Chapter 6
6
Nicole
“ H ere you go.” Kindness led me into a cute little bedroom upstairs with a four-poster bed under a lace coverlet. “I hope you’ll like it here.”
“But I can’t stay.” I gripped the doorframe. “I need to go back. I have a very, very important day today. I need to go home.”
“Oh…” Kindness straightened a ruffle on the coverlet. “That is unfortunate, isn’t it? I really don’t know what to do in your case.”
“Can you take me back?” I asked, hopefully.
She gazed at me with compassion.
“You see, travelling between the worlds isn’t that easy. I hardly ever go to your world myself. Your situation is not a typical one…” She took in my crestfallen expression and rushed to me. “Now, now, no need to get upset yet. Let’s talk to Mother. I’m sure there is something that can be done.”
Without even crossing the threshold of the pretty bedroom, I followed Kindness downstairs again.
The front door to the teahouse remained closed, with both Pandora and Charity now sitting in the armchairs with the ever- present tea tray on the small table between them. Pandora’s current forest-green color matched that of Invi’s.
I nervously swept the room with my gaze. “Is he …gone?”
Pandora nodded. “For now, anyway. But I’m not sure how long my wards can keep him away. Children get so much harder to control as they grow older.”
“Technically, he shouldn’t be coming here without Kindness’s explicit permission,” Charity snapped. “It’s her teahouse, after all.”
Kindness hugged me again. “Aw, sweetie, he terrified you, didn’t he? It’s a lot to take for someone with your limited mortal mentality. Come here, take a seat, have some tea. And don’t be afraid. You’re safe here.”
She put me in one of the comfy armchairs across the table from the other two women and thrust a porcelain cup with chamomile tea in my hands.
“Invi is back in his swamp now,” Charity assured me. “Where he’ll hopefully stay."
“I wish I could make him behave.” Pandora sighed. “But I’m afraid things will get only worse once his brothers find out about another human mortal in Purgatory.”
Kindness nodded, her apple-green eyes growing big with alarm behind her glasses. “Oh, Invi will go livid if one of the other sins claims you for their own. The difference between envy and jealousy isn’t great, and Invi has them both in spades.”
“But I’m not interested in any of his brothers. I don’t even want to meet them. I need to go back home. I have a very important event happening today that I absolutely can’t miss…” My voice trailed off.
What time was it? How long did I sleep? What if I missed the cake decorating challenge already? Making it all the way to the finals was the best thing that had happened to our bakery. Did I blow our chance? Did I let Jess down?
Dread seized my chest. Jess would be devastated, looking for me. She had probably called the police already.
“I really, really need to go back,” I said firmly. “How can I do it?”
Charity winced. Pandora shrugged. And Kindness sighed. Neither of their reactions gave me hope.
“Please,” I begged, pressing my hands together.
“Traveling to your world from Purgatory isn’t exactly natural,” Pandora explained. “The traffic usually moves in the opposite direction. To come here, one just needs to die, but to leave here, one needs a transcendence potion. Avar found the recipe for the potion and, the Sin of Greed that he is, he keeps it under a lock on his mountain.”
“Invi must’ve stolen some,” Charity chimed in. “Or maybe he made a deal with Avar in exchange for something. Our brothers are guilty of all sorts of shady dealings.”
“I don’t think he made a deal.” Kindness put a small basket of scones and muffins closer to me. “I heard from a few souls here, at the teahouse, that Invi stole both the potion and then the moonstone ring that gives a mortal body to a spirit. Avar was raging mad when he discovered the ring gone after a dinner at Gul’s last night. He was supposed to go back to Maddy’s world and couldn’t do it without the ring.”
I remembered the antique-looking ring on Invi’s finger last night. It had glowed with pale blue and shimmering green, looking expensive, like everything else about him.
I should’ve known better and stayed away from him then, like my common sense had screamed for me to do. But something drew me to him, despite all the red flags I’d usually steer away from.
If only he hadn’t been so sweet and charming last night.
I halted my breath against the tightness gripping my chest. I should’ve known it all was too good to be true.
“Does one absolutely need the ring to bring me back?” I asked the otherworldly ladies.
“No.” Pandora stirred the tea in her cup. “The ring is for deception, not for traveling. But without the transcendence potion, it’s impossible to go to your world.”
Sensing my crushing disappointment, Kindness added quickly, “Avar travels to your world often, now that he has Madison, who has a family and a business to attend to.”
“Who is Madison?” I asked.
“Um…” Kindness stumbled in her answer, then glanced at her mother and sister uncertainly.
