by Dean Murray
My heart jumped into overdrive when I saw him waiting in the parking lot, leaning against his Viper, which was parked next to my regular spot. It would have been perfect—romantic even—if not for the crowd of more than a dozen kids standing around looking at his car.
He smiled at me as I pulled up two spaces over, and then walked over and opened my door while I was still reaching back to make sure that I'd managed to cram all of my books into my backpack and the tired old zipper wasn't going to give out on me again.
"Hello, Selene."
I would have said that it wasn't possible for anyone to look as good fully clothed as Jace had last night with his shirt off, but he made a valiant effort. I checked him out starting from his feet and working my way up in the hopes that would allow me to acclimatize gradually and avoid swooning.
He was wearing unassuming black boots that disappeared into his pants, but which I was pretty sure cost as much as my car. His jeans were the same kind of ripped, designer works of art as he'd been wearing the day before. I didn't know how they managed to be tight and still look like they were hanging from his hips by the slimmest of margins.
I forced my eyes up over his black, studded belt, and up to the tight blue shirt that seemed to be having a hard time containing all of those muscles. It was an almost perfect—albeit more masculine—match for my favorite blue shirt, the one that was still sitting at home in my closet because I hadn't been willing to just throw it away. Over the top of the shirt he was wearing the leather jacket that I'd worn all day on Thursday.
I once again felt like my insides were quivering so furiously that some sign of how I was feeling must be making it out where everyone could see it, but I took a deep breath and forced my eyes the rest of the way up. His blue eyes smoldered as he gave me a slow, confident smile.
"Are you tired this morning?"
My face instantly heated up. I didn't need the catcalls from the peanut gallery to tell me what everyone within earshot was thinking, but that didn't stop Jonas Hemart from whistling. Really it shouldn't have been a surprise. Jonas was one of the biggest guys at school and I'd always been a safe target.
This time Jonas got more than he bargained for. I didn't even see Jace move. One second he was standing in front of me, and then he was back over next to his car with Jonas' throat in his hand. There was a half second of shocked stillness as everyone tried to figure out what had just happened, and then Jonas tried to take a swing at Jace.
Jace easily caught the punch and then began applying pressure against Jonas' hand until tears started streaming out of the bully's eyes. Jonas was big, but Jace was the slightest bit taller and seemed to have more strength than three guys combined. He easily kept Jonas' feet from touching the ground.
"I'm going to say this once, and once only. Selene is a lady and therefore above having to defend her actions to scum like you. Luckily I'm here to take up that task on her behalf. You're going to apologize to her and then you're going to tell everyone you know that you acted like a baseborn cretin. If anyone in the school repeats these baseless lies that Sandra Conner made up, I will make them wish they could trade places with her."
Jace looked around the crowd as he made that threat, and more than one big, brawny football player stepped back in response to the force of his stare.
Satisfied with what he saw in everyone's eyes, Jace dropped Jonas to the ground and then rolled him over onto his back with his boot.
"Lady Selene is waiting for her apology."
Jonas choked out an apology around his coughing and gasping. I couldn't have told anyone what it was he said, but it was obvious that he was very sorry.
For the first time in my life I felt sorry for Jonas. He was the worst kind of bully, but now that he'd come up against someone even bigger and stronger he didn't know what to do other than subject himself to the same kind of abject embarrassment he'd always expected out of his victims.
Jace turned his back to Jonas and the rest of the onlookers and walked back over to my car, where he reached into the back seat and pulled out my book bag. I accompanied him towards the school and didn't say anything until I figured we were out of earshot of the crowd.
"You know he's probably going to key your car, right?"
"Maybe, but if so, he'll be sorry. Besides, like Kat said, that would just give me an excuse to have the paint job redone. I'm thinking something with green highlights this time."
"I'd ask you if you took anything at all seriously, but after last night I know you do."
Jace looked at me with worry in his eyes. "I'm sorry about that, Selene. Kat and I never should have gotten into it like that with you around."
"No, I'd rather know what the risks are and be scared out of my mind than be blissfully headed towards a landmine that I otherwise could have avoided."
"You believe it all? At the rate we've been going I was expecting it to take another day or two for us to convince you it was all true."
"I guess I do. I went to bed scared out of my mind and fighting the occasional worry that this was all just some kind of weird prank. I mean, I knew you weren't just a couple of normal kids—especially after you both stopped time and Kat turned the reflecting pool into some kind of weird, transparent silly putty—but, well, I guess I figured even demigods occasionally find kids to play practical jokes on."
"And now?"
"I don't know. I feel like I should be more skeptical, like I should keep you both at arm's length, but it all just seems right. Something tells me that I should trust you both, that neither of you would ever do anything to harm me. I guess all of the doubts didn't make it through the night."
Jace's smile was still slow, still a little lopsided, but this time it wasn't confident. It was relieved.
"I came prepared with all these plans to convince you that we were legit, and here you've already gotten there on your own. It's going to take me a second to adjust to this glorious new reality I find myself in."
