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15
ADDIE
Maddox vanished. After he got stuck in the doorway, I waited for him to shift back to his human form. Instead, he opened a portal and vanished. I glared at the place where he’d been, but I barely had the energy to hold onto my anger.
While we’d been in the underworld, the sun had come up here in the mortal world. I blinked up at it and groaned. Potato jumped onto the bed and curled up beside me. Her presence lulled me into a few hours of restless sleep.
My dreams were filled with lies and secrets. Hel’s refusal to talk to me had left me annoyed. I’d never expected her to be completely honest with me. She was a divine being who knew far more than I ever could, and I understood that some secrets weren’t meant for mortal ears.
But this involved me. Hel had dragged me into a predicament of her own making, and I wanted to know what happened. So, in my dreams, my mind came up with all sorts of reasons. In one instance, Hel and Fenrir were locked in a battle over her domain—over who would become the god of death in the Norse pantheon. In another dream, Hel laid her head in Fenrir’s lap and looked up at him with love before his face twisted and became monstrous.
I woke with a start. That couldn’t be it. Hel and Fenrir never loved one another. I couldn’t imagine Hel loving anyone, let alone an asshole undead shifter like Fenrir.
He had spoken of a lover who’d betrayed him, though. I’d imagined that lover had gone to Hel for help. There was no way that Hel could have been that lover the whole time.
I ran a hand through my undone hair and took in my bedroom. It was a mess, a layer of dust gathering on everything because I hadn’t been able to clean in too long. Little paw prints smudged the dust from Potato. Movement caught my eye. The menace in question was perched atop my dresser mirror, somehow.
She’d knocked the scarf off the glass mirror, so she could sit atop it and look out the far window. Without the covering, I caught my own reflection. I was surprised to find that there were no dark bags under my eyes. If anything, I looked better than ever.
My cheeks warmed as I remembered what Maddox and I had done the night before. I guess it’d been good for my complexion.
I shook off the memories because there was work to do. Of course, the thought sat in the back of my mind and made me smile as I pulled a white chalk pen from my dresser drawer and began writing sigils across the mirror’s surface.
The summoning circle format was becoming as familiar as the back of my hand. I opened a book stolen from Luca’s library and scanned the pages for the symbols that would bring me a Greek Fate. This time, instead of bringing them straight to me, I wanted to use the mirror as a form of video call.
It seemed like the right idea.
Hand pressed to the center of the circle, I let my arcana pour forth. Frost spread across the glass before clearing in the very center to reveal a middle-aged woman. There were fine lines around her mouth and a furrow in her dark brow. She lifted startled honey eyes to mine.
I gave her an apologetic smile. As she set aside what she was doing and turned towards me, her face changed. Her brown skin darkened, taking on a deep blue undertone that made the whites of her eyes pop. Her hair lengthened into wild curls that haloed her head.
“This is interesting!” she said excitedly. She folded her hands beneath her chin and wiggled her hips as if she couldn’t contain her brimming energy. “I don’t hear from desperate mortals anymore.”
Potato’s striped tail drifted into view. I gently pushed it away with the back of my hand as my annoyance grew.
“I’m not desperate.” My nose wrinkled. “Well, I don’t think I’mthatdesperate yet. I need your help, though. Can you teach me how to weave my own fate?”
The woman’s face morphed again. Her skin paled, taking on a russet undertone. This time, she became a crone with deep lines from a long life across her face. Her eyes gleamed with the same kind of gold I saw in the fate threads. When she leveled an annoyed glare in my direction, my stomach turned.
I lifted a shoulder to pretend that I was unaffected by her grandmotherly disapproval. I’d never had a grandmother, so this was an odd experience for me. “If you don’t teach me, then I’ll just do it by myself and mess up fate for everyone. I don’t think you really want that. Do you?”
Her lips twisted while she studied me. I would uphold my end of my threat. I really hoped she could see that. My own fate was already a twisted mess of problems that weren’t even mine. I was going to unravel this unfair knot and give the universe its shit back.
The Fate’s eyes widened. The motherly visage returned as her eyes tracked a figure behind me. Color drained from the goddess’s face. I didn’t know that could even happen to deities. Did they have blood?
I twisted in my seat and looked back to see Perse sitting on the edge of my bed. She, too, looked younger again. She tossed her long wheat-colored curls—with pastel pink tips like she was an experimental young adult all of a sudden—over her shoulder and gave me a wiggle of her fingers in greeting.
Magic sparked across my skin. I jumped in my seat and spun back towards my mirror, but the summoning circle was gone by then. My jaw dropped, and rage turned cold in my stomach.
Potato jumped down from her perch on the mirror and landed on the dresser top with a heavy thud. The cat gave Perse a long, curious look before finally jumping down to greet her.
“Who are you?” I asked with no preamble.
Perse gave me a secretive smile. I was done with the things people kept from me. I couldn’t do anything if I didn’t have information. It’d been like that since day one. Mom left me without telling me what I was, so I’d been forced to stumble through life in fear of myself. Then Maddox had been changed, and we still couldn’t figure out what he was becoming.
I crossed my arms over my chest. The damn cat had betrayed me. She arched her back and jumped up off her front feet so Perse could pet her back. How could Potato do that to me? I thought she was on my side.
“I’m not moving until you tell me a truth. I know you’re not a ghost at this point.” I leaned back, the edge of my dresser biting into my skin.
