Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) (14 page)

Before stepping into the forest, he looked back at the shimmering torches outlining the great square shapes of the palace. He knew he might never see it again, and the thought brought him both sadness and relief. Thinking of Rhea, he could swear he actually sensed her down there, like a particular note plucked on a string, though it wasn’t a matter of hearing, nor any of his other senses.

If it were a piece of magic, it would only be one of many tonight. Accepting it, he turned and followed Tanis.

At the crest of the hill, a breeze washed over them, cooler than he had felt in months. It smelled like the sea.

“There, look.” Tanis pointed to the north, where the wind came from. Clouds blotted out the stars along the horizon. “Your sacrifice worked. The rain’s coming.”

Chapter Eleven

A
KNOCK RANG BRISKLY ON
S
OPHIE’S
dorm room door. It had only been two hours since she parted with Adrian, and her mind was not in the least ready to focus on the general chemistry textbook she was attempting to inflict upon it. Seeing her boyfriend, even in her current confusion, was a diversion she was happy to embrace. She leaped up and opened the door.

Jacob stood there in his denim jacket, broad-shouldered and stocky, waiting with his thumb hooked into his belt loop. He smiled at her. The familiar grin, and the way his light brown bangs swooped down to cover one eye, stirred a burst of affection in her. She laughed and leaped into his arms.

“Hey, babe.” He gave her a lingering kiss on the lips, tasting of tropical-fruit gum. “Missed you.”

“You too. Thanks for driving up.” She led him into the room. “Melissa, you remember Jacob?”

Melissa unplugged one earphone, looking up from her laptop. “Oh, yeah. Hi.”

“Hey.” He aimed a pointer finger at her, thumb up. “We didn’t get a chance to talk when I was helping Soph move in. What are you planning to study?”

“Biology. Maybe a women’s studies minor.”

“Right on.”

“You?” Melissa asked.

“I’m hoping to get into the J school at U of O.” Upon seeing her blank look, he clarified, “Journalism.”

She nodded, returning to her screen-watching. “Cool.”

Jacob lifted his eyebrows at Sophie. “So. Where can we grab some pasta?”

They wound up at a diner that served food from all over the globe, with decor to match. African-inspired rock music played, Italian-style red-checkered cloths covered the tables, and a mural of what might have been Cambodian temples sprawled on the wall. After ordering his pasta, Jacob fell quiet, flicking his butter knife over the flame of the votive candle on their table.

Sophie let her thoughts wander too, and they instantly journeyed to Adrian. Or Karl, or Hades—whatever name best fit him. A lot to wrap your mind around, indeed. Though, as she’d recalled with a shock this afternoon, it wasn’t much of a hardship to wrap your arms and legs around him. It had been romantic and poignant as well as hot, if Grete’s memories could be trusted.

What details did Adrian remember about her? How did her face look to his eyes; how did her body feel in his arms? Not just in past lives, but this one, too. What did he think of her, and what did he want from her?

Jacob kept tilting the knife over the flame. “Have you met a guy named Adrian Watts?”

If Sophie had been holding any silverware herself, she would have dropped it. She blinked, ducking her head to scratch the spot where her barrette held back her curls, thinking fast. How the hell had Jacob found out his name?

“I don’t think so,” she said, trying to sound indifferent. That lie felt safest at this moment.

“Are you sure?” Jacob’s voice held a chilly edge. “What if I said ‘Kiwi Ade’?”

Holy crap
, she thought. “Oh. Then in that case I think he comments on my blog.” She still tried to sound casual. “Lives in New Zealand or something. Why?”

He clunked the knife’s handle against the table, between beats of the music. “Have you met him in real life? Like recently?”

“Why—what—” Sophie drew in her breath, aware she now had to make a major choice: lie to protect Adrian, a guy she still couldn’t figure out; or tell Jacob the truth, possibly putting Adrian in danger. As she weighed her options, Jacob watched her, his brown eyes guarded and uneasy.

It’s serious, this business of not telling anyone
, Adrian had said.

She proceeded with her calm tone as best as possible. “No, like I said, he lives in another country. Why are you asking? Where did you get his name?”

Jacob glanced around nervously, tongue flitting along his teeth. “I’m—look, I’m freaked out, Soph. I’m worried for you.”

She stared at him. Had these superpowered people contacted him too? Or was it this “opposition” Adrian mentioned?

“Why?” she asked.

“These people found me at my dorm the other night. Investigators—I guess detectives of some kind. And this Adrian guy, he’s apparently wanted for, like, lots of scary stuff. They said something about girls missing or killed, girls who had been connected with him…I don’t know all the details. But now it looks like he’s trying to get close to you.”

Sophie found she was shaking—partly fright, partly a sense of outrage she couldn’t account for. “Why were they asking
you
? Why not me?”

He ducked his head, folding his hands over the back of his neck with a sigh. “I wasn’t supposed to ask you right out; it’s just that I got freaked out. Look…” As he lifted his face, the waitress brought Jacob’s pasta and Sophie’s soup and salad.

The couple sat in stony silence as she set the plates down and asked if they needed anything else.

“No, thanks,” Sophie told her.

Once she had returned to the kitchen, Jacob picked up his fork and stabbed at a piece of bow-tie pasta, but didn’t eat it. “They didn’t know if they could trust you to turn him in. Like, maybe you’d become his friend, and believed what he was telling you. So they wanted me to find out if you’d met him, and maybe they could get a lead on him.”

She dipped her spoon into the corn chowder, but didn’t feel like eating. “Are you sure they were detectives? Did you see badges or anything?”

