The column laughed. “No, no. I’m a spell, lovey. An awfully good one, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, no one gets to see it much these days. Not too many people come to the front door requesting an audience with the King, you know? It’s my cross to bear. Well, anyway”—he yawned again—“I think it’s time for a nap.”
And with that, the eyes and mouth disappeared. A few moments later the enormous door creaked open, and Charlotte found herself staring at a man in a tail-coat, with stark white skin and no face at all. He bowed deeply.
“Mademoiselle,” he said in a voice that sounded like smoke. “Come in.”
“Um, okay,” she whispered.
Before her was a long hallway, impossibly long, really, with an impossibly high ceiling. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all in black. Black doors lined the hall in perfect symmetry, candle sconces lit the walls, and an eternally long Persian rug rolled off into the distance.
“Wow,” Charlotte whispered under her breath.
“It’s hand knotted,” said the butler rather ominously. Charlotte did not stop to wonder how he talked with no mouth.
“The Palace doesn’t look this big from the outside….” she said faintly.
The butler laughed a knowing laugh. “No, it doesn’t, does it? Come this way.”
He led Charlotte through the hallway into a small sitting room, which looked like it belonged in that railroad baron’s house she’d been to on many years’ worth of field trips. Ornate furniture, rich fabrics, opulent art, and even some lace doilies dotted the room. The only sign that this was not an ordinary room in an ordinary manor was the size of the furniture—clearly built for those many feet taller than she.
“Wait here, please,” the butler said, bowing. “I’ll come get you when the King is ready to receive you.”
Charlotte nodded, feeling a little like a dwarf.
“Would you like anything?” he continued. “Tea? Our chef makes an excellent scone. Light as air.”
“No. Thank you,” Charlotte said firmly.
“As you wish.” The butler left. This all seemed surprisingly easy to Charlotte. She suspected that you couldn’t just waltz into most palaces, ask for an audience, and be shown right to the king. Shouldn’t Hades have a bit more security? This did not seem to bode well.
Charlotte sat in the room, her legs swinging in the giant chair, hugging herself, thinking of all the things that did not bode well, and practicing what she would say to the King of the Underworld. Coup…army…shadows…danger. And when that was done and settled, when he had sent out his army to squash Philonecron, she could ask him why he didn’t treat the Dead better. At least let them into the City! Not that the City was that great, but, you know, it’s not nice not to let them in. It’s the principle of the thing.
Then she could go back and get Zee and Mr. Metos, and they could go home. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Soon the butler returned and led Charlotte back down the endless hallway. The butler knocked on one of the black doors, and a voice boomed, “Bring her in.”
An involuntary shiver ran through Charlotte. The voice seemed to penetrate her body, resonating straight through to her heart. It was as if she had been thrown into a bath filled with ice water, as if her blood had suddenly changed to ice. She gulped and followed the butler inside.
She entered a vast throne room, which appeared, in itself, to be as big as the Palace walls. Two giant ebony thrones loomed at the end of the room, and the black marble floor gleamed. On either wall two large sets of glass doors led onto balconies—which Charlotte hadn’t seen from the outside, and for that matter, one of the balconies was where the hall should be. The walls were lined with intricate tapestries. (The tapestries portrayed the formation of the earth and the ascendancy of the Olympian gods, though Charlotte didn’t notice—and could you blame her? When you are in the presence of the Lord of the Dead, you don’t stop to look at the art.)
And there was said Lord of the Dead, lording over the cavernous room. As Charlotte approached, the room seemed to shrink, while Hades seemed to grow.
With a face of shadow and bone, he looked as though he had been carved out of a tree. A black beard hung gloomily on his thin face. He had at least a foot of height on Philonecron, though he seemed to stretch before her eyes. He wore a plain crown, wielded a scepter, and was cloaked in blackness. Next to Hades stood an angular figure with pitch-black skin, white eyes, and a shiny, bald head, but Charlotte barely noticed him—she only had eyes for Hades.
