“Clio,” Kassia said patiently. “This is the traditional dress of a high-born nymph. Bastian sent it for you to wear.”
“But it looks—”
“Mysterious and intimidating. It will tell the Underworlders you’re important, you’re confident, and you mean business.”
“But—”
“And, most importantly, the mask hides half your face, so no one will be able to tell if you’re staring at certain spells for a suspiciously long time.”
Clio chewed on her lip and lifted her arms again, uncomfortable with the fabric’s weight.
“It also makes you look rich,” Eryx called from where he waited down the street. “We want them to think you’re loaded.”
She lightly touched her mask where a delicate tiara, set with sapphires, emeralds, and opals, spanned the top. A grand sapphire filled the setting in the middle of her belt, and another large stone glittered at her throat.
“I suppose,” she mumbled grudgingly.
Kassia stepped closer and Clio tipped the mask up to see her friend more clearly.
“You don’t have to go,” Kassia murmured. “We can turn back anytime.”
Clio pulled a smile onto her face and put her shoulders back. “No, it’s fine. If you say the clothes look good, then …” She scrunched her nose and sighed. “I wish I could look like you instead.”
Kassia was also wearing an outfit Bastian had provided. The fine leather was blood red, with accents in black and silver and glittering rubies for decoration. Despite carrying no weapons, she looked like a warrior of flames, crimson from her hair down to her toes.
“Just wait,” Eryx said, trotting back to join them. His outfit matched Kassia’s almost exactly. “Everyone’s attention will be on you. We’re just your escorts.”
She nodded and took a deep breath, feeling the restriction of the unyielding fabric around her midsection.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Clio?” Kassia asked.
Beaming, she pulled the mask back into place over her forehead and eyes. “I’m totally good. Let’s do this!”
“That’s the spirit,” Eryx replied cheerfully. “Just think of it as an adventure.”
Kassia shot the male bodyguard a dirty look that Clio could see even with her mask. Despite her complaints, the mask was made of carefully fashioned fabric that appeared opaque from the outside but allowed her to see through it. Shaking her arms to untangle her obscenely long sleeves, she started forward again. The fabric swished and swirled around her legs with each step, offering glimpses of her soft green boots—a break from tradition, since nymphs normally went barefoot, but the footwear was necessary for this journey. The mane-like ribbons hanging off the back of the mask flowed out behind her in the slight breeze of her movement.
Maybe the outfit really was mysterious and elegant, with all the draping fabric and most of her face hidden. Or maybe she looked like a costumed fool. She would find out for sure when the Underworlders fell over in hysterical laughter at the sight of her.
The sun hung low in the west, almost touching the tops of the skyscrapers and lighting the scattered clouds with shades of orange and pink. A handful of people hurried on their way, their postures stiff as they watched the darkening shadows. A few stopped to gape at the three of them before rushing off down different streets.
“See?” Eryx said. “You are intimidating. The humans are running away.”
“They’re probably running away from you two,” Clio pointed out. “You actually look scary.”
“Scary enough to keep the Underworlders on their toes, I hope.”
Clio nodded, surreptitiously pressing an arm to her stomach where sick nerves churned. It was okay. It was fine. She could do this. She was just going to look at some spells … in the Underworld. Her smile almost slipped but she stubbornly held it in place so Kassia wouldn’t worry too much.
Overworlders didn’t go to the Underworld. Underworlders didn’t go to the Overworld. That was the rule. Well, it wasn’t so much a rule as it was common sense. For starters, a daemon couldn’t just walk into the Underworld or Overworld unless they already knew how to get there. That aside, why would an Overworlder want to go to the Underworld?
The two realms did not get along. Even on Earth, the closest thing to neutral ground, it wasn’t unheard of for Underworlders to kill Overworlders for kicks. And Overworlders weren’t exactly innocent of the same crime.
