chapter seven.

haden

It's a long journey to the outskirts of the Underrealm, where Persephone's Gate stands at the end of a long ravine. The Underlords, and even the Lessers, flank both sides of the walk to the gate. Normally, their swords would be raised in honor to the Champion as he pa.s.ses. I know better now than to expect such pomp on my behalf. All except the Lessers and the other servants are dressed in armor. Mine has been removed and I've been forced to don strange clothes like what Dax is wearing. My pants are made from a similar heavy cloth, but they're an inky black instead of blue, and my collared black tunic has many fasteners down the front. Both items of clothing are too tight, like they'd originally been selected for someone slighter than myself.

This idea makes me look for Rowan in the flanking crowd, but instead of him, my sight lands on Garrick, the scrawny Lesser I tried to defend from Rowan's a.s.sault. His arm looks better now, thanks to a visit to the healing chambers, but for some reason, seeing him once more causes a twisting feeling inside my chest.

When Garrick had been rea.s.signed to the Pits after he was accused of stealing, I'd been glad to see him go. Relieved to be rid of the walking reminder of my shame. But I can't help wondering what his life has been like in that terrible place. And if he knows what part I played in what happened to him. .

At least he hadn't been attacked by Rowan again, like he feared. Not yet anyway.

"Just keep walking," Dax says. I didn't realize I'd stopped moving.

The ground trembles, and a faint green light begins to pulsate in the archway at the end of the ravine.

The gate is beginning to activate. The old myths say that the gate was built for Persephone, the first Boon to be brought to the Underrealm by the original Hades. Persephone's mother, the harvest G.o.ddess, created the gate to ensure that her daughter could return to the Overrealm for six months out of every year-as was decreed by Hades' brother, the Sky G.o.d, in order to appease the keepers of both realms. But that was back when the Sky G.o.d cared about making peace. Back before the war between the G.o.ds. Before the dark day when Hades was slain by the Sky G.o.d and the Key to the Underrealm was lost. This made it so Persephone's Gate is now the only entrance or exit that exists between our world and the Overrealm that a living soul can pa.s.s through.

Unfortunately, the gate is only active for two twenty-four-hour periods a year. Once in the fall and once in the spring. Those times have been reserved for the entering and exiting of the Champions, sent on their quests to the Overrealm.

The gate's green light grows richer until it reaches a shade similar to emeralds'. The ground shakes again, the tremor knocking an elderly Lesser off balance as I pa.s.s by with Dax. I step around the man and hear a familiar, derisive laugh. I look up toward the Court, which surrounds the gateway, and find Rowan standing with Lex and Killian.

I stop in front of the pulsing gate. Dax stands behind me. I look away from Lex, Killian, and Rowan, waiting for one of them to make an accusation against me pertaining to the fight after the ceremony.

But no one speaks.

Sweat beads on my brow as I realize there is one person who is missing from this scene. My father is not present.

Dax leans close. "I'm sure he's just attending to some pressing matter," he says, as if he can read my mind.

Master Crue, one of my teachers, steps to the front. I wonder what I will be tested on now, and try to remember everything I ran through during the night. But Master Crue merely gestures at the light that has filled the archway and says, "G.o.dspeed, Champion Haden. May you be crowned with victory upon your return in six months' time."

Dax nudges me and I take a step forward-then come to a halt. Dax almost slams into my back.

"Wait," I say loudly enough that the Court can hear me.

"G.o.ds, no," Dax whispers.

I look at Master Crue and then to Lord Killian. "I'm allowed an entourage, yes?" Master Crue nods, indicating Dax behind me.

"But I can take more than one other with me?"

"Yes," Killian says hesitantly.

"Then I want to choose one more." I look at Rowan. "I choose my brother . . ." I pause just long enough to watch my words dawn on Rowan. He starts to step forward, just like he had when he thought he was being Chosen by the Oracle. "My half brother, that is." I turn back and look at the frail boy in the crowd. "Garrick."

A collective gasp ripples through the ravine. Garrick stumbles forward, looking as though someone pushed him. He seems bewildered and a little panicked as he falls in line with me and Dax. I don't give Lord Killian or anyone else time to protest and I step up to the gate with my entourage.

