Greta and the Lost Army (Mylena Chronicles Book 3)

by Chloe Jacobs

  A loud bell rang out across the yard, and everyone slowly started to make their way inside the school. “All right, let’s get this over with,” she muttered.

  Isaac and Siona would be fine on their own for the day, and they weren’t concerned about her, either…so why was she so nervous?

  There were too many people around, so she didn’t let Isaac kiss her, even though she wanted to. She also didn’t look back at him. If she was going to do this, she had to stay focused.

  She steeled herself the same way she always did before taking on one of the Lost and made her way inside. Finding her locker turned out okay. Even going to her first class—algebra—was no big deal…until she got there.

  She slipped inside just after everyone else and took an empty desk near the back, keeping her head down and feeling a little like she had always felt back in Mylena when she didn’t want to be noticed. It wasn’t until the teacher came in and made her stand up and tell everyone her name that things started to fall apart.

  If she’d thought that because the phone at home hadn’t been ringing off the hook, that nobody in the neighborhood knew about her…she was wrong. The whispers started immediately.

  As class got underway, she felt even worse. Her head spun listening to the teacher review the previous day’s homework. She had no clue what any of those numbers, letters, and brackets were supposed to mean to anyone, and trying to follow the textbook made her eyes bleed. She would take on an army of gnomes any day if it meant never having to look at any of this stuff ever again.

  By the time the class was done, she missed Isaac and Siona so much, she debated ducking out to go find them, but she talked herself out of it. It was only the first day.

  You’ve been through worse than this. You can do it.

  She made her way to English Lit and sat through a mind-numbing analytical review of The Iliad. After that, she finally had a free period, but when the PA system called her name to go to the guidance counsellor’s office, she headed over.

  She knocked on the partly open door ten minutes later, having made just one wrong turn along the way. “You wanted to see me?” she asked the guy behind the desk.

  The man seemed young for his profession, but maybe it was the red hair and pasty white complexion. He wore a bright blue golf shirt and looked up from the file folder on his desk in the small, windowless office.

  “You must be Greta Scott. My apologies that I wasn’t here when you came in to register on Friday. How are you getting along on your first day?”

  He smiled and motioned for her to come in and sit down. She made it as far as the doorway and stopped. It was too close and stuffy in there for her tastes. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said. “I was on my way to the computer lab for my free period.” She’d wanted to try to do some online research.

  He flipped the folder closed and stepped forward. She wondered how much he’d heard about her from the police, the social worker, and her parents. From the speculative expression on his face, she guessed it was more than she’d be comfortable with.

  “I just wanted to touch base and see if there’s anything that you need in order to make this return to your educational career a successful one.”

  Her eyebrows lifted, and she groaned inwardly. She hoped this guy hadn’t decided that she needed someone to unload her problems on, and that he was going to be that person.

  “Thanks, but I’ll be okay.”

  “Since you’re joining the class so late in the year, you’re a little behind.”

  She was more than just a “little behind.” In fact, there was really no getting caught up from how behind she was.

  “The other students will be starting to fill out their college applications next week, and we want to do whatever we can to make sure you can follow them; that you can pass the entrance exams and won’t be held back. You’ll need a mentor, someone to spend time with you and get you up to speed. I would be happy to be that person for you.”

  “I’m not too worried about it,” she said with a shrug. “I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”

  He paused as if the conversation wasn’t going the way he’d planned and he had to double-back and find a place to start again. “Well, do you have any idea what you’d like to study? Are you interested in medicine or engineering, or maybe teaching? I have some experience guiding young people like you into the careers they’d be best suited for.”

  She crossed her arms. “Is this a mandatory meeting, or am I free to go?”

  His thin lips pressed together. What? Had he really expected her to collapse into his cozy chair and cry on his shoulder about how hard the last four years had been? Did he want her to admit that she was feeling alone and out of place so that he could be the one who made her feel safe? Gag.

  Maybe she was being hard on him, but her patience was at an all-time low. If this guy had been a gnome, she would have kicked his ass already.

  “Of course. Feel free to go if you need to,” he said tightly, “but I’ll be around if you want any help getting settled in the next few days. My door is always open, whether you need to talk or you just want someone to hang out with.”

  She didn’t bother thanking him because of the feeling in her gut that his kind offer wasn’t being made out of simple professional motivation. Whether it was morbid curiosity about the latest neighborhood scandal fueling that look in his eyes or something even less appealing, she didn’t know…and didn’t care.

  As she left to go find the computer lab, she shook her head. Maybe nobody carried a sword in this world, but it would be a mistake to let her guard down just because everything looked safe. She couldn’t say for certain that there had been anything wrong with that guy back there, and that was the problem. At least in Mylena, the dangers she’d faced had been obvious and out in the open.

  The lab wasn’t full, but seven of the eight other students all turned to look at her when she entered the room.

  She found an empty seat in front of a computer beside the one guy who hadn’t checked her out. She plugged her student number in the password field on the computer screen and hit enter.

