Page 79 of The Catacomb King
My temper flared. I knew very well why she was looking at me like that; it was because she was right, I had nothing to wear. I looked down at myself. I was wearing one of my own threadbare dresses, which I’d taken from home before moving into Josie’s spare room. It was pale and too small and utterly unsuitable. Downright disrespectful, in fact.
To my horror I felt tears rising. Choking me. So much wasted time and energy thrown away to try to save my mother, and now everyone would think I wasn’t honoring her at all, just because I had no fucking outfit.
“Fine,” I said roughly to Josie. I thrust my hand out. “Give it to me.”
Josie hesitated. Then she said, “There’s something else in the hamper.”
Monarch’s balls. What fresh hell awaited me now? But I looked in the hamper.
It took me a second to recognize the violet dress. When I did, my stomach swooped. Josie had had it cleaned. The lace gleamed a pearlescent white. The violet silk, as brilliant as the sky on the horizon at dusk, was lush and soft to the touch. Its hue glowed in the dawn light from the window, in a way it had never done in the catacombs.
“I…” My voice was hoarse. I cleared my throat. “I don’t think I can wear this, either. I don’t think it would be appropriate. Thank you, though.”
Josie bit her lip. “Your mom…”
I could notstandthat Josie had memories of my mom that I did not have.
“I sat with her a lot. As you know. And she wasn’t always lucid, but when she was, she talked about you, and she said —”
“Don’t tell me,” I said automatically. I almost covered her mouth. Whatever it was, I was absolutely certain that it would hurt too much for me to bear.
“I think I should,” she said. “I think things are different now that she’s gone. Because she said… Persephone, she said you shouldn’t be here. She said you were too good for this place. Too smart, too ambitious, too special. I used to, um, try to talk her into letting you go, but I think she was afraid to. Too afraid for herself, you know. Because you were taking such good care of her.”
A chasm was opening in me. Yawning. I had been right. I didn’t want to hear this.
“And I didn’t always understand what she meant. But when you came back from the underworld, when I opened that door and saw you standing there in this dress, the only person ever tocome back without going crazy, I thought,That’s the Persephone her mom always saw.
“And I think that’s the Persephone that should be at your mom’s funeral.”
Josie folded the black dress back into the hamper and pressed the violet one deeper into my hands. I looked at it. It was so soft. Hades, Prince of Darkness, had put his hands on this dress.
I said, “This dress is too fancy and it’s not black. Everyone will think it’s wrong.”
“Fuck those people,” Josie said.
A barking laugh jolted out of me. “Josephine Stammerer!”
Good, sweet, perfect Josie blushed. But she drew her eyebrows together defiantly. “I mean it. Your mom was right, Persephone. You’re too good for this place. You might as well look it.”
“I wasmadefor this place.Youare too good for it. You should be in nursing school in Corcagia.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “That’s not what my mom thinks.” Then she looked stricken. “Um. Sorry. Anyway, I’ll leave you with both dresses. You decide.” She scuttled out, looking, bizarrely, for all the world like Elke trying to get the hell out of Hades’s bedroom while I brandished a spear at her.
I smoothed both dresses out on the bed. I regarded both of them.
I whispered, almost inaudibly, shaping the syllables the way Josie had shaped them: “Fuck those people.”
The Funeral
Outside, the day was as bright and hot and stark as every day before it. Since I was wearing silk, it seemed even hotter. But at least the violet ballgown was strapless.
Calix stood at the town center, ready to escort me to the cemetery as part of the funeral procession. When he saw me, his eyes widened. His face darkened into a deep scowl. He practically ran over to me. “What are youwearing?”
“I don’t have anything else.”
“That’s from the underworld! The most horrible time of your life!”
“I beg your pardon? You thinkthat” — I waved behind me, vaguely, where the great shadow of the Primordial Mountain loomed — “was worse thanthis?” I pointed to the open casket that had my mother in it.
