by Laney Powell
“Yes?” Madame Karathos looked confused.
“I wonder if they ever intended for the sirens to succeed, or to always fail, and keep losing their mothers and daughters in the process,” I said.
The expression that crossed Madame Karathos’ face made her look ancient. “While such an idea does not show the gods in a positive light, your thoughts have merit.” She sounded like she was choosing her words carefully.
I decided not to go further down that road, remembering that not only did I have a reason for anger, but Madame Karathos might as well. She was part Gorgon. The gods hadn’t been all that nice to the Gorgons either. “Well, what did you do with Katherine Munroe?” I asked. “Has she woken up, or come out of her trance?”
Madame Karathos frowned. “No, she has not. And so…” she stopped.
“What?” I sat forward.
“Well, I knew the Concilium was expected here today. So I…”
“What?” I demanded.
“I put her in one of the dungeon cells,” Madame Karathos said, wincing.
“What?” I shouted.
“Lower your voice, please,” Madame Karathos snapped. “It’s the safest place for her. Thick walls, and she can’t hurt herself or anyone else. Not that she’s a great physical danger.”
“You can’t put a student in a cage,” I said.
“I don’t have a choice. Unless, of course, you want her to go to the Concilium, or find you.”
“You think she’s looking for me?”
“I do,” Madame Karathos said. “I didn’t, initially, but her mentioning the siren curse changed my mind.”
“Did she mention Marbys?”
She shook her head. “He’s too smart for that. She wouldn’t. Based on what Mr. Silverwood told me, he stopped a student from dragging you into the open hellway, correct?”
I nodded. I’d forgotten, for a moment, that Caspian told her about it. He hadn’t told her it was me, which was interesting. Almost like he was trying to protect me.
“It makes sense to me, having lost the stones,” Madame Karathos said, “That Marbys would try to get you or your sister.”
“I wish he would leave me alone,” I said.
“He can’t,” Madame Karathos said simply. “He must stop you and your mother and the other women from closing him into Hell. He has no choice.”
“And neither do we,” I said bitterly. “But what are you going to do about Katherine? Her family must be so worried!”
“I had to inform them this morning that her roommate said she hadn’t come back from the library last night.”
“You have to close the library,” I said.
“I can’t. I can’t see the hellway. It’s not always there, according to you. And none of the Concilium have been able to find it, either,” Madame Karathos said. “They are not convinced it’s confined to the library. The fire near the dining hall created questions as to where exactly the hellway is. I cannot tell them you have seen it, because I cannot expose you.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Is it because I know about that statue outside the dining hall?”
She frowned, her eyes flashing angrily. “Is that what you think? That I’m concerned you’ll expose me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“I am trying to help you because I know very well what it is to be defined by what you are,” Madame Karathos said. “I’m a prime example of being more than what your birth allows.”
Shame washed over me.
Madame Karathos continued. “I’ve been you, Olivia. I don’t believe you should ever allow others to define who you are.”
“Then why are you here?” I made a sweeping gesture with my hand. “In a place where you can’t be yourself?”
“You are not the only student who has concealed a history the Concilium would not approve of,” she said, folding her hands together in front of her. “I see it as part of my mission to protect all of you.”
Now I felt like a complete and utter ass. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“I know,” she replied. “I know this isn’t easy for you. You have so much to learn so quickly and you’re not getting the benefit of the siren training you would get… elsewhere.”
“You mean at Darklight?” I asked. Also known as the academy of Underworlders. My sister Raven was there.
Madame Karathos nodded. “There is much to being a siren, much more than merely being a water elemental. I would be happy to arrange more training in your siren side during school breaks, if you’d like.”
“No, I think I have that handled,” I said. While no one had said anything yet, I felt I could state with certainty that I’d be learning more than I ever wanted to about my siren side when school let out this year.
“Of course,” Madame Karathos said. “I forget, at times, that you have a supportive family behind you.” She smiled.
“Did you?” I asked, tossing caution to the wind. I’d already been rude.
Her smile slid away a bit. “Not entirely. So please take my offers of assistance for what they are. I am genuinely concerned for you, as I am with all my students.”
“Do you know the woman Raven calls Madame?” I asked suddenly.
“Why do you ask?”
“She’s… she’s like you,” I said, not wanting to say the words out loud.
Madame stared at me for a long moment. “I do,” she said. “There are not many of us left. Now, I am going to ask you to do something for me,” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
“Please listen for anything else you might hear about Katherine Munroe. I’m working to break the enchantment, or whatever sort of magic it is that has her entranced, but I haven’t yet been successful. I’d like to return her to school as soon as I can. It might be helpful to know what she was doing before she disappeared. Also, I need you, Olivia, to be careful. Whether these actions are those of Marbys or another denizen of Hell, we are facing a formidable enemy. We need to discover why the hellway is here, why it shows up at times, and is not detectable at others. That is what I must ask for your help with.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling about a hundred years old. I had a lot of homework as it was, and now, I had more. But this was life or death homework. I realized something else. We were allies in this. Or co-conspirators if I was being pessimistic. I decided I’d stick with allies. Better to be positive.
