Ghost Town (Hound of Hades Book 3), page 7
Bastian knew, and swore it didn’t matter, but I’d heard that one before. It was tough to muster up the enthusiasm to jump headfirst into a new relationship when I’d already seen the end of that particular movie more times than I liked to think about. Before I died, I promised myself I was never going to date again, and I hadn’t broken that promise.
It was a lot easier before Bastian came along.
The truth was, I was going to give in. It was only a matter of time. I could see what was coming, even if I wasn’t prepared to give up the last of my denial just yet. The more time I spent with him, the more time I wanted to spend with him. And no matter how much I told myself I was keeping my distance, the fact was, he was right about the stupid weekly-dinner thing. I was over here every few days, and on the phone with him more often than that. I told myself it was strategically smart to keep him close. I told myself we could be friends without being anything more. But I’ve never been any good at lying to myself.
I still wasn’t ready to give up that final scrap of denial, though. Manning the temple was hard enough without getting into a doomed relationship on top of everything else.
But this wasn’t about that. This was a conflict of interest. Hades needed me to send those spirits back where they belonged. Hades was Bastian’s enemy. Anything that benefited Hades hurt Bastian’s cause; anything that weakened Hades put Humanity Ascendant in a stronger position. And as noble as Bastian’s intentions might be, I couldn’t trust him not to take advantage of an opportunity to hurt Hades if one came about. Not when I didn’t know what choice I would make in that position.
Which was what I explained to him as he poked at the hot dogs, frowned, and stuck them back in the microwave. Only the conflict of interest part, of course. Not the part about my weakening resolve. If he didn’t already know where all these dinners and phone calls were headed, I wasn’t about to tell him.
Bastian didn’t look satisfied with my explanation. “These spirits are a danger to the city, which means their presence threatens our operations. We both want the same thing.”
“Um, is it all right if I move this?” Kimmy asked in a timid voice before I could argue. I peered into the living room. She had unpacked most of the duffel bag. Her pile of clothes, folded with military precision, looked like a lone island of order in the midst of Bastian’s chaos. Now she was trying to set up her laptop on the coffee table, but the space she needed was taken up by a metal contraption that looked like a cross between a tentacled sea monster and a snow globe.
“Go ahead,” said Bastian distractedly, still focused on me. “If you think I would betray you simply to gain a slight temporary advantage—” Then his gaze snapped to the living room as Kimmy’s words caught up with him. His eyes widened as she started to lift the… whatever that metal thing was. “Be very careful. That’s a volatile prototype. Set it down gently—no, not like that, turn it around first. The other way! Yes, like that. You may want to back away, just in case.”
Kimmy scuttled backwards across the room, where she pressed herself to the far wall as if someone had pinned her there.
I eyed the object in question. It didn’t look any more threatening than it had a moment ago. “Some new god-killing weapon?” I asked under my breath, so Kimmy wouldn’t hear. I kept my voice light; he was less likely to notice I was fishing for information that way.
“No such luck. The weapons team doesn’t want anyone else’s hands on their inventions, no matter how much I tell them that the addition of my research would only…” Belatedly, he remembered his audience; an awkward silence fell over the room, the way it always did when he found himself talking about fighting the gods in front of me. “But I did finally get the funding to start experimenting with magical technology other than the amplifier rods,” he continued. “The amplifiers only strengthen the user’s raw magical ability, and as you’ve seen firsthand, they have too many weaknesses to be viable in the long term. The things I’m working on now have the potential to create more complex and longer-lasting effects than a human can manage on their own.”
The object on the table looked even more ominous now than it had a moment ago. “You know you shouldn’t be telling me any of this.”
“I think you’ve earned some trust from me by now.”
As if he didn’t know I would use whatever he told me to help the temple prepare for the war against Humanity Ascendant. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he genuinely felt like he could talk about this stuff with me and not worry about giving away an advantage.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I said.
“I never said it was.”
“It just doesn’t make sense for you to help. We have a total of two loose spirits to worry about, and only one of them is even a threat. The other one is a seven-year-old kid, and while I can’t say I love the idea of sending him back to the underworld against his will, I’m sure Lissa will give him whatever peace she can. And now you know everything. I’m not trying to keep you out of the loop. The opposite, in fact—I didn’t have to tell you any of this.”
“I never thought you—” A soft whining interrupted him. I looked around, trying to pinpoint the sound, and found myself staring at the door—just as it shook on its hinges as if someone had hit it with a battering ram.
I opened the door before it could sustain any more damage, already knowing what I would find on the other side. The three hellhounds padded in, single-file. They spared me a brief glance before sitting in a line in front of the microwave, staring up at the rotating hot dog bowl as if hypnotized.
I expected Bastian to be at least a little startled at the sudden appearance of three very large, very hairy dogs in his apartment. I at least expected him to flinch when he got a look at their eyes. Instead, he knelt by the closest one, held out his hand for it to sniff, and, when it offered him its tail-wagging approval, slowly ran his fingers through its fur. “A real hellhound.” His voice started to speed up the way it did when he got into research mode. His fingers twitched like they were searching for a notebook and a pen. “Only one head each? But I thought—”
“You’re thinking of Cerberus. He guards the main gate of the underworld. But he can’t leave his post—if he did, we’d have a lot more than two escaped spirits to worry about. That’s why these guys exist.”
