“What is it?” I asked, but my heart wasn’t in it. E-mail from Tisiphone. I couldn’t get past that. Death was on its way. Sure I’d fight, but I’d lose. I’d seen the Furies take down Eris, one of the toughest goddesses in the whole damn pantheon. I wouldn’t even make a good speed bump.

“You might want to look at this,” said Melchior.

“Why? How could the exact phrasing possibly matter?”

“Well,” said Melchior, “it’s a visual and—”

He was interrupted by a chime from the mainframe. I turned to see what was up. I had just an instant to read over Cerice’s shoulder, “You have received a 2.21-terabyte message from Hades@hades.net with the header: Here she is. Do you want to download the message, save it for later, or delete it from the server? Automatic download will begin in sixty seconds.” Cerice hit the download-message button. But was it too late? Was the download going to finish after sunrise? Was that why Tisiphone had e-mailed me? To mock me for failing at the last possible moment?

“Melchior,” I began.

“I’m on it.” He opened his eyes and mouth, shooting out three beams of light, one blue, one red, one green. Where they met, a golden sphere formed. It fogged, then became translucent. Inside, a three-dimensional image formed. Tisiphone.

She was naked, as the Furies always were, and beautiful even by goddess standards, very tall and almost boyishly slender, with small high breasts and red hair touched by living fire, both on her head and where her thighs met. Her eyes held flames as well, globes of fire where her irises should have been and pupils like roiling smoke. Her skin was so white it was almost transparent, the blue veins clearly visible in her breasts and thighs. Fiery wings sprouted from her back, expanding out of the picture. I knew from past experience that she could extend them thirty or forty feet in either direction and that what they touched burned.

“Save a dance for me, Raven,” she said. “The music stopped too early this time, but I’m sure you’ll play doom’s song again. You live too close to the cliff ’s edge for it to go any other way.” Suddenly lines of twisting rainbow light slithered through the image, and Melchior’s speaker gave a faint static hiss as though something had disturbed the transmission. It lasted only an instant, but I’d never seen anything like it before. “It’s been a very long time since someone escaped my sisters and me as you did last year. Megaera takes it personally. She wants your hide nailed to the mantel, ideally with you still in it, alive and screaming. Alecto merely thinks you provide a bad example and wishes you dead at her hand. I take you as a challenge and look forward to playing catch again soon. Good-bye. For now.”

Then she touched her fingertips to her lips and blew a kiss in my direction. A kiss of fire. Like a burning smoke ring, it sailed toward me. When the flaming lips hit the edge of Melchior’s projection, they vanished, and so did Tisiphone.

“I think someone’s got a crush on you,” said Melchior. “Isn’t that cute.”

“I don’t think so,” said Cerice, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Neither do I,” I snapped. “A, she called me Raven. B, I’m spoken for. C, hot times with Tisiphone would be a little too hot—I’ve never been much for third-degree burns on delicate tissue. And D, she’s a fucking Fury! You know, Goddess of Vengeance and all that jazz? No one in his right mind would date her.”

“Methinks thou dost protest too much,” said Melchior, but he said it from comfortably beyond my reach. “Lighten up, why don’tcha? You’re off the hook, Boss.” Then he did a little dance.

“I . . .”

It finally sank in. I’d done it. We had Shara back, and I wasn’t going to pay for it with my life. I’d visited the underworld without taking up permanent residence. For the first time in more than a year I didn’t have anything life-threatening hanging over my head. My bad knee buckled, followed by my good one, and I found myself sitting on the sleeping bag. I opened my arms wide and flopped onto my back.

I felt wonderful and empty and hot and cold all at once. It felt like someone had removed a huge boulder from my back, one I’d carried so long I’d forgotten it was there.

“Are you all right?” Melchior paused in his dance.

But I couldn’t answer. I had no words to express what was happening in my head and heart. Contrary to all the laws of nature, I expected to float right off the floor and into space. Nothing as light as I felt could possibly stay on the ground.

Cerice knelt beside me and put a hand on my chest. She didn’t say anything, just sat there touching me. It was just what I needed. If time had stopped then and there, I would have been fine with it. But time does not stop, not even for the gods and their myriad children. So, after a while, when the relief had faded a bit, I sat up and gave Cerice a gentle kiss and a nod. I knew she had to be dying to check on Shara. She rose and went to the monitor. Before I could even make a token effort at following, Melchior landed square in my lap.