She reached the thrones and kneeled, for that is what one does in the presence of a king.
“Charlotte Ruth Mielswetzski,” Hades intoned.
She started. “How…how…do you know my name?”
“I know everyone’s name,” he said. “You all belong to me, after all.”
Well, that was one of the creepiest things Charlotte had heard all day—and it was a long list.
“But,” he continued, peering at her, “you’re mortal. What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
Charlotte gulped. “Your Highness. I’ll tell you later. There isn’t time. I’m here because you’re in danger. The Kingdom is in danger….” In a rush she spilled out everything she could about Philonecron and the shadows, ending with a plaintive, “They’ll be here soon!”
“Oh, yes, Philonecron.” Hades waved his hand. “Assistant Manager of Sanitation. Charon told me all about it. He’ll never be able do it. He needs that boy to enchant the shadows, and he’ll never be able to get him down here. It’s impossible.” Hades nodded importantly at Charlotte and the black-skinned man. “I made a Decree!”
“But,” Charlotte said, bewildered. “The boy is down here. I mean, I’m down here.”
“Yes, you are!” He tilted his head. “How did you get down here?”
“I took a bus to the Mall. And there was a door, and we opened it.”
Hades leaned in. “Just like that?”
Charlotte nodded.
“Impossible,” he declared.
This was not going well. Charlotte stood up, brushed off her knees, and said quietly, “Sir, Zee—the boy—is here. I’m here. We opened the door, and we came down, and the Harpies made fun of me, and now Philonecron has Zee. Please believe me.”
“Hmmm…” Hades looked at the black-skinned man, who was, of course, Thanatos, Chief of Staff. “I see this Philonecron’s power is growing. Banish him, will you?”
“My Lord…” Thanatos bowed. “Um, he is already banished.”
“Oh,” Hades said. “Clever of me…” He looked off somewhere in the direction of the window. “Where is my wife?”
“I don’t know.” Thanatos bowed again. “Probably in her garden.”
“Yes, yes, probably…I’m sure she’ll be back for supper.”
“Excuse me? Your Highness?” Charlotte inhaled and stepped forward. Underneath Hades’s cloak she could see the faint outline of a potbelly. “The shadows are coming. They could be here any minute. They’re coming to overthrow you. You have to do something! Do you have an army?”
Hades blinked at her. “Army?”
“To defend the Kingdom?”
He glanced at Thanatos, then shook his head. “Why would I need an army? This is the Underworld. No one else wants it.”
“Well,” Charlotte said, “someone does now.”
Hades sat back in his chair and stared at Charlotte. At that moment the marble floor seemed to shake. Something in the distance rumbled.
Hades tilted his head. “Did you hear something?”
“Oh no,” Charlotte moaned.
CHAPTER 24
A Surprise
ZEE PACED BACK AND FORTH IN THE SMALL CAVE. THE Footmen had shut the secret door to the shadows cavern behind them, and he found himself in a ten-foot-by-ten-foot prison with nothing but a flat rock on the floor to keep him company and the dank smell of the Underworld sneaking in from the cave entrance. Zee kicked the walls a few times, until it started to hurt a lot, and then he kicke
d up some dust and then threw around some pebbles and then chastised himself for kicking and/or throwing things when he should be doing something to save humanity.
But what?
Everything had depended on his being with Philonecron. It would have been all right to enchant the shadows as long as he’d been able to follow them; now everyone was doomed.
Zee sighed and sat down on the rock. The two Footmen stood right in front of his doorway, their garish faces peeking in every once in a while. They seemed to be quite delighted with his predicament. Zee wanted to hurl rocks at them, but he had a feeling they’d be more than happy to come in and break his neck or choke him with clay or something.
He could try to disable the Footmen—hit one over the head, maybe, and just try to outrun the other one. Then he could still make it to the Palace. Then he’d still have a chance. Of course, when he and Charlotte had tried that when the Footmen attacked them in the Upperworld, they had stopped time and frozen him in place. (He hadn’t thought of that when he was considering killing himself. That was dumb.)
