The Shadow Thieves

  The Footmen gently set the litter down. With a flourish one of them pulled off the fabric that covered the litter to reveal Philonecron, sitting in a very high chair made of bone and smiling like he had never smiled before. His legs were crossed and his feet dangled in the air. From her perch behind the throne, Charlotte shuddered.

  Hades strode forward. “How…how did you get in here? I banished you!”

  Philonecron nodded his head and waved his hand in the air, as if to bow. “My Liege.” He cleared his throat. “If I recall correctly, on the occasion of my banishment you told me that I could not set foot in the Kingdom.” He wiggled his feet. “You said nothing about being carried in. Really, though, this is most inconvenient.” He sighed. “As soon as you have transferred power to me, all your spells will be broken, and I can walk again. I do look forward to that. I am a great walker. It’s very good for the body. And the mind.”

  Hades slammed his scepter on the ground. “How dare you? I will never—”

  “Oh, really?”

  In a flash Hades aimed the scepter at Philonecron. A great blue fiery light rushed from it, heading straight for Philonecron’s head. But Philonecron, just like that, stuck his hand up in the air. The fire hit his hand, bounced off, and went charging toward Hades’s throne—the one Charlotte was hiding behind. She leaped out of the way, and the chair burst into flame and then disappeared into a pile of ash. Thanatos, who was lingering by the window, shrieked.

  Hades looked to the scepter, then to Philonecron. “Part demon, are we?” he muttered. “I should have known.”

  But Philonecron was no longer looking at Hades. His eyes had followed Charlotte as she emerged from behind the throne, and he was staring at her with a brilliant hatred. His lips curled up in a sneer. “Oh, you,” he said.

  “Oh, hi!” she said. “Missing a Footman?”

  “You! You little…” He almost stood up, but then one of the Footmen rushed toward him, and he jerked himself down in the chair. He put out his hands, as if he were trying to steady himself on an invisible rail. “You are trying to come between Zero and me. I will not let you.”

  “Where is he?” Charlotte stomped her foot. “Where’s Zee?”

  “Zero is home. He is resting; he’s had a very trying day. Besides, there may be violence. I did not want him to see that.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I assure you, my dear, I would never harm your cousin. You, on the other hand…” He eyed her. “I should have personally dumped you in Tartarus. They’ve never had a living mortal to punish before. Well”—he tilted his head and smiled cruelly—“it does not matter. You escaped, you came all this way, but all your efforts were for naught. You came to warn Hades, and what happened? Did he offer to appoint a committee? Did he refer you to a Manager? Did he try to show you pictures of his wife?”

  Charlotte gulped and looked at the ground.

  “No, no, my saucy friend, you cannot stop me. Hades could have stopped me, but now it’s too late.” He looked around the room. “Where is the Ice Queen, anyway? I haven’t seen her.”

  “Do not call her that,” Hades breathed.

  “What, the Ice Queen? It’s just, she’s not in her throne and she’s not in the garden. I don’t believe she’s in the Palace at all. Do you know where she is? No? Hmm. Really, you should keep better track of your wife.”

  “Leave her out of this,” Hades spit.

  “I wonder if perhaps, when this is all done, she’d like to marry me. She makes such a lovely queen. Funny, you don’t have any heirs, but I’m sure she’ll give me some. After all, I never kidnapped her from the earth. She’ll view me as her liberator….”

  Hades let out a fierce growl and aimed his scepter again.

  “My Lord!” Thanatos shrieked, running up to him. “No!”

  Exhaling heavily, Hades put the scepter down. He glared at Philonecron. “Well, perhaps I should be more precise in my language this time. Philonecron, grandson of Poseidon, Assistant Manager of Sanitation, I ban—”

  “Wait!” Philonecron threw up his hand. Thanatos cringed. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’re being watched, you know. And if I am banished, those shadows out there—have you seen them? Yes? Impressive, aren’t they?—will tear this Palace down bit by bit.”

  Hades was visibly shaking with rage. Philonecron still smiled placidly. Hades closed his eyes, put a hand on his mouth, and squished his face in thought. Suddenly his eyes popped open, and he leaned over to Thanatos and whispered, “Can I banish the shadows?”

