The Immortal Fire Read online

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said drily.

  Soon Charlotte was in the principal’s office, weaving a tale of pain-related woe. And a few minutes later she was on the front steps, waiting for her mother to pick her up and take her home.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” Mrs. Mielswetzski asked when Charlotte climbed into the car. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “I just needed to get out and get some air.”

  Mrs. Mielswetzski clucked her tongue. Charlotte knew she was physically restraining herself from saying she knew it was too early to go back to school. “I think we should go back to the doctor.”

  “Oh, Mom,” said Charlotte. “It’s okay.” She wanted to be thinking about the words on Mr. Metos’s computer, but her brain hurt too much.

  “Char,” her mother insisted, her voice thick, “there’s nothing okay about it. You just got…battered. And you’re still hurting. You couldn’t even make it through the school day.”

  “Mom, I just needed to rest for a minute, that’s all.” The fact was, her mother was right.

  “And we don’t even know why or how you were injured. I mean, why did you get so hurt when no one else did? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Charlotte bit her lip. This was the sort of thing she’d hoped her parents wouldn’t think too hard about. “I don’t know,” she mumbled.

  “The doctor said it looked like you’d fallen off a mountain. Twice.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I know, I know,” her mother said, her voice softening. “I just want to make sure you’re safe, that’s all.” Closing her eyes, Charlotte sank into her seat. Just be on the lookout. She was many things, but safe was probably not one of them.

  When she got home, Charlotte went up to her room to check that the world was still there. There had been a third tsunami, in the same place, the biggest of all, and it wiped out three towns. The Sicilian island was still being assailed by wind, and the sky above was positively littered with rainbows. Another island was plagued by constant lightning. The gods were never ones to be subtle.

  Charlotte went to the blog that was cataloging the more clearly supernatural events, but when she typed in the address, the site did not load. She tried a couple more times, then did a search for it, to no avail. It was just gone.

  That was enough for one afternoon. Groaning, Charlotte dragged herself over to the bed, where—her mind reeling with tsunamis and secret sons—she soon fell asleep.

  She was awoken a couple of hours later by a firm knock. As Charlotte sat up in bed, blinking and confused, the door burst open to reveal a rather frazzled-looking Zee. “There you are! I thought I was going to have to explain to your mother that you’d been abducted by aliens!” he breathed.

  “Sorry,” Charlotte said, rubbing her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Tara,” Zee continued, “I don’t know where Charlotte is. I think she’s fallen through some kind of space-time vortex. Too bad, that. What’s for supper?”

  “Sorry,” Charlotte repeated. “I went out the window. You did a good job of stall—”

  “I had no idea what happened to you,” Zee interrupted. “I thought you were hiding under the desk at first and were going to be there all afternoon until Mr. Metos left. I thought maybe I’d try to get him out of the office somehow, but he caught on pretty quickly and I looked like a total git. Then I saw you weren’t there at all, and I figured you’d gone out the window, but when you didn’t show up in history, well, I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d uncovered some sort of spell in a book and you read it out loud and a mythical beast came out and ate you!”

  Charlotte stared at him. Zee was gesticulating wildly, and his words had virtually tumbled out of his mouth. She couldn’t believe it was true, but—

  “Zee? Are you mad at me?”

  Zee’s arms dropped to his side. “No.”

  “You are! You’re mad at me!”

  “Well, really, Char,” he said crossly, “you could have left me a note on the board or something. What was I supposed to think?”

  “Clearly you were supposed to think that I had activated some Charlotte-eating monster by reading a spell out loud from a book!” Charlotte had felt bad all afternoon, but now that Zee was here and in such a twit, she couldn’t help but think it was kind of funny.

  “Well—”

  “Don’t worry, Zee, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of reading, it’s that you’re never supposed to say a spell from an ancient book out loud. I went out the window, Mr. Crapf saw me and sent me to Mr. Principle, and he called Mom.”