“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” he said, a wicked grin on his face. Then he took one of my ears in each hand, planted a big smooch square on my lips, and said, “I love you, man.”

With a wild cackle he was gone, back to his goblin dance. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and promised myself I’d think of some suitable revenge later on. For now, I just smiled and joined Cerice. Shara had almost finished downloading, so I collected her mortal shell from my bag and ran a networking cable from it to the back of the mainframe.

“Whenever you’re ready, Cerice.”

“In a minute . . . there. Boot her up in target mode.”

I held down Shara’s power button while simultaneously pressing her E and D keys so that she’d come up as an externally mounted drive rather than an independent machine. There was a soft chime, and a drive logo filled the screen where Shara’s smiling face would normally have appeared. After a few moments, her monitor went to sleep, and Cerice went to work. There really wasn’t much more I could do at that point, so I grabbed Melchior and went to find breakfast.

I was returning from that errand when Melchior—now in laptop shape—gently trilled. Ducking into Starbucks, I plopped him on the table and flipped up his lid.

“Ravirn,” I said.

“Bone!” said a throaty feminine voice through the laptop’s speaker. It was touched with the faintest undertone of transmission static. “It worked. Can yer hear me? This is Kira.”

“I can indeed, though the connection’s a little fuzzy. It shouldn’t be, not with VOMP phone.” The mweb was better than a hard line for most things. “I must have messed up a solder joint. Stop by when you get a chance. But at the moment I haven’t got a lot of time to talk. What do you need?”

“That triple microphone jack yer promised would come in mighty handy sooner rather than later, if yer catch my drift. The dogs and I worked a deal, but Bob says I’m too tinny in external speaker mode.” This last came out indignantly, or perhaps “more indignantly than normal” would have said it better.

“Well,” I said, “I owe you, so stop by, and I’ll check my solder work at the same time.”

“Bone. Be seein’ yer,” and she was gone.

“Bone?” I asked.

Good, printed itself on the screen. From French, bon, as in bon chance, or good luck.

I looked askance at the screen.

You’re always connected, I typed back.

Maybe she bumped something, and it knocked a connector loose, I typed.

When he didn’t say any more, I closed his lid and headed for the lab.

When we got there, Cerice was finishing with the upload to Shara’s onboard drive. I handed her an extratall chai latte and a cinnamon roll roughly the size of a large cat. I hadn’t bothered with anything more elaborate. Cerice wasn’t even going to taste her food before she assured herself of Shara’s good health. I dropped into a seat behind one of the desks, put my feet up, and waited as she finished the various tasks involved in Shara’s reboot and—hopefully—rebirth.

Cerice shut down and disconnected Shara from the mainframe. She paused for a long moment then, her finger hovering over Shara’s power switch. I could imagine what she was thinking. We’d hit that button so many times before, back when we thought all she’d need was a repair job. What if it didn’t work this time either? How could she cope with that big a disappointment? Finally, she hit the switch. A gentle chime sounded, followed by a faint whirring. The screen went black, but only for a second. When it flickered back to life it showed Shara’s goblin face, its eyes closed.

I held my breath. We’d gotten this far before. This was all hardware function. A minute ticked past. Another. I could feel my lungs wanting to breathe, but couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. Wait! Was that a . . . Yes! A flickering of the purple eyelids, a faint tugging at the corner of the mouth, and . . . there she was. Shara looked out of the screen at us and blinked at the morning sun streaming in through the windows. Her speaker coughed, and a rusty-sounding voice halfway between Mae West and Demi Moore spoke.

“Where am I?” it said.

“Home,” answered Cerice, tears in her voice. “You’re home, honey.”

I let out my breath and discovered that, despite how relieved I’d felt earlier, I’d still had some tension left. If I was relaxed then, I was a liquid now. I couldn’t have moved to save my life, and that was grand.

Melchior gave a whoop that almost drowned out Shara’s plaintive request to return to goblin form.

“You can do anything you want,” Cerice responded to Shara. “Anything at all.”

A moment later a curvy purple webgoblin stood in the middle of the desk where Cerice had been working on her. She looked wobbly and tired, but she had an almost incredulous smile on her face. Cerice caught her off the desk and gave her a hug that would probably have cracked human ribs.

