We all agree, and Griffin and I grab our sweatshirts from the drinking fountain—way too heated up to put them on.
As we walk toward the stadium, I slip my arm through Griffin’s. He smiles down at me and then presses a quick kiss to my nose. Everything with Griffin feels completely back to normal. Now if I could just get the rest of my life there.
ORCS AND STORM TROOPERS ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
“Knock on the door already,” Troy says.
Shaking my head—I need to stop trying to understand the descendants of Hephaestus . . . they are beyond normal comprehension—I rap twice on the door. Nothing happens.
Nicole pounds repeatedly on the smooth wooden surface. “Open up.”
“Not like that,” Troy says, snatching her hand away from the door. “How I showed you.”
I take a deep breath and hold it. Having a secret knock is a little extreme, I think, but clearly Urian is not answering the door for anything else. Repeating the pattern Troy taught me, I finish knocking and then step back—as if the door might explode or something.
“Password?” Urian’s voice is muffled by the still-closed door.
I can’t bring myself to say it.
“Holy Hades,” Nicole snaps. “Just let us in, Nacus.”
No response.
Troy elbows me in the ribs.
I clench my jaw and grind out, “Ares wears pink underpants.”
Griffin would so kill me if he heard me utter those words.
The door swings open and Urian waves us inside. I’m not sure I want to go, but Troy pushes me in ahead of him.
“What did you find out?” he asks Urian as he closes the door behind Nicole.
Urian drops into his desk chair and grabs his mouse. A few clicks later, he says, “Nothing yet. My bot is still scanning the Academy server. It’s at ninety-eight percent, so it should be done soon.”
“Okay then,” I say, turning and trying to scoot around Troy to reach the door. “Thanks for trying. See you later.”
“Not so fast.” Troy grabs my shoulders before I can escape. “You have an hour until midnight. Maybe Urian’s search program will find something by then.” He looks me straight in the eyes with a very serious older-brother-like intensity. “Sit.”
While I appreciate the whole looking-out-for-me thing, I don’t need a babysitter. And I don’t need to sit around in the dark when I could be staking out the courtyard or something.
“Chill, Travatas.” Nicole shoves against his chest until he steps back.
“Like I said in my note,” Troy says, giving Nic a narrow-eyed glare. “I’m not letting you go to the courtyard until we know who you’re meeting.”
“As if you could stop me,” I mutter, crossing my arms over my chest. I’m starting to get annoyed. “What note? I never got a note.”
“The one I tucked in your pocket while you were running this morning,” he argues—not the best move at the moment. “I saw your sweatshirt hanging on the water fountain when I was on my way to your house.”
“There was no note,” I repeat.
Since I’m wearing the same sweatshirt I took with me this morning, I slip my hands into the pockets. Empty.
“See,” I say, pulling the pockets inside out. “Empty.”
“No, that’s not the—”
Knock, knock, knock.
We all freeze at the loud banging on the door.
Well, most of us freeze. Nicole reaches for the handle.
“Don’t move,” Urian whispers, grabbing Nic by the wrist. “They’ll go away.”
They don’t.
Knock, knock, knock. Louder this time.
Nic glares at Urian—like he is the dirt stuck to the gum attached to the bottom of her combat boot—until he releases her. Actually, his hand snaps back like she gave him a 220-volt shock. I wouldn’t be surprised.
She goes for the handle.
“Nooo!” Urian shout-whispers.
But he doesn’t have to stop her. Before she can reach the handle, it turns and the door flings open.
“Griffin?” I gasp. “What are you—”
“I was about to do my laundry when I found this”—he shoves a crumpled piece of paper in my face—“in my pocket.”
I pull back, trying to bring the paper into focus—even though I’m pretty sure I know what it is.
“That’s my note,” Troy says, pointing at the paper. “How did you get it?”
Thanks, Troy. That helps.
Griffin is obviously furious. His eyes are all squinty—thankfully focused on Troy at the moment—and his full lips are clamped so tight they look outlined in white “You slipped it into the wrong pocket, genius.”
“There’s no need to get nasty,” I say, defending Troy. It’s not his fault.
Griffin’s blue eyes, burning white-hot, focus on me so intently I’m not sure he even sees anything—or anyone—else in the room. You know that whole protective thing I was thankful for last night? Well, here it is again, lashing out. I try to keep calm by telling myself he’s just worried about me. My getting defensive is not going to improve the situation.
“What is this about?” he demands.
Acutely aware of three pairs of very observant eyes, I slam my palms against Griffin’s chest and push him out into the hallway. He and I have been through enough. We don’t need an audience. “Privacy.”
“Phoebe,” he practically growls.
“You know I got that note pointing me to the record of my dad’s trial,” I point out. When he nods, I explain. “Then I got an e-mail. And another.”
“How many?”
“Five, in all.”
“From who?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “The sender’s address was blocked.”
“In your Academy e-mail? Not possible.”
“Apparently it is,” I insist, trying not to get annoyed that he doesn’t believe me. Like I would make that up. “I couldn’t get them to print, either. So we asked Urian”—I nod at the door behind us—“for help.”
“What did the e-mails say?”