But still. The Underworld was a realm of darkness, violence, and monsters. Humans hadn’t been that far off with their hell mythos. And here she was, a relatively powerless Overworld nymph, waltzing straight into that hell.
“You’re hyperventilating,” Kassia accused. “Clio, let’s go back. Bastian can come up with another plan.”
“I’m fine!” Clio insisted, her voice shrill. “Absolutely fine. See?”
“She’s good,” Eryx added. “She’s tough. She’s been scoping out those Ra bastards for months now, hasn’t she?”
“They didn’t know who she was or that she was spying on them,” Kassia said flatly. “Chrysalis knows she’s an Overworlder. What if they discover our plan?”
Clio gritted her teeth, unsure if her expression still passed for a smile. She was trying hard not to think about how Chrysalis might react if they realized she was stealing their magic.
“They can’t catch you stealing spells because you won’t be stealing them,” Eryx pointed out. “You’ll just be … making a mental note of how they’re made, right?”
“Exactly.” She brightened. “Unless they can read minds, there’s no way they’ll know.”
They reached an intersection. Down the wide boulevard to their left, a white tower rose above the other buildings like a gloating king. Clio tilted her head to get a better view through the mask. The gleaming windows reflected the setting sun, flashing orange like the interior was on fire. Speaking of Ra bastards …
The pale tower was the Ra embassy and contained one of the largest concentrations of Ra daemons on Earth. At least she wasn’t going there. Though she supposed their actual destination wasn’t any better.
She followed Eryx in the opposite direction, leaving the imposing tower behind. The streets grew more dilapidated, lined by battered cars that hadn’t moved in decades and were gradually disintegrating into piles of rust. Half the buildings were abandoned and boarded shut, and they passed a dusty park with a vandalized statue and one cold concrete bench marked with graffiti. Some cities were better than this, she’d heard, while others were worse. A century ago, it was far different, but even then, she didn’t think she would have liked living in a human city.
If their mission in the Underworld went well, she’d be home in Irida in a couple days—where the streets didn’t stink of garbage, the crumbling buildings didn’t block out the sky, and humans didn’t creep through their own neighborhoods like hunted rabbits.
“I was wondering,” Eryx continued, breaking into her thoughts. “How exactly does your ability work? Prince Bastian has never properly explained it to me.”
“He didn’t tell you how it works?” she asked, surprised. Her special talents were inherent to nymphs, but Eryx and Kassia shared a different caste. Chimeras bore almost no resemblance to the beasts of human legend except that they were deadly. “Well, it’s pretty simple. It’s called asper—or rather, astral perception, to use the proper term. It means we can see certain kinds of energy, and magic is a form of energy.”
“All daemons can see magic though.” Eryx kicked an empty tin can out of their path. “So I’ve never really understood the difference.”
Clio gestured to a nearby building, its front doors missing and half the windows boarded shut. “We can both see that building, right? You can see its size, its shape, the construction materials used for the outside. You can count the floors and windows, maybe estimate the number of rooms inside. You can guess what the building was used for.”
Eryx nodded. Kassia listened without comment, already familiar with Clio’s
magic.
“If you wanted to know more about the building,” Clio continued, “you would have to go inside. And if you wanted to know how it was constructed, you’d have to take it apart—ripping down walls or whatever.”
She waved a hand around them. “That’s how almost all daemons see magic. The more skilled you are in spellcrafting, the more you can discern about a spell by looking at it, just like a knowledgeable architect. But if a daemon wants to know exactly what an intricate spell does or how it was created, you’d have to study it for a long time or break it down into its individual components.”
He canted his head. “So how do you see magic then?”
“With my asper, I can see everything about a spell all at once. It’s like looking at a building and seeing through the walls to the beams and supports and wiring and pipes, the rooms and stairwells and attic and—and just everything. Nymphs can see all the parts of a spell, how they fit together, how they interact. I don’t always understand exactly how it works or all the constructs that comprise it, but I can see all its pieces.”