She didn’t let go until Shara spoke again. “Uh, Cerice. I don’t suppose I could convince you to let me breathe. It’s been a while, and I remember enjoying it.”

Once she was back on the desk, she looked my way. “I owe you, big guy. If there’s ever anything I can do to repay you . . . anything at all, you just give a whistle.” She let out with one that would have done the lustiest wolf proud and cocked a hip at me. Shara put a growl into her tone. “You know what I mean, big guy?”

“Shara!” admonished Cerice. “He’s—”

“Yours,” she said. “I know. But he’s such a pretty boy, and you neglect him something awful.” She gave me a wink and a nod, then turned to Cerice, whose face had darkened. She touched her fingertip to her tongue before drawing a check mark in the air. “Gotcha, and I’ve only been back five minutes. You must be slipping. Or have I been gone so long you’ve forgotten how to roll with my punches?”

Cerice rolled her eyes.

“There you go, my dear,” said Shara with a grin. “Now, one last thing on my coming-home list. Where’s Melchior?”

“Over here,” he said, raising a hand and looking a little overwhelmed. Shara has that effect on most males, even when they’re braced for her. “What’s the last thing on your list?”

“This!” she said, and leaped.

She hit him high, knocking him backwards and rolling over and over with him until they bumped into an equipment rack. Somehow she ended up on top, straddling his chest and pinning his arms with her knees. With a positively predatory chuckle, she bent and gave him a solid kiss on the lips. Then she popped back up onto her feet.

“There!” she said, pumping her arms overhead. “I’m back.” Then she started bawling.

Cerice picked her up like a baby and made soothing noises. Catching my eye, she made a subtle nod toward the door. I had questions, like where had she been when she was wherever it was that she was, but they could wait. I collected Melchior and headed out. Cerice and Shara needed some time alone, and I was happy to give it to them. If nothing else, I needed the sleep.

“Incoming visual transfer protocol message from Cerice@shara.gob,” he said. “Accept Vlink?”

“Accept,” I said.

“Vtp linking initiated.” Light burst from his eyes and mouth, creating a cloudy golden sphere.

When it cleared, Cerice hung in the air before me. “I got Shara calmed down. She just needed something to do. I put her to work on that subroutine that went trash can the other day. She said she thinks she can see where the problem is. We’re going to stay here for a while to see if we can nail it down. Is that all right with you?”

“Sure,” I answered. “I mean, I’d hoped we could have a giant reunion party followed by a ticker-tape parade to thank the hero of the hour.” I blew on my fingernails and buffed them on the sheets over my chest. “Me, that is. But if you’re so eager to put poor Shara back to work in the salt mines, who am I to argue?” I grinned to put the lie to my words. “No, really. If Shara feels the need for work to take her mind off her time in Hades, I’m the last one you’ll get an argument from. Though if you could find out what happened to her on the way home, I’d love to hear the story.”

“Not much to tell. She says she doesn’t remember anything after you hit send. Isn’t that right?”

Shara stuck her head into the picture and nodded. “Sorry,” she mumbled, her eyes down. “It’s just a big blank.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I said. There was something evasive about her tone, but she’d had enough stress for one day, and I didn’t want to push it. “If you’re sure—”

“I’m sure.” She nodded again, then vanished out of frame. I heard a faint sniffle.

Cerice gave me a hard look. “I’ve got to go.”

“All right. I . . . I wasn’t trying to stress her out. I’m sorry. You two do whatever you think is best for Shara.”

“Thanks for understanding,” said Cerice, her face relaxing. “What are you going to do?”

I started to tell her I was going back to sleep but realized that even if I hadn’t been down long, I was slept out. “I think I’ll take a long walk and just enjoy the idea that I have nothing at all in the world that needs doing. It’s a novel sensation, and who knows how long I’ll get to enjoy it.”

“Sounds lovely. I envy you. If you’re still moving around in a couple of hours, Vtp me or stop by the lab. Kisses.”

She blew one my way and faded out before I could say anything more.

“Boss?”

“Yeah, Mel.”

“I hate to bring this up after your last comment to Cerice.”

I didn’t know what he wanted to tell me, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear it. Not now. “So don’t.”

Melchior looked down his nose at me. He had a lot of nose to look down. It was long and blue and sharply pointed, as was the look he now gave me.

