing up in the regular world, with parents and siblings and report cards just like the rest of us, didn’t compute.
“Hang on,” I said as Lissa started to grab the too-heavy ball again. I frowned. “You’re not using magic, are you? Because if I have to hold back, then so do you.”
Every god—every god who is interested in holding onto their territory in the mortal world, that is—has two types of humans that work for them. First there are the Marked, like me. We’re the hands of the gods, their weapons in this world. If a god has a problem in the mortal world, especially a problem that requires a violent solution, we’re the ones they call.
The Guardians, on the other hand, are more about the spiritual side of things. Sometimes that means sitting in the temple chanting for hours on end. Occasionally it means raising the dead, or calling down lightning, or shooting fire from their hands—depending on the god they serve, of course. As much as we humans have always liked to talk about magic, the Guardians are the only ones who can do more than talk; that kind of thing requires a god’s power.
Except for that one group of humans. But I wasn’t thinking about them tonight. Especially not about their head researcher and how much I wanted to call him. Two calls per week—that was the limit I had set for myself. Any more than that and I’d be sending a message I didn’t want to send. And I had already hit the two-call limit days ago.
Lissa looked at me as if I had suggested that she had boiled herself a couple of babies for lunch. “I would never use the power of Hades to win a mortal game. What kind of Guardian do you think I am?”
“The kind with a newfound gift for bowling, apparently.” I was beginning to regret not using my full strength. As well as skipping all of Kimmy’s torturous meetings. I should have known “I’m going to get shot if I come out of hiding right now” wouldn’t work as an excuse more than once. Even if it had actually been true two out of the three times I had used it.
“How did the new job go yesterday?” Kimmy asked as Lissa stepped up for her second throw.
I had been hoping she would forget about that. I stared down at the scuffed toes of my bowling shoes. “You’ll get my share of the rent, if that’s what you’re asking. Mine and Lissa’s.”
“Plus what you owe me for the past few months,” Kimmy prompted.
I kicked the ugly shoe against the side of the chair. “That too. And the rest of what I
“I appreciate that.” I couldn’t tell whether she meant to sound sincere or just snotty. “But that’s not why I was asking,” she continued. “In the spirit of roommate fun night, I want our relationship to be about more than money. I’m trying to be a considerate roommate. More than that—a friend. And as a friend, I can’t help but notice how secretive you’ve been about this new job.”
I wondered how long she had spent practicing that overly-earnest tone in the mirror. Then again, that would have at least meant she was trying, which was more than I was doing. For a second, I actually thought about telling her. She was right about us needing to get to know each other better, after all, even if the thought of having Kimmy as a friend and confidante sounded about as appealing as buying an album of nothing but recordings of fingernails on a chalkboard. “It’s not important. You’ll get paid—that’s all you need to know.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kimmy frown. “That kind of attitude isn’t what roommate fun night is all about.”
“We shouldn’t even be doing—” I couldn’t bring myself to say the phrase “roommate fun night.” “—this kind of thing right now. I know the apartment hasn’t exactly been stress-free lately, but between the new job and… my other work, I’m stretched thin as it is. The last thing I need is to mistake a civilian for one of Zeus’s Marked because I’m exhausted from bowling. And it’s not like you’re doing much better, with that professor who keeps assigning you thousand-page papers. I’ll stick it out for tonight, but after this, my vote is for ignoring each other as much as possible until we all have a little more time to breathe.”
Kimmy’s frown started to deepen. Then, abruptly, she smiled. I didn’t like that smile; I had seen it from too many enemies who thought they had gotten the upper hand. “You’re just trying to avoid telling me about your new job, aren’t you? Well, your excuses won’t work on me. Give me the whole story, starting with what exactly this mysterious job is.”
Lissa was lying facedown in front of the lane, head propped up on one hand, meditating on the pins as if she thought they held the secret to world peace. With the other hand, she scratched idly at the wooden floor. I frowned. “Should one of us go get her?”
“You’re not going anywhere until you answer my question.”
Apparently having gotten the answer she was looking for from the pins, Lissa stood, brushed off her dress, and walked back over to us. “It’s your turn, Mal.”
Kimmy shook her head. “She’s not getting up until she tells us where she’s working.”
“That’s easy,” said Lissa immediately. “She’s a bank robber.”
I was surprised my eyebrows didn’t crash through the ceiling this time, that was how fast they leapt up. “I’m a what now?”
“You keep irregular hours. Yesterday you left the house at two in the afternoon and came back at six. Today you didn’t go to work at all.”
