Hades

1. Stephanie

CHAPTER 1

STEPHANIE

My eyes flutter open like I’m a princess in a fairy tale, brain fuzzy with the confusion of having slept a long unintended time.

Where am I?

My head pulses around a brain stuffed with cotton and my body feels…weird. I’m not in pain, but I’m not entirely free from it either. I’m dwelling in a place between “something’s not right” and “it could be way worse.”

There’s also an IV line in my right hand. What the…

Am I in the hospital? I must be. I track the IV line to a bag of clear liquid hanging from a tall rod. It stands like a guard next to the bed, along with a couple of other machines—one of which appears to be tracking my heart rhythm and blood pressure. Two lines wave and bump across its black screen, flashing a set of rapidly rising numbers. I can’t tell if they’re good or bad.

Doc would probably know.

Wait….who’s Doc?

The thought appeared in my head, so sure and certain. But I can’t attach a face to the name. Or any context.

I strain to remember, but…nothing. Fear spikes in my stomach like the bottom line on the heart monitor.

Why can’t I remember—this Doc person or how I got here? What in the world happened to me? Why am I—

“You’re awake. Thank God…”

My panicked thoughts cut off.

There’s a man with thick black hair sitting next to the bed, holding my left hand in both of his. His eyes are red-rimmed with purple bruises underneath, as if he’s been crying on top of not sleeping. Deep lines have creased his forehead. Worry or age? I can’t be sure.

But the extra lines and dark circles barely detract from the sharp symmetry of his face. And they don’t make his silver eyes any less mesmerizing. He’s still beautiful. And, unlike Doc, I recognize him in an instant.

It’s him.

The boy my mother told me to stay away from—the boy she warned could ruin me.

My introduction to ruin began with my mother, Lady Perreault, discovering a cracked drain plate floating at the top of our pool.

“I better call Amy in to fix it,” my mother announced to my father, little sister, and me at breakfast.

Lady wasn’t nobility. She hailed from Ohio, in fact. But she never volunteered that information to anyone. And she spoke with that highly affected accent that almost all formerly poor Black girls from her generation took on when they landed a rich Southern husband and a mansion to match.

So, she did vaguely sound like an English aristocrat when she decreed, “The pool must look pristine for our big event.”

Our big event was what my mother called the episode of SuperRich Sixteen she’d signed us up to tape—ostensibly for my birthday, but really so we could be the first people in all of Baton Rouge to appear on the popular Video Music Hits show. And Amy was what she called our longtime nanny/housekeeper.

I called her Mama Fairgood, though. And my heart sank on her behalf when Lady threatened to call her while she was on her well-deserved winter vacation.

We used to have a live-in groundskeeper named Jorge. But he disappeared around the same time Mama Fairgood announced she was pregnant with a second child. So now my mother insisted on calling our long-suffering housekeeper whenever anything went wrong on the property. As if Mama Fairgood was responsible for the man who abandoned her.

It was ridiculous, really, especially in the age of the internet.

“I bet I can figure out how to fix it,” I told my mother. “Don’t bother Miss Fairgood on her vacation.” Again.

I didn’t add the last word—just thought it silently.

I also made sure not to call her Mama Fairgood to Lady’s face. That nickname had turned sour for my mother when I hit double digits, even though it was true. Our housekeeper had been more of a parent to me than either of the self-absorbed adults sitting at the table.

Lady had spent nearly all her time since my birth either social climbing or showing off. And my father spent most of his hours outside of work doing the same.

Antoine Perreault had been born into one of the wealthiest and oldest Black families in the state before becoming a lawyer. But he liked to provide his society friends and clients with constant reminders of how much better than them he still was, even after marrying a nobody from Ohio.

Dressed for work in a crisp blue suit, he calmly kept reading the latest edition of The Economist, as if the discussion about the pool wasn’t even taking place. I couldn’t imagine him making his own coffee, much less actually volunteering to take over any of Jorge’s duties.

He was a Perreault, after all, and Perreaults didn’t do menial labor—not since the days of slavery when a several greats grandmother “improved the circumstances she had been born into” by becoming the master’s common-law wife.

I was a Perreault by birth too. But I guess my mother’s secretly lower-class background had rubbed off on me.