  “My Lord.” Thanatos bowed his head. “Um…I don’t believe the shadows are citizens of the Kingdom.” Thanatos’s voice was unusually high. “You have no control over them.”

  With that, Hades let out a yeeeaarrgh! that shook the whole room. Philonecron continued to smile. Charlotte slunk back toward the walls.

  “Now.” Philonecron clapped his hands together. “My Lord, in the spirit of reconciliation, generosity, and general bonhomie, I am giving you a choice. As you have seen”—he gestured broadly—“I have an army surrounding your Palace. You have no army. You have no defenses. You have nothing. Even a god cannot fend the shadows off forever; there are simply too many. At a signal from me they will start beating, burning, boring, busting, and generally wreaking havoc. They will continue until they get to you, my Lord, and when they find you, they will do the same to you until you surrender.

  “After your surrender we will take you to Tartarus. You remember Tartarus, don’t you? I’m sure all the people you’ve been punishing relentlessly for millennia will be very happy to see you. Not to mention all the Dead you’ve been mistreating, whom I’m going to throw in to keep you company.

  “Or,” he continued, spreading his arms out magnanimously, “you can just turn your crown and scepter and Kingdom over to me. I’ll banish you—and I assure you, I am always very precise in my language—and we can save the Palace. Really,” he said, looking around the room, “it has a lot of potential. Awfully plain on the outside, though. Mine will have a bit more…panache. Some cast-gold bas-relief ornamentation portraying the story of my great conquest over the indolent, uxorious tyrant—”

  “Get out!” Hades spit.

  “You get out,” Philonecron declared.

  “No, you get out!”

  “No…”

  Charlotte sighed heavily. This was going nowhere. Hades was going to do nothing, and the shadows were going to burn the place down. Charlotte would die and get thrown into Tartarus, the kids would all die and join her, Mr. Metos would have his liver eaten for all eternity, and Zee would have to spend the rest of his life with Philonecron.

  She hurried over to the balcony to check on the shadow army. They still stood, quiet and waiting. It was so quiet outside suddenly—without the echoing approach of the army, with the great stillness of the shadows, the whole world before her seemed cast in perfect silence.

  Except, of course, for sounds coming from inside the Palace. Philonecron and Hades were still yelling uselessly at each other. Charlotte crept over, closed the door, and began to listen to the great silence around her.

  The shadows stared at her, without movement, almost without life. How strange it was. Maddy’s shadow was out there, Elizabeth’s, Ashley’s, Audrey’s, Angie’s, and Zee’s friends too—the kids from soccer, the kids from school, and that Samantha girl who made him blush. They were just things, just reflections of light, enchanted with blood and with her cousin’s own words….

  If I can—

  If I can—

  The whispers reverberated in her mind, but she couldn’t make out the words. She closed her eyes and pictured her cousin—on the first day, when her parents had thrust them together in the living room; at school with a crowd of kids surrounding him; on the soccer field, showing everyone how it’s done; lying on the couch after his concussion, helplessly trying to deflect her mother’s concerns; stopping to warm her as they went down to the Underworld; looking at her urgently as the Footmen led him
away. She pictured him there, standing next to her, leaning down, whispering in her ear.

  “What did you say, Zee?”

  And then suddenly she could hear him—as if he were there, now, right next to her.

  If I can—

  If I can enchant them…

  But before she could make out the rest, one of the Footmen came bursting through the door. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small black horn, and blew—the commanding sound went through the Kingdom. The shadows started moving again then, stamping their feet, brandishing their fire and their bits of darkness. The whole Palace seemed to shake. Charlotte screamed. From inside the room came Philonecron’s booming voice:

  “Shadows!” he cried. “Bring the Palace down!”

  CHAPTER 26

  Battle of the Shadows

  THE SHADOWS SPREAD OUT ALONG THE GROUNDS, shaking their torches in the air. They lit trees on fire, surrounding the Palace in small bursts of flame. Charlotte could not move. In the blink of an eye Hades strode out onto the balcony, eyed a crowd of shadows that was bringing down one of the remaining trees, aimed his scepter, and fired a stream of blue flame.

  Charlotte screamed, “Noooooo!” and ran to the balcony wall—but when the smoke cleared, the shadows were still there, though a nearby cypress had exploded in blue fire.

  Cursing loudly, Hades fired the scepter again, but still to no avail. Smoke rose from the grounds below, and Charlotte began to cough uncontrollably.

  A group of the eerie warriors reached into their chests, plucked out black balls of shadow, and began to hurl them at the Palace walls. The walls burst on contact. Shadowy bits flew through the air, like fireballs, destroying whatever they hit.

  Some of the shadows dived into the walls themselves, and blocks of marble began to fall to the ground. Charlotte turned to Hades and yelled, “We have to go!”

  He turned to her and shook his head firmly. “I am not leaving my Palace.”

  “It’s too dangerous!” Charlotte yelled as a bit of marble burst around her.

  “I’m Immortal,” said Hades.

  “Well, I’m not!” said Charlotte, and she turned and ran back into the throne room.

  There she found that Philonecron and the Footmen were gone. The second throne had been turned into a pile of ash. Behind one of the tapestries stood the trembling form of Thanatos, and Charlotte shouted, “Let’s go!” Another crash—the balcony doors exploded, and glass just missed Charlotte’s head. Smoke filled the room, and the floor shook. She took off, her heart pounding in her ears, passing through the throne room doors, down the endless hallway, and out the Palace door.

  The world was on fire, the world was breaking to pieces. Bits of marble and chunks of wood fell from the sky. The columns flanking the front door had large cracks running through them, and something welled up in Charlotte’s throat. The column was just a spell, not real, not alive, but he had been nice to her—and kindness was hard to come by in the Underworld.

  A chunk of wall came crashing down in front of her, and she took off again, running down the gold-paved front walk, through the line of flaming cypresses, with her sleeve to her nose and mouth so she could breath.

  At least if I die down here, she thought, I won’t have to wait in line at the Styx.

  The shadows were everywhere, but all their attention was focused on the Palace, and they didn’t seem to notice Charlotte at all. She darted in and around groups of the great black creatures on her way to…

  On her way to where?

  What, was she going to run away? Run back to the park, run back home, hide under the bed, while everything here collapsed? She couldn’t leave the scene. She had to see this through, whatever it was. She had to do whatever she could to stop it, because no one else was going to. And if she did not stop it, at least she would not have run away. She could say to herself that when the time came—when the fate of humanity was in the balance—she, Charlotte Ruth Mielswetzski, stayed to see it through.

  (Of course, she would be saying that to herself as her soul was being tortured in the eternal hell of Tartarus. You can’t have everything.)

  Charlotte skirted around the chaos, out of reach of falling chunks of marble and billows of smoke. She found her way to the Palace gates, now a tumble of iron and stone. A great pile of rubble lay just beyond the outline of the gates—the remains of some once-grand building—and slowly, carefully, she climbed up to the top and looked out at the destruction around her.

  The Palace was full of gaping holes, and fire licked up all around it. The smallest of the onion-shaped domes was teetering precariously. The shadows went on throwing bits of darkness; they were relentless, mindless of all the falling stone and the smoke. It did not hurt them. It did not stop them. It didn’t even slow them. The Palace would be nothing but rubble in minutes, and then what would Hades do?

  The Palace was emptying out. Immortal or not, the Palace staff had decided to vacate the premises, and quickly. Shadowy butlers were trotting out as fast as their dignity would carry them. An ogre cook and spritelike maids came scurrying through the doors, followed by ghoulish creatures in business suits clutching papers in their hands. Thanatos came too, holding hands with his identical twin brother, Hypnos. They, and the whole crowd of Palace denizens, followed Charlotte’s tracks through the smoky trees, by the remnants of the front gate, and out into the City.

  Hades, though, did not leave. Charlotte could see him, still on the balcony, shouting and waving his scepter maniacally.

  It didn’t take Charlotte long to see what he was yelling at.

  Over to Charlotte’s left, in a spot just beyond the fracas, stood Philonecron. He seemed impossibly high up in the air, but when a crowd of shadows moved, Charlotte saw he was standing on the chair of the litter, which was being held up by the four Footmen.

  Philonecron was holding his arms out majestically, framing the chaos below him. His grin stretched to his ears. Every once in a while he shouted commands at the shadows. “A little to the left!” or “Yes, yes, splendid shot!” or “Oooh, how wonderfully destructive!”

  The Footmen were perfectly still and stiff, proper as posts, holding up their master. Charlotte wondered if she could hurt them somehow, run over and push them into the flames—maybe that would do something. Slow everything down, maybe. But it would never work; Philonecron would call the shadows to her, and she would last a lot less long than the Palace.

  And the Palace was not lasting. The small dome came crashing down, bringing with it much of the roof. Philonecron let out a cheer, and the group of shadows right in front of Charlotte turned their attention to the other two domes. A wall-size chunk fell from the back of the Palace, another from just below the balcony, and Hades fell backward inside the building.

  “Bring it down!” Philonecron shouted gleefully. “Bring it all down!”

  Two stories of the Palace collapsed with a gigantic crash that shook the entire Kingdom. Charlotte went tumbling off her rubble pile, scraping her hands and legs on the way down.

  She crawled halfway up again, dirty and bleeding, tears and sweat streaking lines down the dust on her face. The shadows in front of her toppled another dome, and Charlotte watched, small and helpless, as the Palace of Hades began to tumble down.

  As the walls fell to the earth, a cry came from deep inside her. “Stop!” she shouted weakly. “Stop!”

  And suddenly the group of shadows in front of her turned to look, rocks clenched in their hands.

  She froze. But they did not fire. They were looking at her, waiting, as if…

  As if waiting for her to tell them what to do.

  “Stop!” she said again, and a few more stopped, turned to her, and waited.

  She bit her lip. Her body trembling, she crawled all the way up to the top of the pile of rubble and shouted at the top of her lungs:

  “STOP!”

  And that’s when she heard Zee’s voice in her head, as clear as day.

  If I can enchant them…


  I can also stop them.

  If I can enchant them, I can also stop them.

  That’s what Zee had been trying to tell her. That’s why he had gone along with Philonecron. He thought he could stop them. If they were enchanted with his blood, with his voice, he could stop them.

  But he wasn’t here.

  She was here.

  What had Mr. Metos said? The Footmen had used Zee’s blood to find her and steal shadows from her friends. She and Zee were blood relatives. The shadows were enchanted with Zee’s blood, with Zee’s commands, so surely…

  “STOP!” she called again. All around her shadows froze. Their attention was uncertain, wavering—she could feel it; she knew she could lose them at any moment. She channeled all the Zee blood inside her, all the Zee-ness, and she cupped her hands around her mouth, took the biggest breath she ever had in her life, and shouted, “STOP!”

  A rush of power went through Charlotte. No one had ever listened to her at all before, and now an entire regiment of shadows was obeying her commands.

  All around Charlotte the destruction had ceased, and Philonecron—shouting commands and cackling on the other side of the Palace—hadn’t noticed a thing. “Find him!” he shouted. “Find him and tear him apart.”

  Her shadows were still, frozen, waiting—but, she realized with a sinking heart, it wasn’t enough. She’d stopped a thousand, maybe two, but there were so many more. And the Palace was on its last legs, and then the shadows would go for Hades.

  There was no time. She couldn’t get to them all….

  But her regiment could.

  “Go to the other shadows,” she yelled at the group before her. “Make them stop! Everyone must stop!” She looked around frantically. “Quickly!” she added.

  Her regiment peeled out in front of her, weaving their way in and out of the other platoons, blackness coiling around blackness. One shadow reached out and touched another, and that one stopped what it was doing and reached out and touched the one next to it, on and on down the line. One stopped, then the next, then the next—like very creepy dominoes. One regiment, then the next, then the next—they stopped in waves, putting down their fire and their smoke and their bits of shadow and looking up at Charlotte. That was enough to get Philonecron’s attention.