by Holly Hook
“Come on,” Ronin said, joining us. “We need to go now. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Natalia just nodded. She upped her pace and Ronin positioned himself so I could reach the Chaos Dagger if I needed it. What would my powers be out in this public place? They could swing either way.
We passed Serena, who was walking back from the bathrooms, and she glared at the three of us as we passed. Ronin, being his usual self, waved with a stupid grin, but he kept his pace fast and urgent. The food court was clear, despite it being lunch, and I kept waiting for Wendy's mom to follow, ready to ban us to the Underworld for daring to talk to her precious daughter, but nothing happened. Things were abnormally quiet. A sense of dread still hung in the air and lingered even as we got out to the Olympian car that Natalia had driven here.
We got in and she turned on the air conditioning. “Well, that wasn't tense,” Ronin said. “Wendy's got some harsh parents. I thought Zeus was bad. I was across the hall and I felt the dread from there. And trust me, everyone in the hall at the time was hurrying away.”
“We accomplished nothing,” I said. What would I tell Maria and Mikey? Hey, you had better get used to staying on campus forever? I'd been close to a breakthrough.
And after this, one might never come again.
Natalia pulled out of the parking spot and got on the road. The air cooled and she turned off the AC, but the chill kept blowing out of the vents. "Come on." She fiddled with it, but the AC stayed on.
“I still feel that dread,” I said, leaning into Ronin.
“So do I. Once we're out of here we should be fine.” He surveyed the parking lot.
We stopped at a red light. I squirmed in my seat as Natalia again fiddled with the air conditioning. I shuddered. The air in the Mercedes was turning to ice.
“Something's not right here,” I said. “This car is too new to be acting like this. Pull over. What if--”
Too late.
A dark vapor leaked out of the vents.
Natalia screamed. The black cloud billowed out, engulfing her as she reached for the car door. She coughed, thrashed, and beat at the steering wheel, wailing the horn. I stiffened in shock. Ronin cursed.
And then the darkness vanished as Natalia took in one long, whistling breath, pulling in all of the vapor.
“Natalia!” Ronin released me and slapped her on the shoulder.
She whirled.
The person in the drivers' seat was no longer Natalia.
Instead, pure darkness, a darkness almost as deep as Chaos, filled her eyes. Grinning with nothing but malice and hate, Natalia turned away as the light turned green, stomping on the gas.
Chapter Seven
“Natalia!” Ronin shouted.
He fell back into the seat as she accelerated through the intersection, swerving around a pickup truck. The Mercedes engine growled louder and louder, full of power. Natalia--or whatever was controlling her--cut off the truck and veered into the oncoming lane. The town of Marchamp blurred past. Cars honked and dove out of the way.
“What are you doing?” I gripped the back of her seat and beat on her headrest.
“She's possessed!” Ronin shouted, gripping the door handle. But we were going too fast to bail. Well, Ronin. I'd heal but I was not leaving him with her.
Natalia said nothing. I slapped her on the shoulder, but it was like hitting a rock. Every muscle of hers had tightened. “That light! It's red!”
Did Wendy's mom seriously want to kill us?
The signal remained red in front of us, with five cars at the intersection and thick cross-traffic. We closed the final five hundred feet. Time seemed to slow. We had just stores on either side of us. Parallel parking spaces. Cars. Sidewalk. A couple walking out of a restaurant froze before they dove back in. Natalia might kill someone. Whatever was possessing her didn't care if we lived or died.
I undid my seat belt and scrambled into the front seat.
“Giselle!” Ronin shouted.
“Natalia!” I could take the powers of others. This was beyond risky, but I had to try. I had to connect.
But she swerved, and as I fell back into the front passenger seat, I realized we were heading onto the sidewalk. The car lurched. Waiting cars blurred past. Something crashed. A huge flowerpot rolled into the restaurant, thrown by the force of the car. Natalia looked right at me, eyes full of pure blackness.
And she smiled.
