Goddess Boot Camp (24 page)

He’s right. That’s the question. Why am I really holding back?

From what everyone has said about Dad’s death, he knowingly used his powers to help the Chargers win the AFC play-offs. That violates a major
hematheos
rule about using our powers for advancement in the
nothos
world. If we didn’t have that rule, then
hematheos
would control the planet—which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but it wouldn’t be fair. He broke a rule and he was punished. That’s the bottom line. Right?

But what if it isn’t? What if he didn’t knowingly break the rule? Or what if he hadn’t been given a warning? Or what if he was forced to—

“I think . . .” I start, but my voice catches in my throat.

Griffin pulls us to a stop, tugs me into his arms, and just holds me. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t press me to say anything. Just comforts me until I get my emotions under control.

“I think,” I finally say around the knot in my throat, “I’m afraid to find out that he was given a choice. That the gods asked him to choose between football and—”

More tears.

Griffin rubs my back in rhythmic circles.

“What if he was forced to pick football or us?” I choke out. “And he picked football?”

“Shhh.” Griffin hugs me close, smoothing his hand over my hair and trying to calm me.

“I just . . .” I stammer between sniffs. “I just don’t think I could stand it if I found out he’d been given the choice, and hadn’t chosen us.”

“Listen to me,” Griffin says against my ear. “There is nothing that says you have to read the record. Ever.”

Damian said pretty much the same thing. But I feel like I should want to know. Like it shouldn’t matter what I find, I should want the truth.

“Part of me wants to know. Either way. Whatever the record says, knowing is better than not knowing.” My voice is muffled against Griffin’s chest. “But part of me is afraid.” I bite my lip. “Afraid I’ll lose the memory of him. That it will be forever changed because I’ll always know that I—that I wasn’t as important to him as football.”

“You know that isn’t—”

“No, I don’t,” I say, my voice tinged with desperation. “He might have made a conscious decision to use his powers in football—that would be bad enough. But what if he didn’t knowingly use them? That would be a million times worse.”

“I don’t see why you—”

“Because that would mean deep down in his soul, football came first.”

And what if, deep down in
my
soul, running comes first? If my dad couldn’t help breaking the rules to win, then I might do the same thing. I might wind up with the same fate.

I can’t say that out loud. It’s too . . . possible.

Griffin squeezes me tighter, like he can sense my thoughts. Or at least my emotions.
Psychospection
is a welcome power at times like this. I let my tears soak into his shirt. I think we both realize that nothing he could say would make this any better.

Because all I can think is
What if I have to spend the rest of my life in fear of crossing that invisible line?
That’s the scariest thing of all.

CHAPTER 12

CORPOPROMOTION

SOURCE: HERMES

The ability to use the body to its fullest extent. This power may manifest as superior stamina, extraordinary healing ability, and athletic talent. Can, depending on the
hematheos
heritage, result in superior physical grace, rhythm, and affinity for dance. Descendants of Hephaestus lack this power entirely.

DYNAMOTHEOS STUDY GUIDE © Stella Petrolas

“PHOEBE, WAKE UP.” A voice penetrates my dream. Then the owner of the voice shakes me awake. “Dad and Valerie will be home in a few hours and you’re going to be late for camp. Get
up
.”

I try burrowing under the comforter, hoping Stella will take the hint and go away. Not that she’s ever been one to take hints.

“Don’t make me get the ice water,” she warns.

I grunt in response.

I want to get back to my dream—in which I not only win the Pythian trials tomorrow, but also the Pythian Games
and
the Olympics . . . but all while running underwater. I know, dreams never make sense.

Besides, Stella wouldn’t really—

“I warned you,” she says, a split second before my comforter is jerked away and a splash of freezing water hits my forehead.

Bolting up, I shout, “Are you insane?” Wiping at the water before it can trickle down to my neck and other sensitive areas, I give her my best you’d-better-run glare. “You can give a person a heart attack doing that.”

