Fire & Flood (Mythverse #1)

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Remedial flying is taught by a crusty harpy named Ocypete with no people skills.

Actually, she has amazing people skills. Berating people skills. I’m the only one in the class, and weeks into my lessons with her, she’s highly frustrated with me. Although I did finally figure out how to say her name, I whisper it to myself on the walk to class every day, just in case. “Ms. Ah-sip-pity.”

I got it right on the first try today, but she’s still irritated with me.

“Do I look like a Ms. to you?” she spits.

“Sorry, it’s just a habit from my old school—”

“Yes, you’ve brought a lot of habits from your old school. You were a mediocre student there too, weren’t you?”

That hurts. “I was a bad test taker.”

“Pfffft.” I’ve never had a teacher give me raspberries before. It’s shockingly effective because I’m immediately ashamed of myself.

“Tests have nothing to do with it,” Ocypete says. “You’re afraid and you’re holding back.”

I think of the eyes inside me, the red ones I see sometimes when I close my own. Ocypete’s not wrong. They do scare me. But I don’t appreciate having it pointed out, and I definite don’t like it when she pokes a claw into my soft belly.

“It’s time to let all of you out,” she says.

“I don’t know how to shift. Nobody’s teaching me! And Themis said there was a spell holding me back from—”

“Themis doesn’t know her a*s from her elbow. And no one is taught how to shift. You just do it. In fact, it’s a lot like flying. You’re the only thing around here with wings that can’t fly,” she rants at me, popping a pair of dusty-winged feathers out of her back. She rises a few feet in the air, but it’s not a lesson, she’s just that irritated with me. I immediately feel awful.

“I’m sorry,” I say, for about the fiftieth time since our lessons together began. My wings—a faded dull rose now—droop at my sides. “I didn’t even know I had wings until, like, a few weeks ago.”

She puts her own away. “I heard you’ve kept them in all this time. That must have been painful.”

“Yes,” I tell her, hoping for some sympathy. Instead she’s suddenly got hold of my ear and I’m on the ground, her bony fingers digging into the side of my skull. It hurts like hell because she doesn’t exactly have fingers. More like claws. Nasty, curled, withered little bird claws.

“Well it’s going to hurt a lot more if a monster gets a hold of you and you can’t get your a*s off the ground.”

“Wow, okay, okay.” I hold up my hands in surrender even though I’m already face planting. I couldn’t be more surrendered, unless I roll over and show her my belly. She lets go of my ear and I get to my feet. Something runs down the side of my neck.

I swipe at it, and my fingers come away b****y.

“Hey!” I say. “Are you really allowed to just hurt me?” It’s a question I’ve asked more than once, since her hurting me has become a thing. She’s never actually answered me.

She doesn’t show any sympathy even at the sight of my blood, which she’s never managed to spill before. Instead she hops—literally hops—forward and licks my hand. I jump back, pulling my fingers with me in case she decides to go for more.

“Gross,” I say.

“Hmm…” She rolls her tongue in her mouth, tasting my blood. “Not a harpy, like me…not a bat either.”

“I’m not an ostrich, am I?” I ask.

She thinks about it for a second, shakes her head, then spits. “No, but I can’t really say for sure what you are. Let’s see those wings again,” she says, noticing that I’d tucked them away.

I comply, a little embarrassed that they’re gray now. A defeated, unhappy gray. She circles me.

“Scaled, not feathered,” she says to herself. “Interesting. Regardless, it doesn’t matter what you are if you don’t know how to use them. Pay attention.”

“I have been paying attention!”

And it’s true. I’ve listened attentively as she lectured me on running starts, triple wing pumps, and adjusting your arms and legs to cut down on wind shear.

When I can’t even get off the ground again today, she decides to focus on posture instead, instructing me on how to keep my arms and legs as close to my body as possible, even when I’m just standing around.

“If you really want to eliminate wind shear, you should cut your breasts off,” she informs me, to which I politely decline.

“Suit yourself,” she says, showing me her own, trim silhouette. “I can rise a hundred feet in a second.”

“And I can get laid,” I tell her, which she actually laughs at.

By the end of the hour I’m covered in grass stains from wiping out so many times, my hair is a windblown mess, and I’ve got more bumps and bruises than I usually do when I leave Kratos’ class. But my wings are a bright jade green, and there’s a bounce in my step when I ask Ocypete if I can start calling her Pity for short.

“It’ll be ironic,” I tell her.

“Fine, if I can call you talented,” she says.

“I said ironic, not sarcastic,” I mumble. Ocypete actually laughs at that.

Maybe I’m growing on her.

“Well, you’re the worst flyer I’ve ever seen.” She tells me. “No sarcasm there.”

I sigh. Maybe not.

Luckily, Tina isn’t in our room when I get back and Cassie is still avoiding me. But instead of laying down, I dig under my mattress for Dad’s phone. I’ve had it with me ever since I picked it up from the ruins of the greenhouse where he died. I thought there might be something on it to help me figure out what was going on, or at the very least, see his texts and calls. Dad obviously knew something I didn’t, and maybe he was talking about it with other people.

But it hadn’t mattered. I’d been elated back in foster care just to see it power on—confident answers were taps away. Instead, I’d been faced with a lock screen with the old passcode—0309—not working. Dad must have changed it.

He must’ve been in a hurry, though—or too technologically challenged—to put a limit on passcode attempts. I’ve got all the tries I need to c***k this thing. I’ve tried combinations of birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, with no luck. So I got methodical and started with 0001, and then 0002, and so forth. I’ve been at this for six months, and tonight I’m diving in with 0589.

