Still, as Nicole and I walk through the glass double doors, I can’t help staring in awe.
You know what most high-school libraries are like? Small, cramped, and with so few books that if every student checked one out at once, the shelves would be empty? Well the Academy library is so not like that.
First of all, it’s huge. When you walk in, you’re on the second story, on a balcony that overlooks the basement-level main floor. Circling the upper level is an alternating pattern of tables and chairs, individual study carrels, and comfy armchairs facing low coffee tables. Who wouldn’t want to study in here?
Second of all, it’s beautiful. There is light everywhere on the balcony and pouring into the open space below. Since it’s at the corner of the school, it has two full walls of windows that let in glorious sun all day. The shelves that line the balcony are the exact same color as the Academy exterior, so they blend right in with the walls. Everything is trimmed in gold—I have a feeling it’s real gold—and marble. All the fabrics are this gorgeous gold swirly-girly pattern. As far as lush interiors go, it could rival any of the great palaces of the world.
Third of all, it’s full of books. Oh, not so much that you feel crowded by them or anything, but if they had a card catalog—which they haven’t since computerizing everything in the nineties—it would be the size of an average high-school library. Almost all of the books are in the basement level, which spreads out under the entire school. Probably farther. This is totally the kind of place that would have secret chambers or hidden passages or something else right out of a Nancy Drew novel.
“Come on,” Nicole calls out as she heads for the sweeping staircase that leads to the lower level. “Let’s check the call number against the Map.”
Note clutched in my hand, I hurry after her. The Map is a huge-scale, Plexiglas floor plan of the library that details what’s on every shelf. Not to the book, of course—wouldn’t that be cool, though, if it was some ultrahip, interactive map where you could scan through every book on the shelf !—but by call number.
When we reach the map I unfold the note and read the call number out.
“X Sigma 597.11 FL76.” I’m sure that makes sense to somebody—librarians, probably—but to me it’s just a garble of numbers and letters.
The one bad thing about the Academy library is that nothing is in order. At least, not call-number order. Or any other order, as far as I can see. Tracing over the Map with our fingers, Nicole and I search every inch of it. I’m just about to give up, when she says, “Here it is.” Followed immediately by, “No, that’s not it.”
“What?” I move to her side of the Map and look at the spot she’s pinpointing with her finger.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “That set of shelves has all the X-whatevers except X Sigma. There’s no X Sigma anything anywhere.”
Leaning in for a closer view, I see she’s right. How weird is that? The label lists everything that starts with X plus a letter from the Latin alphabet.
I scan the Map again. There are no call numbers with Greek letters. But the second letter of the call number is definitely a ∑. A Sigma.
Maybe the note was a typo.
“You will not find Chi Sigma on the Map.”
Nicole and I both spin around. I don’t know about Nicole, but my heart is racing. I feel like we got caught sneaking into school after dark, not searching for a library book.
Standing right behind us is the librarian, Mrs. Philipoulos. I adore her—she helped me find obscure Aristotle writings for my final in Mr. Dorcas’s philosophy class—but she scares me a little. She is no stereotypical librarian. She only comes up to my chin, making her maybe five foot. Maybe. My best guess at her age is seventy, but you wouldn’t know it from how she’s dressed. It’s not every day you see a five-foot, seventy-year-old librarian wearing black cargo pants and a black leather corset top. And certainly not one that looks good in that outfit.
“Mrs. Philipoulos,” Nicole gasps. “You scared the Hades out of us.”
“We librarians have to be stealthy.” She shrugs her tiny shoulders. “How else can we expect to spy on young lovers in the stacks?”
My cheeks flush with the memory of one night during finals week when Griffin and I slipped down the modern-dramatic-theory aisle for a make-out session, certain that no one in their right mind would come looking for one of those books. We quadruple-checked that no one was around. There was no way she could have—
“Mrs. Philipoulos!” I gasp.
The tiny librarian winks at me.
I give her a weak smile.