“Clio is well educated on spell structures and weaving,” Kassia added. “She can deduce the purposes of most spells at a glance.”
She blushed at the praise.
“You and Bastian are different from regular nymphs though.” Eryx turned down a side street. “The royal bloodline is special.”
Clio nodded, warily eyeing the deep shadows of the narrow road surrounded by windowless brick walls. The city here was strangely quiet, the aura of neglect and abandonment stronger than usual.
“Bastian and I have an additional ability,” she told him. “It’s called mimicking. Basically, whatever spells we see with our asper, we can instinctively duplicate.”
“You can replicate any spell you see?”
“Yup.”
“No matter how complicated? Even if you don’t understand how the spell was made? Even if you don’t know what it does?”
She laughed nervously. “It gets tricky with complicated weavings, but I’ve never seen a spell I couldn’t mimic.”
Eryx stopped walking. “Okay, I need to see this.”
“Eryx, this isn’t the time,” Kassia protested.
“It will only take a minute.” He raised a hand, palm up, fingers curled inward. “Are you watching, Clio?”
Amused, she passed a hand over her eyes to focus her asper—or tried to. Instead, she almost knocked her mask off. She quickly straightened it, annoyed with herself. The gesture wasn’t necessary, just an old habit—one she should probably try to break between now and her arrival in Asphodel.
She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. A glowing aura now emanated from her two companions—a tangerine sheen that reflected their inner power and indicated glamour was obscuring their true forms. Brighter spots flashed where they carried woven spells, easily visible through the mask. She concentrated on Eryx.
He snapped his fingers open. Lines of orange magic burst from his palm and spiraled outward, then fell. When they hit the ground, fire erupted, leaping skyward before vanishing.
Clio pursed her lips, watching his magic fade, the internal pattern and flow of its energy emblazoned in her memory like a moving blueprint.
“That’s one of my favorite battle casts,” he said smugly. “I toned it down, obviously, but it does serious damage to groups of enemies. I fine-tuned it myself. No one else knows this version.”
Clio extended her hand, fingers curled. Eryx’s face creased with skepticism, but Kassia smirked.
Clio popped her fingers open. Lines flashed upward, arched over her head, then hit the ground in spurts of flame. She lowered her hand, smiling proudly. Her cast had been much weaker, but only because she had limited magic to toss away on frivolous spells. A perfect replication otherwise.
Something flitted across Eryx’s expression, difficult to see with her vision partially masked, but she knew what it was. Anger. Resentment. The usual reaction when she mimicked a daemon’s spells.
“Well,” he huffed, “that was damn impressive. But it was a cast. What about weavings?”
In magical terms, casts and weaves were two distinctly different applications of magic. A cast, as Eryx had demonstrated, was a spell conjured and implemented on the spot—magic pulled from within the caster’s body, given form and purpose, and unleashed immediately.
A weaving was a spell embedded in an object, usually a hard material that could hold the spell long-term, like metal or gemstones. Weavings were more varied in the kind of magic that could be created, and all but the simplest ones were time-consuming to create.
“I can mimic weavings too,” Clio told Eryx. “It just takes me longer to get a good read on them.”
He rubbed his hands together eagerly, his bad temper forgotten. “This will be great. You can get an eyeful of so much of their magic, and they’ll have no clue you can duplicate everything you see. I’m glad you’re doing this, Clio. If you hadn’t agreed, Bastian might have done it himself.”
Her eyes widened. “This is way too dangerous for the prince to—”
“Exactly. And there’s a slim chance they might know about the Nereid line’s mimic ability.” He grinned. “But even if they’ve heard of a mimic, they’ll never suspect you might be one.”
Kassia hooked her arm through Clio’s and pulled her into motion. “Enlightening summary, Eryx. Why don’t we get a move on before we miss our appointment?”
