Read Cybermancy for Free Online Page B

with 2.0?” asked Melchior. “I really don’t like being here.”
    “Hush,” I said as I scrolled down the screen. “I know what I’m doing.”
    Truth be told, I didn’t like being “here” either. After I’d told Mel where I wanted to go, he’d gated us directly into an office where any sybaritically inclined CEO would have felt at home. Lush carpet. Imposing desk. Pricey art. Expensive chair. Honking-big plasma-screen monitor. Of course it all had that same grayed-out quality as the landscape, but cutting a few artistic corners seemed an inevitable consequence of running the underworld.
    So it wasn’t that I had anything against the office itself—and Hades’ big leather chair was one of the most comfortable I’d ever sat in—I just didn’t want be there when he got back. Unfortunately, if you want to read the God of Death’s e-mail, you have to go to the source. That meant the desktop computer in Hades’ office, the one that had the only link of any kind to the outside in the entire underworld.
    Typing fast, I pulled up Hades’ e-mail client. It gave me a password prompt. Now, if only he was as unimaginative and technolazy as his brother Zeus . . .
    I’d done a little troubleshooting for the big guy once. While he had godly power practically oozing out of his pores, you had to suspect that his wits had followed his wisdom when Athena popped out of his forehead fully formed.
    I entered, Hades123 .
    Access granted. I let out a sigh, then almost swallowed my tongue when I heard a faint noise from beyond the office door, as of someone pausing there, then walking past. I really wanted to get away, but we had to get Shara back to Cerice ASAP if I wanted to keep my oath. That meant finding out what had been done to her. Forcing myself to concentrate on the screen, I checked out the client software. Then I started swearing.
    I’d been spoiled growing up in the Houses of Fate. My umpteen-times-great-grandmother Lachesis is the Fate who measures the threads for Atropos to cut. Control freak doesn’t begin to describe her personality. Neither does anal-retentive. She doesn’t just want everything in its place. She insists that it like it there.
    I’m about as sloppy a child of Fate as ever lived, but every e-mail I’ve ever received is neatly filed away in an appropriate folder for archival purposes. Some of them are even duplicated in multiple folders since they fit into more than one category. Cerice is the same way. It’s our upbringing, and the source is more organized yet. Lachesis even archives her spam.
    Hades was a whole different story. He didn’t so much as have folders, just an in-box with about 300 messages, half unopened. Apparently anything that didn’t have immediate importance went into the trash, where I found 23,897 messages, again about half unopened. After a few minutes I realized his search functions were shit, too, and that I’d have to code my own e-mail sorting script. It’s amazing how fast a man with nine fingertips can type when he’s got the right motivation.
    More precious minutes ticked past, and I kept thinking that if Hades were a better record keeper, we’d have been in and out by now. As it was, I still had to look at 163 messages that might possibly contain the info I needed. I was able to discard some quickly, things with headers like “Smite 500 Percent More ” and “Totally Nude Nymphs.”
    That got me down to fifty or so I actually had to open and skim. Forty. Thirty. Twenty-five. Twenty. I was sweating. What if the info I needed wasn’t here? Ten. Still no luck. The next one claimed to be from [email protected]. It was six months old, from before Shara’s arrival, the date stamp was 10 July OST (Olympus Standard Time). I wanted to skip it, but my script had selected it as containing at least a couple of my search terms. I double-clicked.
    It opened, Dear Hades , I hope this finds you dead . As always, I hate you . . .
    I reached for the closing keys, then