Thank the Tyches, Hailey thought, grateful she didn’t have to worry about the Nereids slinking around the palace while plotting how to kill Hailey and everyone else in a giant flood of water or something.
‘How did they escape in the first place? Who was guarding them?’ he demanded as three pink dolphins swam past the force field.
‘Hart, sir. We found her unconscious.’
‘Feisty bunch, aren’t they?’ Jake watched the dolphins as they drifted further away. ‘Life would be so much easier if we could feed them to a sea-monster,’ he remarked.
You can say that again, Hailey thought.
‘The leader wants to speak with you, sir.’
‘Very well.’ Jake marched towards the stable doors, Scar trailing behind him.
‘Wow.’ Demi shook her head. ‘I can’t believe the nereids actually attacked PET.’
Aaron leapt up.
Alec frowned. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To find out what’s happening. Are you coming?’
‘The soldiers won’t let us anywhere near the nereids,’ Hailey pointed out.
‘The soldier guarding the stable is gone.’ Aaron nudged his head to the PET-free stable doors. ‘We can sneak in through there and down to the nereids’ room to eavesdrop.’
‘Ooh, spying again. I love it,’ Demi said, and then sneezed.
Aaron shot her a hard look. ‘Don’t you dare sneeze or cough in there.’
Demi saluted him. ‘Yes, sir.’
Hailey, Demi, and Alec followed Aaron into the stable, where Hailey tensed, expecting a soldier to appear. But only the horses were inside. They whinnied in greeting.
‘No one make a sound,’ Aaron whispered as he paused by the doors into the hallway, peeking his head out. ‘It’s clear.’
They slunk towards the nereids’ room, stopping before every hallway so Aaron could peer around the corner to make sure no PET members were lurking. Hailey held her breath each time, waiting to get caught, but thankfully PET didn’t appear to be guarding the palace’s hallways at the moment.
Ten minutes later, they reached the nereids’ room, which was at a T-intersection of hallways. Hailey and her friends hid in the hallway just to the left of the open door. They pressed themselves against the wall, the jewels and shells poking into Hailey’s back. She stayed as still as possible and listened to the voices drifting towards them.
‘We will end your lives if you do not leave our palace. You cannot make us prisoners in our own home.’
‘I already have,’ Jake retorted. ‘And I’m here to talk to Amathia, not you.’ Hailey exchanged a confused look with her friends. What’s Amathia doing down here? Hailey couldn’t imagine her helping her sisters attack PET. In fact, she couldn’t imagine her helping her sisters with anything.
‘I would like to know why I have been arrested when I was not involved in my sisters’ attack,’ Amathia’s voice asked.
‘Is this true?’
‘Yes, Colonel,’ Scar said. ‘But as she is the nereids’ leader, we assumed she’d organised it.’
‘She is not our leader,’ Nemertes spat. ‘She is a traitor.’
‘I assure you, I was not involved. I would never aid my sisters in harming anyone.’
‘Let her go,’ Jake ordered. ‘And next time, ask me before assuming someone guilty and arresting them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘There is another matter I would like to discuss with you, Amathia. I’m giving you one last chance to let us past that barrier.’
‘Is your Hecate running out of spells?’ Amathia inquired, an edge of ridicule to her voice.
‘I’m giving you three days,’ Jake informed her. ‘If you don’t let us through the barrier in that time, I will blow up the palace and see what artefacts I can dig from the remains.’
‘I see.’ Amathia’s voice was even, not giving away the slightest inkling of fear or concern. ‘Thank you for the warning.’
Someone cleared their throat. Hailey’s head snapped around. A female soldier with jet black hair stood in the hallway. ‘Sir, you might want to have a look at this.’
Busted.
Jake marched from the room, his eyes widening with surprise for a second before focusing on Aaron. ‘Really, Aaron? I thought I taught you how to be stealthier than this. Obviously, you weren’t paying attention or you wouldn’t have been caught.’
‘I was more interested in hearing what you said to Amathia than staying hidden,’ Aaron retorted. ‘You can’t blow up the palace. This is a school now.’
‘I have orders to do whatever it takes to accomplish my mission.’
