Page 88 of Seph

“No. You just... You just walk around until the light gets stronger. And she’s on this floor, mate. If we just go out this door. If you’ll just put that fire out first...” Simeon gestured to the bar that was rapidly turning to ash.

“Right. Don’t want to burn the building down until after I get Seph out,” Hades chuckled nervously, waved his hand at the fire, and held the vial aloft. “This way!” he shouted.

“That way,” Simeon agreed, smothering a sigh and letting himself smile. This is going to be one of the greatest reunions in history—and I helped.

Wish Emily could see it with me.

“Hades?” Emily blinked in surprise as she put a gaggle of confused senior citizens and a few decades’ worth of luggage on a late afternoon bus in front of Caesar’s Magic Parlor. A man in long, swaying dark robes and a black helm was striding into The Lotus Room.

“Ah! A scholar of mythology! I am indeed dressed as Hades, Lord of the Underworld!”

He’s just some guy coming for the costume party.

He’s here pretty early.

Her stomach prickled. She’d been reading up on Zeus during their moments of restless waiting this week. It was always wise to be informed. There were millions of versions of myths about the king of the Greek gods, but two things remained constant. He was always looking for a new conquest—and he wasn’t above using trickery, even shapeshifting, to get what he wanted.

He’s dressed as Hades. Last ditch effort to confuse Persephone into sleeping with him. I’m so sick I could vomit on him, lightning bolts be damned.

“They just emptied the place out. Something went wrong in the kitchen. I’m only here because Circe thought I might make a nice surprise for one of her special guests tonight. I’m staying on the fifth floor, in The Garden. “

“Hm?” Zeus flipped open his visor, revealing a handsome, heroic face, the classic definition of bronzed, tall, dark, and handsome. “I’m the only special guest.”

“Oh! You must be Mr. Z! She told me that you’ve been unlucky in love, but that was going to change tonight. Probably.”

“Definitely,” Zeus ground out. His eyes roved over her. “You’d be a nice warm-up. Or a good consolation prize. Or a victory lap.” He let out a loud, braying laugh. “Yes. A victory lap!”

“Whatever you say, baby. Tell me about your troubles. Emmy’s a real good listener,” she purred, taking his arm.

Zeus sighed, and they walked inside. If he noticed the deserted nature of the place, he ignored it in favor of staring down her low-cut dress.

“Oh, it’s this girl. I had her first, and my brother interfered. She should have been with me. She was mine. Rightfully mine.”

“You proposed to her first or something?”

“Or something. Anyway, her mother got involved, my brother got involved... It was a long time ago, but... Well. My power started weakening—in the family business. And I knew it was because of her. I was distracted, you see. I always accomplish my goals, you see. I’m never thwarted. Never.”

“Oooh. Powerful.” Emily kept nodding, clinging to his arm lest he suddenly vanish.

Zeus walked through the place like he owned it, heading to the stairwell and beginning to climb. “I won’t bore you with thedetails, but let’s just say I had an empire. A business empire. And when my brother got involved, things started to fail.”

Well, yeah, in the early 1000s, Europe became the hotspot. Christianity soared.

Oh my God. Does this idiot actually think the entire Greek pantheon lost popularity because he didn’t get to bang Persephone??

“It was the first chink in my armor, the first defeat I’d ever had. She’s my ticket back to power.”

“So she’s not with your brother anymore?”

“She hasn’t seen him in a long time. She’s not over him, exactly, but tonight, I’m going to make her forget all about him.”

“She forgot about me?” Hades hesitated outside a plain gray door. It was made to look as basic and unimportant as possible.

The best place to hide a treasure is in something worthless, Simeon thought as he tried to turn the handle of the door marked “Linens” and instead found himself knocked backwards by a powerful electrical zap.

“Not at heart. She never gave in to his advances, Mem as good as said. Everyone here was in some sort of loop. I think—based on something I heard one guest say—that everyone thinks they’ve just been here for about a week. So Seph thinks she’s been here a week, but she might be confused as to who she really is. Others certainly were. But if you give her this,” Simeon reached into his pocket and pulled out the flask of Lethe’s Nectar and the pouch of Lethe’s Dust, “it should help her bounce back. Plus, when she sees you, and now that Mem and her cronies are gone, their power over her will be gone too. It worked pretty fast on the others.”

“But they were only here for a mortal lifespan, not a thousand years, yes.”

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