Remembering why we’re here—and desperate to deflect my embarrassment—I ask, “Why won’t we find Chi Sigma on the Map?”
Why didn’t we guess that the X was really a chi?
“Because,” she says, her ruby-glossed lips smiling mischievously, “that is one of the secret collections.”
“Secret collections?” I repeat. Why would someone send me a call number for a book in a secret collection?
“One of?” Nicole gasps. “You mean there’s more than one?”
“Of course, dear.” Mrs. Philipoulos turns sharply and walks to her desk.
“She’s a little scary,” I whisper.
Nicole whispers back, “She’s a descendant of Nemesis.”
Who is that? I shake my head.
“Goddess of retribution,” Nicole explains.
I’m impressed. “No wonder she looks like she can kick butt.”
“She also has excellent hearing,” Mrs. Philipoulos says as we reach her desk. Before we can react, she says, “What is the exact call number, dear?”
As I read it out she quickly keys in the letters and numbers.
“Interesting,” Mrs. Philipoulos says, squinting at the screen. Her short, spiky gray hair glows blue in the light from her flat-panel monitor.
“What?” Nicole and I both ask, hurrying around the desk to see.
Mrs. Philipoulos presses a red button on her keyboard and the screen goes blank just as we catch a glimpse.
“I’m sorry, girls,” she explains, “but that segment of the collection is off-limits to students.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Isn’t this a student library?”
“Of course.” She gives me a sad look. “But we are also the official archival library of Mount Olympus.”
“So?” Nicole asks, defiantly crossing her arms over her chest.
“So,” Mrs. Philipoulos replies, just as defiantly, “not every document the gods file is fit for student eyes.”
My shoulders slump. After all the racing my brain has done since I got that note, I half expected some kind of miracle in that call number. I’m not sure what kind of miracle, but I was sure there was some kind of mystery about my dad’s death that might explain why he’d died. Why he’d done it. Why he’d decided that his football career was the most important thing in his life. Some clue to how I might avoid the same fate.
Now I might never know.
“That’s all right, Mrs. Philipoulos,” I say, defeated. “Thanks for your help.”
Nicole gapes at me. “What?” she asks. “You’re giving up? When you’re this close”—she holds up her palms half an inch apart—“to finding the truth?”
“What truth?” I throw back. “My dad died. The gods smoted him because he abused his powers to succeed in football. Nothing can change that.”
“How can you be—”
Mrs. Philipoulos gasps, stopping Nicole midsentence. “You’re Nicky Castro’s daughter.”
“Did you know my dad?”
“No, not personally.” She gives me a sad, sympathetic smile. “But I knew of him.” After a thick beat, she adds, “Everyone did.”
My eyes water. There’s something in that beat, in that silence, that tells me the entire hematheos world knows Dad’s story. Like he’s a warning. Careful how you use your powers or this will happen to you.
“How did you get this call number?” she asks.
“It’s not student-accessible in ECHO.”
I shrug as I blink away the moisture. “Someone left that note at my door.”
“I always say there are exceptions to every rule, honey.” She types another quick sequence, turns the monitor to face me, and says, “You have every right to see this.”
Nicole hurries around to look over my shoulder as I quickly scan the entry on the screen.
Collection: Mt. Olympus Archives
Title: Council Court Minutes
Topic: Proceedings of the Trial of Nicholas Andrew Castro
Copies: 1
Call Number: X∑ 597.11 FL76
Location: B2-S18D
My heart thuds into my throat.
The record of my dad’s trial? I didn’t even know there had been a trial. I thought the gods just decided among themselves to punish him. If there was a trial, maybe there was testimony or interviews or some kind of documentation to prove that Dad hadn’t just sacrificed everything for a sport.
“Follow me, girls,” Mrs. Philipoulos says, grabbing a set of keys from her desk drawer.
“I can’t believe it,” I say to Nicole as we follow Mrs. Philipoulos through the doorway that leads to the stacks. “The record of my dad’s trial. I didn’t know they kept that sort of record.”