Clio’s apprehension returned in a sickening wave but she didn’t let it show. Kassia was right that this was a different game than her previous assignments. If they caught her, she couldn’t just run out of the shop the way she had two weeks ago. They would be trapped in the Underworld, helpless to return home unless their enemy voluntarily took them back to Earth. If it went wrong …
“Kassia,” she murmured, keeping her face pointed forward, grateful now for the mask. “You don’t have to come.”
“What?”
“It’ll be dangerous, and I know you don’t agree with … If you’d rather stay here, I’d understand.”
Kassia tightened her arm around Clio’s. “Of course I’m coming with you. It’s not even a question.”
She relaxed. “Thank you.”
“Ah ha,” Eryx exclaimed. “Here we are.”
He stopped in the middle of the narrow street, facing a blank brick wall with a single rusting metal door.
“This? Here?” Clio squinted around the dank, alley-like street, then back at the door. “This is the Hades embassy?”
Talk about a big step down in grandeur from the Ra embassy.
“It’s not the official one that the human government deals with,” Eryx clarified. “It’s the one Hades daemons use.”
He grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. Inside was a closet-sized foyer blocked off by another door, with a keypad panel on the wall beside a list of numbers. As Eryx punched in a code, Clio wrinkled her nose at the smell, trying not to imagine what had left the foul yellow stain on the floor. She felt even stupider standing in the grimy little foyer in her dramatic costume.
They listened to the tinny speaker ring.
“Hello?” a female voice answered.
“Envoy from Irida,” he said.
“Please come in.”
The door buzzed loudly and Eryx swung it open. Clio expected more grunge, so the interior surprised her.
It wasn’t an apartment building at all, but rather resembled a utilitarian office. The spacious reception area was brightly lit, with several rows of cushioned leather chairs, paintings on the wall, and a broad desk behind which sat a young woman in a blouse with her dark hair piled on her head in a fancy twist.
Clio hesitated, feeling pathetically unprepared—a complete fraud. But it was too late to back out now. Straightening her shoulders, she crossed the room in the slow, regal glide she’d practiced for hours yesterday. The receptionist watched, her eyes just a little wide. She actually looked kind of intimidated.
“We
lcome to the Hades embassy.” Daunted or not, the receptionist’s professional tone betrayed nothing of her thoughts—like whether she had a problem with the three Overworlders standing in front of her. “We’ve been expecting you. Before we begin, can I confirm whether you are all capable of ley line travel?”
Clio held her small smile in place. Passing between the realms required traveling through a ley line—one of the bands of natural magical energy that webbed all three worlds. Ley line travel wasn’t the most frightening part of their journey, but its implications were. Ley lines could be difficult to find. Once in the Underworld, if she, Kassia, and Eryx couldn’t find a line to travel through, they could never return to their world.
“Of course,” she answered in her best impression of a serene, queenly tone.
“Excellent.” The receptionist pushed her dark-framed glasses up her nose and peered at the contents of the folder on her desk. “Your guides will be ready shortly. You were informed that weapons are expressly forbidden, correct?”
“Yes,” Clio answered. Luckily, Kassia and Eryx were deadly even unarmed.
The door to the left of the desk swung open and four daemons entered: three men with dark hair and one with silvery hair at odds with his young face. They wore dark, casual clothing as though they were on their way to a pleasant evening on the town. All four stopped to stare at Clio in her fantastical outfit. At least they weren’t laughing.
Kassia shifted closer to Clio. “The pale one,” she whispered. “He’s a reaper. Watch your back.”
Clio’s gaze darted over the silver-haired man again. A reaper. Hades was a territory of reapers, so the presence of one wasn’t unusual, but she’d hoped to avoid interacting with them as much as possible.
“I will be your guide this evening,” the reaper said in a low, clipped voice. Clio opened her mouth to offer a polite greeting but the reaper plowed on without pausing. “We’ll be traveling by car to the ley line, then we will guide you through the line to our destination in the Underworld. From there, it will be an hour to Asphodel.”