Reborn Series Box Set (Books 1-3.5)

by S. L. Stacy

  “Don’t be sorry. You obviously need to talk about it.” Victoria pauses, thinking. “You said once you never go home because you don’t have one to go back to. Is that true? Or is it you don’t want to see him?”

  My throat still feels tight, making it difficult to swallow, and it takes a big push to get the food down. “That was all true. Jeffrey and my mom died in a car accident before I started at Thurston. Don’t,” I plead with her, watching as Victoria’s eyes fill with tenderness, lips parted to heap more words of sympathy on me. “It’s fine. It was a long time ago. I’m—I’m fine.”

  “Don’t you miss her? Your mom, I mean.”

  “Sure.” I wonder if my roommate caught the moment of hesitation before I answered. Despite everything I’ve just confided in her, I can’t seem to bring myself to tell her that I only loved my mom out of a sense of obligation. I had to, because she was my mother, but she was never really on my side. When it came down to it, she chose to fault me and my sister over blaming him.

  I think back to the afternoon in the garden I was remembering before I came down, and a feeling of emptiness wells up inside me, tugging on my heart like a black hole might a star that’s strayed too close, threatening to swallow it whole. “I miss my grandparents even more. We used to visit them a lot when we were little. No matter what, they were always there for me and my sister.”

  Victoria smiles. “It’s nice that you had them.”

  “It was, but it was also hard, toward the end. Before she died, my grandmother had dementia. She was confused, didn’t remember us…” I’m looking straight at Victoria but no longer really seeing her, too absorbed in the image of my sister and I playing at the edge of our grandparents’ property that’s suddenly popped into my mind. “Even before she got sick, there were signs. One night she got really mad at me and Diane for playing too close to the woods,” I recall, a chill prickling my arms. “She hurried us back to the house, ranting about demons that lived in the forest, waiting to snatch little kids. My mom was so mad when she found out. She yelled at Nana, told her to stop scaring us. It was the angriest I ever saw Mom get.”

  I blink a few times, erasing the memory of my mother hugging us to her, one of the few times she actually made me feel safe, loved. Victoria’s face comes back into focus, forehead pinched, eyes uncertain. “I’m sorry,” I say again. “I shouldn’t have gone on and on like that. I haven’t thought about any of this in a long time. None of it matters anymore. This is my home now.”

  Victoria purses her lips, at a loss for words. “Yes, it is,” she says finally, face serious. “We are a family, and we are your family.”

  “Siobhan is a part of that family,” I remind her.

  My roommate looks taken aback. “Of course she is.”

  “Which is why we have to go after her.”

  Victoria works her jaw as she scrambles for a response. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee drifts into the room, but I seem to have lost my appetite, even for legal stimulants. I push what’s left of my cereal away from me.

  “Something’s wrong,” I continue when Victoria still hasn’t said anything. “I could hear it in your voice when you were on the phone. What did Farrah say to you?”

  “Farrah…wants to wait,” Victoria says slowly, looking at me warily. “We can’t go after Siobhan just yet. It may be awhile until we can.”

  “We can’t afford to wait awhile,” I exclaim, jumping to my feet. “I almost died in Pandora, and I wasn’t even there that long!”

  “Carly, everything’s changed.” Victoria’s eyes glisten, but she manages to hold back her tears. “We both saw the rift. We can’t risk opening any more portals until we figure out how to fix it—and to stop it from happening again.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  Victoria looks away from me, flicking a thumb underneath her eye. “I can’t believe I’m saying it.”

  Glancing at the clock on the entertainment console, I’m jolted back to the more mundane reality of school and exams. “Fudge!” I cry out. One of the doves coos loudly in response, the cage rattling as she flaps around inside. “Gotta run.” Part of me is relieved for the excuse to leave. If I have to listen to Victoria rationalize abandoning our friend for one more second, I’ll end up saying or doing something I regret.

  “Class?” Victoria guesses, watching me hurry around the living room, collecting my belongings.

  “Midterm,” I say shortly, stuffing some books into my bag.