“And that made you jump straight to bank robbery?”
“The bag you were carrying looked big enough to hold the contents of a vault.”
“Wait. Kimmy put you up to this, didn’t she? She thinks if you accuse me of something ridiculous, I’ll have to tell her what I’m actually doing.”
Kimmy shook her head. “She came up with that one all on her own. But look how well roommate fun night is working! When was the last time we all talked together like this without arguing?”
“I’m doing plenty of arguing. You two just aren’t listening.”
“You’re obviously not robbing banks,” said Kimmy, “so are you a… what’s it called when you sell stuff that other people steal? A hedge? Did you have stolen goods in that bag? I know you have connections to the underworld.”
“The actual underworld! Where the dead go! All that stuff I said about my supposed criminal past was a cover so you wouldn’t ask questions about the people who were trying to kill me.”
“Or so you said.” Kimmy waggled her eyebrows.
“And the word you’re looking for is ‘fence.’”
“Aha!” Kimmy pointed at me accusingly. “How would you know that if you didn’t have criminal ties?”
“I’m not a criminal!” A couple of parents at the birthday party glanced over at us with alarm. I lowered my voice. “Look, the job is temporary, and it pays surprisingly well, and they were desperate and so was I. And that’s all you need to know.”
“Are you a prostitute?” asked Lissa just as the song on the radio ended. You know those moments where everything is loud and then there happens to be one second where everyone stops talking at once? Turns out even Lissa’s soft voice carries remarkably well during those moments. Half the birthday party was giving us death glares now.
“I’m doing children’s entertainment,” I muttered, staring at my shoes again. “Can we leave it at that?”
“Like a TV show?” asked Kimmy. “Isn’t that kind of risky for… you know… someone like you? I thought you had to keep a low profile.”
“Not like that. More like… parties.”
Kimmy leapt up from her chair, grinning like I had told the best joke she’d ever heard in her life. “You’re a clown!”
“I’m not a clown.”
“Secret agent for the god of the underworld by day, clown by night. Or would it be the other way around?” That damn grin was only getting wider.
“I’m not a clown. There’s no rainbow wig involved. No balloon animals, no red nose, no big shoes.”
“So then what was in that bag, if not the wig and the shoes?”
“My uniform.”
Kimmy just watched me, waiting.
I let out a loud sigh. “It’s my costume, okay? I’m Barkley the Basset Hound.”
Kimmy gave me a blank look. “Who?”
“It’s who you get for your kid’s party if you can’t afford a licensed character. Did I mention they were desperate? Their last Barkley quit with no notice to join a hippie commune in Nova Scotia. He already had the not-showering part down. The suit reeks of stale body odor.”
“You’re honoring Hades, in a way,” Lissa said thoughtfully. “He has a soft spot for dogs.”
“I’ll remember that next time I’m roasting to death in that suit, breathing in someone else’s old sweat.”
“You can take your turn now,” said Kimmy magnanimously. To her credit, she was doing a remarkable job of stifling her laughter, even if I could see the desperate twitches at the corners of her mouth as she tried to hold it in.
I stood. “You go ahead. I’m getting snacks. I heard there was junk food to be found.”
“You don’t have to do that. I brought food.” With a flourish, Kimmy pulled a bag of rice cakes from her purse.
“I’m going to get snacks,” I repeated.
Lissa took one of the rice cakes. As I walked away, I heard her say, “Whoever sold you these must have been mistaken. I don’t think these are food.”
I felt my lips curl upward in a smile, and told myself to quit it. I wasn’t enjoying this, I reminded myself sternly. Not my utter failure at bowling, not sitting around being useless when I should have been tracking Sekhmet’s Marked, and certainly not being teased about my job. It was none of their business what I did for a living anyway. And if Ciara came back from the mission Persephone had assigned her in Guatemala and found me smiling over roommate fun night, it would make her feel validated about all the times over the past four years that she had nagged me to make friends. I couldn’t go proving her right.
No, I was smiling because I could smell delicious artery-clogging food somewhere in this building—that was all. I followed the aroma across the carpet with its neon pattern of squares and triangles.
I had almost reached the snack counter when I heard the sound of breaking glass, and the scream that followed.
I turned—and saw three black dogs running through the building, each one the size of a small bear, trailing shards of the glass doors behind them.
“We have leash laws for a reason,” I muttered, hurrying the rest of the way toward the counter. I had narrowly avoided a run-in with an angry dog last month on a mission; that was enough dogs for me for a while.
