My Ex From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy)

by Darling, Tellulah

  Frustration overwhelmed me. Not to mention guilt that somehow my awakening as Persephone had inadvertently caused Cassie to come to harm.

  Where could she have gone? If I’d been standing outside the door, then the only way out was through the window.

  I headed outside to check the ground underneath, in case there were any clues. Footprints, tracks from a wheelbarrow in which her body had been dragged away. It was probably a little too Scooby Doo but I was desperate.

  There were marks around the low hedges in the flowerbed but they weren’t proof of anything. I sighed and stepped over a bag of fertilizer left on the ground. Pictures of bright, tropical flowers adorned the package.

  Flash! I saw myself cavorting in a meadow of the same flowers, which was so pathetic I wanted to puke. Apparently, though, this is what goddesses did for fun. As long as I wasn’t fertilizing anything, I could deal.

  My head was getting that lovely splitting open sensation again. No way was I going to space out down memory lane in public and risk looking like I was having a seizure. I needed to get somewhere private.

  I ran blindly into the school, barely able to see anything in the here-and-now as more memories assaulted me.

  The sun had been shining, hot and bright. I could feel it heating my skin through the layers of my filmy gown.

  I gazed down upon my body.

  Man, I’d been fine. Stupid Theo could have at least made sure I stayed the equivalent level of hotness.

  The air was perfumed with grass and a bouquet of floral aromas which should have been cloying but instead seemed to fuel me. I dug my toes into the cool earth. Because I actually was on earth. Somewhere tropical and lush. There was an almost overpowering scent of jasmine.

  I nearly collided with the wall in my haste to find somewhere private. There was a girls’ bathroom here. If I could just get inside.

  Further along, people strolled and children played but I knew they couldn’t see me unless I wanted them to. And I wanted to remain invisible. To enjoy the freedom of being alone.

  Things were so tense on Olympus. Zeus was always in a rage and everyone was terrified of setting him off. My mother was anxious because …

  The thought was elusive. There was something important that I needed to remember. But it wouldn’t come. I drifted back to that day.

  I got a prickling feeling like I was being watched. Could someone have followed me? I’d tried to be careful but I had nowhere near all the tricks of some of the other gods.

  I pivoted slowly and then I saw him. An impossibly gorgeous figure, radiating power.

  No. No more Mr. Tall, Dark, and Brooding. I tried to shake it off but like it or not, this was the memory I was stuck with. Fine. I fast-forwarded to Kai moving into the light. My first look at him. The version of Kai I saw in my memory looked like a taller, more powerful, and slightly older version of the Kai here at Hope Park.

  There was only one god he could be. Kyrillos, son of Hades. I’d heard of him but had never seen him. “Kyrillos,” I said, in a cool voice.

  He gave me a mocking bow. “Persephone.”

  “What business have you here?”

  He padded toward me slowly, like a jungle cat I’d seen in my travels, lithe and dangerous. I refused to be cowed and held my ground.

  He examined me slowly and smiled. “My father neglected to speak of your beauty.”

  He overwhelmed me. I didn’t like it so I turned to leave.

  He caught me in an iron grip and made me face him. “Not so fast, Goddess.” He traced my jawline with one finger.

  I suppressed the tremor I felt inside.

  “It pains me to do this.” He raised his hand and …

  Crack! My eyes startled open.

  “That must have been some dream,” Kai said. I realized the noise had been him shutting the door of the girls’ bathroom. “You were stumbling around. Zoned out. Figured I’d better bring you in here to make sure you didn’t kill yourself before you came to.”

  It was kind of disorienting to see Kai in this utilitarian bathroom when I’d just been thinking of him outside in the tropics. “You hit me,” I accused.

  “Huh?”

  “The first time we met. You hit me and kidnapped me.” I yanked a paper towel out of the plastic dispenser and blotted my forehead.

  “I don’t hit girls,” he scowled.

  “I wasn’t a girl. I was a goddess. Am a goddess. Stop ignoring the point.” Annoyed, I wadded the towel into a ball and threw it in the trash.

  “I didn’t hit you either, Goddess.”

  “Cut the crap. I remember. You raised your hand and …” I trailed off.

  He snorted. “I raised my hand and you attacked me.” He pointed to a tiny silver scar under his left eye. “Gave me that. Nearly lost an eye trying to get you down to Hades.”

  That could have been the truth. But of course a kidnapper would deny using force. It was another reason to be wary of him. I felt I should keep my suspicions to myself. For now. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” I sneered.

  He shrugged. “It was kind of hot.”

  “Oh brother.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t tell me you get off on kinky foreplay.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I am not having this conversation with you.”

  “Apparently, you are,” he replied, smugly.

  I had to change the subject because there was no way I could spar with him about sex when I had no idea what had or had not ever happened between us. What if I liked being restrained and screamed like a banshee? What if I turned into a banshee? You could see my dilemma.

  I cast around for a safe topic. “Cassie!” I sputtered. “What did you do with her?”

  He looked blank. “Who?”

  “Cassandra. The oracle?”

