Her palms pressed against it. Wood. She found a handle and turned it, surprised to find the door opened for her.
Greer screwed up her eyes, the bright light burning her after so much darkness.
She stood inside a great marble hall with gold statues interspersed among its elegant columns. A temple.
There were a dozen worshipers kneeling…to her, she realized, eyes widening.
One of them, a boy who couldn’t be much older than five, lifted his head and pointed right at her. “Mom, mom!” he called. “The door’s open!”
His words came in a language she didn’t recognize, yet she understood perfectly.
Greer turned to look at the door behind her, more confused now. He didn’t even seem to notice her.
The boy’s mother indulgently looked and smiled down at her son. “The Door of Knowledge,” she told him. “May the goddess bring us truth.”
Greer moved away from the doorframe. The moment she stepped out, the door closed behind her, to the delight of the little boy, who kept babbling to his mother about the doorway. The woman shushed him, reminding him that temples were places of silent reflection.
Greer walked out, alarmed enough to want to put as much distance between the door and her as possible.
She’d almost left the temple when she decided she should at least work out where she was.
Glancing back toward the door where she’d come from, she blinked.
She couldn’t have seen it from up close earlier, but the doorway was carved under a ten-foot-tall altar. To either side of it, there were feet carved in alabaster, so large they must have weighed a ton each. Following the length of the statue, up and up, until her neck hurt, she saw the statue of a goddess in armor, holding a shield in one hand and a spear in the other.
She knew this statue, or one like it, in any case. It represented the goddess Athena.
“Excuse me,” Greer said to a man who was entering the temple just as she was about to walk out.
He thoroughly ignored her, not even sparing her a glance.
“Rude.” Greer stepped outside and stilled to take in the scenery. She was in a small town. All the square, Grecian houses were made of white stone, stately and polished so well they reflected the light of the sun like a mirror. The pavement was made of red brick, leading down to endless fields of surrealistic pinks and blues. Greer could smell them from here. Honeysuckle and spice.
This place felt incredibly peaceful and abundant. She knew, just from a glance, that no one here ever went hungry or unfulfilled. This land was blessed.
Greer only noticed the odd clothes people wore then. Their tastes ranged from Middle Ages gowns to jeans and T-shirts. Some guys wore full armor, and a teen girl rocked combat boots with a mini skirt.
“This is Athens. The real one.”
Greer turned to find a short man in a toga behind her. “Our goddess, in her wisdom, occasionally plucks minds too bright for their world and brings them here. We were outcasts, hunted or abandoned. Athena saved us and gave us a home in her domain on Olympus.”
Olympus. Greer remembered being quite envious when her friend Blair had visited the home of the gods, terrifying as her trip had been. And now she was here, somehow. It certainly beat the prison she’d been locked in until now.
Deciding to attack one problem at the time, she asked, “You can see me?”
The man’s eyes were on the fields in the distance. “Well, no. I can’t see ghosts.”
Ghosts.
She should have guessed it, somehow. Only she didn’t feel like a ghost. She didn’t feel any different than she had before her death. Except…
No, she wasn’t going to go there. Not yet. She couldn’t deal with being a ghost and the possibility that she may have lost a humongous part of herself the same day.
“I am Patrick, priest of Athena.”
“Patrick,” Greer echoed. “That’s not very priest-like.”
He shrugged. “I was born in 1991. My mother was fond of Patrick Swayze.”
“Who?” Greer asked.
The priest made a fist pump. “Finally! A generation that doesn’t swear by Dirty Dancing. What year is it now, pray?”
She blinked. “Err, 2159.”
He nodded like their century and a half of difference meant nothing.
“You’re human,” she stated without any doubt. She could sense magic, even though she wasn’t currently able to make use of it, and Patrick had none. “You’ve been here for so long and you still look…” She let the word trail off, not sure how to voice any opinion about his appearance.
He was an unremarkable forty-something, short with a pudgy belly and hair coming out of his nostrils.
“Yes, when the goddess brings us here, we cease aging. Some of us have lived here since before the fall of Rome.” Patrick shrugged. “I suppose the goddess might have chosen me to greet you because our times aren’t too far apart. It’s hard to understand the older souls, sometimes. We’re only separated by two or three generations. Let us hope you have better movies these days. And fewer Patricks.”
Greer had never been too much into TV, so she couldn’t comment one way or another. She stayed focus on the problem at hand. She was dead, while Patrick and the rest of this town weren’t. “Do you know what happens to me now, Patrick? Do I keep haunting this temple until the end of days?”
"Oh no.” He shook his head, smiling reassuringly. “Ghosts can only remain loose for seven days—it’s an ancestral law. Then, you’ll either dissolve into a ball of energy, become a poltergeist, or be moved to the appropriate department. Poltergeists are moved to the mortal realms, though. The gods don’t appreciate their antics.”
"Seven days,” she repeated, feeling numb. Less than, depending on how long she’d spent in her pervious accommodations.
She had a pseudo-life here for seven days and then…
“Why was I brought here?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. Typically, when a god brings someone all the way to Olympus, it’s because they have a quest of some sort to complete.” He shrugged. “Is there anything unfinished in your life?”
She paused, frowning.
She thought about all her friends at Oldcrest, now vulnerable without her shields. They’d vanquished Aveka, but Night Hill on Oldcrest was the seat of power of vampirekind. There would be other threats.
“Not here,” she replied.
“Well, you were brought here. Think. Do you have a connection to Olympus? A godly parent, perhaps?” She shook her head. “Mortal enemies, old lovers, second cousins twice removed?”
After some time, Greer finally nodded. Her ancestors, the Vespian clan, worshipped and drew power from one of the gods of Olympus, and she had certainly been linked to them in her life.
They’d more or less left her alone…except for one thing.
Greer was forced to fortify the bounds holding Eirikr captive every year with a blood spell. In the few instances where she’d freed him, she had to fight against her family, who’d made her suffer for her defiance with physical and mental torture. She’d still done it, because in many occurrences Eirikr had been the only one able to save her friends. Her real family.
And because he wasn’t nearly as evil as her family seemed to think. Eirikr cared for his great-great-great-granddaughter more than any member of her family, dead or alive, had ever cared for her. He’d earned her loyalty.