I rolled my eyes at him. "Well, while you're adjusting you can start by telling me what was up with a comment like that back at the cars. Aren't you five-hundred-year-old demigods supposed to be more suave than that?"
Jace winced. "I really am sorry about that. I just wanted to know if you were tired. You got to bed pretty late last night. Most people would be really dragging this morning after something like that…"
"Of course I'm…actually, now that you mention it I'm not nearly as tired as I should be. Do I have you to thank for that?"
"Only very indirectly. Being around Kat and me is going to force your gift to manifest faster than it would otherwise. Nobody is sure why. Some pantheons think it is because you end up catching the fringes of things when we release our power to create effects, and that energy bleed supercharges the ability of the nascent Awakened."
"Some pantheons, but not you and Kat, I'm guessing?"
"No, I think that being around one or more Awakened causes a nascent Awakened's ability to manifest more quickly as a kind of unconscious defense mechanism. Basically, your gift doesn't know whether or not we're dangerous so it's trying to get to the point where it can keep you alive if we come after you."
"Okay, I buy that, but what does that have to do with me not being as exhausted as I should be?"
"As your gift begins to mature, you'll find that you need a lot less sleep than you have up until now. It's one of the perks of being an Awakened."
"How much less sleep are we talking?"
"It depends a little on the individual in question, but most Awakened can comfortably go off of three or four hours a night. We can get by on as little as two hours a night for a week or two in a pinch."
"Wow, that's got to be helpful when you start messing around with time, but doesn't it get boring?"
"Boring is good, remember? Those extra hours every day are part of what lets us build up the base memories to screw around with time and space and not have to always tap into our peak memories."
"You do have a way of making y
our life sound absolutely thrilling—where can I sign up?"
"Ha-ha. The joke is on you, you signed on the dotted line something like seven thousand years ago. In all seriousness, it's not as bad as all that. The extra time is nice to have, and you'll find stuff to do with it remarkably quickly. You used to read books all the time. I asked you one time what the point was when you were eventually just going to forget them anyway."
"What did I say?"
"You said that was the best part of being an Awakened. It meant that you got to rediscover your favorite books over and over again and each time felt like the first time."
"So the base memories don't actually have to be boring?"
"Nope, and nobody says that that time has to just be filled with base memories—you can always add in peak experiences. Beyond that, most of us tend to spend a big chunk of time going through our journals every day."
"Ah, that makes sense. That way the memories you are building during your downtime are a recreation of what you've already lost."
"More like a shadow of a whisper of what we've lost, but yeah, that's the general idea. It's a way of trying to stay grounded in who we've been up until now."
"Wow, there is a lot to learn, isn't there?"
Jace's smile this time was back to the confident expression that was so endearing. "You have no idea. Way back in the day, you were one of the best researchers around. We only managed to save some of your journals, and I only went through the ones you'd labeled as being technical volumes, but even those just about blew my mind. At first I felt like you'd been holding out on us, but the deeper I got into them the more I realized that neither Kat or I were really ready to learn that stuff. Kat just about killed herself the first time she tried to bend time as far as your notes indicated you'd reached."
It was like being told you were the starting forward in the championship game when you'd never even touched a basketball before that instant.
"Wait, I'm the researcher? We're up against a bunch of hostile pantheons and you and Kat are depending on me to pull fluffy bunnies out of magic hats in new and exciting ways so we don't all end up dead and—what was the term Kat used? Farmed?"
Jace grabbed my arms and pulled me around so that I had to look at him. "It's not like that."
"Really, Jace? That's quite the surprise because based on what Kat told me last night it's the researchers who figure out how to keep their pantheons from getting wasted."
My voice had continued to go up in volume during my rant, to the point where Jace winced and then I felt a gust of cool power blow across my skin.
"Okay, if you need to yell now's the time to do it. I've surrounded us with a vacuum so nobody will be able to hear us."
"A vacuum? Really?" I waved my arms around furiously. "If you put us inside a vacuum then how come I'm still breathing and I can feel the air against my hands?"
Jace grabbed at my arms like I was waving dynamite around or something. "Good grief, Selene, you're like a bull in a china closet. What I should have said is that we're standing inside a sphere of air which is enveloped by a layer that is essentially a vacuum, and if you put your hands in the vacuum you might lose some of your fingers."
"What, so you essentially put us inside a giant thermos bottle?"
"Yes, if the thermos bottle is perfectly clear and made of pure awesomeness. Now are you going to freak out, or did I just waste the memory of my fifth-grade graduation for nothing?"
I stuck my tongue out at him. "You're five hundred years old; you never went to fifth grade."
"Okay, fair point. Are you going to freak out now?"
"No, I don't think so—you kind of took all of the fun out of it. How about if you just get to the explaining part?"
Jace sighed. "Okay, it might be like that a little, but you don't have all of the information. Researchers are vital, and you were responsible for an incredible number of advances for our little pantheon, but you have to understand that we Awakened tend to think in terms of decades and centuries rather than days and weeks.
