There was a long pause. The man raised his hand slowly to his mouth and removed a metal coin from his tongue. He looked at it for a moment, and then clenched his fist, holding it tightly in his palm.

“I was,” the man said at last. “I was Mark Antony.”

“And so you are again,” the priestess said. “I have opened the gates of Hades for your shade to pass through.”

10

The shade wavered, the light of the candles pouring through the place where his wound had been. He held his hand to the spot, pressing his fingers against his lost flesh. He moved his hand from the wound and held it up, gazing at it. There was blood on the fingers, but it was immaterial, like a faint residue of ink washed over with water.

He was a flickering presence in the now frigid room. Augustus had to narrow his eyes to distinguish the man, and even then, he moved in and out of clarity, as though he were a sunken ship glimpsed deep beneath rippling waters.

In spite of his state, he was certainly Mark Antony. There was no doubt. The unruly hair and trimmed beard, the cleft chin, the wide chest, the handsome, weathered face. Augustus recognized the ragged, coiled scars, evidence of battles they’d fought together.

His enemy was more man than he, even as a ghost. Augustus picked up his goblet in trembling fingers and refilled it with wine, taking care not to meet Antony’s eyes.

“Is this safe?” Augustus asked Chrysate, taking care that his voice did not wobble. “You’ve brought my enemy into my house. I trust you know how to control him.”

“He is a shade,” Chrysate answered, smiling. “Not the man you knew. They are the perfect servants. Their will begins to slip away from them the moment they enter Hades. The river of forgetfulness beckons them, and they always surrender. Look at him. He is nothing of what he was. He cannot take up arms against you. But he may be useful.”

“What have you done?” Antony asked, the full darkness of his gaze upon the emperor. “Where is my wife?”

His voice seemed to come from far away, an aching echo propelled from the depths of the earth and into the room.

In spite of the witch’s assurances, the emperor clung to his chair, his entire body desirous of flight. He wanted the sun to rise, and it did not. The only glow came from the stars outside the window, and that light was cold. The soul-drawing witch —the psuchagoĝoi— stood beside him, her fingers resting lightly on his shoulder. Augustus did not like the way they felt.

“Where is she?” Antony demanded. “Where is Cleopatra?”

Augustus glanced nervously at the witch, at her gleaming, bone-white skin, her phosphorescent eyes and bloodred lips and the tongue that ran hungrily over them. He mastered his voice with another deep draught of wine and theriac.

“First, you must tell us where you have been,” he informed the shadow before him. “Tell us of your time in Hades.”