A muscle tightened in Aaron’s neck. ‘The palace isn’t yours. You can’t just come in and claim it. It belongs to Amathia.’
‘No, it doesn’t. Everything in this world belongs to humans now—including this palace. I don’t know why you care so much, considering you helped me take it.’
‘And I regret it. I like it here. This is a great school. You can’t take it away!’
‘You shouldn’t even be here. You’re an Other. This school is meant for those with god powers.’
Aaron flinched. ‘I see. I always knew you hated that I was an Other. That you were disappointed in me for not being an Ares like you. That’s the whole reason I did this. To show you I’m just as strong and capable as anyone with a god power. I betrayed my friends to make you proud and still all you see me as is a filthy Other. You know what, Dad. I’m done trying to make you proud. You can go to Tartarus for all I care.’ Aaron’s footsteps echoed down the hallway as he stormed off.
‘Aaron, wait,’ Jake called, taking a step to follow after his son.
Demi moved in front of him, blocking his path, and shook her head in disgust. ‘He deserves so much better than you.’ She stormed off too.
Hailey was lost for words. How could somebody be disappointed in their kid for being a Unique? Aaron’s betrayal was starting to make a lot more sense.
Jake turned to Alec, who still had his back pressed against the wall, almost as if he were trying to melt into it. ‘Will you talk to him for me? Tell him I didn’t mean anything by what I said.’
‘I… um… I.’ Alec swallowed, gulping down his fear, and straightened from the wall. ‘No. You can tell him yourself. Come on, Hailey.’
They both retreated down the hallway and back into the grounds, where Demi stood with her hands on her hips by the palace’s entrance. Hailey followed her gaze, spotting Aaron sprinting around the edge of the grounds.
‘Aaron, come back here,’ Demi shouted as he ran into the back of the grounds, vanishing out of sight. ‘You can’t outrun your problems.’
‘What’s going on?’ Jayden asked, jogging over to them from where he’d been sitting down with Cady a few yards away.
‘Aaron had a fight with his dad,’ Hailey explained.
‘And we also learned Jake is planning on blowing up the palace if he doesn’t get what he wants,’ Alec added.
‘What?!’
‘Yeah,’ Demi said. ‘We might have to do something about stopping that. Aaron, get over here. Now!’ Demi yelled as soon as he reappeared from the back of the palace.
Reluctantly, Aaron jogged over, panting. ‘What?’
‘Are you okay?’ Hailey asked.
He swiped away the sweat dripping down his face. ‘My dad just told me he hates me for being an Other. So no, not really.’
‘Screw your dad,’ Demi said. ‘He’s a jerk. I don’t know why you want to be like him.’
‘Yeah, Demi makes a good point,’ Alec agreed.
‘I’m done with him,’ Aaron declared, kicking a pearl; it skittered across the diamond ground and plopped into the water, sinking out of sight. ‘I don’t care what he thinks anymore.’ He sprinted off, starting to do laps around the palace again.
Demi sneezed. ‘Ugh, I hate getting sick.’
‘I think you should lie down,’ Hailey suggested. ‘You’re starting to look a little pale.’
‘Maybe I’ll get Kora to heal me.’
‘No.’ Jayden’s voice was stern. ‘You know Asclepiuses aren’t meant to heal things as simple as colds, because it weakens the immune system. You need to get over this yourself.’
Demi rolled her eyes. ‘Sometimes I wonder why we’re friends.’
‘Because secretly you like that I don’t let you get away with things.’ Jayden grinned and threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you back to the common room.’
‘Fine,’ Demi conceded, letting Jayden steer her into the palace.
‘So what are we going to do?’ Alec asked Hailey.
‘About Aaron?’ Hailey watched him loop around the grounds. She didn’t think there was much they could do. Aaron’s relationship with his dad was something he had to work out himself.
‘No, about his dad planning to destroy the palace. We can’t let him blow it up. It’s a piece of history.’
‘What can we do? There’s five of us and a team of them—and they all have guns.’ Hailey would have loved nothing more than to send Jake and his team away on a tornado, but she was pretty certain they’d shoot her before she even managed to conjure enough wind to sway the trees.