  “Cassandra is dead. Do you have an actual clue about anything?”

  “Not the Cassandra. My Cassandra. Cassie. My schoolmate. You were headed toward the nurse’s office—”

  “Looking for you. Who took off to avoid me.”

  “Giving you the chance to go get her and spirit her off,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “So she wouldn’t tell me that thing.”

  “What thing?” He sounded genuinely confused. But he could have been a really good actor.

  “I don’t know. You stopped her before she could tell me.”

  Kai swore. “You don’t make any sense. You pretend to be Bethany coming to meet me. Then you get mad. Kiss me.”

  “You kissed me first,” I pointed out. “Being all insufferable and arrogant.”

  “Arrogant? That’s hilarious. You’re the one who let me think you’d been gone all these years having met some horrific fate, when really you’ve been here playing dolls with Prometheus.”

  “You said ‘gone.’ Not ‘dead.’ You thought I was alive, didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t believe you were dead,” he grudgingly admitted. “It never felt right.”

  “Is that why you came here? You were looking for me?” I slid myself onto the cool, blue flecked counter and waited.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I figured if you’d been gone this long, you wanted to stay gone. It was brought to my attention that some random school was incredibly warded up. I wanted to know why.”

  He leaned in close and fixed me in his gaze. “Want to tell me what the past sixteen years were all about?” he asked in a low and deadly tone.

  “Not really,” I answered, since I couldn’t. “I want to know what you did with Cassie.”

  “Nothing. If I’d wanted to do something to her, you’d never have seen me coming. When you so rudely ignored me, I turned around and left.”

  “And followed me here.�
�

  He laughed. A sound so hollow it practically sounded painful. “I don’t need to follow you, Goddess. Ever since we kissed, you’ve been this burning GPS in my head. I know where you are every second.”

  I preened, liking that idea.

  “It’s driving me nuts and I want it to stop.”

  So much for that. “I thought I was supposed to be the big love of your life.”

  “I don’t even know you,” he retorted.

  I stared up at the overhead florescent light and shook my head, willing patience. “Nice attitude.”

  “You’re not Persephone. Just some human.”

  I stood up, making sure I postured myself into full height. “First off, it’s a species not a disease. I’m not going to infect you. Second, I am Persephone. You know it. That’s why you said ‘finally’ before you kissed me. I’m Persephone and I’m Sophie.”

  “How?” he demanded.

  “Theo put me in this form to keep me safe.”

  “From who? How much do you remember?”

  “Why? Got something to hide?”

  “Not as much as you,” he retorted.

  We glared at each other for a moment before he abruptly changed the subject. “They’re after you now, you know.”

  “I know. I saw them.”

  “Zeus and Hades?” He sounded incredulous.

  “No. Gold Crushers and Infernorators.”

  His brow creased in puzzlement.

  “Right, not the technical terms.” I scrambled to remember what Theo had called them. “A Pyrosim and a Photokia.”

  “And you escaped?”

  “I destroyed them. You might want to remember that as you continue to piss me off.”

  “It’s impossible. You’re human,” he retorted.

  “And a goddess. Get with the program.”

  He was really getting under my skin. Maybe I just wanted one others person from my past firmly in my corner in the present. Or maybe I’d ingested too much romantic garbage from the movies, but his lack of overwhelming joy at my appearance rankled.

  “So you have your powers?” Kai sounded doubtful.

  Jerk. My palms started to tingle. I raised my hands. Nothing happened.

  Kai crossed his arms across his chest. Totally unconcerned.

  I turned my palms over to check them out. They seemed fine.

  I refused to let him headtrip me. I was so going to strangle him with my trusty weapons. Yeah. Not what happened. Stupid defective hands.

  “Behold: nothing!” he pronounced.

  I deflated. “That went well.”

  Kai’s lips quirked. “Out of curiosity, did you think it was going to go better or worse?”

  I skewered him in a “not funny” glare. “I don’t get it. I smooshed those things. And I was able to show Hannah what I could do.”

  “I believe you,” he replied.

  “You do?” It was the last thing I expected from him.

  “Yeah. That is your power, after all. And since you wouldn’t know about the Pyrosim and Photokia if you hadn’t seen them, you must have destroyed them to survive.”

  “Why didn’t it work here, then?” I asked.

  “Your little friend Prometheus didn’t fill you in?”

  I glared at him, not wanting to implicate Theo in anything. Not to Kai, anyway. If Theo was keeping stuff from me, we’d have that out later.

  “You haven’t been outside since, have you?” Kai motioned to the small frosted window, set high in the wall.

  “Not for long. But I don’t see how that matters.”

  “You need to recharge. You’re Spring. You’re tied to nature and the outdoors. Like the ultimate solar battery.”

  “So my crummy power has conditions? Figures.”

  “Even Superman had Kryptonite. Besides, fresh air is good for you.”

  I took a deep breath and blurted out before I could think twice, “So where does this leave us?”

  Kai stared at me, then shrugged. “Wish to Hades I knew. I’ll see you around, Sophie Bloom.” Then he left.