"Take these," Dax says, pressing something into my hand as the three of us enter the pulsing green light. I look down to see that he's given me a pair of dark-lensed spectacles, and almost drop them as I suddenly lurch forward. It feels as though I'm being yanked by an invisible cable attached to my shoulders, but when I look at my feet, I realize I am still standing in one spot. Wind lashes at my face.

I close my eyes, feeling as though I might lose the contents of my stomach. The yanking sensation stops abruptly and I fall to my knees. The dim green glow behind my eyelids has shifted to yellow. I open my eyes only to be blinded by an engulfing yellow light, so intense I feel as though my eyes might melt.

"Put them on," I hear Dax say.

I realize he means the spectacles and I shove them onto my face. The dark lenses mute the yellow glow, but only barely. After a few aching moments, my vision clears enough that I can discern the shapes of trees and rocks, and a great yellow orb on the horizon, peeking between what looks like two mountaintops. Garrick is huddled on the ground next to me, his hands clasped over his face.

"What the Tartarus is that?" I say, pointing at the orb without actually looking at it.

"Sunrise." Dax pushes up to his feet. He's wearing his own pair of dark lenses.

I hear a foreign noise from somewhere in the near distance. I blink several times and make out what seems to be the outline of a person emerging from the trees in front of us. The silhouette steps forward. "Welcome to Olympus Hills, my lords. I'm certain you will love it here," a voice says in a tone so . . . perky . . . it hurts my ears.

I close my eyes but the light still burns behind my lids.

And humans call the place where I'm from h.e.l.l?

chapter eight.

daphne

This place is heaven, I admit to myself as I pull open the drapes in the main family room, revealing the incredible view of the lake. Seeing it in the daylight, I know why the real estate around here is so coveted. Jogging trails, trees, bushes, and flowers of almost every kind surround the lake, and I just can't get over how lush everything is. I knew that Ellis was in the middle of the desert, but I never realized exactly what that meant before. Or exactly what I'd been missing.

Mom would love it here, I think with a pang of guilt. Although she probably wouldn't be able to get over the fact that the long lake is man-made-according to Marta's brochure. I can't really tell, except for the odd figure-eight shape, that it isn't naturally occurring. I snap a picture of the lake through the window with my new phone-one of the things Marta left, along with a map and a daily itinerary outside my door this morning.

I text the picture to Jonathan and CeCe with the note: Arrived just fine. This place is gorgeous! (Please show my mom.) Mom doesn't have a cell phone. She says she doesn't see the point since everyone she knows lives within walking distance. But maybe if I can get Jonathan and CeCe to show her enough pics, she might change her mind about coming to visit when she sees how beautiful this place is.

"Daphne, is that you, love?" I hear Joe's groggy voice from behind me.

I step away from the view. The light from the window hits Joe's face where he's splayed out on the family room couch. He cracks open one eye, then the other. He blinks a couple of times and then squeezes his eyes shut. "Be a good girl and go away."

I sigh and shake his booted foot, which dangles over the side of the couch. "Get up, Joe. Marta's itinerary says that you have an interview today. And I'm headed out. So if you don't wake up now, n.o.body will be here to act as your walking snooze b.u.t.ton." Joe lifts his arm and squints at his wrist, but his watch isn't there.

I check Marta's notes: "If Joe can't find his watch, it's probably in the fish tank. Again. He likes to test the water-resistance warranty." I'd thought that was a joke when I'd first read it, but sure enough, I see a couple of clown fish pecking at the platinum watchband at the bottom of the aquarium, which takes up most of the north wall in the family room.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, is it morning already?" Joe asks, his British accent almost as heavy as his hangover.

"No, Joe. It's one in theafternoon already. And we've already had this conversation. Back when I woke you up at noon."

"Well, then, why did you wake me up again?"

"I told you, some reporter is coming over. Marta had to go somewhere for the day, so she charged me with making sure you wake up." Along with a laundry list of other tasks. I'd been here for fewer than sixteen hours, and it was already feeling like Marta was trying to shove most of her "babysitting" duties on to me: 1. Wake up Joe at noon. Check.

2. Wake Joe up again at one. Check.

3. Remind Joe that he booked an interview, even though I explicitly told him I'll be gone for the day.

Check.

