Poseidon's Academy Box Set

by Sarah A Vogler

  ‘I don’t know if it’s safe.’ She didn’t want the nereids hurting Kallie. ‘I can come with you.’

  ‘It’s easier to sneak around by myself. I’ll be fine now that I know not to go anywhere near the nereids. I still feel a little weak, though, so I won’t try any parallel jumping until tomorrow.’

  ‘Hailey.’

  Hailey turned towards Madam Mendem. ‘Are you feeling okay?’ she asked, striding towards the nurse’s bed.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, dearie. You did a good job getting those other Asclepiuses. I couldn’t have managed on my own.’

  ‘Thank you for saving them.’ Hailey glanced at the three students on the beds beside Madam Mendem, wanting to check that Kora was all right. But the three Asclepiuses were strangers to her. ‘Where’s Kora?’

  Madam Mendem raised an eyebrow. ‘She didn’t come. I assumed you couldn’t find her.’

  The nurse’s words hit Hailey like a fireball to the stomach. ‘What? No, I did find her. She’s meant to be here.’ Hailey glanced at the beds again. She must have missed her.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Madam Mendem asked, fear creeping into her voice.

  ‘She’s gone, isn’t she? She’s been taken.’

  ***

  ‘… Manticores’ tails are extremely poisonous, holding enough venom to paralyse a giant for roughly three hours. Now if a human is unfortunate enough to be stung by one, they’ll be dead within ten minutes, unless they’re given the antidote or healed by an Asclepius,’ Madam Grayson droned on in their Monsters and Creatures of the World class.

  Hailey barely heard a word of what she said, her mind too focused on where everyone had vanished to.

  She’d stayed awake all night thinking about it. About where Kora was. She was missing because of Hailey. What if she’s dead? What if everyone who’s been taken is dead? Nausea twisted her stomach into knots at the thought of it. But when Hailey had said Stetho’s name to Amathia, she hadn’t looked scared enough for the students to be dead. So they had to be alive. But where?

  ‘… Now the manticores’ teeth are just as dangerous as its tail…’ Madam Grayson’s voice cut into Hailey’s thoughts.

  Why are we even having classes still? The teachers should be out looking for Amathia and the others, not standing around talking about how many teeth a manticore has. If Madam Grayson and the other teachers don’t work out soon why people are vanishing, then what will happen? Will everyone in the school just disappear, never to be seen or heard from again?

  ‘Class dismissed. Hailey, can I please see you.’

  ‘We’ll meet you in PE,’ Demi said.

  Hailey nodded and walked over to her overseer as Madam Grayson dropped into the chair behind her desk. ‘Did you find out who Stetho is?’

  Madam Grayson shook her head. ‘No. This isn’t about that. I wanted to let you know that you’ll need to report to detention in the entryway after your last class today.’

  Hailey had to keep her jaw from dropping. ‘What?’

  ‘Master Anderson informed me you were supposed to have detention with Madam Norwood yesterday afternoon. You’ll be having it this afternoon instead.’

  ‘Are you kidding? All the teachers should be out looking for Amathia or trying to work out who Stetho is. They shouldn’t be teaching classes, and they especially shouldn’t be monitoring detention.’

  ‘They are doing that,’ Madam Grayson said calmly. ‘But we’re taking shifts. This school is still a school while there are students here, so classes have to continue. And students who break the rules need to be made an example of. We are trying to keep everyone safe.’

  ‘Then find out who Stetho is!’ Hailey half-yelled.

  Madam Grayson ignored her angry tone. ‘I will.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hailey said slowly. ‘I just… Kora. I shouldn’t have let her go alone. I don’t know what I’ll do if no one ever finds her.’

  Hailey drifted through the rest of her classes, barely being able to concentrate on anything but the missing students. And then she found herself in the entryway, waiting to see what menial task Madam Grayson would assign her.

  ‘Hi, Hailey.’

  Hailey was surprised to see Tanzy, as well as Lexa and Tahlia, standing by the glass statue of Poseidon. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We got busted walking around after curfew,’ Tanzy said.

  ‘Why were you out alone?’

  ‘I wanted to find Kora,’ Tahlia explained.

