Fire & Flood (Mythverse #1)

Book 4 Chapter 2

2

BJ is not happy about the flight arrangements.

“You’re flipping kidding me?” she’d screamed at me when I first told her we were flying in a regular plane to get to sss Academy. “You’ve got free wings and I gotta pay my way?”

She had a full-on pout session when I explained to her that those are the rules. Every contestant must get to the island under their own power. Of course she was then irritated that we were flying coach, and I have to admit that her best ball gown is a little at odds with the cramped, business like cabin. When I gave her outfit choice the side-eye, BJ said the competition might not have started yet, but she wants to make an impression. The kind that she said makes the other girls step back about two feet…hopefully off a cliff.

Even though I wasn’t sure about her tactics, I was happy that she was at least already thinking competitively.

Now, I squirm in my seat, highly uncomfortable. Our wind speed velocity has not been stable and we’ve hit more than a few thermal pockets. We’ve been bouncing around for the past thirty minutes as a storm tossed our plane like a leaf in autumn. I tell Brandee Jean that, leaning over and deciding to make conversation to calm my nerves.

“A leaf in autumn?” she repeats. “We didn’t get an autumn this year. Wisconsin went straight from summer into winter and the trees were so confused some of them decided to die rather than figure it out.

“Mama made the same choice, downing the rest of a bottle of Valium and telling me to make sure I kept using the whitening toothpaste, because by god, the world would rise again, and so would the beauty pageant circuit.”

I press back into my seat, horrified. “BJ, I’m so sorry. I had no idea... I didn’t know your mother had passed away.” And never thought to ask, I reprimand myself. I was so intent on getting BJ out of Wisconsin that nothing else mattered. “Were you close?”

“Mama gave birth to me at sixteen,” Brandee says. “She hid the pregnancy up until the day she gave birth, rushed to the hospital from chemistry class. When she got home, her parents locked the doors against her. Though they said they’d take me. She showed ’em her two middle fingers and left. Never saw them again. I don’t even know where they live.”

“I understand,” I say, nodding. “My own family life is—”

“I dug a big deep hole for Mama in the backyard,” BJ interrupts, as usual just allowing her thoughts to take the path to her mouth. “Didn’t take long with my new strength. But in the end, I couldn’t put her in it. I didn’t want to be sitting outside, talking to a patch of grass. It was wrong. I wanted to see her face. Hold her hand. And I didn’t want to be living in Mama’s house without Mama.”

“Yes,” I say. “I can see why—”

“So I preserved her the best way I knew how. I sure hope no one goes poking around our house. If they do, they’re gonna get a big surprise when they open the freezer chest in the basement. Once I get Zeus’s powers, I’ll come back for her. Maybe I’ll make friends with a vampire and they can turn her after the fact. I’m pretty sure stranger things have happened.”

“Well,” I try again. “My boyfriend is—”

“But I can’t think about Mama right now,” BJ sighs. “I’ve got a shot at being the next Zeus. So how did Zeus die, anyway?”

“Uh…” I glance around at the other passengers, but most are asleep, and not that many seats are full, anyway. Not a lot of people can afford vacations during the apocalypse. The only passengers even close to us are another pair of teenage girls; a black-haired beauty and... oh s**t. Are you kidding me? How did we end up on the same plane?

BJ follows my gaze and locks eyes with one of them, who stares daggers back.

“What’s her problem?” BJ mutters.

“Just ignore Tina.”

“Wait…you know her?”

“Yeah,” I say, settling into my seat and trying to resist the urge to slide down. I swear I can feel her gaze on the back of my skull “She’s my old roommate. She’s mentoring the vampire princess.”

“That girl with cheekbones is my competition?”

“Technically, we all have cheekbones,” I tell her. “Tina is trying to get back into the good graces of the vampires. It’s a long story.”

“Girl, as my guide in all this, you need to tell me when an opponent is sitting five feet away. And when she’s a freaking vampire. Give me the deets. Now. Mama always said, know your enemy. Well, she actually said, ‘Google your enemy,’ but the internet’s spotty these days.”

I sigh. “Look, I don’t know much. Sophia is vampire royalty. She’s been training her whole life to be a leader, and now she inherited something extra from Zeus as well. She’s going to be hard to beat.”

BJ nods in agreement. “Especially since I don’t know what I actually have to beat her at. Tell me what you do know, then.” She adjusts her bodice and peeks back over the seat. “Sorry,” she says. “Tina’s glare made me wonder if my other set of eyeballs was peeking out at the world.”

I shake my head to get rid of the visual, and try to explain. “sss Academy isn’t the only school for the supernatural and super-gifted. There’s also Underworld Academy—a school for the dead—and Mount Olympus Academy—that’s where I’m from.”

“Uh-huh.” She leans forward, resting her chin in her hand, then yelps when she notices what she’s doing. “Sorry! Mama always said that’ll make me break out.”

“So,” I continue, “Mount Olympus Academy was founded by the gods in order to draw in students like me—shifters. But also vampires, witches, and seers as well. Anyone they thought would make a good soldier in the war against the monsters.”

“Monsters?” She asks. “Like nightmares in my closet kind of stuff?”

“No,” I shake my head. “Like monsters from Greek myths—minotaurs and harpies, creatures like that.”