4. Either I or Joe's manager will be there in time for the interview to field questions. However, since Joe refuses to let me hire a decent staff for the house, remind him that he is therefore in charge of making sure things are tidy before the reporter arrives. Oh boy.

"I think you might want to clean up a bit." I hitch my thumb at the row of framed platinum records, hanging at precarious angles above the couch. A pizza box had been made into a tepee on the end table, and there are so many half-empty gla.s.ses and bowls residing on various chairs and tables in the family room and bits of ground chips living in the white carpet, you'd think he'd thrown a party after we got back last night. Yet from what I could tell from my room in the east wing, it had just been Joe and his greatest hits on Guitar Hero in here.

"A reporter? Why does a reporter want to come here?" Joe sits up. His rings clack against the gla.s.s-top coffee table as he searches for his gla.s.ses.

"I don't know. Why doesn't a reporter want to come here?" According to Marta, Olympus Hills is where the rich and famous come to live when they get sick of LA. If a reporter is being allowed inside Joe "the G.o.d of Rock" Vince's mansion, it is probably quite the scoop. "All I know is that Marta said to make sure you're up before the reporter arrives." I check my list. "Also, to make sure you're wearing pants." Thankfully, he is. Very tight leather ones, but pants they are. "Marta said you want to make some sort of announcement to the press."

I can only hope that announcement doesn't involve outing the secret of his long-lost backwater daughter to the world. Mom always said it was a miracle that the paparazzi had never found us in Ellis. It's almost like we were invisible to the rest of the world there.

"Oh right, that." Joe finds his gla.s.ses: thick-framed, nerdy, hipster specs that clash with his leather pants, skull rings, and long, rocker hair.

Three things I know for sure about Joe so far. The longer portions of his hair are extensions, he never wears his gla.s.ses in public, and even though he tries to pull off an ubercool, leather-clad, Top Forty rocker persona for the press, when I listen real closely, I can hear that he has more of this geeky, Indie singer-songwriter vibe. It's always baffled me, the few times we've met.

He presses the thick frames onto his face and makes a strangled noise as he surveys the mess around him. He turns a wide, toothy grin on me. "Fancy helping a poor bloke clean up for a bit?"

"Not on your life."

"Come on, Daph, no love for your poor old dad?" He wiggles his eyebrows above the rims of his gla.s.ses, that cheeky smile on his face. "Quality daddy-daughter time," he croons.

"You are not my dad." He isn't going to let me forget that I called him that back at Paradise Plants, is he? "And cleaning up after your drunken binge doesn't make for quality lushy louseadaughter time." My anger shows in my voice too much, but at the moment I don't care. Joe didn't say a word to me on the entire trip from Ellis to here, and he'd disappeared the second I arrived at my new house, and the only reason that he's even paying attention to me now is because he doesn't want to clean up his own mess. I have no idea why he wanted custody of me if he's just going to ignore me as much here as he did when I lived a thousand miles away.

Joe places his hand against his chest and gives me an expression that almost looks genuinely crestfallen. But from the smell of stale whiskey and pizza that wafts off him, he was probably just trying to stifle a burp.

"I'm leaving to go find someplace to rehea.r.s.e. My audition for the music program is today. That's the whole reason you wanted to bring me here, isn't it?" I pick up my guitar off the postmodern lounge chair, which clashes with the ancient-Greece-inspired architecture of Joe's mansion. I use my fingernail to press down the peeling edges of a sticker of the Parthenon on my guitar case. The whole thing is covered in stickers of places I plan to visit someday. The Colosseum, Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, the pyramids of Giza.

Joe's eyes look huge and bloodshot as he blinks at me from behind his thick lenses. He doesn't answer my question, just looks at his wrist again as if trying to read his missing watch. "What day is it?" he asks. "The twentieth?"

"It's the twenty-first."

"Already?" Joe jumps up from the couch, and then catches himself against the armrest, like he's dizzy from standing up too fast. He's probably just trying not to puke.

I grab my tote bag and hitch my soft guitar case over my shoulder. "Marta gave me a map. I'm going to find my way to that grove we pa.s.sed last night. I need a good place to rehea.r.s.e," I say, and head for the grand foyer.