  “Carly,” she calls out as I’m about to step out the door. I reluctantly turn to meet her pleading gaze. “Are we okay?”

  “I…I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. Without waiting to hear her reply, I leave, letting the door bang shut behind me.

  ***

  An hour later, I shuffle out of Clark Hall, head bowed, disappointed with my performance on the Concepts of Math midterm. I guess it could have been worse—at least I didn’t leave any questions blank—but I already know it wasn’t my best work. I wish I’d asked the professor if I could make it up later so I would have had more time to study, but she probably would have said no, anyway. It’s not like I had a family emergency or a note from a doctor I could cite. Then again, if I had given her the real reason I’ve missed so much class, maybe she would have assumed stress had taken its toll and taken pity on me.

  It’s a typical gray afternoon in Shadesburg, although a drop of rain has yet to fall from the cloud-covered sky. With fall in full swing, I wonder if we’ll see the sun again before winter sets in. I miss laying out on the Quad, soaking up the bright summer sun and dewy heat. Autumn has felt increasingly shorter every year, and, despite not being a stranger to bitter winters before I moved here, I still hate the cold. The only things I like about fall are watching the leaves change color, Halloween and pumpkin spice lattes.

  “Carly? Hey, Carly!” someone shouts behind me. I’m unable to place the voice until I turn around to find Jasper marching up to me.

  “Jasper,” I say with some surprise. I’ve never talked to Siobhan’s—well, whatever he is to her—one-on-one before. Actually, the last time I saw him was when my sisters and I opened a portal and sent him back to Olympus. “What’s…up?”

  Jasper’s longish, dark hair is tousled as though from days of running his hands nervously through it. Circles ring the delicate skin underneath haunted blue eyes. My gaze traveling lower, I can see the outline of muscle underneath his tight-fitting black slacks and white collared shirt. Not that I’m checking him out or anything. Fudge it, I’m totally checking him out. Jasper may have a lot of flaws, but none of them are physical.

  “I haven’t heard from Siobhan in a few days, and…well, I mean, we got in a fight, but she didn’t return my text the other day. I can’t tell if she’s blowing me off or if something’s wrong. I just have the feeling something’s wrong. What happened?” he asks, seeing my face fall.

  “Maybe we should sit down somewhere and talk,” I tell him. He nods, staying a few paces behind me as we walk to the Student Union. Inside, we grab some coffee and sit down in the common area. Jasper pulls his chair away from the table, leaning his back against the wall, ankle crossed over the opposite knee. He holds himself tensely, muscles bunched like an animal preparing to defend itself.

  “I don’t bite,” I say dryly.

  He smirks. “I know. It’s just—the last time I saw you—you and your sorority sisters threw me into a portal.”

  “Technically, our house mother did the actual throwing.”

  “Yeah, well, you opened it.” Jasper’s childish tone almost makes me laugh, but the angry-looking vein throbbing near his temple makes me think better of it.

  “Your brothers threw me into one to bring you back,” I say instead.

  “I only knew they were coming to get me—not how they were going to do it,” he says defensively. “Now, about Siobhan.”

  I blow on my coffee. “A lot of stuff has gone down at Gamma Lambda Phi in the l
ast few days. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but—”

  “I’ll find out one way or another,” Jasper points out, sensing my hesitation. “If you’re worried about my ties to Eric, don’t be. I’ve been avoiding him, the fraternity—all of that since I got back. I only care about Siobhan.”

  “Fine,” I sigh, glancing around for eavesdroppers. The surrounding tables are packed with people eating lunch and finishing up last minute homework. The noise level is loud enough, though, that I don’t think anyone with normal, human hearing could overhear us. Anyone more powerful would find a way to listen in no matter how discreet we are. “We’re a little…short-handed right now. Hera was displeased with us and placed a curse on my sisters. She turned them into doves, and they’ll stay like that unless Victoria and I can find an antidote. Do you know of one?” I wonder, leaning into the table.

  Jasper shakes his head. “Nope. Sorry,” he says, not sounding very sorry. “So Siobhan’s a bird?”

  I grimace. “Not exactly.”