“It’s not important.” Pandora swept her hand through the air. “What matters is that Avar is coming back in a week or two. He’ll take you home then.”
“In a week or two?” I repeated, in shock. “But I can’t stay here for that long. I have to go back now . We’re registered for the cake decorating challenge as a team of three. They’ll disqualify Jess and Geoff without me. I can’t let them down.”
As much as I disliked competing, I couldn’t leave Jess and our one and only employee, Geoff, in the cold like that. Poor Jess, she’d be crushed by missing out on this chance, especially on top of all her troubles with her piece-of-shit boyfriend Shaun.
“You can decorate a cake here, with me,” Kindness suggested, cheerfully.
“Humans…” Charity muttered, refilling her cup from a chubby teapot painted with daisies and gooseberries. “They keep holding on to their miserable lives with all they’ve got, even after they get a glimpse of a much better place like our town.”
I tossed the virtue a probing look. “You don’t like us very much, do you?”
“Of course I do,” she bristled. “I love humans. How can I not? You’re wretched, weak creatures. You need all the love and help you can get.”
The line between charity and pity was thin, but Charity made it look non-existent. Except that I couldn’t even fight her on it in earnest. In Purgatory, I felt smaller than ever, and definitely in need of help.
“Is Avar the only one who has that transcendence potion?” I asked, holding on to the hope of being able to leave here soon. “How about anyone else?”
“Other than Avar, only Sup and Gul visit your world regularly,” Charity said. “But they also get the potion from Avar when they need it.”
“But I can’t wait for Avar,” I moaned in panic. “I need to be back today.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Kindness cooed. “Things have a way of sorting themselves out. Here, have a muffin.” She shoved a pastry into my hand. “Food makes mortals feel better, I’ve heard.”
Pandora sipped her tea, while gradually turning from pine green to baby blue. “What are a few days when you still have most of your lifetime to spend in that world? Your body seems to be in good enough health. It may last several decades still.”
“I have a very important… no, a life-changing event happening today. If I miss it, I’ll let my best friend down—” My throat tightened in distress, momentarily cutting off my air supply.
“I’m sure everything will be just fine.” Kindness patted my shoulder sympathetically. “Just try to relax a little and have more tea.” She grabbed the teapot from the side table and filled my cup up to the rim.
The scent of chamomile made me feel nauseated. I couldn’t take another sip even if I tried.
“You humans are so dramatic,” Pandora drawled. “You fret over every little thing that doesn’t go your way and make a huge deal out of everything. A decade from now, you won’t even think about this important event of yours. And just one lifetime later, you’ll completely forget all about it. Just relax, drink some tea, wait for Avar. Nothing life-changing is going to happen in the few days meanwhile. Trust me. Your world is so boring, it often even beats Purgatory in that department.” She stretched in her chair and hid a yawn behind her hand. “I arrived here just this morning, and I’m already so bored.”
Charity curved her lips, unimpressed. “You’re always bored, Mother. But the world cannot burn in chaos indefinitely simply to keep you entertained.”
“Nothing permanent can be entertaining forever, child. The fun is in changing things up, every now and then.” Pandora gave me a closer look, as if gauging my potential for entertainment. “Invi wants you. Badly. You should’ve seen the fit he threw here before I forced him away.”
“Invi always wants what others have,” Charity scoffed. “After what Avar did, of course he had to go and do the same. Only he did it even more clumsily than his brother.”
“A mortal body is rare in Purgatory.” Pandora rested her chin in her hand, staring at me uncomfortably long. “It wouldn’t be just Invi who’d want you. I bet Ira would like a chance to earn your affection or Sup, who always appreciates pretty novelty things. Some of the other sins may want a shot at it too.”
“But I’m not soliciting my affection to anyone,” I bristled. “I didn’t come here to look for a man, or a sin, or…whatever. I didn’t even come here because I wanted to be here?—”
“I know, I know.” Pandora’s voice turned uncharacteristically gentle. “You were stolen, abducted, misled, and wronged. What a terrible, terrible thing Invi did to you. He absolutely needs to be punished.”
“Punished?” I wondered where she was going with it now.
“Yes. He and the rest of my sons need to know that this kind of behavior is not going to be tolerated. We allowed Avar’s deed to go unpunished and look where it led.” She pointed an accusing finger at me. “Next thing you know, all of the deadly sins will descend upon your poor, defenseless world and start snatching mortals left, right, and center. We can’t possibly let that happen.”
Kindness nodded, biting her lip in worry. “Mother is right. We can’t.”
Charity squinted at Pandora, who now flashed an exciting shade of pink.
“Mother, what do you have in mind?”