“Want to watch TV?” he asked.
I started to count to ten. I made it to three. “That was completely unnecessary.” “I don’t think so.”
My indignation rose swiftly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know you’re not.” He winked and then placed the remote below my white-knuckled hands, right on top of my breasts.
I gaped at him. “You arrogant, annoying son—”
“Naptime,” he interrupted. “Watch TV. Or not. Stare at me or not, but I’m going to take a nap.”
So much aggravation built up inside me I thought my head would spin off my shoulders. I tried to wiggle his leg off, but the jerk weighed a ton. “Move,” I ordered with as much as dignity I could muster. “Move your fu—”
“I can’t nap when you’re talking. And I need my naptime. If not, I’ll end up driving off the road on the way to the airport tomorrow.”
Every muscle in my body tensed up. I forgot about the fact that his leg was on mine. “Airport?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Both eyes were closed. “How else do you expect us to get from here to Misery?”
“Missouri,” I corrected.
“Same difference.”
I ignored that. “It’s a town called Osborn. Well, it’s more like a village, but we can drive. I have a car.”
He sighed. “I have a car, too.”
“Good,” I rushed on quickly, knowing my poor car needed a lot of work before I made that hike again. “It’s only a thirteen-hour drive from here and—”
“Thirteen-hour drive? Are you high?” One amber eye opened. “I’m not driving thirteen hours.”
Panic curled around me. “Then I’ll drive! I can drive. I’ve done it a billion times.”
“Really,” he said blandly. “It would be like an hour or two flight. We’re flying.”
“No. No way. I’m not flying. I’m not getting in a tin can that could fall out of the sky at any moment. Screw that. Have you ever thought about how they get planes in the sky and how they stay in the sky? No? I have. It’s a lot of science I don’t understand.”
Both eyes were open now. “You’re afraid of flying.”
I briefly considered lying, but that would’ve been stupid. “Yeah, it’s never interested me.”
Seth stared at me for a moment, and then he muttered something under his breath that sounded like a different language. “Fine. We’ll drive.”
The next breath I took relaxed my muscles as my gaze flickered over his face. “Thank you.”
That appeared to be the wrong thing to say, because the earlier teasing tilt of his lips was completely gone, as was the glimmer of annoyance in his eyes. His face was absolutely stoic, showing nothing as he stared at me.
“What…what did I say?” I asked.
His eyes held mine for a moment, and then they drifted shut. “Nothing,” he murmured.
And he didn’t say anything after that. Neither did I. Remaining quiet, I kept still as I watched him until I knew he was asleep, because his face relaxed and his lips parted. And I kept watching him. In his sleep, he looked…he looked young. Vulnerable. Not normal, because even at rest, there was an unreal quality in the angles and planes of his face, but… I didn’t know. He looked different. Still insanely good-looking, but there was a quality of humanity there, and that was a relief to see, especially because I knew my life was literally in his hands.
CHAPTER
10
MIRACULOUSLY, I actually dozed off during what was probably the epitome of creepy behavior—a.k.a. staring at Seth while he slept. If being a creeper was an Olympic sport, watching someone while they slept was gold-medal worthy.
I only realized I’d fallen asleep when I blinked—or at least that was how it felt—and the soft glow of morning was filtering in through the partially opened curtains.
Huh. Hadn’t they been closed when I was all but catapulted into the bed? And my pillow really sucked. It was as hard as a bag of rocks, but incredibly smooth. The pillow had a weird beat, too.
Pillows didn’t beat.
My pulse accelerated as I really became aware of my surroundings and who, and not what, I was lying on. Seth. And I wasn’t really lying on him. I was completely tangled up in him. My head was on his chest and my right arm was curled against his trim side, and my other hand was resting on the hard slab of his lower stomach. One of my legs was under his, the other curled around the top and somehow shoved between his. My thigh was really close to a part of him that it had no business being that close to.
Oh wow.
One of his hands was tangled in my hair, that must’ve come undone at some point, and somehow I’d ended up under the covers, which was not how I’d fallen asleep. So at some point, he’d tugged the covers up. How embarrassing. Because it was so obvious I’d rolled onto him and turned into a clinging parasite during my sleep.
Crap.
His chest rose and fell under my cheek in deep, steady waves. He was still asleep, so I needed to somehow disentangle myself before he woke up and discovered that I was using him as my personal Pillow Pet.
Man, I missed the Pillow Pet I’d had growing up. I’d had a ladybug that I’d taken everywhere with me, even to the lake. I’d had it with me once when Bob had showed up, and he’d stared at that thing like it was some sort of mystical creature. I wondered if my grandparents still had it stowed away—okay, who cared about the stupid Pillow Pet? Rolling my eyes, I told myself to focus. But how in the world was I going to move his hand? Or get my leg out from under his? Or not accidentally knee him in the—
A throat cleared softly.
