“Wait. The underworld isn’t hell?”
“No. I mean, yes, in some ways. There are parts of the underworld. There is Asphodal Meadows. This is where the average humans went to live out their afterlife. Then there was the Elysium Fields, where the very distinguished enjoyed eternity in paradise.”
“What about the wicked people?”
“‘Wicked’ is a very Christian belief as well. But there was a place for punishment. Tartarus. That is where the very bad receive punishment. But we are talking the Titans or like, I guess, dictators, and those who cannibalise others, that sort of thing. Not your average, every day bad humans. There was less nuance to the underworld than there is to hell.”
“So what about demons?”
“Oh, that’s a little tricky. I mean, yes, there were… demons. They were more inclined to refer to them as monsters, though. Again, not the typical punish-the-bad-guys-in-hell sort. More like the kinds of demon monsters you see in horror movies. Some of them, anyway. Others were like sprites. Just tricksters and such. But as far as the whole demons who rebel against good simply for the sake of evil? No, that’s not really how it worked in the myths.”
“So, in the underworld, Hades didn’t have a team of demons?”
“No.”
Fuck.
What did that mean, then? What would happen to me? To all of us, if we couldn’t go back home? Were we all stuck on this wretched human plane forever?
“I see I ruined some sort of storyline you have in your head,” Charlotte said, giving me a sheepish smile. “I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not. If you are going to go with the myths, I’d really prefer it be accurate. For educational purposes.”
“I need it to be accurate as well,” I agreed, my head spinning so fast, I was feeling a little sick.
What a basic, human sensation.
I didn’t think I would be capable of it.
Just like we couldn’t get drunk or high, like we didn’t really need sleep even though we engaged in it.
The only “high” we got to really experience was an orgasm. And since I had no interest in the human women, that hadn’t been one I’d really been able to experience in a while.
Reaching for the pen, I jotted some of the more important things I’d learned from her so far, just so I had them to reference and bring back to Ace eventually.
“I have another… odd question for you.”
“I like a good, odd question,” she told me.
“If you were to pit the current ideas of gods—“
“I mean, which gods? The human race has hundreds of current gods they worship.”
“Say all of them. If you were to pit them against the Greek gods, who do you think would win?”
“Oh, that is a big question,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Honestly, I think I’d need some time to think about that.”
“While you’re thinking on that. What about this: could both the old gods and the newer gods coexist?”
“Huh. That might be slightly easier to answer. Maybe. I think… maybe. I think there would be wars and destruction beyond anything humankind has ever known. But since gods are, by nature, immortal, I imagine they would eventually have to come to some sort of understanding.”
“But not before all that war and destruction?”
“I mean… what god do you know of who doesn’t have a pretty big ego? The whole ‘I am the only one’ kind of thing. That would be tough to overcome for a couple decades. Maybe a couple hundred years. What’s time when you’re immortal, right?” she asked, smiling.
Time in hell was nothing.
It went by in a blink.
Time on the human realm, though?
Each moment could be fucking torture.
“You look like you might need a break,” she said, her voice taking on a bit of an authoritative, but kind, tone. Maybe that was the voice she used with her students when she thought they were overwhelmed with a topic. “Maybe we should continue this tomorrow once you’ve had a chance to reevaluate your story for the app.”
I didn’t want to go.
Which was exactly the fucking reason I needed to.
I wanted to tell myself that I only wanted to stay because I was learning so much, because there were so many other things I needed to figure out.
Because there was no way that the truth was that I just… enjoyed Charlotte’s company.
A human.
It made no sense.
Maybe it was simply that I was enjoying being away from the house, from the others and their clear annoyance of my curmudgeonly attitude toward the humans and their world.
If that was the case, though, wouldn’t I just want to be on my own in my rented room instead of with the professor in the library?
Maybe I just needed to… stop fucking thinking about it.
“That’s probably a smart idea. I can gather my notes, maybe do some more of my own research, then get back to you. If you’re free tomorrow,” I said, gathering my notebooks and getting to my feet.
“I am always free. I am usually here if you are ever looking for me after class hours,” she said, waving at the table, and not getting up from it, making it clear she was planning on staying.
“Tomorrow then. Same time,” I said, having this overwhelming urge to reach out and slip some of the hair that had fallen out of her bun behind her ear.
I mean… what the actual fuck was that about?
“Same time,” she agreed. “And same coffee,” she added, giving me a saucy little smirk over the rim of the travel mug. “You’re not getting this back, by the way,” she added, tapping her nails on the side of it. And I absolutely did not think about how those fingers of hers would look wrapped around my cock. “It’s too pretty,” she added.
Yeah, yeah, she was.
Too pretty.
Too smart.
Too sexy, in a hot librarian kind of way.
And too fucking human.
“Tomorrow,” I said, grabbing my shit and moving off.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charlotte
I’d kind of flirted with him.
Okay, there was no kind-of about it.
I’d absolutely flirted with the man.
I didn’t really even know I was capable of that.
I’d always admired the vivacious or coquettish girls who knew what to say or how to move around men in ways that made them instantly interested.
I’d never wanted to be one, though. It just wasn’t how I was wired.
Men were great.
But more so in theory than practice.
What could I say, though? Sometimes we were helpless but to go with the whims of our biological drives. Hell, even history told us that. So much death and heartache all over who someone was—or wasn’t—sleeping with.
I wasn’t against a casual fling.
I wasn’t even against a casual fling with the very attractive, almost disarmingly intense Professor Bael Than.
Just, you know, after all the app research was done. I was a little too invested in it now to screw that part up. It was taking everything I had not to tell my students about it. I was even considering making playing it and writing a short report on what they learned from it part of their grade or extra credit or something.