  That was highly unsatisfying. Which seemed to be the tone of all our encounters. While he certainly wasn’t chatty about why he was here at Hope Park, I did believe him about Cassie. About the fact that if he wanted to harm someone, they wouldn’t know until it was too late. And he wouldn’t be caught. I filed that piece of info away under “up the security threat of this guy to DEFCON 2.”

  My concentration was shot so I headed back to my room. Theo and Hannah were waiting for me.

  “She’s gone.” Hannah was visibly upset. “Her roommate, Jessica, said that when she returned to her room after class, Cassie’s stuff wasn’t there. Ms. Keeper was waiting for her to tell her that Cassie’s parents had come to get her and that Cassie was being hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. She won’t be here for the remainder of the term.”

  “Jessica didn’t believe it, did she?”

  “She wasn’t sure what to believe.” Theo said. “She saw Cassie leave class and couldn’t understand what else it could be. Why would Ms. Keeper lie about it?”

  “That’s the million dollar question.” I frowned. “Ms. Keeper appears and Cassie disappears? It’s too much of a coincidence. We need to find out more about this woman.”

  “The timing sucks,” Theo agreed.

  “You think it’s related?” Hannah asked.

  “I’m not willing to chance it,” he replied.

  “But you said you’d be able to tell if anyone from Olympus was here,” I retorted.

  “This goes way beyond Olympus. I had no idea Kai was here until you told me. Thing is, how did she get past the wards on this place?”

  “Kai did,” Hannah pointed out.

  Theo shook his head. “The wards keep out anyone intending to cause Sophie physical harm. And encourage Sophie to stay in. Whatever brought Kai here, it wasn’t to hurt Sophie.”

  “Unless we count head games,” I muttered.

  “Head games won’t get you killed unless you leave school grounds,” Theo replied. “My guess is he’s on a recon mission to learn what happened and report back.”

  “At which point he’ll try to kidnap me again?” Was I going to have to constantly look over my shoulder?

  “Not if you stay within school grounds, he can’t.”

  “Let’s reason this out,” Hannah said. “If Ms. Keeper isn’t here to hurt Sophie, then what? Especially since the only one who may have come to harm is Cassie?”

  “We have to draw her out,” I said. “It’s the only way.”

  “Absolutely not.” Theo was adamant. “We don’t want a total cockup. Nothing happens until we know why she’s here. If she’s even a problem. We don’t want to tip our hand that we’re on to her.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I should just sit here and do nothing? Cassie could be killed.”

  “Whatever has happened to Cassie is most probably done. We will get to the bottom of this.”

  There was about as much a chance of me being patient as there was of me winning the Miss America pageant. Actually, if I’d still had my original body, then the odds would have been on me wearing that crown. I had to take action. Goddesses didn’t just sit there. What was the point of being a deity if all I did was dance around in meadows?

  I needed to use myself as bait and see if I caught a Counselericus Evilicus. The only question was how?

  The answer came to me the next day. Even though he’d only been at Hope Park two days, Kai had become the flavor of the month. I sat on the bleachers during lunch, watching him play soccer with some guys in the grass center of our track.

  It was difficult to tell who was trying harder to impress him, the jocks on the fiel
d or the girls on the sidelines. The more impervious he remained, the more they fell all over themselves.

  It surprised me that certain guys were trying to gain Kai’s favor. Like the husky Jackson Birt. Jackson might have resembled a grizzly, but he was definitely not smarter than your average bear. His motor skills sucked, too. Brother should have stuck to feats of brute strength because watching him attempt to juggle the ball from foot to foot was just embarrassing. Although perhaps less so than Veronica Chen scooting around to remain in Kai’s line of sight at all times. The highlight being when she elbowed Bethany in the head. I grinned just as Kai suppressed his own and caught my eye.

  Even from this distance, I felt the chemistry crackle between us. Until he ruined it by looking abruptly away and bestowing a crooked grin of sympathy on Bethany.

  Kai didn’t count as human so Hannah’s rules didn’t apply. I could get him alone and …

  That was it! I would go outside, alone at night, and do some training. Unleash my power. If Ms. Keeper was here because of me, she’d be bound to come and check it out. Especially with me all vulnerable and by myself. It made perfect sense to me.

  I heard a burst of female laughter and glanced over at the group of popular kids. Given the way Bethany, Veronica, and a couple of other girls were staring at me, a crack had obviously just been made at my expense.

  I consoled myself by imagining acts of horrible retribution, while I thought more about my plan.

  I didn’t say a word to Theo and Hannah. They’d just forbid it or want to come with me and I couldn’t take that risk. Hannah was human and as such, killable. For all intents and purposes, Theo was as well. I doubted he had any powers. Given how many times he must have wanted to kill me over the years, the fact that I was still standing had to be evidence of his lack of super power, not his abundance of will power. Because had I been Theo, I sure would have blasted me on more than one occasion.

  And while I probably was killable too, at least I had powers and a fighting chance.

  I snuck out after bed check in warm, loose clothes. I decided to practice as far away from the school as possible while still staying on the property. It put me back where I’d seen Kai that first night.