Awaken

Speaking of Kayla, surely there must be some reason my necklace still turns purple around her even though she’s not in danger anymore. Maybe she’s supposed to be my queen-in-waiting. Maybe we could get her to come here and queen-sit a few nights a month.”

John lowered the book he’d been reading. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Were you speaking to me?”

“I know you were listening,” I said in disgust, taking the book from him and tossing it over the side of the bed. “You couldn’t possibly have been reading that. You were holding it upside down.”

He laughed and put his arms around me. “How can I read when you’re next to me? Your beauty is too much of a distraction for any man to concentrate.”

“Don’t try to flatter your way out of this,” I said. “Even Persephone got six months’ vacation away from the Underworld every year.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, drawing away a little, looking hurt. “Six months’ vacation away from me every year?”

“No,” I cried, instantly regretting my choice of words. It was hard to remember sometimes that, even though he was very much the lord of this castle, a part of him was also still very much the wounded beast it had taken me so long to tame. I doubted the wounds the Furies — and I, though inadvertently — had inflicted upon him in the past would ever fully heal. “Of course not.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think?” he asked. “You won’t marry me, and all you ever talk about is how you want to go away. Don’t think I’m not aware of your rambles in the cemetery —”

“Not away from you. Away with you. So we can live a normal life in the sunshine, just for a little while.”

“Normal people get married,” he said, lifting a dark eyebrow.

“Normal people have their own houses under the sky,” I said. “They don’t live in castles in the Underworld.”

He thought about this for a moment.

“We could do both,” he suggested finally.

I caught my breath. “Do you mean it?”

He nodded. “I don’t see why not. We could have a little house and stay in it sometimes. Not near your mother’s house,” he added sternly, when he saw my face light up. “I don’t want to live anywhere close to your father. And you must know, Pierce, your grandmother will never enter our doorway.”

“No, of course not. Oh, John, I know the perfect place.” I sat up so abruptly that Hope, who was perched on the end of the bed, gave a flutter, startling her mate, whom we’d settled upon calling Courage, so we had both Hope and Courage with us at all times. “Mr. Smith lives in a cute little Victorian condo downtown. They all look out onto this pool in the back, with the sweetest garden. It’s on the highest point on the island, and when there’s a storm, they have hurricane parties, and Patrick makes lobster tacos. We could get a place there. Since we’d only be staying there every once in a while, it wouldn’t have to be very big. And we’d have neighbors we knew right away.”

John smiled at me, then reached over to smooth a strand of my dark hair away from my face. “Is that what you want?”

“I think it would be nice,” I said, reluctant to reveal to him how very much I wanted it, in case it didn’t work out. I knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me — except allow me to be hurt — and it would be complicated, if not downright impossible, for a young man with no credit whatsoever to buy a condominium. “My father could lend us the money.”

I knew John would never take a handout from my father. He’d insisted on paying Dad back for the boats. I’d wisely stayed out of that conversation, but I’d seen the way it had irritated my father. Dad loved throwing his money around.

What he did not love was having money thrown back at him.

John knew this, so it wasn’t a surprise to me when his smile broadened. “Frank’s not the only one who’s been saving his gold coins, you know.”

“Really?” I eyed him. “I thought you planted them all in Seth Rector’s locker.”

“There are a lot more where those came from,” John said. Then he grew serious. “But remember, Pierce, if we do this, the Underworld must always be our first and only priority. We can never neglect the dead.”

“Of course we can’t neglect the dead,” I said, leaning down to hug him again. “I owe everything I hold most precious to the dead: you.” Then I added, “But I couldn’t help thinking it might be a good idea for us to get a place outside the Underworld because maybe, after we’re married, we could —”

“Wait,” he interrupted, surprised. “After we’re married? Now you want to get married?”

“No, of course not now,” I said. “We have to wait until after Kayla has her business up and running and has had her surgery, because she wants to be my bridesmaid, and she says she doesn’t want her boobs to look humongous in the photos. Well, the photos of her and me, since you’ll probably show up as a big blur in them, like you always do on film.”

John was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I love you, but approximately half the time, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“The feeling is mutual,” I assured him. There was a pause, and then I took a deep breath and said, all in a rush, “What I was trying to say before was that another reason it would be good for us to have our own place outside the Underworld is that maybe, after we get married, we could have a baby.”

He lifted his head from the pillow, then rolled over suddenly, trapping me beneath his arms and staring down at me very intently. “What?”

“Well,” I said, embarrassed. My cheeks were burning, but I plunged on anyway. “I was doing some reading, and Mr. Smith is wrong — not for the first time, but whatever. Hades and Persephone did have children. They’re largely forgotten in Greek mythology, but they do exist. I figure they must have been conceived during the months Persephone wasn’t in the Underworld, since, as you know, no life can grow here. So I don’t see why we can’t do the same thing.” I felt as if I were going to be roasted alive by the heat of his gaze. “You do want a baby someday, don’t you? I never even asked what you thought about the idea —”

He showed me, very enthusiastically, what he thought about it by kissing me hard, on the lips … then kissing me in other places as well.

He seemed to like the idea very, very much.

Which just goes to show that anything can happen. Anything at all.

One. Two. Three.

Blink.

After word

The question I get most often from readers at the close of a book series is, “Is it really the end?”

Of course Pierce and John and their friends could continue to have many adventures, and perhaps someday we’ll hear from them again, but for now it seems best to give them a well-deserved rest.

The inspiration for this series came from Edith Hamilton’s fantastic book, Mythology. I loved reading this book when I was growing up. The myth of Persephone was always my favorite. I used to wish the Greek god of the Underworld would kidnap me so I could live amongst the dead.

Some of the characters in this series were inspired by myths, and some by real people. Alastor, John’s horse, is named after one of the four black horses who pulled the chariot driven by Hades when he kidnapped Persephone (in the Roman version of the tale). Typhon, the tongue-in-cheek name John gives his dog, is also derived from the “father of all monsters” who attempts to destroy Zeus.

The character of Mr. Smith, the dry-witted cemetery sexton, is partly based on an amazing English teacher I had my freshman year in high school, Mr. Kenneth Mann. By giving his students creative writing assignments in