  “Then why do I care? I told you, I only care about what happened to her. Where is she?”

  Scowling, I take a sip of my coffee. It tastes bitter going down my throat, much like Jasper’s words. “She came to rescue me from Pandora, and”—I take a deep breath before finishing, tears pricking my eyes as I think about Siobhan floating in that dark, suffocating place, alone—“she never came back out. She’s trapped down there like I was. And it’s all my fault,” I add in a small voice, swiping a tear from my cheek.

  Jasper straightens up in his seat as though poised to spring out of it, his posture growing even more rigid. His full lips have disappeared into a thin line, his expression inscrutable, which I imagine means he’s skipped shocked and gone straight to furious. I hug myself, the air in the room suddenly chilled. Even my coffee isn’t hot anymore.

  “Yes, it is,” he says, glaring at me. Unlike Victoria, he isn’t reluctant to place blame. “She just had to go in after you—had to play the hero—”

  “Siobhan is a hero,” I say, defensiveness creeping into my tone. “She saved my life. And, no, it didn’t turn out the way any of us planned or wanted it to, but—she came for me. I care about her, and I want to do the same for her.”

  “Great.” Jasper seems to relax a bit, reclining back in his chair and crossing his arms. “What’s the plan, then?”

  “I…don’t know yet,” I admit, looking into my coffee.

  “Well, what does Victoria think?”

  I bite my lip and continue to avoid his gaze. “She…well, you see…” Even though the room is warm once again, the air I’m drawing into my lungs feels thin. If there was a rip in the fabric of the universe here like the one in the woods, I’d jump through it just to avoid having this conversation with him.

  “She doesn’t want to do anything.” Jasper tries to keep his voice level, but a note of disbelief slips through. When I finally look up, his eyes are full of pain, as though Victoria has literally driven a dagger through his back.

  “She does. She just wants to be careful,” I say quickly. “We don’t have enough hands right now. We need to find the antidote first. And it’s further complicated by the fact that whatever quantum physical partition divides your universe from ours is breaking down. There’s a hole in it.” Jasper’s eyebrows go up at this. “And you have your Sigma Iota brothers to thank for that.”

  Jasper hesitates before asking, “How so?”

  “They used a portal last night to bring over some weapons and this…monster thing. Victoria and I saw them.” When Jasper continues to look puzzled, I say, “You really are out of the loop, aren’t you?”

  “Like I told you. I’m avoiding them. You know, for such a smart girl, you’re rather slow on the uptake.”

  “Well jeez, guess I should have believed you in the first place. You’re such a pillar of honesty and everything.”

  A smile sneaks onto his face. He quickly erases it, becoming serious. “I fail to see why any of this should stop us from going after her.”

  “We have to fix the rift first,” I say without much conviction, repeating what Victoria said to me just this morning. “And make sure it doesn’t happen again. There are innocent people who could get hurt,” I add, thinking about Reed.

  Jasper’s upper lip curls. “I don’t care about them. I care about—”

  “I do, too,” I snap, satisfied when he jerks back in surprise. “We can save everyone, but we have to go about this the right way. We need a plan. We can’t afford to be stupid and reckless. Victoria will figure out what to do. She just needs time—”

  “We don’t know how much time we have,” Jasper says, getting up from his chair.

  “One wrong move, and who knows what will happen,” I try to convince him. “The whole universe could be torn apart!” I don’t know if this could actually happen, but I don’t like the look of resolve that’s come over his face. We should work together on this, but I have a feeling he’s going rogue.

  Jasper walks around the table. Towering over me, he brings his face so close to mine I can smell the mixture of mint and coffee on his breath. “I will tear apart the whole fucking universe if it will bring her back to me.” Pulling up, he hurls his empty coffee cup at a trash can. It bounces off and rolls onto the floor, showering it with brown droplets. He storms out, fingers flexing, ready to take on the universe with his bare hands.