“Give me a chance to fix it first,” I told her over the bowls of cereal we were all eating since there was no one to cook for us in the mornings during the holidays. “Miss Fairgood’s son is home on leave from the Army. She was really excited to spend some time with him. And we’re already calling her back two days early for my sweet sixteen party.”

“Where is Army?” my five-year-old sister Daphne asked, reaching for another slice of the toast I’d made to go with our cereal.

Lady swatted her hand. “You’ve already had enough carbs. And you don’t want to look like a little brown piggie at our big event.”

Since our mother was more concerned with Daphne’s weight than her question, I ended up answering. “The Army isn’t a place. It’s what we call the group of soldiers who protect our country. Do you know about soldiers?”

Daphne nodded with a sullen look that reminded me of Lady. My mother had technically adopted her after she was left as a baby on our doorstep—yes, literally. People in our tony gated community were still talking about it. So, who knew who her birth mother was.

But other than having blue as opposed to brown eyes, Daphne fit right into our light-skinned family. If her arrival hadn’t been such a sensational story, I doubted anyone would have guessed she wasn’t related to us by blood.

Adopting Daphne had been pretty much the first and last truly altruistic thing I’d ever seen my mother do. And, at first, she’d acted downright excited to add another cute daughter to our family. Over time, though, she’d hated that her second daughter wasn’t thinning out as I had, and lately, she’d begun harping on Daphne’s eating habits.

“It’s probably a super-easy fix,” I told Mom before she could launch into yet another lecture about how her five-year-old daughter had to start eating better if she wanted to get rid of that stubborn baby fat. “Don’t interrupt Miss Fairgood’s quality time with her son.”

As it turned out, I was right. A few minutes of internet research and one visit to the local hardware store later, I dived into the pool with a new drain cover. The chlorine level was low enough that I could open my eyes underwater, but I quickly regretted not wearing my mask. Holding my breath and fighting for visibility was not a winning combination.

After two minutes of trying to screw on the new grate I’d purchased, I weighted the drain cover and screwdriver down underneath a stray piece of ceramic from the pool wall and swam back up.

I’d also need to reglue all those loose tiles before the VMH camera crew arrived, so I added some underwater sealant to the list of things I needed to fetch from the house. And maybe a rash guard too.

My body had done some major developing since I’d bought my yellow bikini two years ago. And even though I was alone in the backyard, it felt like I was “putting on a show.” That was how my mother and her friends unkindly referred to such displays whenever they caught sight of a scantily clad teen walking around Lake Front as if this wasn’t an upper-class community filled with proper people.

I headed toward the house, only to stop short.

I wasn’t alone in the backyard.

Everything inside of me froze when I caught sight of the boy standing at the edge of the pool.

He wasn’t a boy, though. Maybe not even a mortal man.

He wore his crow-black hair in a buzz cut—not the long, floppy swoop that celebrities like Justin Bieber and Zac Efron had made way too popular among White high school boys at the time. Yet, he was even more handsome than any celebrity I’d ever seen on TV.

And his eyes…. His startling silver gaze held me in complete thrall from the moment our eyes met.

As if I was now his to command. Maybe I was.

I had never known desire before that moment.

My heart raced, and a new pulse appeared out of nowhere, low in my belly.

Oh, I had wanted things. The iPhone 3GS, an A+ in French, a pair of red Beats Solo by Dr. Dre. I’d wanted for Billy Jacobson to ask me to homecoming, even though he was a senior and I was a sophomore, and for my mother to allow me to wear high heels to the event. And I’d gotten all of those things over the past year.

But they had been mere wants, I realized the moment I laid eyes on the possible god standing next to my pool—silly fancies that were eclipsed in a moment by what I felt when I looked at him.

The air crackled between us like an electric storm. And a heavy, tugging feeling appeared in my belly, just below my navel. It was scary and somehow thrilling at the same time.

Maybe he really was a god. He regarded me with an intense but steady gaze. A god on high, waiting for his subject to speak.

I didn’t speak. At first, I couldn’t speak. All thoughts and words disappeared from my mind.