“Stop being so dramatic.” She holds the still-half-f glass over me. “Now get out of bed before I dump the rest on you.”

She disappears before I can even begin to think of ways to murder her and hide the body.

Well, I’m fully awake now—my dream is out of reach—so I swing myself out of bed. It wasn’t the ice water that jolted me awake so much as the reminder that Mom and Damian are getting home today.

Though I could be relieved that Damian is about to be home and can help me train, I’m terrified. Even though he said it could happen at any time, I felt pretty certain the gods wouldn’t spring the test on me while Damian was off the island. With his return comes the looming reminder that I’m going to be tested, and soon. Summer solstice is only days away.

As I splash water on my face, my stomach is full of butterflies. What kind of test will it be? Will I be able to figure out it’s the test before I fail miserably? And what really will happen if I fail? I’m picturing me chained to a boulder while a giant eagle pecks out my liver when Stella opens the bathroom door.

“You’re not even dressed,” she points out.

Not willing to dignify her statement by turning around, I give her reflection a look that says,
Duh.

“Hurry up already,” she says, giving me the speed-it-up gesture. “I don’t want to be late today.”

Rather than point out that
she
doesn’t have to be late, even if
I
am—since when does she wait for me?—I ask, “What’s the rush? Why are you so excited about today?”

“No reason,” she says. But I see the twinkle in her eye.

She’s up to something.

“Be on the front porch in five,” she says. “Or I’m zapping you to camp, dressed or not.”

As if the butterflies in my stomach weren’t bad enough, now they’re swirling up a storm at the thought of what she has cooked up for today. I can only imagine it will end in my total embarrassment—as always.

But, since my getting zapped into the middle of camp in my smiley-face boxers would mean certain humiliation, I speed up my routine and beat Stella to the front porch by a good thirty seconds.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I ask as we descend the steps and head toward school.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “I like keeping you on your toes.”

When we pass by the turn for the front entrance, I ask, “I thought we were meeting in the courtyard today?”

“We were.” She smiles cryptically. “Plans change.”

We round the back of the school, where Adara and Xander are waiting. Adara looks annoyed. Xander looks . . . well, also annoyed, but that’s how he always looks.

There are no little campers around.

“What’s going on?” I ask nervously. One or two of the ten-year-olds are always early. “Where is everyone else?”

“They’ll be here later,” Stella explains. “At ten.”

“At ten?” I look for my watch, only to find my wrist empty. “I thought it was ten.”

“It’s eight,” Adara says, crossing her arms across her chest.

Spinning on Stella, I ask, “Why am I here two hours early?”

Xander, silent until now, steps forward. “This is my idea.”

“We think this might help you take your powers control to the next level,” Stella explains.

They are being intentionally vague and evasive. I’m immediately on guard. If this were some simple exercise, they’d just tell me without all the dramatic suspense. “What is ‘this’ exactly?”

No one answers.

Adara steps forward, carrying a black sash. “Trust me?”

It’s only half a question. Asking me and telling me to trust her at the same time. A week ago, I would have shouted, “No way!” But ever since she shared her darkest secret, we’ve had a kind of understanding. She hasn’t once threatened to smote me.

I turn my back, letting her secure the sash over my eyes.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “Guess how many fingers you’re holding up?”

“Not exactly,” Xander says, moving closer and taking my elbow. He leads me . . . somewhere. All my senses are on high alert because I can’t see my surroundings. I can hear the crunch of our footsteps on the gravel path.

“So . . .” I say as the scent of pine fills my nostrils. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“You’re going to complete an obstacle course.”

“Blindfolded?” I stop in my tracks, only slightly pleased to feel Xander jerk to a stop next to me. “Are you crazy?”

I reach up to rip off the blindfold, but Xander’s hands clamp around my wrists.

“Listen to me,” he says, his voice low and close. “In order to tap into your powers, sometimes you have to stop relying on your senses. You don’t need to see the obstacles to overcome them.”