“And they’re here to help you.”
I nodded. “All right,” I said, “now you know everything.”
“Except for how you’ll die if you don’t get this done fast enough,” Kimmy piped up from the living room.
Bastian’s head jerked up. The hand that had been petting the nearest dog stilled. “What did you say?”
Great. I had invited a walking security breach to sleep on Bastian’s couch. “Didn’t we have a conversation about not giving out information about the temple?”
“I just think it’s kind of an important thing to leave out.”
Slowly, Bastian straightened. The dogs might as well have been invisible to him now; every ounce of his attention was focused on me. And being the sole focus of someone with a mind powerful enough to give humanity the ability to challenge the gods is not a comfortable experience. “Explain,” he said, too softly.
I looked away from the intensity of his gaze. “Turns out letting the dead escape from the underworld is kind of a big deal. If I don’t get them back, I have my Mark taken away, and Lissa gets banned from ever talking to Hades again. At least in theory.”
“It’s not possible to remove a Mark.”
“Not without destroying the soul of the Marked.” Keeping my voice light was harder than I expected. I reminded myself that my soul wasn’t going to survive past my death anyway. But it’s one thing to be aware of something like that in the background. It’s another to hear someone threaten to tear you apart until nothing is left.
Bastian’s golden eyes darkened to a cloudy amber. “And who intends to do this?”
“Temple business,” I said with an apologetic shrug. “You know the drill.”
“But the spirit situation is city business,” said Bastian. “And Humanity Ascendant has its largest facility in the city, which makes it my concern. I won’t involve the rest of Humanity Ascendant in an issue that belongs to your temple unless it becomes necessary, but I will do everything I can to help.” His voice told me he wasn’t planning on letting me argue with him.
It was a good thing I didn’t need his permission to argue. “I’m not bringing you on another mission. Once was enough.”
“Unless I’m misremembering, that mission only succeeded because I was there.”
I wished I could tell him he was wrong. “And you managed to give yourself an advantage in the process, if I’m remembering correctly.” He had taken a powerful young demigod under his protection and given her a home inside Humanity Ascendant. He swore he would never ask her to fight for him, but the fact remained that the girl was a living weapon with every reason to be loyal to him.
Not that I could bring up any of that in front of Kimmy. Kimmy still thought Bastian was a civilian who had stumbled on the truth about the gods by accident and had only an academic interest in the subject. I didn’t like having to keep something from her now that she thought I was finally being completely open and honest about my secret life, but the moment Lissa found out about Humanity Ascendant, Hades would too. And I didn’t trust Kimmy to keep her mouth shut around Lissa.
“One of the devices I’ve been experimenting with can capture and hold spiritual entities indefinitely,” said Bastian, gracefully returning the conversation to the issue at hand. “At least that’s the theory.”
“Lissa can send them back more efficiently. The underworld is her domain. This is what she does.”
Bastian studied my face. Judging by his frown, he didn’t like what he found there. “You really don’t intend to let me help you with this.”
“I really don’t. Look, this has nothing to do with us. But I’m in enough trouble with the temple as it is right now, and—” And I couldn’t extend him the same trust he was apparently willing to give me. Not when I was still Marked and he was still the enemy. “And I can handle it.”
“If you won’t accept my help, then I can’t force it on you.” Bastian’s eyes were still dark, but he gave me a small nod of acquiescence. “But know that I have no intention of letting anyone strip the Mark from your soul.”
“Believe me, neither do I.” I looked at the door, then up at the microwave, which was seconds away from beeping. Even though I hadn’t been able to fulfill my junk food craving at the bowling alley, the thought of a hot dog that tasted like fridge wasn’t exactly making my stomach stand up and do a jig. And if I stayed, I would only be giving Bastian more ammunition for the next time he insisted our weekly dinners were a thing.
Not to mention, the more time I spent with him, the harder it became to hang on to that denial.
But I wasn’t ready to leave quite yet.
I cleared away a pile of books and sat down heavily at the table. “Get me a hot dog before I leave. If I’m going ghost-hunting, I’ll need fuel.”
Chapter 8
By the time I left Bastian’s apartment, it was closer to dawn than to sunset. As a general rule, I don’t mind keeping late hours, and these days I’m used to running on too little sleep, but even I need to crash sometimes. I started back to my apartment, planning to collapse in my bed for a couple of hours before I got to work.
I got two blocks before I remembered who was waiting there. Then I turned right back around and marched straight to the nearest coffee shop that was open at this hour. I didn’t like what it said about how much time I had been spending with Bastian that I had memorized all the sources of coffee within three blocks of his apartment as well as my own. The only place nearby that stayed open all night was a combination Italian cafe and Vietnamese grocery, and I had never seen another soul in the place who didn’t work there. But they must have been making money if they hadn’t gone out of business yet.