  Guilt tightened Hailey’s chest. ‘I’m so sorry, Tahlia. I feel like that was my fault.’

  ‘It wasn’t. It was whatever took everyone else. I want to find it and kill it.’ Tahlia sounded as if she was contemplating raiding the Ares room in the Powers classroom for weapons so she could hunt down Stetho.

  ‘I was planning to give it a taste of its own medicine and make it disappear.’ Tanzy clicked her fingers, and a sapphire embedded in the crystal wall disappeared, leaving behind a tiny indent.

  ‘We ended up crossing paths with Master Anderson instead though,’ Lexa said.

  ‘Okay, let me check that everyone who is supposed to be here is,’ Madam Grayson said, coming down the stairs.

  Hailey glanced around. Apparently, “everyone” was about thirty students. She waved at Riley, who was standing with a few older students by the left archway. It didn’t surprise her one bit that he’d been caught breaking the rules.

  ‘Hmm, we seem to be missing three.’ Madam Grayson glanced up from the clipboard she’d been staring at. ‘Hailey, I don’t suppose you know where Venus, Nerissa, and Cleo are?’

  Why does Madam Grayson expect me to keep track of the evil trio at all times? She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll start without them. I want the staircases and the entire entryway cleaned—polish every individual pearl in the floor, and every jewel and shell in the crystal walls. There are mops, dusters, scrubbing brushes, and everything else you need in the cupboard under the left staircase. I’ll be back to check on your progress once I’ve tracked down Venus, Nerissa, and Cleo.’

  ‘Whatcha in for, Hails?’ Riley asked, coming up to her.

  ‘Walking around the palace alone. You?’

  ‘I got busted sneaking into the main hall after curfew. But in my defence, I was starving.’

  ‘Come on, Riley, grab a mop,’ one of the older boys shouted to him, dumping a pile of cleaning stuff on the floor.

  ‘I think we need an extra man.’ Riley grinned. Convulsions shook his body like he was having an epileptic fit, and then Charlie stepped out of him.

  ‘At your service,’ Charlie said, saluting Riley.

  ‘I better get started.’ Hailey picked up a duster and ambled towards the right staircase, which Tahlia, Lexa, and Tanzy were starting to clean. ‘Mind if I join you? I’ve had to polish the pearl floor before and it’s not much fun.’

  ‘Sure,’ Tanzy said.

  ‘I’ll clean the second-floor guardrail.’ Lexa levitated into the air, floating up to the second floor as if riding on an invisible hoverboard.

  ‘This seems pointless.’ Tahlia rubbed a cloth back and forth on the rail.

  ‘I know. There’s no dust or dirt anywhere,’ Tanzy said. ‘Hephaestus designed the palace to be self-cleaning.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ Tahlia polished more ferociously. ‘I meant we should be helping find out what happened to Kora and the others.’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel.’ Hailey glided her cloth over the crystal steps, which were so clean you could eat off them. ‘I—’

  A shriek pierced the air.

  25

  The Plot Thickens

  Hailey’s hands flew to her ears, the wailing shriek still tearing through the air.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ Tanzy yelled, her hands pressed to her ears too.

  ‘A screecher alarm.’ Hailey recognised the sound as what she’d heard at Alec’s house. She hoped no guard hydra came slithering out to attack.

  ‘Evacuate!�
��

  Hailey glanced up to Master Anderson on the level above, yelling at everyone to get outside.

  Students poured out of the main hall and scrambled down the stairs from the common rooms, everyone looking more excited than scared as they filed into the grounds. Hailey got caught in the throng, students pushing and shoving her outside. The shrieking was quieter out here.

  ‘I didn’t even know we had an alarm,’ Tanzy said from beside Hailey. ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Maybe they found whatever is taking students.’ Hope sparked in Tahlia’s crystal blue eyes. ‘Maybe the teachers are fighting it and don’t want anyone getting in the way.’

  Please, Tyches, let that be it. Let this all be over.

  What felt like hours, but was probably only ten minutes, passed before the grounds were bursting with the entire student population. Hailey glanced around for her friends, but there were too many people. She couldn’t even take a step without treading on someone’s toes.

