by Holly Hook
“He did what?” Ronin asked, eyes widening. “I can see him cursing me but his own students? He must be desperate. Maria. Mikey. We are not putting up with this. I'll talk to the healers and see if they can remove it, but curses from immortals are almost impossible. Even other immortals have a hard time taking them off."
“I'm starting to not like him anymore,” Maria said. Her shoulders arched forward and she stared at the dirt.
“You used to sing his praises,” Mikey told her.
"Don't remind me."
The principal changed when I got here. I had ruined things on more than one level. Chaos, indeed.
A low groan filled my body and I breathed out, casting it away.
Ronin lifted an eyebrow and reached for my arm. He'd sensed the turmoil. “Giselle.”
I reached for him, but he dropped his hand and looked to the side.
Prometheus stood there, face calm, but tension lived in the creases around his eyes. He was wondering about the result of his little curse.
“Hey,” I said, mouth going dry. Yeah, I looked nervous, but I should if I'd been cursed.
“I still need your updated information. You know, I'm amazed you got your schedule at all.” The titan's words filled the arena, spreading through the whole space.
“Oh. Do you um, have a pencil?” My skin tingled as he watched for my reaction. And I was giving him plenty of fear. For the first time, I legitimately feared Prometheus. “My address is fifteen fifteen Oak."
A long pause dragged out. Prometheus nodded at last. “I'll look up your zip code in the computer and fill in what I don't have. Fifteen fifteen is easy to remember.”
Yikes. He was going to fact check my words. I didn't even know if this was a real address. What town had I told him I lived in? But at least every town had a street named Oak.
Change the subject. Now. Ronin crossed his arms, watching me, trying to look professional. Maria hung back with Mikey. And Prometheus lifted one eyebrow, waiting.
“I...what...” I blurted, rubbing my arms. "That letter." See? I was cursed. You should be happy.
Prometheus nodded and offered a warm, but tense smile. “Safety precautions. The Lower Order could have taken you over the summer and I was worried sick. I can't keep you on campus and safe, so now you should be able to defend yourself if you leave. Consider it a gift.”
He turned away as his words bore a hole into my chest.
Chapter Six
Over the next few weeks, I took notes in Mrs. Allenson's classes about the mortal heroes of ancient times. She crept closer and closer to Hercules, saving the best for last, and took a long time talking about how Odysseus, in his quest to get home, stabbed a Cyclops in the eye while he was sleeping. Maria cringed over and over through that lesson. Mikey grabbed the sides of his desk, skin turning the faintest shade of blue as he stared daggers into Mrs. Allenson.
And the low groan of Chaos filled me as I exhaled, just as Natalia instructed me to do. Breathe out the anger, Giselle. Anything negative, just breathe it out.
“...and the hideous monster was blinded,” Mrs. Allenson finished. “You will be tested on this particular story at the end of the week, so I hope you've taken good notes.”
“I want to kill her,” Mikey hissed in my ear.
So much for Natalia's advice. So did I. The low groan filled me once again, the call of Chaos, the urge to just open up a void and destroy. The feelings had been gone all summer, since I'd been away from Cursed and all this bad influence, but now it was happening again and the episodes were slowly getting more intense.
Maria slapped me on the arm so hard that the pain brought me out of it. Yeah, we'd made an agreement. If I started getting scary, or gods forbid, got the purple flecks in my eyes, she was to hit me with extreme prejudice. I healed fast even when I wasn't using my powers.
“I hate her,” Maria once we left class. “You two. Don't let her get to you. Mrs. Allenson is trying to make us all mature faster. And Mikey. I thought your powers didn't work on women.”
Mikey nodded. “My attraction powers don't work on women. Doesn't mean I can't get scary. And why would I want Mrs. Allenson? Yuck. Oh, and Tiffany invited us out to dinner on Saturday. I told her I'm allergic to gluten and can't eat out anywhere.” His tone dropped to the Underworld.
I held in my sigh. Maria and Mikey, I sensed, were trying not to talk about the suckiness of their curse in front of me, but sometimes things slipped. Here they were, second years, supposed to be free to leave campus on the weekends only to have that ripped away.