“But what if I get hurt?” An image of me sitting in the bleachers at the Pythian Games, my leg encased in a massive cast, sends a shiver through me. “The trials are tomorrow and I need to be in peak condition.”

“I placed a protection on you,” Stella says. “Nothing will happen to you while you’re on the course.”

I relax a little.

Until Adara adds, “But if you use the protection, you’ll fail that obstacle.”

“Fail?” My heart thumps. “Is this my test?”

“No,” Xander answers. “But treat it as if it were.”

I start to ask more questions, but he cuts me off. “Remember when I said I hoped you never found out the consequences of failing the test?” he asks, like I could forget. I’ve been stressing about it ever since. He continues, “Well, that’s not exactly the truth. What I meant was I
knew
you would never find out.”

“You knew?” That makes no sense. “What do you—”

“No one at school knows my heritage,” he says, his voice low and right next to my ear so the girls can’t hear. “Only Headmaster Petrolas knows I’m a descendant of Narcissus.” He pauses, and then adds, “His son.”

Whoa. That means he’s even farther up the tree than I am. He makes my three degrees of separation seem like a seventh cousin thrice removed.

I remember the myth about Narcissus. He was completely infatuated with his own reflection, in love with his own perfection to the exclusion of everything else. I’m surprised Xander confided in me, but now his feelings about superficiality make a lot more sense.

“Believing he had learned his lesson on self-absorption, the gods paroled him with a grant of temporary immortality.” Xander’s voice wavers a little. “He met my mother. And quickly proved he had learned nothing.”

For a jaded rebel boy, he sure is sharing a lot of very personal info. He must have a reason. I ask, “What does that have to do with me?”

“To make up for having to be
his
descendant,” Xander explains, “and to protect me from succumbing to the same fatal flaw, the gods granted me the ability to see beneath the surface in others. I can see into a person’s deepest center. Do you know what I see in you?”

I shake my head.

“A great and powerful
hematheos
,” he whispers, “with a pure heart.”

That heart beats a little faster.

“You will succeed, Phoebe.”

Then he turns me, gives me a little push, and I know he’s gone. I feel completely alone. Part of me is tempted to take off the blindfold and go home—I’m too old for games like this. But the rest of me knows that I have to do this. Solstice is days away, and after that little
autoporting
stunt I pulled in our training run, I know I need to get my powers under control once and for all.

Before something irreversible happens.

As worried as I am about the trials tomorrow, I won’t be running
any
races if I’m smoted to Hades. This is more important than a single competition.

I focus my energy on my surroundings, trying to get a sense of what I have to do. I take three steps forward, then stop. An image of a fallen tree pops into my mind. I see it blocking the path, its tangled branches daring me to try climbing over. Carefully—like I’m feeling for the last step in the dark—I take a step forward.

Bending down, I feel around for what I sense is there. When my hand hits the rough bark of a pine trunk, I shriek, “It’s really a fallen tree!”

No one responds, but I know they’re watching.

Telekinesis
flashes in my mind like a neon sign.

Great, if this obstacle tests a single power, I bet the rest of the obstacles test the rest of the powers. Thank the gods I finally studied Stella’s guide.

I focus on moving the tree out of the path, on the tree already
being
out of the path. Two seconds later, I sense that it’s gone.

Forcing myself to trust my instinct, I take a step forward. Then another. And another. Until I’m well past the spot where the fallen tree had blocked my path.

“How was that for perfect?” I shout to the course.

Excited by my success, I turn and move on to the next obstacle. Twenty paces into the woods, I feel a spray of water across my face. An image of flood-making heavy rain appears.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I mutter. When Adara tied the blindfold over my eyes five minutes ago, the sky was cloudless clear blue. Now it’s pouring?

Must be obstacle number two.

Stay dry,
I hear in my mind.

Okay. I hold out my hand, which promptly gets soaked in the deluge two feet in front of me.
Hydrokinesis,
I think. Control and movement of water. As I take a step forward, I focus on the water not hitting me.
I’m staying dry,
I think.
Not a molecule is going to hit me.