I’d heard about the “secret” collection—everyone has. But I had no idea what they held.
“Neither did I.” Nicole’s voice sounds strange.
When I look, she’s staring straight ahead, her eyes completely blank. Without question I know what she’s thinking about: the trial where her and Griffin’s parents got banished. The trial over something she and Griffin did, and for which their parents were punished. Though she and Griff are finally friends again after years of hating each other over it, I know it still kills them inside. I can see it sometimes when Griffin runs. His bright blue eyes get a faraway look and I know he’s thinking about his parents. My heart breaks every time.
As we reach the end of one row of stacks, Mrs. Philipoulos stops in front of a janitor’s closet and whips around to face us.
“What I am going to show you,” she says, sounding very ominous, “you are not to breathe a word about to another living soul.” She starts to turn around and then spins back. “Or a dead one.”
Nicole and I exchange raised eyebrows.
Mrs. Philipoulos unlocks the janitor’s closet and walks inside. When we don’t follow, she leans her head back out and says, “What are you waiting for?” She waves us inside. “This way.”
Nicole raises her finger to her temple and makes the universal sign for nutso. But really, what have we got to lose?
I shrug and take a step into the closet. As soon as we’re both inside, Mrs. Philipoulos pulls the door shut. While we’re surrounded by darkness I hear a bit of a shuffle. Something falls over, crashing to the floor.
“Drat!” Mrs. Philipoulos snaps. “Who put that mop there? Ah, here we go.”
I hear a soft click. All at once the tiny closet is bathed in soft light. And it starts to move. Down.
“Whoa,” Nicole gasps. “There’s a sub-sublevel?”
Mrs. Philipoulos winks at her.
Seconds later, the closet stops moving and Mrs. Philipoulos reaches for the handle. “Remember, girls,” she says, turning the handle. “You were never here.”
“Oh. My. Gods.”
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It’s a whole other level that spreads out beneath the school. With just as many rows and rows of bookshelves as the floor above. And every last shelf is full.
“Are these all records from Mount Olympus?” Nicole asks, gaping just as seriously as I am.
“Of course not,” Mrs. Philipoulos says, as if that’s the most ridiculous thing that’s been said all day. “Most of these are from the Library of Alexandria.”
“The Library of Alexandria?” I ask. “Didn’t that burn down?”
Mrs. Philipoulos scoffs. “Damn fool Hypatia. Athena tried to convince her to install a sprinkler system. But no-o-o, no one was going to tell the librarinatrix how to run her library.” As she starts stomping down one aisle, she adds, “Athena saved the collection before it turned to ash, but she couldn’t exactly advertise the fact, could she? So, we keep it protected here.”
As we hurry past shelf after shelf of ancient books and scrolls and papers, bound in various earthy shades of leather and smelling like dirt and mold and century upon century of history, I try to catch a few titles. The Complete Plays of Sophocles. Plato’s Early Writings . Chronicle of the Trojan War. Wow.
Behind me, Nicole gasps. I notice her stop and stare at a book. She runs her fingertips reverently over the burgundy leather spine before tugging it out. Mrs. Philipoulos doesn’t notice, but I have a feeling she would freak out a little if she saw Nicole grabbing something off the shelf. I try to distract her.
“How do you keep track of it all?” I ask.
“Hephaestus designed an amazing computer system that scans, categorizes, and keeps track of every document.” She keeps hurrying down the aisle, getting farther and farther from Nicole. “He’s not just the god of blacksmithing, you know.”
“Yeah,” I say, picturing his computer-geeky descendants. “I know.”
“Aha!” she explains, pulling to stop. “Here we go. Shelf B2-S18D.”
She quickly skims a finger across a shelf of books, mumbling the call numbers as she goes. “Chi Sigma 597.10, Chi Sigma 597.1099, Chi Sigma 597.121—wait a second,” she says, skimming back a few books and then ahead again. “Chi Sigma 597.1099 and then Chi Sigma 597.121. Where is Chi Sigma 597.11?”
