Page 37 of Midlife Demigod Unexpected

“By all means.” I held the box up so she could reach inside and easily take out the egg.

“My grandmother used to tell me that if a mother bird wanted her eggs to hatch, she would sing to them,” Mae mused.

“Are you suggesting we sing to the egg?” I asked.

“Well, we aren’t exactly singers,” Mae said, “but we are pretty good at spells and chanting. Do you think it might be worth a try?”

“Like a revealing spell?” Hilda asked, then nodded her head. “It might work.”

“I think we might have to be a little trickier than that,” Mae mused. “If we do a reveal spell, it probably will recognize it and stop it, but what if I did a finder spell? If there is anything inside this egg, there will be a way to open it. We just need to see where the cracks are that are invisible to the naked eye.”

“You’re suggesting that you do a finders spell on it.” I asked.

Bianca smiled and nodded, putting her hands on her hips. “I think it’s a great idea.”

“Do you mind?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “I don’t mind at all. When I look down at the cemetery, all I see are the zombies coming to eat the brains of everybody I know and love in Cougar Creek. I am grateful for the fact all you guys are here and willing to do this to try to stop the zombies and keep them in the cemetery. This is ground zero. They will wipe us all out before they move on to the wider world.”

“Ground zero are the friends and families we’ve known our whole lives,” Hilda added. “They may not mean as much to all of you, but I know the parents and the grandparents of the kids who go to the school at the bottom of the cemetery hill. I couldn’t imagine seeing all those kids turned into zombies.”

“So, whatever it takes,” I said, holding the egg out to Mae. “Do your worst on it. If this holds a clue to stopping the zombies, let’s break the egg apart to get it.”

Chapter 27

Mae took the egg and placed it in the cauldron in the altar room. The same altar and cauldron I now realized had held the blood sacrifice for the Pendant of Time binding spell. This is what we had inherited from our ancestors. We were just now uncovering their stories and piecing them together. I hoped unlocking the egg would help.

We all stood in the circle around the altar and Mae holding out our hands towards each other, palms facing the altar. We began chanting the words to the finder spell. I could feel the power thrumming up my arms. It wasn’t just my energy alone, it was all our power, caught together in a circle, an infinite loop. The purple and green electric lights that floated around Mae’s hands grew stronger. Instead of flying out of her hands, the lights came down her arms and onto the ground. They traced a line to the altar. We kept chanting, even though I couldn’t help wondering if this was safe or not.

This was her finder spell, the one I had heard about. It could take people to the object they needed finding. They had rescued Kartika that way before.

I watched the lights disappear into the altar and the glow above the cauldron grow, but it was growing massively large. What if—

A blinding light surged out of the altar and exploded in a wave of purple and green across us. It knocked me over as it hit me, making me fall into the darkness.

“You have found the key,” a voice intoned as the darkness receded and we found ourselves on the ground facing the Lady Styx. We stood in a half circle facing Styx, who had her back to the lion statue. She wore a black leather romper and looked particularly smug with herself.

I glanced around, quickly getting my bearings. “Fuck,” I muttered.

“We’re in the cemetery?” Kartika asked, brandishing her sword toward the zombies who were rambling their way to us.

“How’d you get that?” I asked.

She winked at me. “Did the spell with it.”

The sword let out a bluish light, which at first, I thought might be attracting the zombies but then I realized it was putting them into a soft trance. They were swaying back-and-forth. Bianca had already shifted and was howling to keep everything as calm as she could.

“Very good,” Styx said. “You are so resourceful. It’s very impressive how you’ve managed to not only survive but to find each other and then grow strength together. It’s quite remarkable, considering you’re operating under false pretenses. You’ve bought into a lie about who you are and what your purpose in life is.”

“Whatever you tell us can’t change why we are here,” I said, looking around. I was grateful my mother hadn’t been teleported with us. It was the blood coven. Mae, Bianca, Jane, Chloe, Kartika, and myself, the six of us alone with Styx. She clearly had an attitude, but I wondered if she couldn’t possibly be spoken to like a normal well, being, since she wasn’t human. I didn’t know how far her sympathies lay. I wish I understood her better.

“You found the key,” Styx said. “I’ve been looking for it for the last fifty years. Your father stole it from me when he tried to get out of the agreement he made. When he discovered it had been a completely fool proof agreement and there was no way he could get out of it, he did the next best thing. He hid the key, even from the Hayes. She had no idea when she died where it was and neither did anybody else all these years. If it wasn’t for you and your little coven, maybe we never would’ve found it or found out how to use it. So, I guess, thank you.”

The zombies pressed closer. Lady Styx, in her all-black romper and short cropped black hair smiled as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “I’m going to take you on a tour of the tunnels beneath the cemetery. The place I’ve been relegated to. Me. A demigod. Not what you would expect, right? I mean you know how it is, Helen. Right?”

I looked to Mae. What the hell did Styx want from me.

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