I ordered two cups of coffee and drained them both inside of a minute. Then I sat and read about Dylan McCabe while I waited for the sun to come up, made stay-where-you-are gestures from time to time at the hellhounds through the windows, and pretended I couldn’t feel the sole employee’s curious gaze. It may seem like night is the best time for covert activities, and sometimes that’s true, but when you need to poke around in someone else’s apartment, you don’t want them to be home for it. And most of the time, that means nine to five.
When enough time had crawled by, I got a third cup of coffee for the road, and drained it before I had made it two steps. The hellhounds followed me the whole way, drawing curious stares from everyone I passed. After a man wobbling his way down the sidewalk with a half-empty bottle of tequila caught sight of the hounds, let out a piercing scream that made the curtains in the building above me ruffle as people peered out to see what was wrong, and landed facedown in a mud puddle, I ducked into the next alley and faced the dogs. “We need to talk.”
The dogs stared at me expressionlessly.
“You guys aren’t exactly subtle. And subtle is kind of my job. I’m not going to be able to do anything if you’re standing there like a giant red arrow screaming, ‘Hey everyone, there’s something scary and supernatural over here.’”
They kept on staring.
“So I need you to go back to the temple. Okay?”
They didn’t move.
Maybe I could try this another way. “All right, if you won’t go back to the temple, maybe you can help me out. You’re supposed to be able to track the spirits, right? So go on. Show me where they are.”
One of them started scratching itself. The other two just sat there.
“At least tell me if I’m on the right track. I’m going to Stefan Bailey’s apartment. That way.” I pointed. “Is he there?”
Nothing.
“Well, let’s hope you’re better at tracking than you are at talking. Let’s go.” I started walking again, gesturing for the dogs to follow.
I didn’t know anything about the dead. The living were my responsibility. But when I woke up in the temple and found out I had been dead for five years, the first thing I wanted to do was go home. My family wasn’t the greatest, to say the least. My dad wasn’t really my dad, biologically speaking, and could never let himself forget it long enough to offer me a few minutes of affection. To my mom, I was an inconvenient reminder of a mistake she regretted. But something about dying and coming back to life makes you want to see familiar faces, no matter how those people treated you while you were alive. Five years later, and I still got the occasional urge to show up on my parents’ doorstep asking for a hug.
I could only hope my two targets felt the same way.
Stefan’s apartment wasn’t that far from my own. He had apparently died trying to climb out his window one night. I suppressed a shudder as I looked up at the window, trying not to imagine the scene. The apartment was only three stories up, but that had been more than enough. But I wasn’t seven years old—or an ordinary mortal, for that matter. And a drain pipe snaked down the wall inches away from the window, inviting me to climb.
I grasped the pipe. Behind me, a dog let out a soft whine.
The three dogs sat watching me with identical crestfallen looks on their faces. I looked from the pipe to them and back again. I didn’t know what kind of special skills Hades’s hellhounds came equipped with, but I was willing to bet climbing drain pipes wasn’t one of them. I sighed and stepped back. “The front door it is, then.”
There’s an art to getting into a building without a key. Picking the lock to an individual apartment is a lot easier than it should be; most people never replace the original lock on their door, probably because they don’t realize the builder almost always goes with the cheapest option. I bought a set of specialized lock-picking tools when I first realized how many apartments I would be breaking into in my new career. I’ve almost never had to use them. Most of the locks I encounter can be picked with a simple hair pin. The front door, though, is a different matter. Even in places where you don’t need to be buzzed in, a hair pin isn’t going to cut it. I could have gone home and gotten my lock-picking kit, and then hoped no one got suspicious enough to call the police while I fiddled with the lock in broad daylight. Instead I went with my tried-and-true method: wait for someone else to go in or come out, and slip through while they have the door open.
Most people won’t let just anyone in. They may not be security-conscious enough to buy a decent lock for their door, but that doesn’t mean they want strangers wandering through their building. But how many people know the faces of every single one of their neighbors? The trick is to walk fast, with a bit of a frown, like you’re in a hurry. Don’t look your unwitting helper in the eye, and whatever you do, don’t smile—people who have something to hide go out of their way to be friendly, while people who are just trying to get home don’t bother. But don’t look away, either, or you’ll seem shady. It’s not easy to get the balance right, but by now, it comes as easily to me as breathing.
I was lucky this time—as I approached the door, a woman in a flowered dress swung it open from the other side. I grabbed it from her, feigning distraction by staring at my phone, inclining my head in her direction without going so far as to actually smile. She returned my half-nod without really looking at me. As she started to step out onto the sidewalk, I prepared to slip past her—
And she stopped.
She stood in the center of the doorway. I couldn’t get inside without shoving past her; I couldn’t let go of the door without losing my chance. I stood helplessly in place, holding the door open, as she stared at the hellhounds behind me.
“Those are quite the dogs.” Maybe she hadn’t noticed me before, but she was looking straight at me now.
