Free Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) by Molly Ringle Page A

as the one above the spirit fields. A four-poster bed with dark blankets stood against the far wall. It looked fairly new and clean, not the moldering, dusty antique she might expect in a world of the dead.
    While Sophie paused to look in curiosity at the bed, Adrian pointed toward the right. “Bathroom’s back there.”
    She stepped that way, glancing again at the bed. “This is where you sleep?”
    “Yeah, when I’m here. I, um, did put in plumbing, but no electricity yet. So grab one of the flashlights in the box by the door.”
    Sophie walked to the “door,” which was actually a curtain, and picked up a button LED light from the cardboard box beside it. With a click, it came on, and she pushed through the curtain to find herself in a small dead-end tunnel. Toilet, sink, tub, and water heater all looked new and standard, thank goodness. She gladly made use of the first two, setting the light on the granite counter.
    While washing her hands a minute later in the tap, she noticed a gleam of green on the wall, catching the light of the LED.
    Thinking it might be an emerald, she dried her hands with the red towel sitting on the counter, and picked up the light to shine it at the green spark. She found it was a set of dog tags sitting on a tiny ledge. One of the tags was green and shaped like a diamond. The others displayed identification numbers and vaccination proofs, as dogs usually wore, but the green one said:
KIRI
Adrian Watts
18 Titan Street
Wellington
    It carried a phone number as well, but the name and address were all Sophie could reliably commit to memory on the spot. She read the inscription over and over for half a minute, fingers tingling. Then she set the tags back on the ledge, careful not to let the metal clink audibly, and went out. She switched off the LED and dropped it in the box on her way to Adrian. He handed her the lantern and walked to the bathroom himself.
    Watts. That perhaps explained “Watson” as an alias—”Watts-on,” Nikolaos had playfully pronounced it.
    She wandered over to Kiri and petted the dog’s head, then combed her fingers through the thick fur at her neck. It was enough to verify that Kiri wore no collar, and thus no tags. Sophie wondered a little why they’d been removed, or whether maybe the tags didn’t belong to this dog. But mainly she wondered how fast she could get home, get online, and find out everything she could about Mr. Adrian Watts of 18 Titan Street, Wellington, New Zealand.
    S O SHE’D REFUSED the pomegranate. Well. Adrian did have one trick up his sleeve, if he dared use it. As he emerged from his turn in the bathroom, his gaze traveled to the plastic crate of food by the bedchamber wall.
    Impulse triumphed. He veered over there.
    “Midnight snack?” Adrian pulled a pair of granola bars and two small juice bottles from the crate, and held them up. He tried to look aloof, not letting his eyes give anything away.
    She studied the snacks, and shrugged, noncommittal.
    He twisted the cap off a bottle and handed the juice to her, along with a granola bar.
    “I think I could’ve handled the cap myself,” she remarked, but took it, read the label, and sniffed at the juice.
    “Should be fresh.” He sipped from his own bottle, heart thumping. “Just bought it last week.”
    He knew she was checking for copious amounts of alcohol or noticeable drugs. Her first sip was tiny, and she licked her lips and examined the label again before evidently deciding it was safe, and taking another drink.
    Panic and remorse leaped up in his chest for a moment, and he almost knocked the bottle out of her hand. But it was too late. She’d swallowed it. Swallowed the juice he had doctored, at Nikolaos’ suggestion, pouring out half of it and replacing it with juice squeezed from the Underworld’s pomegranates. The tart cranberry-grape juice masked the taste; she’d never guess. Just as Niko predicted.
    Adrian lowered his face, wiping a spilled drop off the outside of