Page 59 of Persephone's Curse
“No,” I said miserably, feeling cold and embarrassed and sad.
“Might I offer some advice?”
“Sure.”
“The people in our lives, the ones who have passed on, they’re all around us. They’re here and there and everywhere. But they don’t often respond to demands for performance. They have more important things to do. A whole eternity of important things to do. Down here… we’re a blip in time. A mere second in an endless expanse of hours. Whatever you said to this soul, it might not reach them for another thousand years. And by that time, you’ll be with them again, able to ask them right to their face. Does that make sense?”
“It makes sense, but it’s not super helpful for menow,” I said.
The priest chuckled. “Indeed not, I admit.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Anything.”
“Do you actually believe in an afterlife? In a Heaven or a Hell or a Purgatory or, like, a Dante’sInfernosituation?”
“I do,” he replied. “I’m not sure I would use any of that exact language to describe it, but I believe there is a place for all our souls, and I believe it is beautiful and will offer unending peace and comfort and love.”
“Right. So obviously he won’t answer me right away, if he’s surrounded by all that.”
“Maybe you already have your answer,” the priest said. “Maybe it’s just something you aren’t ready to admit to yourself.”
He was cute, that priest, but in that moment, he couldn’t have been more wrong.
I didn’t have the answer at all. I didn’t haveanyanswers. Not a single solitary one.
I stopped at Dark Magic again on my way home.
“What even are your hours?” I asked the girl behind the counter, who looked slightly less bored tonight.
She shrugged and picked at her cuticles. “I guess, like, whenever I want. How did your little séance go?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it didn’t work. Or maybe it did work. Something answered, maybe, or maybe one of my sisters was just fucking with me and is too afraid to admit it now and I potentially saw a ghost, but that’s also notthatunusual for me, so, it’s ultimately hard to say.”
“How many sisters do you have?”
“Three,” I said.
“I’m an only child.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s okay, until I want somebody to use the Ouija board with me. What do you mean it’s not unusual for you to see ghosts?”
Never in my life had I been as forthcoming with people I had just met, but something about the priest and now this girl behind the counter made me either 1) trust them implicitly or 2) not give a shit about what they might think of me.
“I might be descended from gods,” I said. “And I think something about that gives me the ability to see ghosts. Only ones I’mrelated to. Well—mostly. And only women. Well—mostly. There’s one outlier.”
“What gods?”
“Persephone.”
“Well, that makes sense. She’s the Queen of the Underworld. You’d have a direct connection with the dead, if you were her descendant. And you’d also have a direct connection to her daughter—”
“Melinoë,” I interrupted. “I know.”
“She’s a cool god,” she said. “Goddess of nightmares, goddess of ghosts…”
