Also, please remember that your right to access the secret archives depends on your status as a library employee. If you are no longer working in the library, you should not access the secret archives for ANY reason.
Yours,
Philippa Philipoulos
At least she only blind-copied me. Damian won’t know I’m involved. I wouldn’t want him to get suspicious and rush home from his honeymoon. The last thing I need is Mom and Damian nosing around in the middle of my trying to find out what happened to Dad.
Mrs. Philipoulos said two volumes are missing. Clearly, one of them is Dad’s trial record. I wonder what else was taken.
The last e-mail is yet another blocked message.
To: [email protected]
From: [Blocked]
Subject: [No Subject]
Urian Nacus will not be able to decrypt my identity before our meeting.
Do not be late.
Just for ducks, I click print. When the blank page spits out, I slide it back into the paper tray. I’m so not surprised. If e-mails one and two wouldn’t print, it would be some kind of divine intervention if the third did.
Closing down my computer, I decide I need to get out of my room, out of this house. I need the clarity of thought that only running can bring. I grab the zip-up sweatshirt off the back of my chair. As I hurry through the living room, I try not to make eye contact. Xander is back and I’m not up for conversation. I can see him and Stella sitting on the couch—Stella flirtatiously turned to face him with one foot tucked up underneath her and Xander nonflirtatiously focused on whatever he’s writing in a spiral notebook.
Maybe I can get to the front door—
“Phoebe,” Stella calls out before I can escape, “are you okay?”
“Fine,” I say, hoping she’ll take the hint.
Of course subtlety is not her strong suit.
“Griffin looked pretty upset when he left.” She climbs off the couch and approaches me. Dropping her voice to a whisper, she asks, “Is everything all right?”
“Just peachy,” I say, and I can’t quite keep the emotion out of my voice.
But instead of pouncing on my trauma—I can just see her gloating to Adara over my continued torment—she puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “I’m sorry.” And then shocks the Hades out of me by adding, “If you ever need someone to talk to . . .”
“Sure.” I try to smile—and hide my shock at her apparently sincere offer. “Thanks.”
She smiles sympathetically.
“I’m going for a run,” I say, uncomfortable with this friendly Stella. I jerk my hand back over my shoulder, “I need some fresh air.”
Xander looks up at me, his lavender eyes wide and intent. He looks like he might say something, but I turn and head outside before he gets the chance.
I take the front steps two at a time. Those same steps where Griffin almost first kissed me. Right after I found out he was a duty-bound descendant of Hercules. Right before I found out I was part of some elaborate bet between him and Stella and Adara. I should have listened to my gut the first time. Then my heart wouldn’t be shattering right now.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at our rocky end. We had a pretty rocky beginning, even if the time between was smooth and wonderful.
“Phoebe,” Xander calls out. Then, when I don’t stop, he shouts, “Castro!”
I. Have. Had. Enough.
Whipping around and jogging back to the porch, I snap, “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he says—like he knows an apology is the only thing that can undermine my fury. “I shouldn’t have stormed out like that earlier. You’re going through a tough enough time without my making things worse.”
“Fine,” I say. “Apology accepted. Can I go now?”
Before he can answer, I turn and jog down the path leading to the dock—to the beach. To my left, the front lawn of the Academy stretches out into a rolling green hill that leads down to the cove. Ahead, I can see the Aegean, inky black and rippling in reflected moonlight from the starry sky. It’s so peaceful and calming and completely at odds with the emotions running through me.
How can Griffin make me feel so good and so rotten at the same time? Why did he go back to Adara? Does she have something I don’t—other than bleached blonde hair and a cheerleader uniform?
Does she, like Mitzi Busch, offer something I haven’t?
When he said he didn’t know why he’d stayed with her so long, I’d believed him. When he told me about his mom’s oracle reading, I’d really thought we’d be together forever. I’d thought he was my one.
Had I really been such a fool?
With only a hint of a moon out tonight, I can barely see the path down to the dock. It’s only because I’ve climbed this path dozens of times that I make it to the bottom without stumbling. Usually I take a right, to the long stretch of perfect white beach that just screams for a run. But tonight the tide is really low and there’s a thin sliver of shore leading off to the left.
Without another thought, I head left. The strip of sand—still wet from a higher tide and solid beneath my Nikes—winds beneath the cliffs and the village perched overhead. It’s quiet and secluded—the beach isn’t usually bustling with activity after dark unless it’s bonfire night—and it’s a relief to know I won’t be running into anyone. Company is the last thing I’m looking for. As I hurdle a low rock outcropping, I think about my promise to Nola. She always gives people second chances. And third and fourth and fifth chances. So it’s not exactly a surprise that she wants me to give Griff a second opportunity to explain. I don’t want to—I feel like I’ve already given him tons of opportunities—but I can’t break a promise. Not to Nola.
I’m just wondering how to go about giving Griffin another chance to explain—do I go after him, or do I wait until he comes to me?—when I feel water slosh over my Nikes.