  The rest of the day is filled with class and catching up on missed assignments at the library in between. By the time I head home, the sky has turned dark charcoal, and a fine moisture hangs in the air, making my clothes stick to my skin and my hair swell into a cloud of frizz. I walk slowly, in a fog of my own. After our fight and everything I just spilled to Jasper, I’m dreading going back to the house and seeing Victoria. As regret and panic seize me, I start counting the cracks in the sidewalk as I go. One. Two. Three. There’s a particularly long, jagged one a few feet later. Usually, counting things helps me calm down, but the cracks only make me think about the rift in the woods.

  As I approach the house, a glint of red against the doorstep catches my eye. For just a moment, I forget everyone and everything else—Victoria, Jasper, the curse, the rift. The breath is knocked completely out of me, my heartbeat picking up in anticipation. I think I know what it is, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. It’s not until I’m standing almost right on top of it that I realize I was right.

  Curled at my feet is a rose, its fragile petals like dark red velvet, a black ribbon tied around the stem in a bow.

  Chapter 5

  I start to reach for the rose, then hesitate for a moment, afraid I might be imagining it—that if I touch it, it’ll disappear. Finally, I carefully pick it up, running a finger along one of the soft, dewy petals. Its sweet fragrance stirs memories that feel like a lifetime ago, snippets of almost-forgotten conversation. What happened in Pandora seems like a dream sometimes. I guess, in many ways, it was.

  “I do remember wishing that I had someone to share it with—the garden, the magic. Someone besides my annoying little sister. A secret friend who could whisk me off to some fantastical land. I guess I should be careful what I wish for, huh?”

  The rustle of leaves, the snap of a stem. Dolos tucking my hair aside, sliding a black red rose behind my ear. “I’m not so bad…”

  “Dolos?” I say in the present, my voice coming out in a whisper. Turning, I scan the Greek Quad eagerly, but it’s unusually silent and empty. I look back at the rose, peering into the folds of satiny petals as if they hold the answer. Sighing, I go into the house, heading straight for the kitchen to retrieve one of the crystal vases we usually reserve for our recruitment décor. I drop the rose in and fill it with water.

  Upstairs, I set the vase on my desk and sit down, contemplating it for a while. In my heart, I know it has to be from Dolos, but I don’t understand how it’s even possible. He’s back on Olympus. How did he get it here? Did he open a portal?

  Portals. The rift. Siobhan. Putting
the rose and how it got here out of my mind for the time being, I go over to my roommate’s bookshelf to get our ritual book and settle down at my desk with it. Victoria didn’t seem to know how to close the rift we saw in the clearing, but maybe there’s something about it in here.

  The pages are as thin as tissue paper and yellowed with age. I turn them gently, running my fingers over the tiny black print. Toward the beginning are the more typical rituals we perform as a chapter—our preference ceremony during recruitment, the procedures for our formal chapter meetings and initiation. Deeper into the book are the more ancient, secret rituals, like the Guardian Ceremony, as well as some historical passages, including an account of the first time Nike and the original Gamma Lambda Phis erected the walls between universes. There’s even a chapter on “Objects of Power,” with accompanying sketches and descriptions. Some of the objects are familiar:

  The Guardian Stones: A trio of stones that, when activated by Nike or one of her descendants, open a portal between Earth and Olympus. Each is carved with a singular Greek letter: Γ (gamma), Λ (lambda), or Φ (phi). Used in conjunction with the Guardian Ceremony.

  The Pandora Jars: A pair of jars that open a portal to Pandora, the space between universes. One is in the safekeeping of the Elder Council; the other has been lost. Their use is reserved solely for the most desperate of circumstances and must be used with caution. Used in conjunction with the Pandora Ceremony.

  The jar that was lost has since been found again. The others used it to rescue me from Pandora, although I have no idea where it is now. Otherwise, I’d get Siobhan out of there myself. Sighing, I turn the page to a chapter on weaponry.

  I idly flip through the next section, past black-and-white drawings of bows and arrows, daggers, shields, and swords. A streak of color catches my eye, and I pause on a sketch of a cruel-looking sword with an ornate black handle. Its blade is shaded in dark gray but outlined in a halo of transparent red ink, as though bathed in a red light. The caption next to it reads: