Hades wiped his face. “If you can manage that, I will kiss the ground at your feet and set you above me in Olympus.”

I frowned at him, and repeated myself. “Do you agree that if I can get Hera to agree, you will stop the virus and you will support Zeus again?”

His laughter stilled. “Shit, you really think you can do it?”

I held my head high. “I do.”

There was silence for a moment while I waited for Hades. With obvious reluctance he nodded. “Alright. You have my word.”

I turned to Zeus. “And if I do it, you are going to take the reins of the supernatural world. You are going to be Zeus again, not just some pansy Blue Box manager. You will become the liaison between us and the human world. And you won’t allow the pantheon to treat the world like its playground again. Understood?”

Zeus stared hard at me, glittering with anger. “Fine. But you won’t convince Hera of anything. She’s a hard-nosed bitch who is out for revenge, and you are on her shit list, Drakaina.”

My guts tightened at the thought of not being able to convince Hera. “I have a backup plan. One I know she’ll go for no matter how much you think you know her.”

Remo put a hand to my lower back. “There will be another way if she won’t agree. We can figure this out.”

Hades and Zeus shared another of those sibling looks again, and I glared at them both, but finally settled on Hades. “If I’m going to deal with Hera and get you what you want, you need to send me and Remo back. I can’t talk to her from here.”

The two brothers nodded at one another, and then Hades looked at me. “Fine. But I keep Zeus here as a security deposit. Also, I don’t want him helping you. You made the negotiation, you follow through on how it’s going to be done on your own. No help at all.” His brilliant blue eyes sparkled with something dangerous. Like he too had an ace up his sleeve. An ace I wasn’t going to like, like the bite of a rotten peach in the middle of the pie.

“Fine. Not like he’s been much help anyway,” I said. Hades laughed, and Zeus grunted as if I’d slapped him. I shrugged. “What do you want? It’s the truth.”

Hades approached, and Remo tightened his hold on me. The two men were of the same height, but Remo was broader across the chest with more muscle. Hades looked at him first. “You stuck my dog with the pipe?”

“Yes.” Remo’s voice was deadly intense.

“Excellent. Then I won’t regret this one bit. Another piece of insurance, to make sure you put your all into making Hera change her mind.” Hades grinned at me as he snapped his fingers, and the underworld around us faded into a blast of color and light.

“No!” I screamed the word as Remo was torn from me. No, he couldn’t keep Remo, because what if I did fail? Wasn’t it enough I’d lost my mom?

My whole body jerked as I sucked in a breath of stale air, my skin cold on the cheap linoleum floor of the hospital room. I lay in a puddle of my own blood, coagulated and thick, but still with the multicolored rainbow lights that it held within it. I sat up, and the feather Merlin had stabbed me with fell to the floor, cracked in half down the spine. I touched my chest over my heart, a tiny ridged scar the only evidence that I’d been mortally injured. A soft groan and the sound of an unsteady heart spun me around. Remo lay on the floor behind me, and I fell on him, kissing him. “You’re here, you’re alive, I thought he’d kept you.”

Hades hadn’t taken him after all. What in the world had the underworld boss been talking about, then? How could sending Remo back with me be insurance?

Remo’s eyes opened slowly, and they were fogged with pain. I put a hand to his face. He was hot to the touch, and his heartbeat was unsteady, like it was out of sync . . . Wait . . . his heart?

He coughed and blood coated his lips. The first stages of the Aegrus virus clutching him close.

“Oh my God.” I cupped his face and stared into his eyes. “He made you human.”

CHAPTER 18

Hades’s voice floated around us.

“No, I did not make him human. He was dead when he came to the underworld. I cannot send the dead back; I can only send people back alive. And in this case, that makes him rather human. I did, however, give him the virus. That is my insurance, and a rather tight deadline to make things happen. Your man has less than twenty-four hours before the virus kills him. Get to it, Drakaina. Find Hera and make her believe that you are serious.”

Hades’s voice faded, and I stared in shock at Remo. A very human Remo, who was dying in my arms. I picked him up and laid him in the hospital bed I’d been in not all that long ago. “I’m going to get Merlin. He can turn you.”

“No. Deal with Hera. You can do it. I trust you.” He breathed the words out and then coughed—hard enough that I heard something crack in his chest. I couldn’t stop the cry that slipped past my lips. I put my hands on his and held his fingers tight.

“Remo, he can turn you, and then you won’t die.”

“No, you’re going to stop the virus, and Hera will take it away from us all. Go.” He smiled, but it was weak and his heart seemed to stumble, like it didn’t know how to beat properly anymore. A small hand touched my shoulder, and I saw Ernie floating beside me. “He’s right, you have to go. There is no way that you can help him by staying here and watching him die. We have to find Hera. And the only way to do that is . . .”