We blew through the intersection. A chorus of beeps and squealing brakes filled the world as she accelerated again. Gravity shoved me into the seat. Natalia faced the road, plotting her next move. All she had to do was brake. She'd throw me through the windshield and I'd end up a mess on the pavement. A half-immortal, bloody mess that would draw the attention of the police—and Prometheus—for sure.
But Ronin.
I reached for Natalia as we blew through, lurched over the curb, and back onto the road.
And Ronin pushed in front of me, gripping her arms.
Natalia growled, throwing him with one flick of her body.
“Ronin!” I shouted.
He grunted and got off. Our gazes met. His eyes were wide and terrified. Helpless.
He peeled his jacket back, revealing my dagger.
Natalia went silent, speeding up again. We were headed out of town. The darkness in her eyes was blank. Dead. Slowly, she turned her head to a clump of trees. The speedometer climbed. Eighty. Ninety. Now she was going to plow us into death.
I lurched forward, seizing Natalia's arms, reaching for the dark force within her. This might mean my own darkness, but I had to try.
And blackness I felt, hard and cold. My vision turned to ink. I was no longer in the car, but underneath a black expanse, an expanse I breathed into me. It flooded my lungs. I couldn't breathe. The power struggled, cold and deep, trying to escape. I was holding it inside my lungs.
But I closed my mouth and didn't dare exhale, holding it in, and the inside of the car snapped back into existence as I fell back into the passenger side window. Sunlight. Leather seats. Natalia blinked and stomped on the brakes. Her eyes were normal. She screamed as I held the night within, tensing every muscle in my body as the power grew. I was amplifying it without trying. Soon it would break free, three times as strong.
Natalia screamed.
I pounded on the door. Let me out.
We screeched to a stop. Or was that my ears ringing?
I threw open the door, still holding my breath, as the world began to tilt. I still needed to breathe but if I did, I'd release this monster. It would go right back into Natalia or Ronin.
My lungs burned.
I ran across an open field of tall, waving grass, leaned over, and coughed out a dark cloud, now somehow blacker than before. It scattered among the plant stalks and the weeds, fleeing from the sun as if it were a vaporous vampire. I took a long, whistling breath and filled my lungs with precious oxygen.
The darkness disappeared, absorbing into the ground.
“Giselle! How did you do that?”
Ronin clamped his hands down on my shoulders. I sucked in another gasping breath.
“I don't know,” I said, straightening up and making sure all the darkness had vanished into the ground. “I don't know."
“You breathed in whatever was possesssing her,” Ronin said, whirling me around to face him. I looked right into his wide eyes. “You breathed it right out of Natalia. It was like the time you took my power and amplified it. And it didn't even possess you. I thought it had you for sure. Giselle, you just used that side of your powers. And all I did was offer you your dagger.”
This should be the part where he kissed me out of sheer relief.
But instead, Ronin faced the ground as if he had just pulled the biggest epic fail in history.
"Ronin. What else could you do?"
Behind him, Natalia got out of the Mercedes, which she'd pulled to the side of the now-country road. She leaned over, catching her own breath.
“More th
an that." He stalked over to the car.
I'd run a good fifty feet from the car. After stomping on the ground and making sure the darkness wasn't rising back out, I followed Ronin over to Natalia. She grasped the hood, getting fingerprints on the shine, and she was shaking.
This was because I'd tried to talk to Wendy.
“It was all dark,” she gasped. “Everything. I was breathing in that stuff, and then everything went black. What happened? How did we get out here?” She turned her gaze up to us, pupils wide.
Ronin put his arm around her. It was clearly a friend gesture. “Hey. Calm down. Whatever it was is gone now. Giselle took it out of you and stomped on it to boot.”
"I didn't stomp on anything," I said.
“Did I...drive while I wasn't here?” Natalia removed herself from his grasp and paced, looking around, putting the pieces together. Her jaw dropped as it must have clicked. “I did. I almost plowed us into those trees.”