“Why would you ask that? Yes, they showed me ID. Look.” Jacob pulled out his wallet and handed a business card to her.

Bill Wilkes, Oregon State Police
, it said, with a phone number, email address, and official-looking sheriff-star logo.

“I’m supposed to call him if you can help me bring in this Adrian guy,” Jacob added.

Sophie returned the card, not looking him in the eye. She felt violated by this conversation—oddly more violated than she’d felt by Adrian himself. “Well, I’m not hanging out with criminals, so chill,” she said.

Maybe the business card was forged, and these “detectives” were the opposition. Or maybe they weren’t, and Adrian
was
a dangerous stalker on top of having supernatural powers. That was entirely possible. With a shiver, she considered that Jacob’s warning might fit into what she already knew.

“Don’t answer his comments anymore, all right?” Jacob asked. “Please. I just don’t want you to get killed. Like those other girls.” Jacob’s voice almost broke on the last sentence. He let his fork drop onto the plate, clearly as uninterested in food as she was.

Sophie pulled in a long breath and released it. Jacob’s stress and worry were genuine; she was convinced of that, at least. She reached across and covered his hand with hers. “Okay. Relax. Listen, I’ll be careful. I’ll ignore him, I promise. It’s good that you warned me.”

Not that she could ignore what was going on in her head, but she would at least put off talking to Adrian a few days, until she found out more.

Jacob nodded. “Thanks. And if he pesters you online, or if you see him around town or anything, just call the cops.”

“I will.”

And she meant it—at least for now. What she’d experienced with Adrian might have been some kind of illusion or hallucination. Abuse or death at the hands of an insane stalker might have befallen her, and still could.
Dear God
, she thought shakily, trying one more time to eat a bite of chowder.
I am seriously lucky to be alive.

T
HEY DID MANAGE
to eat, and the food calmed them down enough that they were nearly smiling again by the time they paid the bill. Back in her dorm room after the meal, they found Melissa had cleared out. She texted Sophie to say she’d be studying late with some other students.

“So we’re alone.” Jacob drew Sophie close, kissing her neck.

She supposed it was his form of making up and feeling safe. She tried to match the feeling and grow warmer toward him, and succeeded at least partway.

But he sabotaged the mood several minutes later when he asked, “Have you been to the student health clinic yet?”

They were lying on her bed, shirts and shoes off, kissing and nuzzling. Sophie turned her face away, annoyed. “I’ve only been here a few days, J.”

“I know, but we agreed when we went to college you’d see about getting the pill or an IUD or something.” He sounded petulant, which made her angrier.

She sat up, nudging his arm off her waist. “Why do you make such a big deal about it? We do other things. We satisfy each other.”

“We talked about it. You said you would. I want us to be together.”

“How is it not ‘being together’ to do these other things?”

He grimaced, and flopped onto his back. “Fine. You don’t want to.”

“I didn’t say that. Look, I’ll tell you when I talk to the clinic. I haven’t had time. I’ll get to it when I’m ready.”

“Yeah, when you’re ready.”

“Damn it. Is this how you want it to happen? Because you guilt-tripped me?”

He sat up too, folding his arms around his knees. “Maybe this isn’t our night.”

“No, maybe it isn’t.” They sat sulking a moment, then Sophie added, “I’m sorry. It’s all that stalker stuff you were talking about. It creeped me out. I kind of don’t want
anyone
to touch me tonight.”

She wasn’t lying. Being alone to untangle her strange thoughts, dreams, and memories appealed most strongly this evening.

Her reciprocal guilt-trip worked, in any case. Jacob looked abashed, kissed her once more, and said, “Okay.” A few minutes later, he declared it time to drive back to Eugene. Classes would begin tomorrow for them both.

As soon as he left, she booted up her computer and ran a search on Adrian’s name with the terms “criminal” and “wanted” added. She found nothing. For over an hour she searched in every way she could think of, seeking some proof that Adrian was a known danger according to the authorities. Not a single crumb of evidence presented itself.

Both frustrated and relieved, she shut the computer and trudged to the bathroom to get ready for bed. All she could do now was dream, and hope the answers arrived that way.

Chapter Twelve

H
ER DREAMS WERE LINED UP
in wait for her, bombarding her with images surrounding her soul and Adrian’s—or at least, that’s what her mind insisted they were.

After wading through the life of a woman in northern India in the late nineteenth century, she managed, in the midst of her dream, to remember Adrian’s analogy about the bag of oranges. Stepping back from the scene, she mentally gathered up that life into a whole and set it aside. New images flooded in upon her from what she presumed was the life before that one—China this time. After allowing a minute to examine her silk trousers and the taste of the green tea in her small painted mug, she wrapped up that life too and moved it to the side.

Though she approached the memories backward, the most recent events arriving first, she found her mind tended to flip each individual life into the proper chronological order if she wished. All she had to do was think of it as a book, and start at the first page rather than the last, and the story unfolded in the right sequence. She preferred it that way; it made more sense. The backward direction wasn’t how people tended to think about life.

Six or seven lives passed in that one night, with brief intermissions in the Underworld, where she visited people she had known. Souls remembered everything. Living mortals only remembered if they’d eaten the pomegranate from Hades and Persephone’s orchard. To judge from the conversations she’d held with other souls in the Underworld, no living humans had done that for thousands of years.

“Everyone misses having you immortals around,” another soul said to her once, between lives.

She awoke to the golden, cloud-streaked September morning, startled into consciousness by the word.
Immortals
.

Are you immortal?
she texted to Adrian—or started to, but stopped and deleted the message. Trusting him still didn’t strike her as safe, not with the rumor that he was responsible for the disappearance or murder of several girls.