“You’re going to tell me whatever it is anyway, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Sorry, but that’s my job.”

“You don’t have a job anymore,” I said. “We’re partners now, remember? Not master and servant.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up in a knowing smile. “Nice try, Boss. Partners we may be, but I’m still your familiar no matter what. We may not be in a following-orders kind of relationship anymore, but I’m still the sidekick. That means the big issues and strategy are your problems, and the nagging little stuff and tactics are mine.”

“Oh, just get on with it, Mel. What horrible earthshaking thing have I forgotten to take into account this time?”

“Persephone,” he said very seriously.

I felt a snake slither its way up my spine, a very cold snake. “Damn.” I’d managed to put the goddess completely out of my mind. “She did say she was going to want something from me in exchange for Shara’s life, didn’t she? Can you believe I completely forgot about her?”

“You? Of course I can. Denial is a force beyond even immortal ken, and you are its prince.”

“Thanks, Mel. That makes me feel so much better.” I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair to pull it out of my eyes. “I’d just gotten used to being off everybody’s list.”

Melchior looked at me like I was out of my mind. “Off everybody’s list? You’re mad. You know that, right?” He held up a finger. “Atropos, the Fate with the Shears. Wants you dead.” Another finger. “Tisiphone, Fury of fire, remember her? She wants your ass as a plaything.” A third finger. “Clotho, Fate’s spinner. Who knows what she’s got on her mind, but you can bet she didn’t name you Raven just for giggles.” More fingers. “Lachesis. Alecto. Megaera. Eris.”

He shook his head at that last. “I don’t know what Discord wants with you, but she doesn’t invite you to her place all the time solely to fleece you at poker.” He looked at his hands. “That’s seven. Hades. Cerberus. Hey, I have one finger left for Persephone. That’s nice, I thought I was going to run out. Maybe you can get on Zeus’s list, too, and I can start in on toes.”

“All right,” I said. “Point taken. My profile is way too high, and I should probably learn to keep my head down a little more.”

“Oh yeah,” said Melchior. “Like that’s gonna happen. Might as well ask Aphrodite to stop sleeping around. I wasn’t trying to untie the Gordian knot, just reminding you that you need to keep both eyes open and not get complacent.”

“What if I think complacent sounds like a wonderful idea?” He raised an eyebrow. “All right, that sounds whiny even to me. Can I at least pretend that everything’s beautiful and that I’m not going to have to cope with shit like this whole Raven thing for one entire day?”

“If that means you’re actually going to deal with it all tomorrow, sign me up. I’m not going to hold my breath, though.”

“Probably a good idea. You’ve already turned blue.” I rolled out of bed, and Melchior hopped down after me. “Come on, let’s go get some ice cream and play hooky for the afternoon.”

What I really wanted was to haul out my motorcycle and break some speed laws, but there was enough ice on the roads to guarantee that all I’d do was trash the bike and pick up some spectacular road rash.

It took another two days and the successful delivery of the repaired portion of her program to her advisor to achieve that goal. By then she’d had enough time with Shara that she was willing to let her go off with Melchior to discuss “goblin things,” an ever-mysterious category that probably included a lot of rude jokes in binary and gossip about their respective sorcerers.

I took advantage of the moment to get Cerice to go out for a late breakfast with me. We ended up at a little Thai place that we both loved. It had been a bar at some point in its past and featured deep booths with thick wooden backs that went all the way to the ceiling and guaranteed a certain amount of privacy. We’d gotten our appetizers, and I was just getting ready to ask Cerice what she thought about us, when she preempted me.

“I’m worried about Shara,” she said. “She’s not acting quite herself.”

“She’s doing better than she was a week ago,” I said. “Then she was acting like death warmed over. Oh, wait. That’s right. She was death warmed over a week ago.” Cerice’s face clouded, and I held up a hand to forestall her response. “Look, I’m not trying to be funny. OK, maybe I am, but I’m making a serious point. She was dead a week ago. Dead, Cerice. Wrong side of the River Styx. Hades is not a good place to be. I only spent a few hours there, but it’s provided me with a whole new set of nightmares. I’d be deeply shocked if she were acting completely like her old self.”

“I don’t know, maybe you’re right. I want to believe that, but if feels like there’s something more. It’s so hard. I want everything back the way it used to be.”