“That’s all,” she looked down to write something on a piece of paper. “You have Elementals with Professor Markham, correct?”
I nodded.
“Then here is a pass. Off you go. Keep your eyes open, and be careful,” she said.
I took the pass and got up. “I will,” I said. I wanted to say something else. “Thank you,” I said.
“For what?” Madame Karathos had a faint look of surprise on her face.
“For trusting me, for asking for help, for… for protecting me.” I said.
“Of course,” she said, and she smiled then. “I will trust you to keep this between us for the time being. Get to class, Olivia.”
I left then, my mind whirling with everything we had talked about. One thing stuck. She said that I would get better training to be a siren at Darklight. Is that what I wanted?
Thoughts of that occupied me until I got to Elemental class, and I had to put it aside to focus on working on my water spells.
The next night, Silas was with me after dinner. We did our homework—my insistence, and then at his insistence, sat cuddled together on my bed.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been in your own world since you went to see Madame Karathos,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t even know where to start,” I said.
He regarded me for a moment. “What’s the worst thing?”
“You really want to know?”
“I want to know everything about you, Olivia,” he said, reaching ove
r to tuck my hair behind my ear as he kissed me. “Every.” He kissed me. “Little.” Another kiss. “Thing.”
I returned his kiss, and for a bit, we didn’t talk. Sometimes, there were better ways of communicating than words.
“You make me feel better,” I confessed.
“Part of the job, toots,” he said. “Now spill.” He looked at me intently, as though he were waiting for me to say something specific.
That was weird. I told him about what Madame Karathos said about Darklight. “She sounded sad, like I was missing out on something.”
Silas didn’t reply right away. “You should talk to your sister.”
“I know. I’ve been such an ass to her, though.”
“Olivia, your whole world changed,” he said, sounding a lot like Madame Karathos. “You didn’t respond as well as you could have. You could also try to manage that temper, too,” he said with a grin.
“What do you mean?”
“The first thing you did to me when we met was burn the hell out of me,” he was laughing now, referring to when he’d surprised me and I hit him with my hot water bomb spell.
“You could also stop skulking around and sneaking up on unsuspecting innocent student,” I said. “You deserved it.”
“There’s only one student I want to skulk around,” he said, gathering me into his lap and kissing me thoroughly.
Apparently, discussion time was over.
Chapter Five
Olivia
The next day, even though I was on alert, was quiet. I looked around for anyone acting strangely and concluded that the only person who might be acting strangely was me. Well, outside of Wendi-Bad Hair Tennyson, who glared when she saw Jake sitting with me. She really needed to get over herself.
Nothing happened. No one went wandering, or spouting off about the Stones of Arabethym, or anything else. I even went into the library and cautiously wandered around, but I couldn’t smell anything, brimstone or anything else. Nor did I sense a thing out of place.
There was nothing.
Wednesday morning, I got up, and went to breakfast with Thalia and Jade. Matty and Silas were already at our regular table. Both of them greeted me with warm eyes.
Looking at them, I realized how lucky I was. Two of the hottest guys in my year, and they were mine. By choice. I felt good as I sat down and piled toast and eggs onto my plate.
Levi came to talk to Jade as Jake sat down yawning.
“Late night?” Matty elbowed his brother.
“Maybe,” Jake said, smiling at me. He’d been with me last night, and we had talked and kissed for hours before he finally left.
While part of me hated that the guys went back to their own rooms at night, the other part of me was glad. I would never sleep if they didn’t.
Everyone was cheerful, even me after my two days of lack of success on the figuring shit out front. Conversation stopped as a guy I didn’t know approached where we were sitting. His manner was hesitant.
What was this? I watched carefully, not even bothering to hide it.
“Hey, Thalia,” he said.
My head whipped around to my friend. Her cheeks were not just pink, they were red. She was smiling, and her eyes were bright. I met Jade’s eyes, asking if she knew.
Jade gave me a tiny shake of her head.
“Hi, Marcus,” Thalia said.
I noticed that everyone else at the table was watching this with great interest. No wonder the poor guy was hesitant.
“Marcus Sanderson, right?” Jade said from the other side of the table.
Marcus looked up from smiling at Thalia to nod at Jade. “Yes,” he said.
His voice was low and quiet. He was tall, with dark hair that fell into his face. He pushed it back absently, and I could see that he had dark eyes. Eyes that were completely focused on my friend.
“Why don’t you join us?” I asked, scooting over to make room between me and Thalia.
As Marcus sat down between us, he bumped into me.
Silas made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl, and I glared. However, it warmed me to my core that he was not happy with another guy even bumping me. Well, outside of the two brothers that sat with me.
Thalia introduced everyone, and Marcus smiled easily. He was quiet, but he wasn’t awkward, even with so much focus on him.
