Cybermancy by Kelly McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

that is. “Would one of those precautions involve a spiritual recompile?”
    It would indeed, one that automatically grabs any soul that comes in via the mweb, as your little friend’s did, since her body had already been repaired. The only way to reverse it is to send her back out the way she came in.
    “You want me to e-mail Shara out of here?”
    Exactly, and the file protocol is huge.
    “I’d best get on it then.” My fingers began to fly as I composed one of the stranger notes I’d ever put together. A few minutes later I double-checked the To line, “Cerice@ harvard.edu/mlink/via-Clotho.net ,” then reached for the attachments button.
    Shara caught my hand. “Wait.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “Just this.” She planted a big kiss on my cheek, then gave Mel one as well. “For luck. Thanks.”
    Her expression belied her words. What she really meant was, “In case I don’t see you again.” Of course, she couldn’t say that. Neither could I. So when I kissed her back and told her to pass it along to Cerice, I didn’t say why. I pulled a networking cable from my shoulder bag and attached one end to the computer and the other to the port concealed in Shara’s nose. A moment later she was gone, sucked down the line in a visual straight out of some crazy cartoon. I wished Mel and I could go out the same way, but that would require us to leave our bodies behind—a fatal and therefore very temporary arrangement.
    “Now what?” I asked Persephone.
    Now we find out whether you’re a smart enough bird to fly Hell’s coop. Then she was gone, too, leaving me alone with Melchior. Her floating IM box vanished, exposing the more mundane screen behind and the e-mail I’d been reading when she first arrived. Dear Hades, I hope this finds you dead. As always, I hate you . . . On an impulse I forwarded it to myself, being careful to leave no trace of having done so.
    By the time I finished that, Melchior had already begun running the spell that would move us from Hades’ office to some more congenial spot in the underworld. This time it worked without a hitch. I hate dealing with goddesses.
    As the gate opened, he asked, “Where to?”
    Perhaps because my meeting with Persephone had scrambled my brains, or perhaps because it was the only answer that had ever made any sense, I decided to return to my original plan. With the issue of Shara settled, there was no reason not to try it. I would trust to my friendships and my luck.
    “Take us back to the front gate.”
    “Are you sure about that? What’s the plan?”
    “I’m going to play it by ear,” I replied with a smile. It was kind of nice to be one step ahead of my familiar for a change.
    “I hate it when you say things like that,” grumbled Melchior. “I just hate it.” But he went ahead and stepped into the gate.
     
I’ll say this for the new computerized arrangement in Hades, it made the job of getting back to the top level a lot easier than it had been for Orpheus. Quicker, too. Just enter the coordinates in the master computer and poof. At least it did if you were a hacker like me. As far as the computerized routing systems were concerned, I was Hades. I love root-level access.
    We ended up on a low hill overlooking the underworld gate, with Cerberus stalking back and forth on the other side. My watch said it was coming up on midnight. He hadn’t varied his routine one iota in all the hours I’d been gone. I’d kind of hoped something would come up to distract him, so I could fake my way out. Oh well. I did have an actual Plan A; it just scared the source code out of me.
    “Come on,” I said to Melchior. “It’s showtime.” I stood and calmly walked toward the gate. Looking worried, Melchior followed. “Smile, Mel. If this doesn’t work, maybe you can make a break for it while he’s tearing me limb from limb.”
    “You don’t have to outrun the cops, you just have to outrun your accomplice?”
    “Something like that,” I replied. “It