But so long as they were stuck, I decided, I would be, too. It wasn't fair that I went out when they had to stay behind.
Maria cleared her throat. “What was my excuse?”
“That you were getting picked up by your mom for a weekend at the spa.”
“Oh.”
I said nothing. Neither did Mikey. He wouldn't look right at me. I had the sense he had told Tiffany I could go.
We made eye contact as we neared the doors of Building B. Tiffany and Sarah were already heading out of them and into the rain.
“I'm not going if you can't,” I forced.
“Stop being such a martyr,” Maria said. “Go. You might even get the chance to spy on Wendy or even talk to her, since I heard she likes to go to the same restaurant all the time. And Ronin's going, so why not?”
“But the two of you will be sitting around here, bored,” I said.
“We can salvage it,” Mikey said. “We've got Cal and Teddy coming over on Saturday to hang out with us. I told Cal the deal so he's happy to come over here.”
Pressure lifted off my chest. “How are things going?”
“Well, I haven't been able to convert Cal, but we're getting along so far,” Mikey said, obviously trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. “Guess we're friends.”
“Convert?” I asked.
Mikey just grinned at me. “Still working on it. The thing is, I'm not sure who's supposed to make the first move. Therein might lie the problem.”
“But--” Maria started. She let the meaning hang.
I held the door open for my friends. It was pouring. We ran to lunch, which was now after Divine History.
Mikey didn't speak until we'd reached the main building. “I don't feel like I want to kill Cal. Maybe it's the Apollo power in him holding mine back. That would be nice.” He left it there. Mikey enjoyed talking about his Siren powers as much as everyone else enjoyed a punch in the face.
* * * * *
When Saturday came, I woke to a knock on the door.
“Morning!” Ronin shouted outside of it. “I would have slid you a note, but I figured you might have PTSD from that.”
I eyed the space on my carpet where the cursed note had landed. “Thanks. And I don't have PTSD.” If anyone had to deal with that it was Ronin. And it wasn't a joke.
“Well, I wanted to hang out before we go to the restaurant. Maria and Mikey say we could run into Wendy there. Talked to the healers, but they're at a loss as to how to remove curses. And some of them aren't friendly.”
I opened the door for Ronin. He was dressed in his leather jacket today, it being Saturday. There was no rule about uniforms on weekends. He sent me a cocky smile that made it seem like his troubles were a million miles away. “Shall I escort you down to breakfast?”
“Don't let Wendy see us,” I said. “That won't win me brownie points. I can't believe I have to try to be nice to her.”
“You already didn't kill her. Isn't that good enough?” Ronin wrapped his arm around me. “By the way, good job making it look like you're using your dark powers in class.”
“I am using my dark powers in class. Just not much,” I admitted, though even making small bubbles of darkness appear in Combat Training scared me. “And Prometheus happens to walk by Combat Training on the days you're not there. He's waiting for me to go off campus and mature.”
“If we're lucky, he just thinks you're afraid to. That's why we nee
d to sneak you out later. Cal's staying here, so I drafted Natalia to drive us away. You should use that maintenance trail most people don't know about. The guards won't catch you.”
“You still don't have a car of your own.”
Ronin frowned at me as I locked my door and we headed down the steps. “No. Zeus came to Olympian this week. Met with me. He wants me to start training you after school again. But now that you've shown another side of your powers, I think that'll be okay now.” He kissed me on the temple. “You don't have to get all mad that I'm trying to keep you in a box.”
I slapped him on the arm. “And you don't have to have a hero thing going on for a while. We're even.”
“Hey!”
I loved these fake arguments with Ronin. We made each other feel less like freaks. Ronin was learning how not to make me dark. It was something he'd been too good at before.
We found Maria and Mikey down in the dining hall, but Wendy was missing. She must already be out, taking advantage of her new second year status. Mikey waved to us and I knew it was because Cal was going to show up.
