“That won’t be necessary,” he answered. He also had a Louisiana accent, complete with the thick-rolled “o”s that had come be associated with Cajuns. But his was smoother, deeper. And much, much darker.
It wafted like smoke up my spine as he said, “Ma belle, it is good to see you again. I can trust you to keep quiet while we have this talk, non?”
As scared as I was, I realized he was right.
I didn’t need to have my mouth duct taped because I was no longer screaming.
I hadn’t said a word since being dragged into the room. I could only stare at the man on the throne.
As if sensing he had me completely in his thrall, he uncoiled from his seat like a king—the cobra kind. And stood up to loom over me on the raised dais.
Black. Black leather boots. Black jeans encasing strong legs. Black leather jacket with a PRESIDENT patch stitched over its left side. Black hair the same as the teenager’s but not slicked back in a pompadour. It topped his head in thick, tousled waves, an inky ocean at rest.
He was beautiful. But not like me. His beauty was neither feminine nor particularly mortal.
He was beautiful like a god. And I immediately knew why they called him Hades.
But all those other details fell away when I met his gaze.
His silver gaze.
It twinkled with a mix of amusement and curiosity. Just as it did five years ago when I emerged from that broken pool.
I gasped.
“I’ve already got a child, princess. A son. I named Galen after his father. Beautiful name. It means calm weather,” Mama Fairgood, our dear nanny/housekeeper had explained to me when I asked why I wasn’t allowed to just call her plain Mama, since she was the one who took care of me the most. “But he hates it. My sister friend Cherise lets him watch too much TV. And he spends all the money I give him on comics. He’s decided he wants to be a hero when he grows up. Some kind of mix between Swamp Thing and Gambit. He makes everybody call him Swamp Boy—even his own mama. It’s real silly. But you always can find him down on the bayou, helping folks out the best he can. He’s my pride and joy. And that’s why I can’t let you call me just mama without the Fairgood.”
The hero…the boy she’d told me about…he was standing before me.
And apparently, he still didn’t let anyone call him Galen.
Hades.
That was his name now. And he was no longer a superhero. He was a monstrous god.
Yet, it was his old nickname that fell out of my mouth when I finally opened it to speak.
“Swamp Boy?” My voice, my body, my mind…they all trembled as I asked, “Swamp Boy, is that you?”
CHAPTER 6
GALEN
Around the age of six, Galen realized his mère had another family. She took care of them and looked after them and called their little girl “princess,” and stayed with them every school night. The other family got most of her time. Weekends, Easter, and Christmas to the day before New Year’s Eve belonged to him.
He used to get New Year’s Eve too. But then the other family’s little princess cried because his mother wasn’t there for her birthday, so that day started going to them too.
When it came down to him and his mother’s other family, the other family came first, every time.
Galen wasn’t sure how much his mother got paid to be some other family’s mother, but according to his godmother, Cherise, it wasn’t enough.
But Galen was satisfied. His mother’s job made it so that Nanan Cherise didn’t never have to keep a job—which she couldn’t on account of a head sickness she called “my emotions.” Galen had clothes and comic books. And Nanan Cherise, who couldn’t drive anything but their swamp boat on account of her emotions, was able to pay folks to pick him up from extracurriculars after school and bring him to the main dock at the end of their unincorporated bayou.
But she still insisted his mother wasn’t getting paid enough.
According to her, his mother working for that Black family was a scandal.
“She only took the job to prove she ain’t how she grew up. And they only hired her to show they got money,” Nanan Cherise insisted. “Ooh-ah, look at us, swannin’ around with our white maid. The nerve of them. Can you believe that? Abandoning her own child to take care of those Perreaults. They act like their fertilizer don’t stink, but you know, they got that ugly history. Black-on-Black slave owning, politics, bodies that ain’t never been found, thinking they better.”