I'd allowed myself exactly three minutes to freak out about the audition last night-a trick I learned from CeCe, who had trained to be an actress before she ended up in Ellis-and then set to work. I'd used my new Mac to peruse my iTunes account until I'd made a list of possible songs to add to my audition piece. I'd spent most of the morning running through the lyrics, but now that Joe is up, I feel the need to get out of the house. I could hear the grove's soothing song through my open window most of the night, and since Marta claimed that n.o.body ever went there, it seemed like a place worth scouting out as a practice spot. I've always preferred rehearsing in nature. When I was little, my mom used to claim that the flowers in the greenhouse grew twice as big because I sang to them.

"You can rehea.r.s.e in my studio," Joe calls after me.

"Your studio smells like Cheez Whiz."

"Right. That it does." Joe stumbles into the foyer behind me. "I know, how about I buy you a new guitar? That's quality daddydaughter time, right?" He reaches behind him and pulls out his wallet- where he fit a wallet in those pants, I don't want to know- and opens the billfold. "A few thousand ought to do it. . . . Huh. I seem to have misplaced all my cash. . . ."

"I think you donated it to the local liquor store." I open the front door. I don't have time for his attempts at pretending to be a good parent.

"Wait. My AmEx is upstairs. . . . Wait here."

"You've got an interview, and I need to rehea.r.s.e." I pat my guitar. "I like Gibby anyway." Doesn't he remember how I got her?

"But I don't want you rehearsing outside. Not today. What if it gets dark before you get back? How will I know where you'll be?"

"It's one in the afternoon, remember? And you've never known where I was at any given point in time for the last seventeen years. Today shouldn't be any different."

"Just wait," he says. "If you don't want a new guitar, let's get you a new amp. A nice Fender? I'll tell that reporter to come back tomorrow, and I'll make sure I get you to the school with enough time to run through your audition piece a few times in one of their practice rooms." I pause. I could really use a new amp. . . .

I sigh, wondering how much I'll regret the decision I'm about to make. "Okay, but only if we're quick. And I get to drive."

There is one benefit to Joe's constant need for a designated driver-I am going to rack up the remaining hours behind the wheel I need to get my license in no time.

"Brilliant!" Joe waves his hand at me in a wait-here motion. "I'll be right back with my card. I'll help you rehea.r.s.e when we get to the school." He tries to bound up the stairs two at a time, but either his pants or his hangover slows him down. He whistles the melody from one of his songs as he disappears out of my sight.

I wait for a few minutes. The large clock in the foyer sounds like a countdown timer, the time I have left to rehea.r.s.e ticking away. I realize I can't hear his whistle anymore.

"Joe?" I call up the stairs. "Did you get lost?"

This house is so big, I might not put it past him.

Joe doesn't answer. I wonder if I should wait here longer or go looking for him. My guitar grows heavy against my back. My shoulders ache. I suddenly feel like I'm ten years old again, waiting at the window-with a hefty telescope in my arms-for Joe to come pick me up so we can go stargazing.

I'd waited until almost midnight that night, until my mother had insisted I go to bed. I'm sorry, honey. I just don't think he's coming. . . .

Standing here in his cavernous foyer, I hate that one small promise of a shopping trip can make me feel like that waiting little girl all over again. Why am I putting myself in this position? Why am I letting Joe back in again just so I can be disappointed?

But shouldn't I be happy that he wants to spend time with me? Shouldn't I be forgiving? I mean, he brought me here, he's giving me everything I've ever wanted, he's giving me the opportunity to follow my dreams. Shouldn't I be grateful? If the man wants to spend the afternoon with me, shouldn't I let him?

But I already know how this is going to turn out. Whether it's here or at the store or later today at the auditions, he's going to forget or he's going to get distracted, or something, and I'm going to be left waiting once more like that disappointed little girl.

No, I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not here for daddydaughter-bonding time. I'm not here to reconnect with my long-lost father. Joe is a means to an end. A ticket out of Ellis and an opportunity for a top-flight education. I'm here for myself. To achieve my goals, and right now, that's getting into the music program at OHH. After that, it's making a name for myself in the music world-all on my own.