I explain the content, inching away as his expression grows darker with every word. He looks like he could explode at any second. By the time I finish, I’m pressed up against Urian’s door.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“We weren’t exactly in a sharing mood the past few days,” I say. “Besides, I don’t see why this is such a big deal.”
“I don’t think you should go.”
“Why not? Everyone seems so sure this is some master plot or something.” Like I’m important enough for someone to master-plot against me. “What if it’s just someone trying to help me out?”
Although the fire in his eyes is gone—replaced by an equally intense blank look—and he isn’t moving a muscle, his entire body is practically radiating tension. If Nola were here, she’d probably tell me that his aura is fire-engine red right now. It doesn’t take major deductive or psychic powers to realize he’s upset. And, if it wasn’t my dad we were talking about, I’d probably appreciate the concern.
“Then why all the games?” he replies. “Why not just mail you the record or leave it on your doorstep? No.” He shakes his head. “This reeks of mischief.”
“You’re being ridiculous. ‘Reeks of mischief.’ What are you, a character from Shakespeare? I’m going,” I say, daring him to argue. Which, of course, he does.
“No,” he grinds out, “you’re not.”
“You can’t stop me.” I turn to grab the door handle, but Griffin snags it first, holding it shut.
“Yes I can,” he says, sounding overly alpha male. “I will do whatever I have to do to protect you from harm.”
I want to spin around and chew him a new one. To say that it’s just his Hercules heroic gene that’s making him so protective. But I know that’s not true—not entirely anyway. Besides, I don’t like using that against him, like it’s a tool I can use to win an argument.
Instead, I say
softly, “You won’t.” I lay my hand over his on the handle. “Because you would never forgive yourself if you kept me from finding out the truth about my dad.” His hand softens beneath mine, but doesn’t move. “And because you’re afraid I’d never forgive you, either.”
His hand drops away.
Before I turn the handle and slip back into Urian’s room, I say, “Thank you for trusting me.”
At eleven-thirty, I’m leaning against the courtyard wall, trying to stay in the shadows and keep an eye on the two entrances at the same time. All of the classrooms that overlook the courtyard are dark and only the faint glow of moonlight illuminates the smooth stone floor. The tiny pieces of the intricate mosaic at the center shine like those glow-in-the-dark jellyfish we learned about in freshman biology. I can’t make out the design at the moment, but I know from memory that it depicts Plato and Athena—the cofounders of the Academy—locked in a heated debate.
I can just imagine what they’re arguing about. The ideal political state. Ethics and education. Who looks better in a toga.
I stifle a snort at my own joke.
“Somehow I knew you wouldn’t wait until midnight.”
I spin around, face-to-face with the one person I never expected to see here.
“Damian?” I can’t stop blinking. Damian isn’t here. He’s in Thailand with Mom. Trekking through the Southeast Asian jungle. On their honeymoon. They’re not getting back for another two days. Oh no, maybe something happened. Maybe Mom—
“Your mother is fine,” he assures me with a knowing smile. “She is sleeping peacefully in our Nakhon Pathom hotel room.”
It still bugs me how he can read minds, but I’m more in shock over the fact that he’s here. In this courtyard. Right now.
“Then what are you doing here?” I ask. “How did you know I—”
“I sent the e-mails, Phoebe.” He places his hand on my shoulder. “I sent the note.”
That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Damian go through all this mystery and superspy subterfuge? He could have just picked up the phone—or, considering the rates to place a call from Thailand, sent a nonblocked e-mail. Besides, he is so not the type to play games.
When he doesn’t seem to be reading my mind—or at least he’s not acting on what he reads—I ask, “Why? The mystery, the suspense, the secrecy. Why would you do it this way?”
“For many reasons,” he replies cryptically. “The foremost of which is that I wished to distract you from your looming test. I believed that if I diverted your worry from your powers, you might more easily control them.”
Ha, like that worked.
“Skepticism aside,” he says. “Consider this: When was the last time your powers behaved erratically?”
“This morning,” I say without hesitation. “Griffin and I were training with Tansy, and as we—”
“I know.” He always seems to know way more than should be possible. It’s like he’s got this whole island wired or something. “Autoporting surprised you, but it did not misbehave. That was exactly what your subconscious was trying to achieve.”
Maybe he’s right. I mean, I was exhausted and desperate to get across the finish line and then, suddenly, I was. At least I hadn’t zapped myself to Finland or anything. The last time my powers truly freaked out on their own was the first day of camp, when I turned Stella into a birthday cake.
His distraction had worked.
“Was that the only reason?” I ask. “Keeping my mind on something else?”
“No,” he explains. “I chose the lure of your father’s trial in an attempt to draw out your strongest emotions.”
“Why?” I shake my head. “Everyone says emotions hijack your powers.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Phoebe, learning to control your powers is about more than passing a single test.” He steps forward and places his hands on my shoulders. “For your own protection, you need to have complete mastery over your powers. Even in the face of emotional upheaval.”
“Oh.” I guess that makes sense. Nothing could shake me up more than anything to do with Dad. If I can control my powers in the midst of all that, then I can control them in any situation.
But does that mean it was nothing more than an emotional distraction?