“That’s way worse than what I had in mind,” BJ says. “The nightmare in my closet is a knock-off pageant dress Mama ordered from China that definitely did not look like the picture. So, you fought monsters?”

“At first,” I say, lowering my voice and glancing around to make sure no one is listening in. I glance at the competition. Both Tina and Sophia have their eyes closed and are sharing a pair of earbuds. I bet they’re listening to Vampire Weekend.

“But then I realized the monsters were actually the good guys. The gods treated them like crap for centuries. They were only fighting for their freedom, while the gods were using the Mount Olympus students as human shields to protect their own skins.”

“Like really good moisturizer?” BJ asks.

“No, not like that,” I say.

“It’s kind of the same thing,” BJ argues. “This one time, when I was in the tri-county circuit, there was this girl—Candy Messmer—her mom ran a lot of the behind the scenes stuff and one of her jobs was recruiting new blood to come into the pageant life. But what she did was find girls with like, overbites and really bad skin.”

I just stare at her.

“That way she had no real competition,” she explains.

“Yeah, I get that,” I say slowly. “But I don’t see what it has to do with Mount Olympus Academy.”

“Well,” BJ says, her voice getting louder as she breaks it down for me. “Your gods didn’t want to fight their own battles, right? And Candy’s mom saw the writing on the wall. Her daughter was pretty and all, but on stage she was like a bag of cold French fries. Except it turned out that this one girl cleaned up pretty good, and ooh could she sing too. Candy and her mom had to resort to some low tricks to win that one.”

“I can’t believe I’m asking this,” I say, “But what were the tricks?”

“They rubbed all that girl’s razor blades in a poison ivy patch day before the swimsuit competition,” BJ tells me. “Her bikini line looked like a war zone.”

“Oh my gods,” I say. “That’s terrible. Okay, so maybe there are some things in common with Mount Olympus, then. We definitely had people operating behind the scenes. Spies and traitors.”

“You were one of them?” BJ guesses.

“Yep,” I nod, and she grins back at me.

“There’s a little bit of a spark in your eye. I’ve seen something like that before. Like when Miss All State Full Fat Milk purposely loosened the heels of the Two Percent girl right before the runway walk. Miss Two Percent broke a hip in that fall, and nobody ever crossed Full Fat again. Sometimes it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to look out for.”

“Right,” I say after leaving a moment of silence to see if there was anymore to that story. “With Zeus dead, Mount Olympus Academy has folded. The war with the monsters is over. Themis, who was Zeus’ second in command, has been sending former students out into the world to fix the mess that Zeus’s death caused. She’s not powerful enough on her own to keep all the other gods in check. Not like Zeus. Getting rid of him seemed so right at the time. I didn’t know it would cause so much trouble in the world.”

“Wait…did you kill Zeus?” BJ asks me, her expression changing from interest to anger. “You did, didn’t you?”

Clearly pissed, she puts her tray table back in the locked position and gathers the rest of her stuff from under the seat. Standing, she lurches out into the aisle, bumping the seats around us and knocking Sophia’s earbud out. She stares at BJ in disgust.

“Wait,” I say, trying to keep it quiet. “You don’t understand.”

“Screw you, dragon-breath,” BJ says, not bothering to keep her voice low. “Because of you, I don’t have a mom anymore, or the Real Housewives, or…cheese. Okay, I totally still have cheese. Everyone in Wisconsin has cheese. But I said it because it seems like a very crappy thing to say to someone, accusing them of being responsible for a world without cheese.”

Tina is smirking at us. “I told you yours was going to be a dud,” she says. “The only thing she’s the queen of is Dairy Queen.”

“Hey,” BJ yells down the aisle, her face getting flushed. “I woulda worn the Dairy Queen crown with pride. And by the way, the one streak of color in your hair thing is so five seasons ago. You go full head of green or you don’t go there at all.”

Tina stands. There’s murder in her eyes and her fangs have erupted.

“Leave Brandee Jean alone.” I warn, stepping between them before the passengers can get a better look at Tina’s pointy teeth.

“Wait, her middle name starts with a J…and her first name starts with a B?” Tina asks, glee lighting up her face.

“Yeah, those are my initials,” BJ seethes. “And look at how fast you figured it out. Now what were the two words you were gonna connect it with? Butterscotch jellybeans? Ben and Jerry’s? Baby Jesus? Or were you leaning towards what’s sometimes known as a hummer, lollipop love, peenie polish, or most commonly, a b*****b?”

Sophia’s lip curls. “You are disgusting.”

“Suck it. Blow it. Beat it. Bitch.” BJ snaps the words at Sophia along with her fingers on each syllable for accent.

Sophia turns to Tina. “That peasant insulted me!”

“Oh, screw this!” BJ says, her eyes meeting mine. “What was I thinking? Running away with a dragon lady who couldn’t even pay for my airfare? This is bullshit. I’m going back home.”

“You’re on a plane,” I remind her. “You can’t go anywhere except the bathroom.”

“And that dress is not going to fit,” Tina says with a sniff.

“I don’t want to be here anymore!” Brandee Jean wails, throwing her arms up in the air. “I’d rather be second runner up in the Miss Potato Plow contest. I’d rather break a heel during the swimsuit competition. I’d rather do a weigh-in right after going to an all you can eat pizza buffet. I’d rather die!”

That’s when an engine goes out.