Zee sat and he thought. He thought about everything that had happened so far, about how terribly wrong it had gone, and about the chances he had had to make it right, and about all the ways he had made things worse. He thought about all the Dead, and all the Dead that were to come, and how unless he thought of something fast, they were going to spend eternity in torment.
And he found himself thinking of his grandmother. What would she think of him now, sitting here? Would she be ashamed of him? Ashamed of him for letting Philonecron control him like that, ashamed of him for running to the States and leading the shadow thieves there, ashamed of him for falling for Philonecron’s trick, ashamed of him for enchanting the shadows, ashamed of him for not doing something now—now when there was nothing left to do?
Zee sighed. The sad part, the really sad part, was that she would probably not be. She would probably love him and be proud of him anyway. That was just the way of Grandmother Winter.
She was down here…somewhere. He would never be able to find her, he knew that now, but she was here. She was near him. She had promised him she would watch over him, and now when it mattered most, she was close by. Grandmother Winter had a way of getting what she wanted. He wanted to see her, to give her a hug, to tell her how much he missed her, how much he needed the strength she gave him. But he couldn’t. He would simply have to get the strength from the idea of Grandmother Winter—the sweet, soft, strong idea of her.
And with that strength he would have to do something. He would have to try. He would have to try to get past the Footmen, even if it was impossible, even if it meant his death. Which it probably did. Because at least he could say he had tried. At least he would not have let the world go without a fight.
Zee closed his eyes and he pictured his grandmother. He remembered the floury, talcum powdery, lotiony scent of her, he held it in his mind, he breathed it in.
Then suddenly he sensed something in the cave with him. Something small and not quite human. He’d seen enough creatures that day to know they tended to pop up everywhere in the Underworld—and it wouldn’t do him any good to be killed by a vampiric lizard right now, so he opened his eyes, expecting to see such a beast, or maybe a four-headed rat or a mucus-spewing mole.
But what he saw was a cat.
Not a demon cat. Or a skeleton cat. A regular cat. Almost, well, a kitten.
The cat had darted into the cave and was making its way slowly toward him, eyes set on him. Zee stared. Upon looking closer at the cat, he thought it looked a great deal like Charlotte’s cat, Mew.
In fact, Zee couldn’t be sure, but if he had to bet, well, he’d bet the cat was Mew.
“Mew?” he whispered.
The cat leaped toward him and frantically rubbed against his legs. Zee felt tears springing to his eyes; he couldn’t help it. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?” He picked up Mew and squeezed her. “You really are an extraordinary cat.”
He shot a glance at the doorway, but the Footmen didn’t seem to have noticed a thing. They were standing a few feet away from the door, stock-still now—they looked like wax statues.
Mew bonked her head against his a few times, then leaped out of his arms and dashed to the left wall of the cave.
“What is it?” Zee asked.
Mew began to scratch violently against the wall. Zee got up. “What are you doing?” he whispered, walking over to her. He stood between Mew and the doorway and stared at her. She looked at him and kept scratching.
Zee examined the wall. It didn’t look different from any of the others—ragged, with bits of rock jutting out….
Oh!
Zee put his hands on two of the rocks and pulled down. Nothing. He tried two more. And then he saw a small, round rock just to the right of his head. He put his hand on it, pressed down—and the wall evaporated.
In front of him was a slightly larger room, maybe four times the size of the little cave. It was quite clearly a laboratory—Philonecron’s laboratory. It was filled with test tubes, beakers, strange contraptions, and jars of unidentifiable substances. Cabinets and shelves lined the walls. Hanging against one wall was a very long white lab coat, and there was a bookshelf filled with quite ancient-looking texts, and on top, a box of scrolls. And there was a whole wall containing small jars of what looked very, very much like blood. The markings on them were in Greek, and so Zee couldn’t tell which jar was which, but he knew his blood was somewhere in there. He grimaced.