“What the—?”
I look down. The sliver of beach is two feet thinner than when I started out. I hope it just naturally narrows down as it goes. But a quick glance behind me reveals that the entire strip of beach is disappearing. About a hundred yards back, it’s completely gone. Which can only mean one thing.
“Rising tides,” I exclaim.
How could I have been so stupid? If the tide is low and I’m suddenly seeing a beach that’s never been there before, it’s probably because it’s not there during high tide. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
I have to decide quickly what to do, because it’s not like I can scale the cliffs if the tide comes in. Behind me, the beach is already underwater. My only choice is to press on and hope the beach opens up around the curve up ahead.
Kicking into a sprint, I try to calm my racing heart. Fear sends adrenaline pumping through my blood, and that’s only going to cloud my judgment.
I’ve never been a short-distance dasher, but I make the two hundred yards to the curve in the beach in record time.
My calves are on fire and my heart is racing out of control. I’ve never felt so keyed up.
As I speed around the rocks, I heave a huge gasp of relief. There’s a nice wide beach, deep enough to stick around for high tide. Some of it even looks familiar.
There’s a cluster of bushes along the cliff wall that I know I’ve seen before. I remember—it’s the beach where Griffin took me when we made up last fall. The last training session before the Cycladian Cup.
That’s when I know that one day I’ll thank Nola for making me give Griffin a second chance. The memory of how great it felt to know he cared about me, how great it felt to take his hand and know that nothing stood between us anymore. I want that again.
“What do you mean you didn’t tell her?” a muffled female voice demands.
I’m not sure what makes me do it—instinct, fear, or knowledge beyond my years—but I dive behind a big boulder. I hear the sound of footsteps on gravel and then silence. Whoever was talking must have just reached the beach.
“How could I?” an intim
ately familiar male voice replies.
Griffin.
“She still doesn’t trust me,” he says. “She thinks I’m cheating on her.”
“Oh, and not telling her what’s going on is definitely going to make that better.”
Is that Adara? I can’t see for sure. I dare a peek around the edge of the boulder and catch a glimpse of blonde. Her back is to me, so I can’t tell. But it has to be . . . right?
“I know that, Nicole,” he says.
Nicole?
Everything crashes to a stop. There’s no wind whistling through the trees. No waves crashing on the beach. No breath leaving my body.
“You can’t tell Phoebe,” he says. “If she knew what was going on, then she might . . .”
The rest of his sentence gets lost as the world rushes back to life around me. There’s a roaring in my ears that I can’t shake away. Then my hearing finally clears as he says, “I don’t want her to get hurt.”
Why does Nicole know the secret I’m not allowed to know? And why would whatever they’re doing wind up hurting me? It’s bad enough knowing Griffin has betrayed me with Adara. I expect that from her and should have known better about him. But Nicole? She is the closest thing I have to a best friend on this island.
How could they do this to me?
In that instant, my mind focuses entirely on one thing: getting away from this beach. Away from where I learned about this latest betrayal. Away, away, away.
Eyes closed, I feel a tingling spread over my skin.
When I blink open, I’m in my room.
Great, I finally do something useful with my powers, and I can’t even enjoy it. I’m too busy worrying about my world crumbling around me.
“I didn’t hear you come home,” Stella says when I stumble out of my room two tear-filled hours later.
I barely glance at her before continuing to the kitchen. All my crying has left me severely dehydrated and I need liquid like nobody’s business. Taking a dirty glass from the sink, I fill it with tap water and chug. I don’t even have the energy to twist the cap off a Gatorade.
“What happened to you?”
I flick Stella a glance over my glass. Her generally superior look gradually fades as I just stare at her.
When I finish the last drop in my glass, I set it in the sink and start to leave the kitchen. Stella steps in front of me. She grabs my shoulders with both hands, dips down to look in my eyes, and announces, “You autoported.”
“What?”
“Autoported,” she repeats. “You shimmered yourself home, didn’t you?”
“How can you tell?” Then I remember she can read minds. “Never mind.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Your mind’s too much of a mess for me to read right now. You have a residual glow in your eyes. That only happens when someone has recently autoported.”
I shrug. I’m in no mood to be analyzed or critiqued or judged or whatever she’s trying to do right now.
“I know you’re hurting,” she says, her voice soft with understanding, “but autoportation is the most advanced of all dynamotheos powers. We need to figure out how this happened.”
“Stella, I—”
She squeezes my shoulders. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this right now unless I thought it was really important.”
Her pale gray eyes are steely with resolve. Clearly, I’m not escaping this session. “Just let me splash some water on my face.”
Stella nods and lets me go freshen up.
When I get back, she’s in the dining room with a bunch of papers spread out over the table. She glances up when I walk in.
“Feeling better?”
“A little,” I answer honestly.
“Good,” she says, “because I need you to tell me everything about the situation that led to your autoportation.”