Maria echoed my thoughts. “Wendy left in that fancy car this morning. Serena went with her. I don't know where Percival wandered off to, but I bet she went shopping.”
I couldn't imagine Wendy with her family. The man's grumping came back to me and I shuddered. “Well, I'll suggest Ronin and I stop by the mall up in Marchamp so we can run into her.”
Maria and Mikey stayed in a surprisingly good mood as Ronin and I left after breakfast. Maybe it was the fact that they'd found a good distraction from their imprisonment. Or they were just keeping up a good face for me.
“We'll find a way to free them,” Ronin whispered in my ear once we passed Prometheus's empty office. “But we'll have fun today. I promise.”
Ronin and I left out the back, along the hidden maintenance trail that never had guards, and circled through the woods around the campus. Natalia was waiting near the gate in one of the official Olympian cars, a Mercedes that looked like all the others. With the principal waiting for me to mature, I couldn't risk being seen leaving. Or he'd curse me for real next time.
Natalia turned out to be a crazy driver, accelerating and taking full advantage of the amazing motor. I held on for dear life beside Ronin, who just grinned at me in response.
“Come on. You're going to be some big bad immortal and you're afraid of an accident,” he said.
“Yes. I am.”
“We're here,” Natalia said, pulling into the Grassroots Mall. It was a long building, not a big mall, but just enough to have a small theater and a bunch of stores. Ronin looked at me and pulled out his wallet. It was stuffed with hundreds.
“Show off,” I said.
“You're getting a new wardrobe while we're looking for Wendy and waiting for dinner to roll around. Can't look suspicious, can you?”
“She'll be shopping in the gothic store.”
“Then so are we. Hopefully Serena's not there to drag her away.”
The mall was mostly empty this early in the day, and Ronin and I wandered the long, wide hallway beside each other. Ronin kept his eyes narrowed, scanning every door and every shop, even pausing on the guy working behind the sunglasses kiosk.
“Relax,” I said. “This is our first time off campus on a weekend in like, forever.”
“Easier said than done.” Ronin wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. I felt the outline of my Chaos Dagger—the real one—under leather. Ronin always carried it with him when we were out, because we never knew when the Lower Order would show up. And every time I prayed I wouldn't have to use it.
“We're safe. Nobody's going to tip off Dominique that we're here.”
“We don't know for sure.” Ronin's tone darkened.
The Grassroots Mall was pretty quiet so early in the day, even though it was a weekend, and we blended in since we were wearing our plain clothes. The old people and the moms with strollers walked past, ignoring us, unaware that they were in the presence of a budding immortal born straight from Chaos, an oracle, and a literal son of Zeus. It didn't seem fair that I could go crazy on these people if things suddenly got bad.
“When we shop for clothes,” Natalia said, “I'm going with you and Ronin is going to go do something manly. That'll look a lot less suspicious.”
“No way,” Ronin said, curling his fingers into my arm.
In the end, we found Wendy and Serena walking out of the food court, bags already laden with purchases. They were rich girls, all right. Wendy wore a classy black top with a necklace that might be gold. A ruby shone, reflecting the skylights above. Serena wore leggings with stars and galaxies on them. A descendant of Nyx, the goddess of night, she'd chosen a fitting outfit.
They headed into another corridor, leaving us standing at the edge of the food court. We hadn't been spotted. A woman followed far behind them, scrolling through her phone, and the feeling of dread emanating from her told me that she, too, might be a descendant of Hades. Laden in jewels and fancy earrings, the dark-haired woman who looked like an older version of Wendy yawned and followed the girls with her gaze before settling on one of the mall couches.
“Well, they're loaded people,” Natalia said. “That woman looks really unpleasant.”
“Hades is also the god of riches,” Ronin said. “Figures his few descendants would be rich, too. Let's follow. Look natural.”
Natalia nodded at me and I separated from Ronin. He shook his head and patted his leather coat, which held my dagger. “No.”
“I'll be fine.” I nodded to the store Wendy had just vanished into. “I just want to talk to her when Serena's not around, is all. Be friendly. What could go wrong with that in a public place?”