A single truck drove past, not slowing to see if we were okay.
“Look, I'll drive us back to Academy,” Ronin said. “Or we could have Giselle do it, since that stuff couldn't possess her.”
I about choked. “Me? Drive the Mercedes?”
Natalia looked at me. “I'm sorry. I should have sensed something was off when we got in the car.”
We were all feeling great, then.
“We did know something was off,” Ronin said. “But we didn't know what. Do you think Wendy's mom did this to the car when we were in the store? She would have had time.”
“I'm an oracle and should have seen it,” Natalia said. “Yeah. Someone besides me should drive.” She rubbed her eyes. “Good lord. Graduated last year and started officially teaching, and I get possessed by some dark force. Hopefully whatever it was went back to the Underworld.”
* * * * *
Long story short: I got to drive the Mercedes.
Well, neither Ronin nor Natalia wanted to get in the driver's seat in case another mysterious, dark force came out of the vents. I turned the air conditioning off, too. I'd never driven anything before, but at least we had a country road to practice on. Ronin stayed up front with me, hovering and not saying much, as I first tapped the gas pedal and got us moving.
And immediately slammed the brake.
“You were doing fine,” he said with a grin. “You're scared of the car. That's your problem.”
“Well, it's big and can kill people? And not to mention, the cops must be looking for it right now.”
Ronin looked out the back window. “That's not how it works with Olympian Academy cars. The police station will call the school and let them handle the punishment. They don't mess with Olympian kids.”
I eyed Natalia, who curled up in the back seat. She nodded.
He was right. If we were normal people, we'd be swarmed with cops, but now nobody was coming. The townspeople would have seen the Olympian license plate on the back. They probably thought we were just kids messing around, thinking we were full of ourselves. “We need to get back and wash our fingerprints off this, then.”
“Very yes. We don't want to get punished for this. Zeus will not like us making his school look bad.”
Ronin gave me the guts to try driving again. I managed to pull onto the road and got up to twenty, then thirty. The steering was sharp, and after a minute, I learned how to keep the car going straight. Then my heart leapt into my throat as another vehicle came up behind us, hit their brakes, and passed. An old lady. That made me feel more confident.
“There's something called the gas pedal,” Ronin joked. But I heard the forcing behind it. He wasn't in a good mood. And I knew why.
Natalia said nothing. Since I'd started driving, she hadn't said a word.
Getting possessed had done a number on her emotionally.
But, driving. I got better and more confident with each turn, glad that Olympian and Cursed Academies were out in the country and we wouldn't have to go through town. Ronin stopped giving me instructions once we reached the dirt road to Cursed. By then I knew where to go.
“We'll wash the vehicle down,” Ronin explained as I parked by the Cursed Academy fountain. So far, no Olympian Guards were waiting for us and neither was Prometheus. Even if he came out, our car had tinted windows. Yay. “You get out of here. If he comes out, I'll make it look like Natalia and I are here, looking for you, and you haven't tried to leave campus. The story is that you're too scared to leave.”
I got their drift. The two couldn't go back to Olympian before they removed all evidence they'd used this car. I just hoped nobody had gotten a description of us. Another yay for tinted windows.
Proud of myself for driving, I rushed back up to my dorm, which was empty. Maria and Mikey were still hanging out with Cal and Ted somewhere. My heart was still racing. I'd taken so many risks today it was unbelievable. And then I remembered we were supposed to meet Tiffany for dinner. I texted her a lame excuse--that I was sick--and she sent me back a frowny face and told me to get better.
Wendy's mom had tried to kill us.
I flopped down on my bed.
Had Wendy told her, last year, that I was going to kill her? That made sense, then. That made her mom a good parent. But things were different now and clearly her mom still thought I was a threat. Maybe Wendy forgot to tell her mom I didn't want to kill her after all.
But to go after an oracle and almost kill Ronin, too? That was low.