  “Be careful what you look up on these things,” somebody said. She glanced up. It was the boy sitting beside her. He pushed his thick, unnaturally black hair off his forehead and nodded toward her screen. “They monitor everyone’s search history to make sure you’re not trying to figure out how to build a bomb, or download porn on to the school computers.”

  How to respond to that? Would researching potentially world-destroying demons count as misuse of school technology? “Uh, thanks,” she said finally.

  He chuckled. “So you’re the chick that got nabbed as a kid and showed up ten years after everyone figured you were lost for good.”

  “Only four years,” she corrected him.

  He shrugged. “Did you ever think about staying lost?”

  She raised a brow. “Did you ever think about not blurting out every thought that comes into your head?”

  He only laughed. “Sometimes, but what would be the fun in that?”

  She grinned. “Well, at least you’re upfront about your nosiness. That’s more than I can say for a lot of people.”

  She turned back to the computer screen and decided to start with the witches. She typed “Lamya”.

  That brought up a bunch of fan pages for a pretty Indian folk singer, but it wasn’t what she was looking for. She tried “Lamia” and the search engine spit out another thousand hits.

  “What the hell is that?” The boy wasn’t even trying to hide his prying anymore as various renditions of some kind of snake monster filled her screen.

  She glared at him with raised brows. “Do you mind? I’m trying to do some research here.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” he said with a grin. “Do you want some help?”

  “Why would you want to help?” She didn’t remember school being full of so many prying people. She’d pretty much thought that she could be invisible here, just like she’d bee
n in Mylena.

  He shrugged. “It looks kind of freaky, and I’m all over the freaky stuff.”

  She shook her head. “Suit yourself. I’m trying to find information about a type of witch called a Lamia, but I don’t think the snake beast is what I’m looking for. How do I filter that out and get what I need?” She felt like an idiot. Give her a sword any day of the week instead of a keyboard and a mouse.

  He got up and dragged his chair closer. “Well, first of all, if you’re trying to find actual real information, then you got to stay away from the RPG sites. That’s all just made-up stuff for video games. The developers get inspiration for characters from ancient mythology and old horror stories and things like that, but then they modify the details to suit their game, and these sites are just a bunch of geeks comparing power ratios and stats, so you won’t find anything there. You have to go straight to the source for that.”

  “Are you even speaking English?” She groaned. “Where is the source then? How do I know if it’s real?”

  He paused and gave her a curious look. “You have been living under a rock, haven’t you?”

  She narrowed her gaze. He laughed, then leaned in and clicked a couple of links before opening a new tab and pasting something, then clicking something else again.

  He sat back. “Here, this is an article from the Department of Mythological Studies at UCLA. It looks like versions of this Lamia thing can be found in ancient mythology from all around the world. The Basques—whoever the hell those dudes are—describe it as a kind of mermaid creature that sings to men, and when it brushes its hair, a rainbow opens up to devour them.”

  That was actually pretty close, given that the Lamia she was looking for lured children to her and then would push them through a portal made of fire. “I want the stories that talk about it stealing children and having the power to open doors to other worlds,” she said.

  He turned his curious look on her again before going back to the computer and maneuvering around for a bit. He clicked on another link. “This looks like the one you want, then. This is about an ancient queen of Greece whose children were stolen from her. She went mad from grief and turned into a monster that preyed on everyone else’s kids.” He paused and grimaced. “Oh, gross. Apparently she actually ate babies.”

  That was it! “Yes, but where’s the part about the portal?”

  More clicking with the mouse. “Apparently, after becoming enough of a nuisance, she was finally banished by the gods, but before that happened she managed to have other children. Her ancestors are called Lamia, too. The word itself has come to mean a kind of witch that uses the blood of children in its dark spells.” He read a little further. “Oh, and your portal stuff. Something about a Lamia only appearing under the right moon with the right human sacrifice, in order to open the gates to every possible eternity. Cryptic, huh?”

  “Crap, really? Does it say anything about where to find them, or maybe how to find the gates?”

  He tilted his head. “You mean hypothetically, right? Because this is all just stories and mythology, right?”

  She schooled her features. “Oh, sure. Of course.”

  His gaze narrowed even more. “Yeah, right.”

  He turned back to the screen with a shrug and clicked a few more links. “It says here that for centuries, the witches searched the universe for the one dimension that the gods banished their ancestor to, and that eventually they found it and all of them left the human realm to join her there. So I guess if you were hoping they were real, that’s where you’d find them, in this other dimension.”

  Her stomach fell, and she got up from the computer. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You would have found what you were looking for. I was just too nosy to let you do it on your own. What’s all that information for, by the way?” The boy stood up, too. He stuffed his hands in his pockets as he grabbed his backpack and followed her out the door.

  She bit her lip “Oh, nothing. Just a school project.”