  “Yeah,” Zee said, his voice softening. “She thinks you’re hurt. And traumatized. She’s pretty worried about you.”

  “Yeah,” said Charlotte, guilt washing over her again.

  “So”—Zee plopped into Charlotte’s desk chair—“what happened? What did you see?”

  So Charlotte told him about the gibberish e-mails. “The son stays secret, it said.” She leaned in, eyes wide. “Zee, I think Mr. Metos has a son!”

  He frowned. “Hmmm…I don’t know…”

  “What else could it be? A secret son. Why do you think it’s a secret? Does that mean he has a wife?”

  They exchanged a doubtful look. That was hard to imagine.

  “Maybe it’s some sort of past affair that he can’t talk about,” Charlotte continued. “Maybe it’s dangerous for some reason to have been with the boy’s mother. Or”—she gasped—“maybe the boy is a threat to the mother, so they have to hide him from her!”

  “Maybe…”

  “It’s like Zeus, you know?” Charlotte continued breathlessly. “The Lords of the Universe always get overthrown by their sons in Greek myths. Cronus heard a prophecy that his heir was going to overthrow him, so he swallowed his babies, until Zeus was born and Cronus’s wife gave him a stone to swallow instead and hid baby Zeus away in a cave and he was raised by wolves.”

  Zee frowned. “I don’t think it was wolves. I think that was Romulus and Remus.”

  “Well, whatever. The point is, he’s got to be secret for a reason.” Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Or maybe he’s secret from the gods! Maybe Mr. Metos is afraid they’ll harm him if they knew, like use him to get to the Prometheans. Or maybe he’s dangerous to them somehow!”

  “Perhaps,” Zee said with a shrug.

  “Zee,” Charlotte cried, “maybe he’s a god!”

  “Mr. Metos?”

  “No! The son. Maybe Mr. Metos had a son with a goddess. That sort of thing happens all the time.”

  “I can’t really see him doing that,” Zee said drily. He had a point; Mr. Metos didn’t like the gods very much. “Anyway, if he did have a son with a goddess, wouldn’t the son be mortal?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes the descendants of gods and mortals are gods. Mr. Metos has Titan blood. He’s a descendant of Prometheus. If you mixed that with god blood, that could be really powerful.” As the words came out of her mouth so confidently, Charlotte was aware that she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but it sounded plausible. “Anyway, if he has a son and wants to keep it secret, we know now, right? We could blackmail him. Make him take us to the Prometheans.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Come on, Zee. Poseidon is missing. The other gods are rampaging. That’s our fault. Somehow. If it weren’t for us, those people would still have their towns.”

  “Char, I know! I’m just not sure there’s enough evidence….”

  “What else could it be?” Charlotte asked. “We can feel him out, anyway. See how he reacts.”

  “You’re going to school tomorrow?”

  Charlotte sighed. “I guess. Don’t worry, if things get bad, I can just get caught sneaking out again.”

  Just then her father knocked softly on the door. “Oh, Charlotte,” he said, “I thought you were sleeping. Mr. Metos called for you.”

  “Really?” Charlotte asked, deliberately not looking at her cousin. �
��What did he say?”

  “He wanted you to come see him tomorrow before school. At seven thirty. He said it was important. Mr. Metos was quite concerned about you.”

  Charlotte and Zee exchanged a look. “He was?”

  “Yes. He must have heard you had to leave school today. He told me we should keep you at home tonight. He wanted to make sure you knew he said that. What a nice teacher!”

  “Uh-huh,” said Charlotte, her heart sinking. Something was wrong, something was coming. For a while it had seemed that they were in charge, that suddenly Charlotte and Zee were going to take matters into their own hands, that somehow the situation was controllable. But it wasn’t. It never had been, and it never would be. No matter what they wanted, the fight, it seemed, would always come to them. Something was in store for them now. Charlotte could feel its presence breathing down her neck, and no matter what she did, eventually it was going to pounce.