I shake my head in disbelief. “So this was all some kind of mind game,” I say, a wave of really uncomfortable emotion welling in my chest. “There never was anything new in my dad’s trial record, was there?”
“On the contrary,” Damian says, clasping his hands together in his very formal way. “There are many things in the transcripts you may wish to see.”
So there really is something in the record. And he really is going to let me see it. I’m about to ask what it says when Damian steps sideways into the darkest shadows.
“But no one must see what I am about to show you, so you must send your friends away,” he says, his voice a low whisper. When I look at him like he’s crazy—I’m here alone, aren’t I?—he adds, “A pair of them are about to burst through the far doors, and a third has been watching you from the second story chemistry classroom since shortly after you arrived.”
I scowl up at the classroom window. That would be Griffin, I’m sure of it. Stalking out into the moonlight, I look directly into what I know are his bright blue eyes—just so he knows I know—and point toward the Academy entrance. I sense his hesitation and then a shadow finally moves across the darkened window and I know he’s gone. Probably to go wait on the front steps.
Then, before I can even turn back to see if Damian is impressed, the far doors fling open and Troy and Urian come racing into the courtyard.
“We’ve got it,” Troy shouts.
“My computer finished its search,” Urian says, holding up a computer printout and looking extremely proud of his geeky self. “We figured out who sent the e-mail.”
“Yeah,” Troy gasps, skidding to a stop in front of me, “it’s—”
“Damian,” I say, bursting his bubble. “I know.”
Urian drops his jaw. “How?”
I jerk back over my shoulder. Footsteps echo across the courtyard and I know Damian has stepped out of the shadows.
Troy—who is always kind of a chicken when it comes to authority figures—blanches. “Um, ah, Headmaster Petrolas,” he stammers. “I thought, um, you were in, er, Thailand.”
Damian takes two steps toward Troy, who is practically shaking, and says, “I am,” in his best headmaster tone.
Troy looks too scared to speak.
“Yes, sir,” Urian says, grabbing Troy by the wrist and dragging him backward across the courtyard. “You were never here. We never saw you.”
Damian smiles and gives me a quick wink.
“On your way out,” he says, before they disappear through the doors, “see to it that Mr. Blake remains at a safe distance.”
Urian actually salutes and then pushes Troy through the doors.
I squint at Damian. “You enjoy inciting fear, don’t you?”
He gives me an innocent look—which is probably where Stella learned it—and says, “It does seem to help keep the peace.”
Damian definitely has hidden depths. Who would have imagined he would send me anonymous notes and e-mails and autoport himself all the way from Thailand just to . . . Wait, I’m not sure what he’s really doing here.
“Hey, so why did you—”
“I thought you would never ask,” he says with a mischievous grin.
Who is this guy, and what has he done with my stuffed-shirt stepdad?
“Follow me.”
I do follow him. All the way to the center of the courtyard. He stops on the mosaic, one oxford-clad foot on either side of Plato’s head.
“What I am about to show you,” he says, sounding more and more into the whole spy game with every word, “you can never tell another soul. None know and none can know.”
“You’re not talking about the secret archives, a
re you?” I ask, remembering Mrs. Philipoulos’ similar warning to me and Nicole. “Because honestly, everyone already knows about that.”
“No,” he says, squatting down and placing his hand on Plato’s nose. “I am not speaking of the archives.” He presses on one of the mosaic tiles, no bigger than a half-inch square, which slides down about an inch. “I am speaking of this.”
“Of wh—”
Before I can finish my question, the ground beneath my feet starts shaking. All the tiny tiles in the mosaic quiver back and forth. My California-bred instincts kick in and my first thought is, Earthquake! Does Greece have earthquakes? Maybe it’s a volcanic eruption, or tsunami, or—
“I suggest you take two steps back,” Damian says, calm as can be. “Unless you wish to end up at the base of a very long staircase.”
For half a second, I’m frozen in confusion. What is going on? Isn’t this a natural disaster? What staircase?
Then, as Damian’s smug look turns to concern, I heed his warning and take a giant leap back. Just as the mosaic beneath my feet drops. It falls in a series of thunks, leaving a steplike ledge with each crash. I feel like I’m in one of those Hollywood secret passages, where the movie hero pulls the gargoyle’s head and a stone staircase appears in the floor.
“What the—”
“We must hurry,” Damian says, stepping onto the first ledge and waving at me to follow. “The stairway will only remain open for a short time. And I need to return to your mother before she discovers I am gone.”
As he moves down the stairs, I hesitate. This is so weird. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in this courtyard and never thought twice about this mosaic. And all the time it was a secret entrance to—
“Phoebe,” Damian shouts up from the bowels of the Academy. “We do not wish to be caught below when the stairway closes. I assure you it is not a pleasant experience.”
Throwing my worries and wonders to the wind, I hurry down after him.
CHAPTER 11
PHOTOMORPHOSIS
SOURCE: APOLLO
The ability to control light and fire. Most common expression consists of bringing light into an area of darkness (i.e. a cave or basement). May also manifest as fireworks, flames, and, in remarkably rare cases, fire-breathing. Do not attempt fire-breathing as it does irreparable damage to the esophagus!