“Do you?” A fire roared in his eyes. “I’ll have to remember that.”
My lips parted, and I sucked in a breath through my nose. Persephone.
He dropped his mouth to my ear, whispering. “Don’t worry. If I ever chose to pursue you, I’d do it the old-fashioned way, darlin’.”
I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening, my heartbeat feeling like a jackhammer inside my chest. When he leaned back, his eyes bore into mine. A swirl of black fog started to float around us.
“They must’ve really pumped up those machines,” I said.
The fog wrapped itself around my legs, cascading over my body. No one else on the dance floor batted an eyelash. How much champagne did I drink?
“What color fog do these machines normally produce?” He asked.
I furrowed my brow. “Gray-ish?”
“Hm.” He dipped me.
Hm? Hm, what?
He searched my face, his eyes brightening. “You’re not afraid of me.”
My brow creased. “Afraid of you? No. Why?”
The fog cascaded back down, gradually disappearing.
He stood me upright. “Everyone fears me.”
“Do they have a reason to?” I concentrated on what I could of his face from behind his mask.
His gaze dropped to the floor, not answering. He took my hands and draped them on his shoulders. His arms wrapped around my waist, and we swayed.
“You say we choose our paths toward good and evil. What do you see when you look at me, Stephanie?”
I gazed up at him, watching those beautiful pastel shreds of light trying to squeeze past the shadows. “Hurt. You’ve been hurt deeply, but yearn to feel free again.”
He pulled me closer, my chest pressing against him. His cheek rested against the side of my head. “You’re quite perceptive. But I can’t be free. Not in the way I want.”
I peeled away to look at him. “Why?”
“If I were to explain, it’d be wasted on deaf ears.” His eyes glinted behind his mask. “For whatever reason, I want nothing more than for you to believe, and it frustrates me.” His lips thinned.
My heart fluttered. Was he telling the truth? No. It wasn’t possible.
The song faded to a close, and we stepped away from each other, but he didn’t let go of my hand. After bowing, he placed a kiss against my knuckles. I blinked, and he was gone. The crowd danced and twirled around me, smiling and laughing. The urge to find him coursed through my veins. I pushed myself into the sea of people, forgetting I was claustrophobic. I needed to see him. Mirages of his face would appear, but once I thought I’d reached him, he’d fade away. I backed myself into a corner, wondering if I’d officially gone insane, chasing after nothing. The feeling of the mysterious smoke fog coiling around me like a caress burnt itself into my skin.
“Was that Hades you were dancing with?” Sara asked.
Hades. God of the Underworld. How could I believe it? I couldn’t. Gods didn’t exist, let alone show up at a resort on vacation and dance at a masquerade ball. He even knew lines from Dirty Dancing.
“Yes,” I clipped, absently dragging a finger across the exposed skin of my collar bone.
Her eyes dropped to my hand, practically groping myself, and I dropped it to my side.
“That good, huh?” She asked.
Guy walked up with two drinks in hand, looking between us.
She narrowed her eyes at me, staring into space. “Guy, I’m going to dance with Steph for a few minutes.”
“And I will gladly watch,” Guy said.
Sara pursed her lips together. “Real mature.”
She tugged my arm, but it took several tries before I let her pull me to the center of the floor. She gripped my shoulders, shaking me.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Steph.”
I nodded, swaying back and forth with her, offbeat with the music. The first encounters with Hades kept replaying in my head. Wife of a thousand years? A divider of souls?
I locked eyes with her. “Earlier, did you see this swirly black smoke on the dancefloor?”
“No?” The skin between her eyes creased.
“I think Hades did it.”
“I’ll tell you what’s happening,” she said, poking my shoulder. “He’s dragging you into his delusions. And you’re diving right in because you want to help him. What good is it going to do if you’re both stranded with no life jacket? Someone needs to stay in the boat.”
I snorted. Hades would most certainly be the one in the boat. “Quite the analogy.”
“Did you like that?”
“I do want to help him. But I’m just not sure how.”
“I’m going to have to talk with this guy. I’ve interrogated plenty of people who tried to manipulate me. If he’s trying that on you—I’ll break one of his ribs.”
“I don’t think he’s trying to manipulate me. Why would he have tried to push me away?”
A man with dark hair, a dark beard, and a metallic gold mask stepped up to Sara, tapping her on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?”
Sara folded her arms. “I do, actually. We’re in the middle of an important conversation.”
“Oh, are you? My mistake.” The man pushed a fingertip against her forehead.
Her arms fell slack at her sides, and she shrugged. “On second thought, be my guest.”
My hands went numb, watching Sara walk off like a zombie. I moved to follow her, but his arm slipped around my waist, pinning me against him.
“I’ll scream,” I said, trying to pull away, but his grip tightened, holding me captive.
His pearly grin spread wide, eyes beaming with mischief even behind the guise of his mask.
He dipped his lips to my ear, and I grimaced. “My brother has taken quite the liking to you.”
Jesus. I knew I recognized that slimy grin.
“How would you know? Judging from the last time I saw you two together, he doesn’t seem to like you very much.”
He chuckled, the whiskers from his beard scraping against my cheek. “I don’t need him to like me.”
“Is there a point to all of this?”
“I need you to make sure he’s happy.”
“I don’t need to do anything.”
He smiled against my chin. “You’ve no idea the forces you’ve become intertwined with, Stephanie.”
I forced my head back, peering up at him. “Are you threatening me?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
He backed away, letting the dozens of dancing bodies swallow him like quicksand until he disappeared. The hair on my arms stood at attention like after an electric shock. I wrapped my arms around myself, looking for Hades one last time amongst the slew of guests. The room was far from empty, but strangely, without him there, it felt hollow.
Considering the night I’d had, sipping fruity drinks by the pool was the last thing on my mind. I convinced Sara I felt under the weather from too much champagne. Between the mind games of swirling smoke, the disappearing act, and Jesus’ cryptic threat, I needed a distraction. Today was for me.
The resort’s computer lab was a short walk from our room. I found a station in a hidden corner and patched myself through to my work computer back home. Forcing my brain back into work-mode was my only real form of distraction. I expected Sara to walk around the corner at any given moment, scolding me. I looked for her so many times one might think I was hacking the NSA database.