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Hayden’s brow rises, and he scans the ceiling, running his eyes along the lines of the wood. “Your aunt is old enough to remember how mischievous they can be.”
My heart trembles in my chest. “Let me go, Hayden.”
His eyes snap back to mine. “No.”
Racing through my thoughts, I try to remember everything I’ve learned in the past two days. Penny’s words from so long ago flash in my brain. “Persephone… my aunt Persephone!”
“Oh, god,” he waves a hand as if deterring a bad smell. “Yes, you have a point. I did send that one back before her time had expired.”
A glimmer of hope? “Why?”
“By Zeus, she was awful. Can you imagine anyone able to make the underworld depressing?”
My breathing picks up. “What makes you think I won’t be the same?”
“No,” his head shakes. “You’re not like her. For starters, the name Persephone… I will say, her mother was an ancestor I’d like to have taken. It’s a pity cleverness sometimes skips a generation. Especially considering how long you shifters live.”
His manner is so easy, so familiar, I cross the room and grasp his arm. “Please, Hayden,” I whisper.
At my touch, he seems to soften. A gentle smile curves his slim lips. “I’ve waited for you, Mercy. I’ve watched you since you were a little girl. You’re smart and beautiful. You’re a talented artist. You’re the first to give me hope. For the first time in a long time, I’ll have a true Queen of the Underworld at my side.”
“I’ll never love you. I love someone else.”
He stiffens. “That brute? He’s a criminal!”
Pleading is in my tone. “I want to be in the sunshine, Hayden. I want to live by the sea. I love the light.” My fingers clench his soft coat, and my voice is a cracked whisper. “If you truly care about me, you’d want me to be happy.”
“Where did you get such a delusion?” Jerking his arm back, he storms to the door. “I am selfish and vain, and I want you. You belong to me.”
“Hayden, please!” I’m crying now.
He jerks the door open. “I’ll be back in two nights to collect you.”
* * *
Koa
College has never been a priority to me, even though my mom was an instructor at Whitman College near Princeton. She was a tall, athletic non-shifter with smooth chocolate skin and long, African-American curls. She was beautiful, and she was my mom.
She fell hard for a scrappy Hawaiian panther-shifter, doing the rounds on the middleweight boxing circuit. According to her, he was wild and dangerous, and he left her with a broken heart and me on the way. I’m pretty sure he never knew he had a son, but she never complained.
I grew up hating him and being exactly like him, and looking back, I regret the shit I turned into as a teen. Mom never liked me boxing. She taught me as much as she could about my Hawaiian heritage and tried to get me interested in books. None of it stuck. I put her through hell, and I ended up exiled.
The one bright spot is I’m comfortable in a university setting, and I even know how to use the library and research the archives. The past tangles in my thoughts as I make my way across the grounds of Hastings-Albrecht University. I might have failed my family when I was young, but maybe saving Mercy is a way to redeem myself.
A tall, red-brick building with beige limestone accents forms the center of a quadrangle of similar red-brick buildings. The library has an enormous tower rising from the entrance with two spires pointing to the sky.
Students mostly dressed in jeans, boots, and plaid shirts with backpacks slung over their shoulders hurry across the grass never looking up. A few loiter in the sun, I assume on break, or congregate in little clumps talking. The occasional shriek of laughter pierces the low drone.
I could easily pass for one of them. I’m similarly dressed, and my age puts me in at least graduate-school range. As such, I only catch the occasional eye of a co-ed checking me out. Red leaves speckle the green grass, and I can feel winter in the air.
Inside the enormous library, I do a quick scan of the long tables with laptops and shelves of books. It smells like old paper, but I don’t have time to waste. The directory says I need to be on the third floor
for the town archives.
When I step off the elevator a librarian with a short brown bob sits behind the desk. She only gives me a glance before returning to her computer screen. A glass case is between us, and I step forward to examine an elaborate pop-up book depicting the original town of Woodland Creek. The recreational areas are shown in such detail, for a moment, I am distracted from why I came here, but only for a moment.
“I’m looking for a death record from early in the town’s history.” The librarian glances up at me. “Any local periodicals from that time?”