My heart skipped a beat as my gaze darted around the room, landing on the tall, dark-skinned girl sitting in the chair in front of the desk.
Oh gosh.
Erin sat there, arms folded over her chest. She looked normal, like the girl I’d met two years ago when I shuffled into my dorm for the first time, wishing I’d had my Pillow Pet with me. There were no leathery wings or all-white eyeballs. Her skin was smooth and flawless, not charcoal gray, and her fingers weren’t sharpened into deadly claws. She looked human. Our eyes met, and my stomach hollowed as I stared at her. Everything she had told me was a lie.
“Weeell,” Erin drew the word out as she hooked one slender leg over the other. “I’d heard about his reputation, but I have to admit, I didn’t think he was this good.”
For a moment, I didn’t get what she was suggesting, then I remembered where I was and who I was lying on. Ah, awkward.
“This isn’t what it looks like.” I started to sit up, but the hand that had been in my hair slipped down the curve of my back in a slow slide that caused my breath to hitch and my toes to curl.
“It’s totally what it looks like,” came the deep voice.
Erin arched a brow.
My head whipped around. Seth gave me a lazy grin from where his head was propped up on the pillows. “You’re awake!”
“I have been.”
“For a while,” Erin added, and I twisted back to her. “We were debating on waking you up or not. Especially when you were making those noises.”
“Noises?”
Seth’s hand was a heavy weight on the side of my stomach. “Yeah, it was kind of like little whimpers.”
Heat blasted my cheeks. “I d-don’t make noises when I sleep.”
“Yes, you do.” Erin tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “Kind of like what a baby kitten sounds like.”
My mouth dropped open.
She shrugged. “It’s cute.”
It was mortifying.
Planting my hand on Seth’s stomach, I pushed up. His stomach didn’t give an inch. It was like pushing on a wall. Gathering up the edges of the robe, I scooted to the far side of the bed.
Seth sat up, stretching his arms above his head. Joints cracked as he twisted at the waist. As he lowered his arms, his lazy gaze swept over me, lingering where my hands clutched the robe, and then moved to where Erin sat. Then he said, “I’m hung
ry.” He looked at me, sleep clinging to the relaxed line of his jaw. “You hungry?”
I was always hungry, so I nodded.
“Perfect.” He swung his legs off the bed and stretched again. This time, when he raised his arms, his shirt rode up. Not that I hadn’t seen it all when he’d paraded around shirtless before, but the glimpse of hard abs still caught my attention.
And Erin’s.
He sauntered past her on his way to the bathroom. “I would ask if you were hungry,” he said to her. “But I assume you ate your fill of babies last night.”
My eyes widened. “You…eat babies?”
Her eyes rolled. “No, I don’t.” She shot him a nasty look as he chuckled. “Asshole.”
Seth disappeared into the bathroom. I didn’t know what to say to Erin in the silence that followed, and he returned in a few seconds, the hair around his face damp. He tugged the ends back, securing them at the nape of his neck as he toed on a pair of sneakers I hadn’t noticed before. “I’ll be back,” he said as he walked to the door. “With bacon. Pancakes. Eggs. Sausage. Maybe some fruit,” he continued, opening the door. “And waffles. Oh. Omelets sound good, too. With lots of cheese and peppers…” The door shut behind him as I wondered how he’d get all that food back here.
Silence.
Smoothing a hand over my hair, I looked over at Erin. She was staring at the closed door. “I’ve heard a lot of stuff about him,” she said, her voice soft. “Rumors. Some of it probably true. Some of it not. He did kill one of my sisters.” She turned to me. “Granted, they were trying to kill him.”
I wasn’t sure if that made it any better.
Uncrossing her legs, she dropped both feet to the floor and leaned forward. “He’s just not… He’s not what I thought.”
“What do you mean?”
Erin shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I brought you all the clothes I could grab, and some of your other stuff, too.”
On the floor under the desk were several gym bags and backpacks that looked full to bursting. My tongue felt woolly as I spoke. “Thank you.”
Her features pinched. “We need to talk before he gets back and pisses me off. I know you’re probably confused.”
“Confused?” My laugh was as dry as dust. “Twenty-four hours ago, I thought Greek gods were nothing but myths, and now…”
“And now you know you’re one of the myths,” she finished. “A demigod—a very important one. Besides the fact that there hasn’t been a demigod since, well, a very long time, you’re Apollo’s daughter. The freaking sun god is your father.”
My father. I still couldn’t wrap my head around that, but I did know I wasn’t comfortable with the way it sounded. “Please stop saying he’s my father. He might’ve donated some sperm, but that’s all he did. He’s not my dad. My grandpa is the closest to a dad I have, because he raised me. He loves me.”