Alec rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know. Maybe we can talk to Amathia. See if she has a plan. Or try to convince her to give them what they want—access past the barrier. If the trident isn’t here, then she has nothing to worry about.’
Hailey watched Aaron sprint from behind the palace, following the edge of the grounds. He clearly didn’t want to talk right now. And someone needed to save this palace. ‘Okay, let’s find Amathia.’
Sneaking down to Amathia’s classroom was easy, since Scar hadn’t returned to his post at the stable doors.
‘I hope she’s inside.’ Alec reached a fist up, rapping against the mother-of-pearl door.
‘Enter.’ Amathia’s voice was crisp.
Hailey and Alec exchanged an unsure glance. Amathia sounded angry, and that wasn’t something they were used to. But Hailey supposed she had a right to be when someone was threatening to blow up the school she’d worked so hard to create, not to mention her home.
Hailey pushed into the room. Amathia sat behind her desk, glaring towards the door with venom-filled eyes so similar to Nemertes’s that Hailey took a step back. Her harsh features melted when she saw Hailey and Alec—clearly she’d been expecting Jake. ‘Hailey? Alec? What brings you to my classroom?’
‘Um, we kind of overheard what happened just before with your sisters and Jake,’ Hailey admitted, moving towards Amathia’s desk.
Amathia arched an eyebrow. ‘Eavesdropping, were we?’
‘No,’ Hailey said. ‘Okay, maybe. We just wanted to know what was happening.’
‘Well, as you heard, I was given an ultimatum.’
‘We want to help save the school.’ Alec pressed his hands against Amathia’s polished-coral desk.
‘That is very kind of you. But not your responsibility.’
‘But I can help.’ Alec glanced over his shoulder, checking to make sure they were still alone, before lowering his voice and saying, ‘My dad has a watwdaom atpkonaskdao.’
Curiosity sparkled in Amathia’s eyes. ‘A memory extractor?’
‘Yes. We can use it to take away PET’s memories of the palace and their mission. They’ll forget it ever existed.’
‘What are you talking about, Alec?’ Hailey frowned. ‘I remember your dad showing us the memory extractor, but it was just a replica. Do you think he can borrow the real one from the museum?’ It would solve all their problems; she couldn’t believe she’d never thought of it before.
‘It’s not a replica.’ Alec lowered his voice even more. ‘Nothing in our house is a replica. The replicas are in the museums. My dad protects the real relics so if anyone tries to steal from a museum, they’ll end up with a fake.’
‘Seriously? Why are you only suggesting this now? We could have used that memory extractor to get rid of PET when they first showed up.’
‘Shh,’ Alec hissed. ‘It’s top secret. Only my dad and some people high up in the TripleAS know about it—I’m not even supposed to know.’
‘That is very kind of you to offer, Alec,’ Amathia said. ‘But a watwdaom atpkonaskdao should only be used in the direst of circumstances. Memories make up a person. When you take away memories, you steal parts of the person they have become.’
‘But you’d only need to take the memories about Poseidon’s palace,’ Alec argued. ‘It wouldn’t change PET that much.’
‘Maybe not,’ Amathia mused. ‘But Aaron aided his father with gathering information about the palace. If you took Colonel Wynton’s memories away, he would forget that, and any relationship developments between him and his son would be forgotten as well.’
‘But isn’t it worth it if it saves the palace?’ Hailey argued. And from what she’d seen, Aaron and Jake definitely didn’t have a strong relationship. ‘And Aaron wants his dad gone too.’
Amathia tapped a finger against the blue glass teardrop hanging around her neck. ‘Thank you for bringing me this information. I’ll take it under consideration.’
Why is Amathia giving up the perfect chance to get rid of PET? ‘Do you have another plan?’
‘Unleash my sisters on them.’
Hailey’s eyes widened. The nereids would kill PET.
An amused smile broke over Amathia’s face. ‘I only jest. I will do everything in my power to ensure the palace stays intact.’
Thank the Tyches Amathia isn’t slipping to the dark side.
Alec straightened. ‘Why don’t you just give them what they want? Let them through the barrier.’
‘Because it is there for a reason,’ Amathia said simply.