“Lots.”
“Ronin. Hero,” I said, hating that I was pulling that card.
“Yep. That's what I am,” he said, flexing his biceps.
“You really need a new way to show off.” Natalia slapped his arm.
“Fine. How about this?” He moved his hips in a way that brought heat and tingles to my cheeks.
“Ronin!” Natalia said.
“Well, I see your point,” he said, eyeing a store full of sports jerseys. “I'll go look manly in this one. Wendy just went into a makeup store and I cannot go in there, or my masculinity will shrivel and die.”
Natalia and I laughed. I wished Maria were here to enjoy this with us.
Ronin vanished into the sports supply store, which thankfully was right across from the makeup one. Natalia and I walked inside like perfect friends, just as Serena brushed past us, face to her phone, texting. Serena made a beeline to the bathrooms which meant that Wendy was in the store, alone, except for two old women at the very back and the worker behind the counter.
My heart raced. Natalia nodded to me and Ronin gave me a thumbs-up from across the corridor. He wasn't straying far. A mom with a stroller walked past and a guy in a trench coat sat down on the bench, dropping a paper bag to the worn carpet. I watched him for a second, but he did nothing, so I chalked it up to paranoia as I wandered deeper into a jungle of foundation, nail polish, and fashion accessories. Natalia separated from me, walking into the next aisle but staying close.
I found Wendy sifting through long, fake nails, all of which had black in them. She was looking at some fakes with golden sequins on them when she looked up at me.
I stopped as if shocked I'd run into her. “Hey, Wendy.” My heart leapt into my throat as the feeling of dread she always carried settled over me. It was no wonder no one else had dared to come near her. When she was in a bad mood, nobody wanted to hang around Wendy except for fellow descendants of dark gods.
Wendy worked her lips—they were bright red like the ruby around her neck—before she spoke. “Look, we're neutral now. Don't tell anybody that. If you're asking about our status, there it is. You stay away from me, and I stay away from you."
“I'm glad,” I said. Getting on good terms with Wendy wasn't going to be easy. Letting her
slice into my neck during finals just got me up to neutral. Yikes. And that was when no one else was around. What would good take? Human sacrifice? I sensed I should walk away now—the atmosphere thickened more with each second Wendy waited for me to leave—but this was my one shot. “I just wanted to say I don't want any rivalry. You can stay at the top of the class. I need to get out of Cursed, anyway, before I become something I'm afraid of. Sounds like you have tough parents you need to impress. That's rough.”
I blurted out that last part.
And Wendy let her mouth fall open for a split second. Then she closed it and threw a mask on.
“We're done.” She turned away, hiking her shoulders.
My heart sank.
“Hey. I just wanted to let you know the deal. Once I'm in Olympian, you won't have to worry.”
I had hit a button because Wendy snapped her gaze to me, paling. “You found a way to--”
“Who are you talking to?”
A whole new wave of dread fell over me and I knew that Wendy's mother had gotten bored of texting and come to check on her daughter.
I whirled to find myself face to face with another god descendant, this one fully grown and a head taller than me. Wendy's mother shared her very dark hair and the horrible sneer I'd come to know so well, and as I stared into those golden-flecked eyes, the dread in my bones increased.
“Just some random girl from school.” Wendy's full attitude was back.
Natalia, who had stayed back by the nail polish, waved to me from behind Wendy's scary mom. We needed to go. And I trusted an oracle.
“We just ran into each other,” I said, throat dry.
“Really.” The woman shook her head at me and motioned to the exit with her chin. She rubbed her thumb over her finger, drawing an eerie green glow. "Wendy. We're done in here. Come on. It's time for you and Serena to see a movie.” Her tone dripped with fierce disapproval.
“Get lost, Giselle,” Wendy said, turning my name into a razor blade.
I didn't dare say goodbye to Wendy. I felt her glare on the back of my neck as I moved around Mrs. Pazizi and joined Natalia at the door. Ronin also stood in the corridor, waiting, and the guy in the trench coat had left. It was no wonder Wendy had issues.