She cocked her head to the side as her brows knit together. “Apollo loves you, too. I know that may be hard to believe, but he does. He made sure you were always safe. Protected.”
The thing was, I hadn’t needed that when I was growing up. Or if I had, I’d been completely oblivious. What I had needed was a dad. Grandpa was great and did everything he could, but it wasn’t the same.
I swept those thoughts aside. “He sent you to watch over me.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. As she nodded, a twisty motion enveloped my stomach. “He did.”
“So you’re not really from DC, are you? And you didn’t run track in high school.” When she shook her head, my chest squeezed like it had been dropped in a juice grinder.
“I grew up on Olympus, but I’ve visited DC many times. I like the museums,” she said sheepishly. “I know that’s not what I told you.”
Did they even have high schools in Olympus? “You’re right. Everything about you—about us—has been a lie.”
She stood, flipping her curly ponytail over her shoulder. “I couldn’t tell you the truth. You wouldn’t have believed me.”
She was also right about that, but she didn’t get it. “You know that I didn’t have friends growing up, right?”
Casting her gaze to the window, she nodded. “I know.”
“Other kids weren’t nice to me, because their parents weren’t nice to my family,” I said, swallowing against the sudden tightening in my throat. “When I came here, I was expecting the same. I didn’t really know any better, but I met you and you were so nice and so open, and…” Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. “You had to be friends with me.”
Her eyes widened as her head snapped back to me. “I had to be close to you, yes, but that doesn’t change that I sincerely like you.” She took a step toward me. “I wasn’t faking that.”
Part of me got that, but I couldn’t help wonder how our relationship would’ve been if she was…normal.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, and my gaze drifted to her. Sincerity was etched into her beautiful face and soulful eyes. Seeing her like this made it hard to believe that she could turn into a giant bat-like creature with snakes for hair. “I know you, so I know this has hurt you. And I wish I could’ve sat you down and talked to you about what I am and why I was here, but we were ordered to keep the truth hidden. And for your sake, I’d hoped you would never find out. No. Don’t take that the wrong way,” she said when I opened my mouth. “Not because I wanted to continue to lie to you, but if you lived the rest of your life not knowing about any of this, that meant you were safe. None of us knew this would happen with the Titans. We were preparing for…”
“What?” I asked when she didn’t finish.
Erin glanced at the closed door. “We were preparing to fight the God Killer. He told you about what he could’ve turned into, right?”
I nodded. “He mentioned something about that.”
Tension crept in her movements as she folded her arms across her chest. “We prepared for a different kind of battle. None of us planned for the Titans or for…” Her forehead wrinkled as her shoulders hunched. “Apollo trusts the Apollyon—Seth. He trusts him with you.”
Tiny hairs all over my body rose. That didn’t sound good. “Should I be worried about more than just the Titans?”
She was still for a moment and then shook her head. “There are things about us, about our world, that you don’t understand and will hold to mortal social norms and judge by mortal standards. And anyway, you’re leaving in a few hours, right? Where are you going? I’m leaving, too. I’ve been called back, now that Seth is here.”
“Called back? What about school?” I asked stupidly.
She picked up one of my bags and placed it on the foot of the bed. “I don’t need to be here any longer.”
“But how can you just disappear?”
Another bag joined the one on the bed. “The same as you have. People will think you went home. Family emergency. And well, people leave college all the time.” She shrugged as if it was no big deal. “So where are you going?”
“We’re going to see my mom first,” I answered, distracted by how she was organizing my bags and what she had said. “Then I guess we’re going to someplace in South Dakota.”
“Ah, the University. It’s kind of like Radford, but cooler. Full of pures and halfs and maybe a god or two.” Opening one bag, she grabbed a pair of jeans and tossed them on the bed. She laughed, the sound like wind chimes. “Sorry. I’m trying to picture Seth in Osborn, Missouri. I do think it’s cool you’re going to see your mom. Maybe knowing what you know now will help you understand her better. And also will stop you from worrying that you’ll have some kind of illness later. You won’t.”
“Yeah, I guess that clears up that worry.” I caught the bra and undies she threw at me. “So you’re not going with us?”
She shook her head. “If I did, I’d probably end up maiming Seth at some point, and that kind of defeats the purpose of him watching over you. But it’s not like you’re never going to see me again. You will. But I nee
d to help locate the other demigods. They also need protection.”
I’d forgotten about the others already. Standing up and holding my undergarments close to my chest, I watched Erin pull out a lightweight pink sweater, and it hit me again that, at some point, I was going to be required to fight the Titans, to help entomb them in Tartar Sauce Land.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
Erin looked at me sharply. “What?”
“I can’t even walk a straight line sober, but I’m basically a weapon, aren’t I? So are the other demigods. I’m going to have to
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