As I sink into the chair opposite hers, I meet her eyes straight on. I don’t really want to tell her what just happened—we may be friendly at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to share personal details of my love life. But, the truth is, I’m a little freaked out by the whole autoportation thing. It’s not like I controlled it. I didn’t even see it coming.
What if I accidentally autoport myself to the Gobi Desert? Or the bottom of the ocean? Or the middle of a Mary-Kay convention? I shudder at the thought of all the makeup and pep.
Considering the risks of not understanding what happened, it’s far less frightening to tell Stella the truth.
“Well, I went for a run,” I begin. “To clear my head . . .”
For the next thirty minutes, I spill every last detail of the last few days, everything from the instant I turned Damian into a surfer dude up until I autoported back to my room. I even trash on Adara and her boyfriend-stealing games, despite the fact that she and Stella are friends.
Stella doesn’t say a word. Just scribbles notes in a pink spiral-bound while I babble on. And on. And on.
“All I could think of was being away from there and then . . .” I gesture toward my room. “I was.”
Finished, I take a deep breath and slump back against my chair.
Wow. I feel a lot better just getting that off my chest.
“I’d like to try an experiment,” Stella finally says. She places her pen in the center of the table. “Simple telekinesis. Pick this up.”
When I start to reach for it, she says, “No. Not with your hands.”
Okay. Concentrating all my energy on the pen, I try to move it toward me. Instead of sliding in my direction, though, it spins in circles for several seconds before flying off the table and heading point first into the nearest wall.
“I know what your problem is,” she announces.
“Great.” I’m glad someone does. “Tell me.”
“You were trying to move the pen.”
“Well, duh.” I hold her gaze to keep from rolling my eyes—she is trying to help me, after all. “That’s what you told me to do.”
“The approach is all wrong.” She pushes back from the table and retrieves the pen from the wall. “You were thinking about moving the pen—which you did—when you need to think about having the pen in your hand.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it.”
Stella replaces the pen on the table. “Focus your thoughts on the pen being in your hand already. Imagine it there. Believe it is already in your—”
While she is talking, I try what she suggests. I picture the pen in my hand, like I can already feel the cool plastic in my palm. And then, while Stella is still talking and I’m still skeptically expecting the pen to zip into the living room, I feel a gentle weight in my hand.
When I glance down, Stella’s pen is lying across my palm.
“I did it,” I say, stunned. Looking up at her, I repeat, “Omigods, I did it!”
She takes her pen back and starts scribbling more notes.
“Does that mean I’m cured?”
Glancing up, gray eyes sparkling, she says, “Not yet.” Before I can slump in defeat, she adds, “But it’s a start.”
We share a smile of success. For the first time in my life, a success off the cross-country course feels almost as good as winning a race. Almost. But, like Stella said, it’s a start.
CHAPTER 9
TELEKINESIS
SOURCE: ARES
The ability to move objects through nonphysical means. Ability varies depending on size and weight of object and distance moved. May be combined with Aerokinesis to magnify strength of ability. Generally the first power to manifest in young hematheos.
DYNAMOTHEOS STUDY GUIDE © Stella Petrolas
MONDAY MORNING I show up on the Academy steps early. Not that I’m eager for camp or anything, but after spending all last night—and the three previous nights—trying to get to sleep, I just couldn’t stare at my ceiling a minute longer. At first I thought the Internet could be my diversion. But I finally disconnected Saturday afternoon after another unprintable blocked message and after moving the fi
fth e-mail from Griffin, unread, into the “Liars” folder. Even running myself to the point of exhaustion three days in a row hadn’t helped.
At least camp will be a welcome distraction.
“Never thought I’d see you here early.”
I turn at the sound of Xander’s voice.
“Yeah, I could say the same about you,” I say, leaning my head back against the cold marble column.
I hear his footsteps approach and then the sounds of him sitting next to me, but don’t open my eyes. With exactly zero hours of sleep and coming down from a weekend-long emotional roller coaster, I’m not in the mood.
Apparently, though, he’s not sensing my go-away vibes.
“Trouble in paradise?” he asks. Despite the cliché, he sounds serious.
“What do you care?”
“I don’t.”
I feel him lean back next to me against the column.
“Good,” I say.
For a minute I think he’s not going to say anything else. “Unless it’s affecting your powers training.”
Prying an eye open, I ask, “I beg your pardon?”
“If your problems with Blake are going to get in the way of your development, then we need to deal with this.”
“My problems with Blake—” I shake my head, “with Griffin have nothing to do with my powers.”
“You don’t think so?” He sounds all superior. Maybe he and Stella have more in common than I thought. “Let me tell you from experience that everything that affects your emotions affects your powers.”
Right. I almost forgot about his experience.
My spine stiffens as I turn my full attention on him. “Which reminds me,” I snap. “You could explain a little more about the test—and the consequences of failing it—since you’ve, you know, done that.”
His lavender eyes burn brighter for a second, but he doesn’t betray any other reaction.
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