  Madam Grayson was the last teacher to enter the grounds, lingering in front of the palace’s doors. She looked fine to Hailey—no bleeding gashes, and her dress wasn’t torn—so that probably meant she hadn’t been fighting the thing taking students. ‘Disengage,’ Madam Grayson shouted. The screecher alarm cut off, leaving Hailey’s ears ringing. Madam Grayson said something to Master Anderson, who was beside her. He shrugged and pointed at her with a frown. Madam Grayson shook her head and frowned back.

  That doesn’t look good—it looks like they’re trying to work out who set the alarm off. And judging by the looks of the teachers’ frowns and head shaking, none of them had done it. Madam Grayson pointed at the palace’s entrance and Master Anderson nodded, disappearing inside with five other teachers.

  Madam Grayson raised a conch shell to her mouth as she turned her attention to the students. ‘Thank you for evacuating so efficiently.’ The shell amplified her voice, carrying it over the entire grounds. ‘It appears to have been a false alarm, but some of the teachers have gone to confirm that before I let you back inside, so please talk among yourselves.’

  ‘What in Tartarus is going on?’ Tanzy said. ‘Is it even possible to have a false alarm?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hailey said, fiddling with her necklace. ‘But something definitely doesn’t feel right.’

  Why did an alarm randomly go off? Does somebody want everyone in the grounds so that they can kill all of us at once? Is the monster or whatever taking people behind it? Is it coming for us right now? Hailey’s eyes darted to the entrance, expecting a giant sea-snail or some other horrible sea-monster to come charging out. But only teachers lingered by the palace’s door. Not a monster in sight.

  About half an hour passed before Master Anderson returned. He said something to Madam Grayson, who nodded before turning her attention back to the students. ‘As I suspected, the screecher alarm malfunctioned. It has been repaired now, so it shouldn’t go off again. Please return to your common rooms.’

  Tahlia’s shoulders slumped. ‘I’d really hoped they’d found something.’

  Hailey was about to agree when the student population started pushing towards the entrance, shoving her away from her friends and thrusting her into the crowd of moving bodies.

  A false alarm, Hailey thought as the students herded her towards the entryway stairs. Madam Grayson seems convinced by that. Is there really any other explanation? No monster had attacked them, and the teachers who’d left to search the palace had returned, so it hadn’t been a trap. But Hailey couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the alarm. That the timing was too perfect. What are the chances of a false alarm happening when the Academy is under attack by some mysterious enemy, and Amathia is missing?

  Did the nereids know about the alarm? she wondered as she mindlessly continued up the stairs. Is this their way of distracting everyone while they sneak back into the Academy? Are they skulking around the palace right now, waiting for their chance to strike?

  ‘Hailey!’ A hand yanked her from the crowd of students before she could even think about running back downstairs to check if the nereids had moved back in.

  ‘Kallie?’ Hailey blinked. She’d pulled Hailey onto the off-shoot staircase that led up to their common room. ‘Is everything okay? Did you find a parallel world where Amathia told you about Stetho?’

  ‘I never got a chance. Af—’

  ‘Get off the stairs,’ someone grumbled, pushing past them.

  ‘Come on. I’ll explain in the common room.’

  Hailey followed Kallie up the stairs, the uneasiness in her stomach curling tighter.

  ‘So after classes ended,’ Kallie said once they’d reached the common room, ‘I headed to my dorm. I was about to open a portal when a potion bottle flew through my window and shattered on the floor. All this gold dust exploded everywhere and I passed out.’

  ‘Medusa, why would someone use a sleeping potion on you? As a joke?’

  Kallie paled. ‘No. For this.’ She held up her arm.

  Hailey’s mouth popped open. A neutralising bracelet clung to Kallie’s right wrist. ‘You woke up with that?’

  Kallie nodded. ‘I woke up when the screecher alarm started. I found Madam Grayson in the dormitory hallway and told her about the bracelet. She tried to get it off me, but it didn’t respond to her voice. It’s like someone reprogrammed it.’

  ‘How is that even possible?’

  ‘I don’t know. Madam Grayson said it was probably someone’s idea of a practical joke and she’d look into it. But she looked worried, Hailey—really worried.’