Mew had run over to a corner and was squawking madly at Zee. He got the point. She was standing right in front of what looked like a trash bin, and Zee hurried over, raised the lid, and gasped.
The bin was filled with shadows.
They were piled on top of one another carelessly, like old towels. They looked thin, used, torn. Zee tried to pick one up, but he couldn’t get hold of it—his hands just passed right through.
Zee looked at Mew, who stared pointedly back at him.
“I have to enchant these, don’t I?” he said.
Mew simply looked at him.
“Then they can take care of the Footmen, and I can get to Philonecron.”
Mew stared.
“I should hurry, shouldn’t I?”
More staring.
“All right, then.”
Zee knew what he had to do. He went over to Philonecron’s cupboards and searched until he found what he needed. With a deep breath he went back over to the shadow bin and stood over it.
“Here goes…” He took the knife and sliced open his arm. Pain shot through him, and he winced. He felt tears leap to his eyes, and he exhaled deeply, then held his arm over the pile of shadows and squeezed, watching the blood as it dripped down.
He nodded at Mew, then toward the doorway. “Go check on them, will you? I’m going to make some noise.”
Mew turned her head toward the door and crept off.
He closed his eyes. He had no idea if this would work. His words were supposed to be the final step, so whatever needed to be done to these shadows, he hoped Philonecron had already done it.
And the words—Zee had repeated them over and over again earlier today. Did he still know them? He exhaled and tried to clear his head.
Ek…
Ek skotou…
Yes, that was it. Ek skotou es to phaos! That was the first sentence. Ek skotou es to phaos! The next was much the same.
Ek thanatou…
Ek thanatou es to…
Es to what? Si something. Si something?
Argh!
Ek skotou es to phaos. Ek thanatou es to…
Es to…
Sden!
Zee leaned into the bin of shadows and whispered, “Ek skotou es to phaos, ek thanatou es to sden! Ek skotou es to phaos, ek thanatou es to sden! Ek skotou es to phaos, ek thanatou es to sden!”
There was movement in the bin. A stirring. The shadows were coming alive.
“Ek skotou es to phaos, ek thana
tou es to sden!”
The pile began to thicken, the shadows were growing. The pile wrenched and pulsed, and then a shadow jumped from the bin and stretched its arms out. Then another. Then another.
“Ek skotou es to phaos, ek thanatou es to sden!”
The shadows were leaping out—or were being tossed out by the other shadows. Some lay limp on the ground, others stretched and writhed until they, too, popped up and stood in front of Zee.
He had two dozen, then three, standing at attention in front of him. A few others roamed around the room aimlessly, and others still lay lifeless in the bin.
He stared warily at his strange new soldiers, these spirits cut out of darkness. They twitched and shimmered as they stood, seemingly eager to try out the profits of life. Would they really obey? Would they turn on him? How alive were they—did they think, did they want? They were smoky and indistinct, vague creatures with stumps for arms, and they looked as if they could haunt Zee for the rest of time. There was something so…negative about them; they seemed to be cast from Nothing, like animate black holes, and Zee could not help but feel that if they got too close to him, they would take his soul.
He had to command them now. He had to be strong and sure. If only he were Charlotte, he could do this. But he wasn’t. So he had to channel all the Charlotteness inside him. Zee took a deep breath.
Suddenly he heard a loud squawk behind him. Mew! He whirled around. The Footmen were approaching the lab, grinning broadly and viciously, Mew running behind them. Mew leaped from the ground and began clawing feverishly at one of the Footmen’s thighs, and he reached down and threw her aside. She hit the ground and yelped.
“Shadows!” Zee yelled. “Attack them!”
His heart went into his throat. He had no idea what would happen—it all had been a good plan in theory, but in theory shadows could not come to life.
The shadows flickered, expanded into the air, stretched up and out as if they were letting out a silent roar.
Zee stepped back. The Footmen sneered and took long, sure steps toward Zee. He suddenly doubted Philonecron, doubted the shadows, doubted the whole plan, doubted everything but the Footmen, who were going to tear him to pieces.