“Give Shara some time to reground herself in the here and now. She’s got to deal with this in her own way,” I continued. “Don’t push.”

Cerice nodded, but she didn’t look entirely convinced. Who could blame her? Shara was her daughter as much as her best friend, the creation of her heart and her magic, and she had been imprisoned in Hades. Look what that had done to Persephone’s mother, the Earth. The goddess had been so stricken with grief that she’d literally fallen over, turning her feet to the sun so that eternal winter came to hide the goddess’s face where it looked out of Greece. Only Zeus’s intervention with Hades had gotten her upright again, and that not completely, leaving her forever off balance. Twenty-three degrees off, the tilt that gave us the modern seasons. Less poetic than the other version, but at least as true.

Our entrées arrived then, and we spent a little time in lighter conversation as we paid the excellent food some much deserved attention. When we’d gotten to the stage of filling in the corners, I decided it was time to have a go at relationship debugging.

“Cerice?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

She grinned. “So I’d gathered.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I’m happy that you do,” she said, “but I have to say, falling for someone like me is probably not the wisest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I didn’t fall for someone like you, Cerice. I fell for you. You’re smart and gorgeous and talented. You’re a splendid coder, and I’d certainly be dead without the help you gave me in my fight with Fate.”

“Thank you, but—”

“Hang on, I’m not finished. You’re also deadly slick at avoiding things you don’t want to talk about, like us.”

She let go of my hand and leaned back into the side of the booth with a long sigh. “I’m sorry, Ravirn. I know the way I am is hard on you. I care for you deeply, and I want us to stay together and see where that goes. I even want to tell you that I love you. I just . . . can’t. Not yet.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. Words formed in my mind, hurt words, bitter words. Somehow, I held them in. Though my mouth has gotten me into a world of trouble over the years, I’ve always managed to keep it leashed around Cerice. Perhaps because she and Melchior are all I’ve got left.

“I thought it was Shara,” she said into the silence, “that I was still mourning her passing, or holding out hope for her return, or even just blaming you for her death. I know that’s not true now. I’m not sure what’s holding me back. I don’t really understand myself anymore.”

“Fantastic.” I couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t be angry.”

“Maybe I should step out for a while and drop back in once you find yourself?” It didn’t come out the way I’d meant it to, and I regretted saying it even before I finished.

Cerice looked like she’d been slapped. “Maybe you should,” she said. “Maybe while you’re out, you can find out who Raven is.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I picked up the check and headed for the register. After that, Cerice went back to the lab, and I headed for the apartment. We said good-bye, but there was no kiss, no physical contact at all.

“No. I don’t.” He opened his mouth, but I didn’t wait to listen. “Melchior. Mtp://mweb.DecLocus.prime.Styx.”

I was angry enough that I almost forgot the “Please.” When I did say it, a split second too late, I knew it sounded insincere. Melchior’s mouth shut with an audible snap. For a long moment I thought he was going to tell me to stuff it and walk away. I would have deserved it. I was clearly in a mood for self-destruction. Witness my destination.

No one could deny that I owed Dave and Mort and Bob an apology, but the sensible thing would have been to “say it with flowers,” preferably from a great distance. I didn’t think Cerberus would eat me at this point, but I wouldn’t have bet money one way or the other.

Melchior shook his head. His eyes practically shouted “Stupid idea, dip boy,” but he didn’t say it. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all until he eventually acknowledged my request for a gate with the formal syntax of an accepted program. “Executing. Connecting to prime.Styx.”

A pause followed, one that stretched out unnaturally. Since we were in the apartment, he was using the hexagram Cerice and I had permanently inscribed under the oriental carpet in the living room instead of sketching one in chalk or light. On top of that, the Styx was part of the same world as Olympus, the center of the universe and home of the mweb core architecture. With that double advantage, the connection should have come so quickly that a flesh-and-blood creature like me wouldn’t even notice the gap.

Instead, a full and unnatural two minutes passed before Melchior finally said, “Connected. Initiating Gate procedure.”

I wanted to ask him what was up, but his expression didn’t invite conversation. He reinforced that conclusion by changing into his laptop shape as soon as light filled the gate. His lid was firmly closed. I took his point and tucked him into my shoulder bag. One more apology owed.

Then I stepped into the light. I would soon see whether the hound of hell was still my friend.