  ‘I’m sure she was. Because if someone put this on you, it means they knew about our plan to find out who Stetho is, and they didn’t want that. That means there’s a student—or students—responsible for what’s happening.’ That wasn’t something she wanted to believe. That someone at the Academy could be the one kidnapping people. But there was no denying it. The missing travelling necklaces could be explained away as students not wanting to go home, but knocking out the person who was about to solve everything and putting a neutralising bracelet on them… there was no rationalising that. The question is why? Why would anyone want to hurt other students?

  A scream snapped Hailey’s head towards the door to the girls’ dormitories. She bolted through it. Girls were crowded around a dormitory four doors before Hailey’s room. She pushed her way through the crowd and peeked into the dorm.

  Her breath caught.

  Inside, a girl was kneeling in front of a pile of ash. The drawers from her mother-of-pearl chest were scattered around her, all of them empty. Someone burned her clothes. More shrieks sounded from various dorms. This is bad.

  Hailey scrambled towards her own dorm. The door was already open. Demi was inside, staring at a pile of ash in front of her chest of drawers. There was another one in front of Hailey’s. ‘Medusa!’

  ‘Why would somebody do this?’ Demi turned to Hailey, tears glistening in her eyes. ‘They burned all our clothes.’

  ‘I have no idea.’ A glint of something shiny in the ashes caught Hailey’s eye. She picked it up, staring at the fragment of glass. ‘Looks like they used a potion to do it. It was probably designed only to burn clothes and then extinguish.’ She tossed the glass back into the ash. ‘And I guess the floor’s self-cleaning magic doesn’t work when there’s a potion or spell involved.’

  Demi hugged her arms. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I…’ Hailey began, and then stumbled a step as the palace jolted.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I think the palace is rising.’

  ‘But only Amathia can make it rise.’

  Hailey’s blood turned to ice. ‘And the nereids.’

  Hailey and Demi bolted to the window. Terror gripped Hailey’s chest as tightly as a clenched fist when she peered outside. At the back of the palace, she saw them. Six nereids. No, no, no, this is bad. Really bad!

  The palace broke through the surface like a rising submari
ne, water rolling off the force field. Hailey gripped the desk beside her, her knees threatening to give out. Icebergs crowded the sea, surrounding the palace like ice giants determined to freeze them to death.

  ‘Stamanto,’ Nemertes yelled out. Another jolt shot through the palace. ‘Eikaatva adaur.’

  The jewels and pearls in the trees clinked together as a gale of wind charged through the grounds. Demi slammed the window’s crystal doors shut. Wind howled through the cracks, sounding like the cries of tortured souls trapped in Tartarus. ‘I guess the nereids have decided to freeze us to death in this world too.’

  ‘And they didn’t even have to change the Goldarin commands to lock Amathia out,’ Hailey said. ‘All they had to do was get rid of her so she couldn’t lower the palace or put the force field up. I knew it was them. This whole time, they’ve been responsible.’ Hailey glared down at Nemertes, who was laughing with her sisters, no doubt taking great joy in reclaiming the palace.

  ‘But Pandora said they never left the island.’

  ‘They’ve had help.’ Hailey hugged her arms, shivering as frost crept along the crystal window. ‘Someone here is helping them. That’s who set the screecher alarm off. They did it to get us outside so they could burn everyone’s clothes. There’s a traitor at the Academy. Maybe it’s someone whose parents are in the Olympian Mysteries—maybe they recruited them to team up with the nereids.’ It was the only theory Hailey could think of.

  ‘But the nereids hate humans.’ Demi leaned against the end of Hailey’s desk as she stared out the window, watching to see what would happen next. ‘They’d never team up with any of us.’

  ‘If they were desperate, I think they’d do anything,’ Hailey said, and then gulped as Madam Grayson marched into the back of the grounds with Master Anderson. Please don’t let the nereids hurt them.

  Madam Grayson did a lot of pointing, which Hailey interpreted as “get the Tartarus out of here”. Nemertes laughed, and she and her sisters shoved past the two teachers, sashaying their way towards the palace.