  “It doesn’t sound much like geometry or physics, and I don’t remember any mention of a project in ancient history this morning.” He grinned. “Then again, I’m the first to admit that I don’t pay much attention to Ms. Lennon.”

  She stopped in the hall and looked up and down. She had no idea how to get to her locker from this part of the school. “It’s actually for a make-up assignment,” she said absently, “since I missed a bunch of time the last few years.”

  “Ah, right.” To give him credit, he didn’t take it as permission to ask any more intrusive questions. The bell rang and people started pouring out of all the classrooms and filling the hall around them. He hitched his backpack up over his shoulder. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”

  “Sure.”

  “You look a little confused. Did you lose track of your locker?”

  This guy had been nice to her for absolutely no reason. He hadn’t automatically assumed that she would poison his air with her very existence.

  Her shoulders drooped, and she laughed. “Yes. The stupid thing is probably on the other side of the school.”

  “Do you want me to walk you over?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not even going to bother,” she admitted with a twist of her lips. The only thing in there was an algebra textbook that she had no intention of looking at anyway. “I think I’m just going to pretend that tomorrow is my first day and start all over. I assume the mountain of books will still be there waiting for me.”

  He chuckled and stuck his hands in his pant pockets. “I’m Ted, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m—”

  “Greta? Hey, Greta, oh my God, is that really you?” The female voice calling her name got higher and sharper with every syllable.

  She turned around, a memory surfacing. The girl jogging down the hall toward her with a pink bag slung over her shoulder was short, with long brown hair and round cheeks a chipmunk would envy. Greta recognized her immediately.

  She smiled at Ted as he said good-bye and turned away just as the girl stopped in front of them.

  “Hi, I’ve been hoping to see you all day,” she said, looking Greta up and down with a big smile. “When I heard you were home, I called your house right away. Your parents told me I should try to give you some time to get settled, but that you were going to be at school today. I’ve been going kind of crazy ever since.”

  Greta wasn’t sure what to say. “Um, why?” she finally asked.

  The girl punched her in the arm and laughed. “We were best friends since second grade, and you ask me that?”

  “Oh right…” The two of them were being pushed along toward the exit by the crowd of students who were all eager to be free for the rest of the day. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “You remember me, right?” The girl looked horrified, as if forgetting their friendship was the worst thing that could have happened.

  “Of course I do.” Danielle Wilson.

  She remembered swing set challenges in the backyard, each of them daring the other to see who could go the highest before jumping off. Greta had won every time. But she also remembered cheating off Danielle’s paper during their eighth grade math final, and she remembered Sleepover Saturdays. They’d never been able to agree on what movie to watch. When it had been at her house, they’d always ended up putting in an action or sci-fi movie, and when it was at Danielle’s, they had watched romantic comedies pretty much exclusively.

  Greta took a deep breath as she stepped out into the fresh air. Part of her hadn’t consciously realized she’d been holding it all afternoon in that clinical, stuffy building, but now she could finally relax.

  She scanned the sidewalk on the other side of the street where she’d left Isaac earlier…

  “It…it was really nice to see you, Danielle.” Although she meant it, she couldn’t help her distraction. “I’m sorry, but I should probably get home right away so that nobody worries.”

  “Oh, right, because you d
isappeared for four years,” she said knowingly. “Well, I’m so glad you’re back finally. Do you know how hellish it was without you around? We really need to hang out and get caught up. Why don’t we have Sleepover Saturday? Just like old times?”

  “It sounds wonderful.”

  She looked around, hoping to see Isaac. It wasn’t that she expected him to just be standing there waiting for her like he had nothing better to do, but…

  Her heart leaped. There he was, leaning against a lamppost with his arms crossed, watching her! A smile tugged the corners of his mouth when he realized she’d noticed. For her, there was suddenly no one else in the world.

  Until someone called her name. It was the boy from the computer lab, Ted. He passed her on his way down the front steps and waved. “Hey, it was nice looking shit up online with you. See you tomorrow?”

  Danielle tsked and leaned in close. “That dude spends most of his time in detention but still manages to ace every class. Either he’s crazy smart in all things or hacking the computers to changes his grades. Still, it doesn’t even matter because he’s totally hot,” she whispered. Then she nudged Greta in the arm and chuckled. “How did you get the attention of the coolest boy in school on your very first day?”

  She shrugged. They got to the bottom of the stairs and veered around the yellow school bus waiting for all the kids who lived across town. The guy sitting in the driver’s seat was a gaunt, sixty-something man with a massive set of headphones over his ears that looked like bulbous alien eyeballs. He seemed to be rocking out pretty hard, complete with invisible drumsticks.

  She registered that because it was hard not to, but listening to the rest of what Danielle was saying proved impossible.

  They were getting closer to Isaac. She could feel the pull of him more and more with each step.

  Suddenly Danielle noticed him, too. And she noticed the direction of his unwavering gaze with a low whistle. “Holy shit, Greta. That guy is intense. Is he your boyfriend or something?” she whispered, tugging on her arm.