I look for myself. She’s right. The book is gone.
“That’s not possible,” she says. “This is a noncirculating collection. No one can check out an Olympic record. No one.”
My heart sinks.
Great. The one and only record of my dad’s trial is missing. That’s like waving a bowl of cookies and cream under my nose and then telling me ice cream’s off-limits. Almost having that record in my hands makes me even more desperate to know everything. All of a sudden I have a million more questions. What’s in the record? Who took it? Why did they take it? And, most important at the moment, does whoever sent me that note know where it is?
“Afraid I won’t catch you?”
I look back over my shoulder at Xander, standing there looking all cool and passive. He’s holding his hands out, palms up, but in a casual way.
“You’re not exactly inspiring confidence,” I say, nodding at his hands. “Besides, I’ve done this same thing like a million times before. It’s stupid.”
All around me, ten-year-olds are giggling. We’re in the courtyard again, though I think we should really be on a softer surface. At the moment we’re supposed to be doing that team-building trust exercise where you fall back and someone catches you. I’d much rather crash on grass than on the hard-tile mosaic of the courtyard floor.
All the giggly girls have been paired up, and one after another, they’re falling back into one another’s arms.
“You almost let me fall!” one girl—Larissa, I think—squeals. She’s a descendant of Hades, but with her golden blonde hair and dark green eyes, she doesn’t look like any Hades descendant I’ve met.
“I did not!” her partner, curly-haired Gillian, protests. “I was just softening your fall.”
While they argue, I turn my attention back to Xander, who is still watching me patiently.
“You’re right,” I say. “I don’t trust you.”
He shrugs. “This exercise isn’t about trusting me.”
I scowl. “It’s not?”
“No.” He shakes his head slowly. “It’s about trusting yourself.”
“I don’t get it.”
He just shrugs again and holds out his hands.
Clearly, explanation time is over.
I debate it for a minute longer. I mean, he’s definitely strong enough to catch me—that’s why I’m paired with him and not a ten-yea
r-old—and definitely more likely than Stella or Adara to catch me. But the question is: Will he catch me? There’s a dark spark of mischief in his lavender eyes that suggests he likes breaking rules no matter the consequences. He’s trouble and likes it that way.
“Tell me something about yourself first.” I’m not about to risk bodily injury trusting someone who won’t tell me more than his name and grade.
He looks indifferent. “Like what?”
“Like—” I almost ask why he got expelled, but then change my mind. That might be too personal for a first question. And after what Griffin said about some people being touchy about their ancestor god, that’s not a smart choice, either. Instead, I go for something safe . . . ish. “Are you subjecting yourself to weeks of ten-year-olds just to spend time with Stella?”
I am totally bluffing. I mean, he’s shown no indication so far that he’s interested in anything about this camp, let alone one of the counselors. But she’s definitely interested in him. I’m looking out for my girl, testing the waters to see if her crush might be reciprocated. Maybe plant the seed of interest in his mind.
I don’t expect an admission.
His dark blond brows lift just the tiniest bit, betraying his surprise. Then, shocking the crap out of me, a flush of pink crawls up his neck.
Gotcha!
He grumbles, “Let’s just get on with the exercise.”
“Fine,” I say, satisfied with my victory.
Besides, if he drops me, I’ll have an excuse to skip out on the rest of these stupid exercises. I’ll be bleeding from the head, but I’ll be doing it at home.
Holding my arms straight out to the side, I close my eyes and fall.
Halfway to the ground, my eyes fly open. He’s not going to catch me. He’s not going to—
A split second before I hit the ground, his hands slip under my pits. My heart racing, I scramble upright and whirl around. “You almost let me drop!”
“You did not trust.”
“Of course not!” I smack him on the shoulder. Hard. “You were going to let me fall.”