But then he smiled and tilted his head to the side in a familiar way, and I suddenly recognized him on a genealogical level. He had Mama Fairgood’s easy grin. This beautiful specimen wasn’t a god. He was her mortal progeny. The son she still called “Swamp Boy” because when he was little he’d declared himself the superhero of the unincorporated bayou where they lived.

She’d made my sides split with laughter when she told me tales of the trouble he got into trying to help folks who didn’t necessarily want or need the superhero efforts of a little boy.

But I wasn’t laughing now.

Somehow, I’d kept on envisioning him as a little boy running around the bayou, even as Mama Fairgood’s stories about him grew older and came to include giving him credit for things that got magically fixed around our mansion while I was at school or sleeping. Then came her most recent tale about Swamp Boy enlisting in the Army and leaving his beloved bayou behind.

No matter how old he got, Mama Fairgood still called him Swamp Boy. And so did I when I asked, “Swamp Boy, is that you?”

If I had known this would be the last time I ever saw him, I might have come up with a better first line.

But I asked him that silly question and held my breath waiting for the answer. What did a Swamp Boy superhero-turned-god sound like? I wondered.

I never found out. My mom appeared like lightning before he could tell me anything.

“Stephanie Marianne Perreault! What are you doing out here in that state of undress?” Lady grabbed me by the arm. “Get in the house! Get in the house right now!”

I’d only gaped at him. Gaped at him and asked one useless question.

But my mother dragged me into our antebellum mansion as if she caught me having that word I only ever spelled out in a whisper: S-E-X.

And when we were behind closed doors where no one else could see us, she slapped me across the face.

“Stay away from him,” she warned, her voice cold as an Ohio winter. “Boys like him can ruin a good girl with just a few slick words.”

I was a proper Perreault, brought up to be excellent in all speech and actions. But with the sting of her slap radiating across my face, a defiant thought flashed through my mind before I could stop it. I want to be ruined. I want him to ruin me.

Swamp Boy made me want things I’d never desired before.

I stopped myself from saying those words out loud. Swamp Boy finished the job I’d started, and my sweet sixteen party went off without another hitch.

But maybe my mother read my mind.

When we got back from our Saint-Tropez vacation, all of Mama Fairgood’s things were gone from the little house she stayed in out back.

“Now that Daphne’s old enough for kindergarten, we’ve decided to go in a new direction,” my mother informed me in business-like tones. She ignored the tears streaming down my face and insisted, “We need someone who can cook healthy meals for Daphne and clean to a better standard.”

“What? Mama—Miss Fairgood can do all those things!” I answered. But I couldn’t get Lady to change her mind, no matter how much I cried and begged.

And all of my texts and calls to the woman I considered a better mother went unanswered until one day an electronic voice informed me the number had been disconnected.

Shortly after that, my father called me into his office to sign what he called “necessary paperwork” but what I came to dub “my virginity contract.”

It had only been one look, one question. But it had scared my parents enough to fire Mama Fairgood and make me vow in ink that I wouldn’t give any boy my virginity before marriage.

I signed the contract like the good Southern daughter I’d been raised to be—even against my own pleasure or self-interest. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Swamp Boy.

He lingered in the back of my mind, overshadowing every other mortal who flirted with me through the rest of my high school relationships, and the memory of our one meeting continued to stalk me when I went off to Tulane for college.

My sophomore year, my mother called me into her bedroom to inform me—in the same cold tone she’d used to let me know that Mama Fairgood would no longer be a member of our household staff—that she had terminal cancer.

“My eventual passing doesn’t mean I don’t expect you to live your life to the standard I’ve put forth for you, though, Stephanie,” she told me. “You are and will remain a Perreault. I expect you to marry well and make your family proud. No using grief as an excuse to unravel and squander all the privileges your name has provided you.”

Mom seemed more concerned with how I would reflect upon her than her own imminent death. But the fact remained, she was dying. Sooner than any of us planned, Daphne and I would be left motherless.

Setting my bar even higher seemed like the least I could do.

I made myself stop thinking of Swamp Boy when I touched myself. I ceased touching myself altogether, in fact.

Instead, I focused on getting into the right college circles. That meant joining the best sorority and only flirting with the kind of high-pedigree guys my mother would approve of for the daughter she’d specifically raised to marry well.

