Page 13 of Half Dead

“Libby,” the goddess corrected her. “It’s nice to meet you.” Her handshake was warm and welcoming.

“You, too. And please, call me Lorelei.”

Posy groaned. “That name shackles you to earth. You won’t be able to transcend until you let it go.” Her gaze snagged on someone across the room. “Look alive, people. There’s Olelbis. I’m going over to say hello. He never stays more than five minutes at these things.” She sailed across the room calling his name in a singsong voice.

Libby and I exchanged the kind of awkward glance that only introverts understood.

“So, how do you like working here?” I asked.

Libby shifted her weight to her other foot as her awkwardness intensified.

I broke the tension with a laugh. “Was that the wrong question?”

“No, no. It’s a perfectly reasonable one. It’s only that no one ever asks me that. They assume we’re all happy to be here. I mean, it’s Paradise, right?”

“If you’re unhappy here, why not leave?”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “And go where?”

“You’re a goddess, aren’t you? You can go anywhere.”

“I’m the goddess of death and the underworld.”

I gasped. “Hey, me too.”

She offered a grim smile. “I know who you are.”

I cringed. “Should I know who you are? I’m sorry.”

“I’m the Roman equivalent of your mother, Persephone.”

“Oh, right,” I said, struggling to recall whether Pops had taught me anything about my mom’s Roman counterpart. I was coming up empty, or maybe it was the effects of the deified alcohol.

“Our underworlds sort of got merged together at some point in history,” Libby said. “I’m not as popular as some of the others.”

“Sorry about that.”

She shrugged. “That’s the life of a worshipped deity. It’s all coins and poems until they forget you.” As a waiter passed by, she plucked a full glass from the tray and gulped down the golden liquid.

I took the opportunity to polish off the French 75, which was probably the best cocktail I’d ever tasted, not that I’d admit it to my hosts.

“You must be the famous Melinoe reborn,” a scratchy voice said.

I turned toward a slender man with a pencil-thin mustache and even thinner lips. He wore his black hair in a ponytail.

“I am, but don’t be fooled. This party is about Posy’s promotion, not about me.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. “I am Zhi Peng.”

His name wasn’t familiar. “A pleasure to meet you. Do you know Libby?”

“I do, indeed.” He gave Libby a slight bow.

“Are you another god of the underworld? We seem to be forming a club.”

“Sadly, no. My domain is somewhat smaller.”

I hazarded a guess. “The forest?”

---