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A small boat was moored to the shore, its back end being licked at by the sticky current of the river. Whatever liquid flowed through these banks, it wasn’t water. The smell of it was foul, like burning tires, but also unlike anything I’d experienced on earth.
My pulse hammered as we approached the little craft, knowing whatever we found there would make or break the rest of the journey for us.
Shadows shifted on the bow of the ship, shimmering like oil on the surface of water. The shapeless blackness moved as smoke did, swirling and spinning, then as if it had always been real, the shadows became a man. He was slender and stooped, his spine bent at a crooked angle, leaning him too far forward. He had stringy white hair that dangled limply down to his nose, but given the swath of foggy whiteness of his eyes, I didn’t think he needed to see anything.
“The old man and the sea?” Leo observed. “Is Ernest Hemingway here going to get us to freedom?”
In spite of how far away we were, the old man grinned slyly at Leo’s words, having heard them across the distance. His beard was white but made of smoke, swirling loosely around his face. He scratched his chin, and as the smoke-beard parted to accommodate his fingers, I saw that the lower half of his face was a bare skull, the grin permanent without lips. He withdrew his hand, and the beard resettled, making him look human again.
“Come along, come along,” the boatman goaded. “We haven’t got an eternity.”
He started to chuckle a high-pitched laugh that would have done the Wicked Witch of the West proud. Leo grabbed me by the back of my shirt and pulled me to a halt. I almost slipped on the uneven surface of all the bones.
“Remember how we talked about the trap feeling?” he said.
I nodded. “Normally I’d listen to you. But that’s the River Styx, and that makes the creepy dude in the boat Charon, and unless we get him to give us a lift you’d better get really, really accustomed to my charming company, because you’ll be enduring it forever.”
Leo blinked slowly, looking from me to the terrifying figure aboard the vessel, openly debating which was worse before giving me an apologetic shrug and saying, “Ladies first.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As we approached the boat, the smell from the river got more and more severe, until my eyes were burning and the hair inside my nose felt like it was being singed off. Why did everything associated with death and the afterlife have to smell so terrible? Couldn’t the underworld smell like cotton candy and unicorn farts or something?
I imagined getting home and taking a ten-hour bubble bath surrounded by jasmine-scented candles. I thought about leaving hell and driving directly to the nearest bakery so I could breathe in the fresh-bread aroma until it was baked into my skin.
I’d plant lilac bushes and buy bouquets of flowers every week.
By the time we reached the boat I was ready to throw up and my eyes stung so badly I was crying. Leo was coughing in dry, labored hacks next to me, so he wasn’t doing much better.
Charon leaned closer, gripping the edge. Up close it was easier to see that his fingers were also those of a skeleton, and he did nothing to hide their appearance from us. Why pretend to be normal down here, after all, where the absurd and horrible was par for the course?
“Good day, mortal wanderers.” Charon beamed his frightening toothy grin at us and chuckled again. “Are you lost?”
“We’re looking for the exit,” Leo responded, covering his mouth with his shirt.
“There is no way out of the underworld,” Charon replied. “What is here is here forever.”
“Nice try, Captain, but we know we can get back aboveground.” I wiped away the streaming tears where they’d dripped to the bottom of my chin and splattered on my chest.
“If you know there is a way, why ask the way?” He turned as if he might leave us, and panic hitched my breath and made my heart pound.
“Wait,” I shouted. “We can pay for our passage.”
We could, couldn’t we? Best I could tell we still had everything we’d come down here with, so we must have something that would interest the boatman of the River Styx. This being a cashless culture I didn’t have any coins, but last time I checked Leo had roughly seven hundred stolen watches on his person.
I elbowed the demigod hard in the ribs.
“Ow,” he growled.
“Offer the nice man something valuable.”
Charon eyed us with greedy curiosity, leaning over the side of the boat to get a better look at whatever Leo had for him. He reminded me of a small child being given a chance to take a treat from a jar of candy.
“I do so admire a pretty penny,” Charon admitted as Leo rifled around in his jacket. “Something shiny, something new.”
The first thing Leo held out was a Rolex watch, and I recognized it as the one he’d handed to me on Bourbon Street. I’d still been wearing it when we got back to his apartment. I shot him an incredulous look. “Did you steal that from me at the hospital?”
He feigned hurt. “No. I simply held on to it for safekeeping, thank you.”