Yeah, I had to talk to Wendy. This hadn't been her doing. But I feared I wouldn't be nice about it.
Chapter Eight
Unfortunately, it didn't look like I'd get the chance anytime soon.
Wendy continued to hang around Serena and Percival. Some invisible glue held them together even as they walked from class to class. I swore that nobody in that group could ever breathe.
All the time, Wendy gave me no indication that we'd even talked in the makeup store. It was as if her mother had laid the scare in her.
September flowed into October and the trees outside turned bright colors and began to lose their leaves. The school started prepping for a Halloween party, which would take place in the dining hall, and the week of Halloween, people moved the long dining tables to one side of the room and started putting up decorations on the other. Paper ghosts and plastic goblins hung from the ceiling. They looked like cheap dollar store gifts, but one of the fourth years, a guy who had a car of his own, had gone out and bought a bunch of orange and purple string lights. The fourth years were making the dining hall look amazing and they'd even put masks and costumes on the statues. Now instead of naked, marble people we had serial killers, aliens and even evil clowns staring at us while we ate.
“That's not scary at all,” Mikey said, looking at the clown. “I invited Cal to the party over here since we can't go over to Olympian and to their party. Things seem to be going well with him.” He smiled. “I think he's a bit nervous about being seen with me, so I'm hoping this party is when he gets up the bravery. And so far, I haven't wanted to devour him. There's something about Cal that holds that off. Good sign.”
“At least he understands that you can't go to the Olympian party,” I said. “Good luck, Mikey. Maybe things will start moving for you." If Cal could resist Mikey's dark powers, that would be good for both of them. I wanted Mikey to be happy. He had nothing much else to look forward to until his curse got removed.
He blushed. "I also found out he's into music. Likes mixing it. Well, Apollo was a god of music, so that makes sense his descendants would be good at it too. He's thinking we might even be able to put out an album someday. Maybe something electronic. I know I haven't done any singing, but at least if my voice is on an MP3, I won't kill anybody."
"They'll just gravitate towards a speaker instead," Maria said.
Tingles ran up my arms. "I'd like to hear you sing someday." Mikey's Siren mother was a singer, or had been before she vanished from his life.
"Not now," Mikey said, tone darkening. "Maybe in a studio w
hen Cal's around. His family owns one. They think my mother might have sang there once in a background choir but he'd have to track it down. And they're used to dealing with people like me."
"So it would be a safe zone," I said.
"Yeah." Mikey grinned. "I'll talk to him about it at the party. He said he's not going to the Olympian one. He's ditching it for me. Has to be."
“I heard the real Olympian party is going to be at Pamira's mansion,” Maria said.
“No more drunk tag,” I said.
She put out her lip. “But it was fun. And people were so drunk they didn't care about some of us Cursed kids being there.”
“They also got attacked by the Lower Order,” I reminded her. “I can't risk going to any more of her parties.” Ronin would come over to our Halloween party, even if it was going to be right here on campus. Wouldn't he?
"Who are you? Prometheus?" Mikey asked. Then he searched the cafeteria, but the principal was gone. Shocker. He'd been watching me from afar forever, waiting for me to mature already.
I felt like a trophy in a case. And the longer I went to Cursed, the more I hated Prometheus. Did he want me to destroy everything around me? Was he crazy? Well, he might be a god of fire, so why not? Maria and Mikey hadn't dared talk to him about removing their curses, and the longer the year dragged on, the more tension climbed into my shoulders and stayed there. I had a constant dull headache.
"Look, I can try to talk to Wendy again," I said. "It's hard in Magical Meditation when Natalia has me on my own side of the room. She's been letting me slack off, and I know Ronin's been telling her to do that, and there's no way she'll let me sit by Wendy in class." Serena was there, anyway.
"But you got her attention when you mentioned you were trying to get over to Olympian," Maria said. "Maybe she does want to talk to you and other people won't let her. Her family's all about status and looking good. And until you mature, you're still just the awkward klutz."