‘What’s on the other side?’ Alec inquired. ‘Poseidon’s trident?’
‘It’s better for everyone to remain oblivious. There are some things in this world that no one should ever have. Such as that wand you discovered last year. Power changes people.’ Amathia smoothed out her dress and stood up. ‘Now, I think you best return to your common room before someone discovers you roaming the palace. And do not fear, I will protect this school. With my life, if I must.’
Hailey left Amathia’s classroom feeling no better than when she’d walked in. Amathia made it sound as though her only plan was to refuse to leave. She wondered if PET would even care about the nereids’ lives enough to not blow them up with the palace.
‘What if we hid the travelling necklaces?’ Alec broke the silence as they headed back down the hallway to the stable.
Hailey cocked an eyebrow. ‘What?’
‘If we hide the travelling necklaces, then PET can’t send us home.’
‘And they can’t destroy the palace if we’re still here.’ Hailey finished his thought, coming to a stop in the hallway to face him. ‘Alec, that’s brilliant!’ PET might not care about the lives of a few nereids, but there was no way they’d blow the students up. ‘But what if they have their own travelling necklaces? They could use them to get more back up.’
‘Their necklaces wouldn’t work here. The palace is protected by a spell that blocks anyone from using a foreign travelling necklace to get in. It’s the same for leaving the palace. Only the school’s travelling necklaces will work, because they’re specially designed to bypass the protective spell.’
‘Well that’s good,’ Hailey said, and then her heart sank as she realised the massive hole in their plan. ‘It won’t work. Not with Hart here. She can open a portal back to land and force everyone through.’
‘We’ll battle that minotaur when we cross it. Right now we need to get the travelling necklaces from the teachers.’
Hailey stared at Alec, suddenly realising how strange it was to hear him talking like this.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘It’s just you’re normally the one who wants to avoid getting involved in things. And now you want to go after PET.’
‘Poseido
n’s palace is a piece of history.’ He traced a finger over the jewels and seashells embedded in the crystal wall. ‘I can’t stand by and let someone blow it up. Now come on, let’s go see Madam Grayson.’
‘You’ll have to go and see her,’ Alec told Hailey as they came to a stop in front of the girls’ dormitories in their common room. ‘The soldier won’t let me in.’
‘I’ll be right back.’ Hailey disappeared through the door. She shot an uneasy glance at the soldier standing a few feet from her, just in front of the door to the common room, before knocking on the first door on the left. Please let this work. Please don’t let the soldier stop me.
The door opened a second later. Madam Grayson smiled at her. ‘Hailey, what can I do for you?’
‘I need to talk to you about something—private,’ she added with a sideways glance at the soldier.
‘Come in.’
Hailey walked into her overseer’s dorm, which had the usual double bed, along with a mother-of-pearl chest of drawers, and a polished-coral desk, which was stacked high with what looked like students’ essays. A coral bookcase stretched across the wall opposite her bed, cluttered with giant tomes similar to the ones Alec’s dad kept hidden under the floorboards in his library. The whole place smelled like ink and leather.
The door clicked shut behind her.
‘What do you want to talk about?’
Hailey fiddled with her necklace and wondered if this was a good idea. Would Madam Grayson simply hand the necklaces to her just because she asked? And if she did, how was Hailey meant to sneak them out? The soldier would see her and confiscate them. Plus she’d have to get the travelling necklaces from all the other overseers too. Maybe she and Alec should have thought the plan through more.
‘Hailey, what’s wrong?’
Hailey couldn’t back out now. She had to at least get Madam Grayson to agree to give her the necklaces. She and her friends could figure the rest out later. ‘Um, I came from Amathia and she said Jake is planning to blow up the palace if she doesn’t give him what he wants.’
Madam Grayson’s eyes widened. ‘What? Why would she tell you that? She hasn’t told the teachers anything. I need to see her.’
‘Wait.’ Hailey darted in front of the door before Madam Grayson could rush out. ‘Alec has a plan.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘If we hide the travelling necklaces then PET can’t evacuate the school, which means they can’t blow it up.’
Poseidon's Academy and the Deadly Disease Page 20