"You put us on the map with your discoveries, but Kat and I have been very careful to avoid tangling with other Awakened since even before you died. Part of that is because there was only the two of us, but part of that is because we were trying to keep your discoveries as much of a secret as possible. Right now we're ahead of the curve, which means that you're going to have time to get up to speed on all of this stuff."
I shook my head. "I'm not smart, Jace. Maybe you have the wrong girl. Maybe I'm just one of the mimicries that Kat was talking about."
Jace wrapped his arms around me right there in front of everyone. "There's more to being a researcher than just smarts. It requires creativity, a willingness to take chances, and a dogged determination that most people can't even begin to touch. You have all of that in spades, but beyond that, you are smart. You've just never had a reason to push yourself before."
"How can you be so sure that I'm the right girl?"
"Because I've talked to dozens of mimicries over the last two years. They all looked an awful lot like you, but none of them made me feel like this."
Chapter 13
The rest of the day went by in a blur of stops and starts that was like nothing else I'd ever experienced before. Once Jace got me calmed down, we headed toward my first class, which also happened to be Jace's first class. I guess that shouldn't have surprised me.
In the course of finding out what we were currently studying, Jace found out that I'd had homework that I was supposed to have done the night before. Predictably he demanded that I let him bend time and speed us up enough that I would be able to get my homework done before class.
I tried to argue with him, but the best I managed to do was get him to agree to only speed us up to half the speed he'd originally wanted to use. It wasn't a clear victory for me, but as nearly as I could tell bending time wasn't a linear kind of thing. Going from double speed to quadruple speed didn't just use twice as much power, it used a lot more than that.
Keeping the time field down to just eight times normal meant that it would cost Jace a lot less than it would have at sixteen times normal. It was still going to use up a chunk of base memories, but at least it would mean that I wasn't making him tap into peak memories.
I wasn't sure I was going to get even that much of a concession out of Jace, but when I made the point that I could still get my homework done as long as we did a number of shorter studying sessions spread out over the day, that convinced him.
Once we agreed, Jace led me to one of the abandoned classrooms and used telekinesis to unlock the door. He then flipped on the lights and covered the windows with an illusion to make it look like it was still dark and abandoned.
It took me twenty minutes to get ready for my first class, at which point we headed to homeroom and I turned in my homework while Jace went through all of the new student stuff like introducing himself to the class and getting a book.
Jace took the next several study sessions and then handed me off to Kat during lunch to do the next one. I felt less bad about Kat bending time for me because she actually did have homework that she needed to get done. I was pretty sure though that she pushed things up higher than we'd agreed though, because once we were done with our assignments she didn't seem like she was in any hurry to get to our next class.
"So what's the verdict about tonight? What did your dad say?"
"Oh, right, I should have told you already. He wasn't very keen on it, so I asked him to wait to make a decision until after he'd had a chance to meet with you."
Kat sighed. "Okay, what were his objections? Presumably I'm supposed to meet him after school gets out but before it's time to go get Ari?"
"Yeah, sorry. As for the objections, he mainly didn't like that there weren't going to be any adults there and was worried that you had more money than sense."
"Okay. Well, I guess I'm going to be missing PE today."
"Wait, what do you mean?"
She shrugged an
d gestured at her clothes, which consisted of jeans and a t-shirt from some eighties band I'd never heard of before. "If I go talk to your dad wearing this he's going to see everything he's worried about. I've got to go home so I can change and redo my makeup."
Something was off, Kat wasn't usually this curt. The coward inside of me wanted to just pretend that nothing was wrong, but that didn't seem like a very good way to start off the third day of a relationship that might last for the next several hundred years.
"What's wrong, Kat? If it's about the fact that you have to meet with my dad, I'm sorry. You said it was vital that we go on the trip and I could tell he wasn't going to go for it, so I did the only thing I could think of. Can't you throw a whammy on him or something and make him agree to let us go? You did it with Mr. Reynolds…"
"I hate using the worship-me aura, Selene."
"Wait, that's what I've been calling it inside of my head."
That earned me a smile. "That's what you called it when you taught it to me. You didn't like it very much either, but it seems like we just can't get away from using it."
"So use something else. You and Jace are the next best thing to all-powerful. If you don't want to use the worship-me aura then use something else."
"There isn't anything else, Selene. Mortals have their free will; it's just how things work. Mindreading, compulsion, all of that stuff is just pure fantasy. If one of us wants something from one of them then we either have to trade for it, play upon their emotions, trick them, or threaten them. Our powers can make it easier to do one of those things, but no effect is capable of doing it for us.
"I could amp up my body to the point where I could break your dad's bones as easy as breaking a toothpick, and hurting him might be enough to make him allow you to leave, but once we were gone there wouldn't be anything other than that fear to stop him from calling the police."
I started to stand, fists clenched, but Kat waved me back to my seat. "I'm not going to hurt your dad, Selene, it was just an example."