  The dream came to her quickly that night. Again she was trapped somewhere dark, dank, and cold, and again she knew instinctively she was in a cave. Her hands traced the familiar cold bars of the cage, searching for a door she would never find.

  And then, again, light. Just the barest trace, but Charlotte’s parched eyes drank it up voraciously. She still could not see much around her—the outline of her cage surrounded by some hulking darkness, while the light flickered teasingly somewhere in the distance.

  “Hello?” Charlotte asked. “Is anyone there?”

  Then the Shade, standing there, waiting, watching. It wanted her to do something, it needed her to do something, but she couldn’t, she was trapped in this cage.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Charlotte? The voice came out of nowhere. Over here!

  Something in Charlotte’s mind told her she’d been here before, she’d heard this voice before, and she really wanted to know what it had to say.

  Charlotte, come here. I want to show you something.

  In a blink, her world was flooded with warm, low light, and she finally could see what was around her.

  She was in a cage all right, a cage with close-set, thick iron bars that was suspended from the ceiling of the cave a few feet off the rocky ground. The cave she was in was about the size of her living room, with craggy walls that were marked with several-feet-high Greek letters that seemed to dance slightly in the stale air. And standing before her was a small, dark-haired girl whom Charlotte had certainly never seen before.

  The girl was about six or seven, in a white dress with long, flowing white ribbons in her dark hair. The dress was odd-looking, old-fashioned, with a white sash and stiff triangular skirt, like the sort of thing your great-grandmother might buy you if she didn’t know you very well or like you very much. Odder still were the girl’s eyes—a deep, strange shade of green like nothing Charlotte had seen before—eyes that stared calmly at Charlotte. The Shade stood near, watching.

  Something in Charlotte’s conscious mind went off—no, she’d never seen her before, but there was something familiar about this girl, something she should remember.

  Who are you? Charlotte whispered.

  That’s not important, said the girl. I want to show you something. Come on out.

  I can’t, Charlotte said.

  And just like that, a door to Charlotte’s cage opened, a door that certainly had not been there a second ago. The girl had not moved; she still stood gazing at Charlotte through the thick cage bars.

  Charlotte looked from the girl to the open door. Suddenly she could not see any ground below her at all, just darkness. The Shade watched her.

  Come on.

  Is it safe? Charlotte asked.

  No, said the girl. Come out anyway.

  The next thing Charlotte knew she was stepping out of the cage into the blackness, waiting to reach the ground that she knew was just a few feet underneath her, but then she was falling into the darkness. She fell and fell and it seemed she would never stop.

  She woke with a jolt, upsetting Mew, who had settled on her chest. It was still night, completely dark. The world was absolutely silent. Charlotte closed her eyes and tried to settle herself back to sleep, but sleep would not come. She could not shake the vividness of the dream, the terror of falling, the silent expectation in the watchful Dead. And then Mr. Metos’s phone call came back to her. It must have been something serious for him to call them at home, for him to leave a message that sounded so very much like alarm. They were in danger again.

  With a sigh, she pulled herself out of bed and went to the window to look at the street below. There was nothing, just darkness. It was uncommonly dark, actually. She looked up—the night sky was covered in a thick blanket of clouds that obscured the stars and the moon. There were no heavens that night, no stars watching over them. The Earth was on its own.

  CHAPTER 6

  A Rather Alarming Development

  CHARLOTTE WOKE UP THAT MORNING FILLED WITH apprehension and dread. When she came down to breakfast, she found her parents engaged in what could only be described as a Talk. Even more suspiciously, the Talk broke off quickly when she entered the room.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said her mother.

  “Ephesus is ruined,” Mr. Mielswetzski said, seeming to change the subject. “It’s an archeological site in Turkey. I’d always wanted to go there.”

  “What happened?”

  “They don’t know. It’s all shattered. Like an earthquake hit, but there was no earthquake last night.”

  “Oh,” Charlotte said.

