“Who dares summon me?” the man’s voice thundered through the room.
“I do,” Frank said. “Great god of the underworld. I summon you, Hades.”
“He did it,” Hilda said, groggily. “He summoned Hades.”
“You puny mortal,” Hades said, stepping up to the altar. “You dare evoke my name in prayer and demand I come to you?”
“I do, oh lord, for a great purpose,” Frank said, bowing to Hades.
“And what purpose would this be?” Hades said.
“I have arranged all the ingredients needed to bring back my dear, departed Gina. She was taken from me, and only you have the power to bring her back.”
“Is that why you have caused so much chaos in my underworld, mortal? To save the one you love?”
“Yes, my dark god. I only wish to have returned that which was taken from me.”
Hades studied the ingredients on the altar. “You have collected a fine list of items. However, I cannot help you.”
“Cannot, or will not?”
“Both, and neither. Your wife no longer is your wife. She has been drained of her essence and reconstituted in a new form.”
“I don’t understand.”
Hades rolled his eyes. “She has been reincarnated into a little boy in Cameroon.”
“You lie!” Frank said. “Why does everyone lie to me?”
“I do not lie!” Hades screamed loud enough to make the room quake. “I should turn you into a sea sponge for the mere implication.”
Frank sniffled, starting to cry. “I have done everything required of me, and it is still not enough?”
Hades nodded. “I’m afraid even the best of humanity will never be enough.”
“I want to be with her again,” Frank said, dropping his head.
“I cannot make that happen in this life, but I can reunite you again in the next.”
Frank looked up. “You can?”
“If that is your request.”
Frank nodded. “Yes, please.”
“Then let it be done.”
Hades snapped his fingers and Frank vanished in an instant, leaving nothing behind, except for his altar full of body parts locked in jars.
Chapter 56
I pushed the shelf off me and stood up to lift it so Hilda could climb out as well. Hades paced across the altar.
“Now that’s over,” he said, brushing his hands off on his toga, “maybe it’s time for a froyo. Persephone would like one, I’m sure. What was the flavor she liked so much?” He stopped and pointed to me. “You, girl. Where is there a frozen yogurt stand around here?”
I froze to the spot. “Um, there’s one about a mile away from here, on Frontier and Main.”
Hades squinted suspiciously. “Is it any good?”
“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s no Red Mango, but it’s pretty okay.”
“Thank you,” he said. “You are most kind.”
“Wait,” I said. “You can’t just leave.”
He turned to me. “Of course I can. Haven’t you heard? I’m a god, and we can do anything we want. Why, my father once turned into a horse and fought a camel. It was quite entertaining.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t mean you can’t leave. I meant…please don’t leave. There’s so much we have to fix, and we could really use your help.”
Hades stepped down from the altar. “Yes, I suppose there is a bit of a mess down here, isn’t there. I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”
“Can’t you…fix it?”
He scratched his head. “Well, I’d love to help, but it’s just, well, I don’t know how. I’m not very good at this type of thing. That’s why my father created magic, to allow witches to do that kind of work for us.”
Hilda stepped forward. “We have the ingredients to make a paste which should close the portal.”
“The paste,” Hades said, smacking himself on the head. “Of course. How silly of me.” He snapped his fingers and the ingredients on the altar combined into a single jar, full of white paste. “There you go. Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“Is Frank really gone?” I asked.
Hades nodded. “Of course, little girl.”
“And his wife was really reincarnated?”
Hades smiled. “That’s what happens when you die. You’re left in the Dark Place until you forget everything about your life, and then you start over, with a new soul. Making souls costs an incredible amount of mana but recycling them into new hosts takes very little.”
“And my friend, Katie, she’ll forget all about me, won’t she?”
Hades nodded. “Yes, and you’ll forget about her, too, but then, you’ll start over, and maybe you’ll meet again.”
“Do you really think so?”
Hades smiled. “I’ll make a note of it. In your next lives, I promise you will have more time together.”
Hilda walked up the stairs to the altar. She picked up the jar and brought it back down to Hades. “Here. You’ll need this.”
Hades shook his head. “Oh no. I can’t fix the rift. Or, more appropriately, I won’t. That’s witch’s work.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes. That’s why we gave you magical powers in the first place. You’re sort of our plumbers, in a way.”
“But this is too big a hole to close on our own. We’ll have to go inside and—”
“I don’t want to know the details. I’m sure you’ll work it out. Now, if you’ll excuse me…froyo.” Hades snapped his fingers and vanished.
Hilda shook her head. “Ugh. Gods. They are the worst. We don’t need him, anyway. Now that we have the paste we need, it should be an easy patch job.”
She was right. With Frank not actively working to keep the portal open, the witches made quick work of fixing it with the paste and soon there was nothing but a little hole left, which rested right over the clearing in the woods where Katie had first brought me.
Once Katie had gone through it, the witches would close it for good. We all met there, when it was almost over, and the witches had finished their work to close the puncture between our world and the Dark Side.
“I don’t want to go,” Katie said, looking through the hole. “I always knew I would have to go, but now that it’s come, I don’t want to do it.”
“I wish I could hug you,” Joanne