For my mother’s sake, I tried to forget the superhero god who’d frozen me in place. I tried so hard.

But he was always there, lingering in the background of every flirty conversation, reminding me that none of the well-pedigreed boys I purposefully chose to talk to at parties caused that scary-thrilling tug below my belly when I gazed up at them.

I tried to forget him. But I couldn’t.

Until, suddenly, I did.

“Swamp Boy, is that you?” I greet him now as I did back then. But this time, the question comes out as a croak. My throat is beyond dry. “Why are you here?”

“Oh, I…”

He drops my hand, as if I’d caught him in the act.

And that’s when I see something that stops my heart cold. Three stacked rings. On my left wedding finger. The two bottom bands are ringed with diamonds. The top band is also composed of small diamonds, but it sports a huge princess-cut, deep-red gem. Not a ruby, I guess from its darker hue, but a garnet. My birthstone.

I’m married! The realization sends a bolt of sensation through my otherwise numb body.

“How am I married already?” My shocked daze gives way to confusion and panic. Instead of staring at Swamp Boy, I demand to know, “And why are you here? Why am I here?”

“You’re in the hospital,” he answers, his voice gentle but calm. “You were in an accident, and the doctors had to medically induce a coma to relieve some of the pressure on your brain. We’ve been waiting for you to come out of it for days now, but you weren’t waking up. I was afraid…”

Tears well in his silver eyes, and I immediately feel terrible for worrying him. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m awake now. Thank you so much for staying by my side.”

It suddenly occurs to me why he’d do such a thing. “Did Mama Fairgood send you? Is she here too?”

He stills, and his face blanches.

She’s dead. The thought emerges from the fog, clear and resolute.

“She’s dead,” I whisper. “She’s dead, isn’t she? Oh God, she’s dead, and I never got a chance to tell her how much I loved her and appreciated her.”

I’d planned to hunt her down after my mother fired her, ask my father for her address and drive out to the bayou to tell her how sorry I was about the way things had ended. But my father had sprung the virginity contract on me. And by the time I was an adult with my own bank account, it was time for me to go off to college.

I’d always meant to make the time to go see her, and now it was too late.

Hot tears well in my eyes.

“Non, don’t cry.” Swamp Boy picks my hand back up and pulls it into his chest. “She knew. She knew you loved her, and she loved you right on back. She wouldn’t want you crying over her. C’mon now, ma belle.”

His words soothe me and my tears recede, but I’m still so confused. “Where are my parents? What hospital is this? Are we in New Orleans? If so, I should ask for a transfer. My father’s on the board of Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge….”

I trail off. Swamp Boy has gone completely still.

“We’re in Ohio, ma belle.” The creases in his forehead appear even deeper than before as he asks, “What year do you think it is?”

I reply in a careful tone, somehow suspecting my answer is wrong.

Even before he replies with, “No, it’s almost ten years later than that. You’re twenty-eight. Not nineteen.”

My stomach drops.

Twenty-eight? I’m twenty-eight now, and apparently married and living in Ohio.

But where is my husband? Why is Swamp Boy here instead of him? Had we hired him as a helper, like my parents had hired Mama Fairgood?

A fleet of nurses burst in before I can ask him any of my many, many questions.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Fairgood,” one of them says to Swamp Boy. Meanwhile, another nurse shines a light in my eyes and ask me, “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

I always try to be polite, but I push away her bright light and crane my head. Something tells me I need to pay attention to what the nurse is saying to the grown-up version of Swamp Boy.

“We were at an all-staff meeting when her monitor went off,” she continues with an apologetic wince. “But, thank goodness, it looks like your wife is finally awake. We’ll get a doctor in here right away.”

My sluggish brain pushes to process her words as the other nurses flurry around me. Mr. Fairgood…your wife…

The truth hits me like a thunderbolt wrapped up in a hurricane. Swamp Boy isn’t here as some kind of delegation for his dead mother. Somewhere between nineteen and twenty-eight, I’d married the god boy I couldn’t forget.

Then I forgot him.

“Oh my God.” I slap a hand over my mouth. “You? You’re my husband?”