I watched them as we ate. There wasn’t a more perfect guy for Thalia. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better choice. My eyes met Jade’s, and we both smiled. There would definitely be some time for us to find out all the details from Thalia. She’d kept this very quiet.
Good for her. I’d been worried, along with all my other bag of concern, that Thalia might be feeling left out. Jade always kept her and Levi’s relationship low key, but since Matty, Silas, and Jake had started spending time with me, Levi was around more.
I glanced at Thalia again. Her face glowed. She really liked him. I wondered if Marcus could tell. Then I decided that I needed to not worry—Thalia was the most levelheaded one of me and my friends. She’d manage it.
That didn’t mean I was going to ease up on interrogating her before. The thought made me happy. It was something normal, and nice. Not all the ‘oh, shit, the demon’s about to blow us all to hell’ I’d been living in recently. Or the ‘oh, shit, they’re going to find out about you’ that was always there.
Which brought Madame Karathos’ words to me yesterday to mind. I don’t believe you should ever allow others to define who you are.
I think my mouth might have fallen open, probably in the most unattractive manner possible, as the truth of her words hits me. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve let everyone else’s idea of what I’m supposed to be set the course. That didn’t have to be my life.
My life could be what I wanted it to be.
“Hello? Olivia?” Matty was staring from across the table.
I shook my head. “Sorry, I was lost in thought.”
“Clearly,” Silas said next to me. “You all right?” He gave me the same searching look I’d seen before, like he was waiting to hear something.
“I think so,” I said, still lost in my own personal revelations. Nothing to see here. At least for the time being.
Both Matty and Jake watched me and then went back to eating. But I saw that they were both keeping an eye on me. Silas leaned into me, offering me the closeness of his body. He was warm and the warmth of him soothed me.
After lunch, we all went to our classes. I noted that Marcus and Thalia lingered behind everyone else, and I suppressed a grin. Go Thalia, I thought.
Classes were nothing special, outside the increasing homework. I found that lately I was loving both my Combat classes. “I think you have some sharing to do, missy,” I teased Thalia.
She blushed, which made me laugh.
Marcus sat with her again at dinner, and then I went back to my room to get a little work done before seeing Madame Karathos. We’d kept up our Wednesday appointments. The guys walked me back to my pod, and each gave me a lingering kiss goodbye. Wednesdays were the only day I didn’t spend most of the evening with them, because I had to see Madame Karathos. Now that a student was all befuddled or whatever, it was even more important that we keep working together.
As I walked toward her office, I thought about how over the past two days, I had nothing to report. No one had whispered anything threatening, suspicious, or even moderately nasty. I hadn’t seen the hellway, and I’d been looking. No zoned-out students had tried to drag me anywhere.
When I entered her office, I said, “I don’t have a thing to tell you. Nothing even remotely strange happened anywhere near me.”
Madame Karathos smiled. “That’s how these things go sometimes, Olivia. The quest for answers isn’t fast, or a straight line.”
“Oh, I think there’s a straight line. Right to Marbys. I’d really like to kick his ass, the giant asshole,” I said, without thinking about who I was talking to.
Her eyebrows went up toward her
hairline. “Really?”
I threw myself into one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Really. He spends weeks harassing me about the Persephone stone. Then I get it, and he drags me to Hell. Then my birth mom shows up, and now I’ve got all that to deal with. But he is still messing with me. There’s a hellway in my school. I feel like I’m waiting for something really bad to happen, and I hate it. I mean, none of this is a coincidence, is it?” Again, I didn’t mention the sooty hands. I hadn’t had it happen recently.
“No, I don’t believe so. I wish it were otherwise, but I think you’re right.” A slight frown crossed her face.
“How is it going with Katherine?” I asked, referring to the girl down in the dungeon somewhere.
“Not good, unfortunately,” Madame Karathos shook her head. “She hears me, and then she looks away, and she’s not with me anymore. Whoever it is that has a grip on her mind is strong.”
“What kind of spells are you trying? Not that I have answers or anything, but I’m curious,” I said.
“A variety. I’m using both simple and complex spells. Nothing is holding.” She shook her head. “I don’t often come across magic I cannot access, but I fear this may get the better of me.”
“Should you call her parents? Send her home?”
“I can’t,” she said. “She is under a spell that puts you, me, and the entire school in danger. I can’t let the Concilium get a hold of her.” Her voice changed when she said ‘Concilium,’.
“What do you have against them?” I asked. I wanted to see if it was just me and my personal stuff that was undergoing a change. Although none of my friends were as gung-ho as I’d been about Nobledark, or the Concilium. None of the guys, either. They had more experience with the less than pleasant aspects of the Concilium.
“They see the world in black and white, and the world is actually many shades of gray. Even here, at Nobledark. Enough about the concerns of the school. Let’s work on keeping others from your mind.” Madame Karathos rose from her desk, the subject of the school and Katherine clearly closed.
We practiced for the next hour. I was starting to get tired.