  “How are you feeling, dear?” asked Mrs. Mielswetzski. “Are you sure you want to go to school today?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  Her parents exchanged another look. “I’ll drive you guys,” said Mr. Mielswetzski. “Let’s get your cousin.”

  As Charlotte stared out of the car window on the way to school, images from the past year flicked through her mind. Here a Footman reaches for her on a quiet street, here another bears her toward the steaming River Styx, here Hades’s Palace crumbles around her, she’s attacked by the monstrous Scylla, nearly drowned several times, beaten to within an inch of her life, here she’s standing on the deck of a lifeless cruise ship as Poseidon comes bearing down on her from one side, a giant sea monster from another. It was a lot to happen in the eighth grade. She’d escaped death so many times, but if people kept trying to kill her, eventually one of them was going to succeed.

  Charlotte thought fleetingly of her recurring dream. When she was in the Underworld, she saw the lake that dreams come from. Philonecron had used it (or bribed someone to use it, since he was exiled) to send Zee dreams to try to lure him down to the Underworld, but Charlotte had had strangely prophetic dreams as well, dreams that seemed to warn her about Philonecron’s shadow-stealing servants. It didn’t seem that Philonecron himself would have sent those, but the cousins were never able to figure out who had.

  Whether these new dreams had been sent or were just figments of her (admittedly active, but can you blame her?) imagination, Charlotte didn’t know. And whatever it was the girl in the dream wanted to show her, she still hadn’t seen it—unless, of course, it was merely the feeling of plunging toward certain death, which Charlotte already knew all about, thank you very much.

  There was something else about the dream, something that nagged at her. The girl seemed so familiar somehow, even though Charlotte knew she’d never seen her before. There was something in her memory about a cave, a girl, a dream, but she couldn’t place it. It might have simply been that she’d dreamed about it before and the memory lingered in her subconscious, or maybe it was something she’d seen in a movie; it might have been nothing. But it might be something. Charlotte resolved to mention it to Zee later.

  When they got to school, Mr. Mielswetzski stopped the car and said, “Zachary, go ahead. I want to talk to your cousin.”

  Zee got out of the car and glanced at Charlotte through the window of the front
seat. He nodded toward the front doors and mouthed something to her, then walked up the stairs toward school.

  Charlotte looked up at her father, who was regarding her gravely.

  “So,” he said, “what happened in school yesterday?”

  Huh? Oh, that. “Oh, I was just…I don’t know. I just had to get outside and rest. All those people, and I wanted some air….”

  Her father nodded slowly. “Is that all?”

  “What?”

  “Was there any other reason you were outside?”

  Charlotte stared. Did her father not believe her? “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he said with a sigh, “that your mother and I worry about you.”

  Oh. Yeah. She knew. Apparently her days of respite from being thought of as irresponsible were over. “I’m very good at taking care of myself,” she said stiffly.

  “I know that. You don’t need us anymore. But…that’s part of the problem.”

  Charlotte looked at her father questioningly. That was not where she expected this conversation to go.

  “Charlotte, you’re just—” He frowned. “Some people in the world are destined to have quiet lives. Your mother and I are like that. We’re happy, and more than that, we’re content. And then there are people who are marked for…for trouble, for risk, for excitement. And you, my dear Lottie, are one of those people.”

  Charlotte looked at her feet. He didn’t know the half of it.

  “Look at the cruise ship,” he continued. “Hundreds of people onboard, all without a scratch on them. Except you. You look like you’ve been put through a meat grinder.” He shook his head. “Your mother and I know that there’s going to be a lot in your life we’re not a part of. And”—he looked at her pointedly—“that there already has been.”

  Charlotte’s ears burned.

  “And as much as we want you to tell us everything, we know that’s not always going to happen. So we’re just going to have to take it on faith that no matter what you face, you’re going to come out all right. Fortunately, we have a lot of faith in you. So as you’re out leading your unquiet life, think of your parents, who are worrying about you and who love you and who know that, whatever challenges you face, they have nothing on you.”