Book 2 Chapter 2
1118 Words
2
“What are you doing?” A tiny voice squeaks near my ear.
I swat at the bat flying around my head. “Greg, we’re supposed to keep a low profile and stay in human form unless there’s danger,” I remind my bat-shifter friend.
“I know, that’s why I’m getting it out of my system before we leave campus.” He lands on my shoulder. “Gotta give the wings a good flapping or else they’ll be stiff the next time I use them.”
He does have a point. The back problems I suffered for most of my life were from keeping my wings hidden. For pretty much my entire life I had no idea they were there. My parents thought they were protecting me by casting a spell that kept my wings hidden deep inside me. I guess it’s hard to raise a daughter who’s half dragon, but I still can’t help but feel a little betrayed by all the lies they told me.
Once I find my mom, I’m first gonna give her the biggest hug ever (and, let’s be honest, probably cry all over her too), but after that—I’m gonna have some tough questions for her to answer.
The biggest will be asking who my real parents are, or at least, who my dad is. Turns out, I wasn’t entirely wrong when I was three and told my mom and dad I was waiting for my real parents to come get me. Back then, I was playing make-believe. Last year, I found out the cold, hard truth.
The parents who raised me aren’t my birth parents. When I arrived at the Academy, my friend Cassie helped me discover that years ago my birth mom was a student here as well. Adrianna Aspostolos died giving birth to me. The people I thought were my parents were students here at the time, too, and my dad—a foundling who’d been raised by the goddess Themis—snuck me off campus, along with my sister Mavis.
Why Mavis and I were secrets—and in danger—I have no idea. But I bet it has something to do with who my bio-dad is.
“Oh my gods, what are we waiting for?” the constantly cranky Hepatitis asks.
I’d wanted my healer friend, Fern, to be on our team, but she and her vampire girlfriend had a really big fight about how dangerous it might be and she decided to stay behind. Hepa has actual field experience and so it was strongly recommended I choose her as a replacement. And when Themis strongly suggests something, that means you do it and you don’t argue.
“Hey ladies, what did I miss?” A tall, dark, and too handsome for his own good, boy prowls toward us. Even in athletic sandals there’s an unmistakable grace to his movements that hints at the panther hiding beneath.
“Um, I’m here too, Jordan.” Greg pops back into human form. “I’m definitely not a lady. Not that I have anything against being a lady. I really like ladies. I’m saying lady too much, aren’t I?”
“You really are,” I agree.
“Oh, sorry, little guy.” Jordan claps Greg on the back. “I’ll try to remember your preferred pronouns for next time.” Even in human form Greg is on the diminutive side, and next to the much taller and more muscled Jordan the lack of stature is even more pronounced. We all stare at Jordan. “What?” he asks. “Hot guys can be woke.”
“Hi Jordan,” Hepa immediately perks up, the grumpy girl I know disappearing in a haze of fluttering eyelashes.
“Hey, uh…” Jordan looks flummoxed for a second. “Chlamydia?”
“Hepatitis,” I correct him quickly, before she can go for his eyes.
“Oh right, I knew it was something like that,” he says, flashing a smile that makes Hepa’s anger response diminish into a deep sigh. Like she might even agree that her name is an STD if he likes that better.
It’s impossible to be mad at this guy. He’s so friendly and open. You’d think he was a sheepdog shifter. Reaching under his shirt to scratch, Jordan asks, “Where we going again?”
An inbred sheepdog. ’Cause he’s not the brightest kid at school. He is, however, the best observer in the spy class. His specialty is to park his panther butt somewhere and watch, for days if he has to. Greg insists he’s never seen anyone better at concealed surveillance.
Another good thing about Jordan is he can double for a tracker, because let’s face it, Greg is not great at his job. Apparently, panther shifters are natural trackers. According to Greg, Jordan is an all-around, great guy…and he’d know, since they’re roommates. With Greg vouching for Jordan, I had to take him. So many people wanted to join our group—after I went all dragon at the Spring Fling I went from the loser new girl to an Academy legend.
Hepa sighs. “We went over the plan last night. There were handouts. And a PowerPoint presentation. I’m surprised she didn’t cap it off with a musical number.”
“Aw yeah, that woulda been solid,” Jordan agrees, totally missing Hepa’s sarcasm. And her point—that I am trying way too hard to be a good leader and have no idea what I’m doing.
The truth is, the last time I can remember leading anything was in second grade when my teacher would choose a different kid every week to be the line leader. The week I got chosen was Thanksgiving break, so I only got two days…and I totally got lost, too, leading the whole class into the fifth-grade wing, where we’d been intimidated by the taller, bigger, stronger kids.
And now here I am, leading a bunch of teenagers right into the mouths of taller, bigger, stronger monsters. That didn’t work out too well at the Spring Fling, when Darcy—a merman that my best friend Cassie had a crush on—was decapitated by a centaur.
I left that part out of the PowerPoint.
Greg was friends with Darcy too. It seems like everyone was. He even tried to help me find my inner shifter once. His death was hard on us all, no one more so than Cassie. And that’s why I will never accept what Ocypete told me—that the gods are the real villains.
No, Ocypete, I think. You were on the wrong side. Not me.
- Writer