I know there are about a million options. I’m sure there’s some sort of formula I could use to find out the depressing amount of actual number combination possibilities, but Hermes wasn’t lying about one thing—there’s no signal at Mount Olympus. I can’t use my phone, but I can keep it charged and access anything saved on it. So the same will be true of Dad’s, if I can get it open.

I’m tapping in 0600 when it occurs to me that I’m at a school with people who turn into bats, suck people’s blood—and accurately predict what’s going to be for breakfast. Why am I sitting here guessing when I can just ask Cassie for help?

Cassie also rooms with a vampire, but apparently she prefers to share a coffin with her boyfriend at night, so Cassie essentially has the room to herself. Cassie has begged me to ask for a transfer, but while Tina may be a b***h, at least she’s quiet sometimes.

I knock on the door. Cassie opens it a c***k and peers out. For a second I’m worried she’ll slam it in my face, but then she flings it open all the way. The next thing I know, she’s dragged me into room and is sprawled across her bed in a dramatic pose.

“Fine. I’ll talk. I can’t take the t*****e of being apart anymore.”

I blink. And then slowly sit on her roommate’s bare mattress. “Um, okay.”

Cassie looks at me intently. “Swear you will tell no one what I’ve told you. Or that I’ve told you. No one is supposed to speak of this. Ever.”

I hesitate. “What are we talking about?”

“Fine, you’ve twisted my arm. I will tell you the story of Val and his werewolf roommate.”

“Okaaay. Let’s have it, then.”

Cassie sits cross-legged on her bed and folds her hands in her lap. “It all began when the new shifter started here a year ago. Emmie was a cat shifter. And, well, she was also my roommate. Everyone loved her. Val’s roommate, Derrick, he really loved her, like looooveeed–”

I hold up my hand to stop her. I get it. Cassie shrugs.

“She was just one of those people. You know?”

I do know. Mavis was like that. Is like that.

Sometimes it annoyed me, which seems so petty now. It just felt like everything was always just so easy for her. Friends. Romance. School. Anything she wanted fell into her lap.

Now, though…now I’d give anything to see her again. To have one of our movie nights where we’d spend an hour arguing over what we’d watch before finally deciding to just pig out on pizza while some makeover show played in the background.

I miss her so much it hurts.

“Anyway,” Cassie continues, “Emmie left school after a few months and they said it was a leave of absence, but apparently she was on some super-secret mission with another student. Exciting, right? It’s amazing Emmie was sent, being so new, but she was the most naturally talented tracker the school had ever seen. But then, the worst thing happened—they were captured by the monsters. The other student died, but Emmie got away. When she returned to the Academy—”

“Wait.” I spring up from the bed. “I know this story. Ms. Themis told me. The girl became a traitor and then fled. And her boyfriend—who must have been Val’s roommate—went with her.”

Cassie’s mouth hangs open. She is totally and completely deflated. “Why didn’t you tell me you already knew?”

“I didn’t know that I knew.”

“Hmm…” Cassie considers this for a moment and seems to accept it. “Well, yeah. They escaped. There was like a terrible awful storm that night. I’m talking downpour, and that might have helped Emmie escape. That’s the flip side of being an amazing tracker—you also know how to cover your own.”

I shrug. “Sorry. And…I actually came to talk with you about something else entirely.”

Cassie perks up. “Oh?”

I pull Dad’s phone from my pocket.

Cassie’s eyes become huge. “Oh my gods! Is that a cell phone! I’ve heard of those! Let’s order pizza from Pizza House. And then prank call people and ask if their car is running!”

“Cassie…” I hesitate, trying to find a good way to put this. “You may want to consider getting off campus and seeing a bit of the real world. I think it might help you understand it better.”

“Oh wow, I’d love to do that.” Her eyes glow. “Let’s go together this summer! You can show me all the sights!”

I sigh. I was actually planning on hiding out at the Academy as long as possible. Here I can forget about all I lost, but outside of the gates there would be a million painful reminders.

“Listen,” I say, switching the subject without making any promises. “I haven’t really told you much about my family and where I come from…”

“Understatement of the year.”

She’s right. I haven’t told Cassie anything. And it’s not like she hasn’t asked. Despite liking to talk, she isn’t the type to monopolize every conversation. She’s also deeply curious about life “on the outside” and is constantly pumping me for information about the non-Academy world. Maybe I have some trust issues after my friendships imploded last year. It’s also hard to talk about everything that happened and have to relive it all again.

Which is why I plan to give Cassie the bare minimum details. Somehow, though, once I start talking it all spills out of me.

Finally, I finish with, “I thought I knew my dad. But he was hiding secrets about me from me. And who knows what else. I need answers. I need—” I need my dad back. But I don’t say that aloud. Instead, I hold the phone out to Cassie. “Could you do your eyes rolling back into your head thing and try to see the code?”

Cassie takes the phone and looks down at it. After a moment she makes a low humming noise in her throat. I sit forward eagerly.

She looks back up at me. “Sorry, I’m getting nothing. It’s hard to read tech without having a connection to the person it belongs to.”

“Oh.” I slump, more disappointed than I have any right to be.

“But,” Cassie adds. “We could try getting our hands on a Seer Stone.”

“Seer Stone?”

“Yeah, they have a few in the vault. They’re sacred so they’re kept with the other important artifacts. My mom…well, my mom would never break the rules but I know my way around down there. If we see anyone, though, you might have to distract them until I can find a Seer Stone and well, touch it—it will enhance my power. But it’s a risk. If we get caught, we’ll be in trouble for sure.”

I nod, not quite understanding. “So the stones are worth this risk because…?”

“If I get my grabby hands on one of these stones and I’m also holding your dad’s phone, presto! Login code seen!”

I spring to my feet. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”