Fire & Flood (Mythverse #1)

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

A few hours later, Cassie and I are ready for action.

Not wanting a repeat of last night, we’re both dressed in all black. I may or may not have borrowed a few things from Tina’s wardrobe (I totally did). Now we’re creeping between buildings in a way that tells me maybe we should’ve sat in on a few of the Spying 101 classes before attempting this.

In short: our sneaking game is lame.

Finally, Cassie points across the way to a door I’ve never seen before at the side of the library. Probably because it’s below ground level. “That’s it,” she whispers.

I nudge her. “You go first, just try to look casual. And then I’ll come behind.”

“Right.” She nods and then walks very casually…on her tiptoes across the paved path.

She makes it across and I am slowly counting to ten when a voice whispers in my ear, “What are we doing right now?”

Somehow I keep the shriek from tearing out of my throat. Only a little croak comes out instead. I whirl around and come face to face with Val.

“Oh,” I say. And then hoping I’m better at faking casual than Cassie, I lean against the wall and ask, “Hey, what’s up?”

He grins in that infuriatingly mocking way he has. “Not much. I just heard you were looking for me.”

“That’s ridiculous. Who told you that? It’s not even a little bit true.” It’s totally true. I can’t walk into a room or across campus without scanning it, wondering what t-shirt he’s wearing today. It’s a sickness.

Today it’s a fluffy brown squirrel and says, Who runs the world? Squirrels!

“Hmm,” he says. “I can’t reveal my sources.” He pauses as I glance toward the library door, hoping Cassie doesn’t come running out calling my name. “So if you aren’t out here hoping to bump into me during one of my famous midnight strolls, what exactly are you doing?”

I push away from the wall. “You are so arrogant. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are tons of hot guys on this campus. Some of them are literal gods.”

“Ah. So you’ve got your eye on one of our teachers, then.”

“No! Of course not! Why does everyone think that’s okay?” I give him a little shove, not for an excuse to touch his chest, but just to let him know I’m not intimidated. Of course, he just laughs and grabs hold of my hand, sandwiching it between two of his own.

“I wouldn’t mind if you were looking for me.” He voice is low and almost—but not quite—lacking that mocking edge. It’s tempting to lean into him for a little late night necking. I could find out if the ice in his lips can withstand the fire behind my own.

But not tonight.

Not any night if I know what’s good for me.

But definitely not when I am this close to getting answers about my family and maybe even what I am.

I jerk my hand away. “I know this may go against everything you believe about yourself, Val, but there are whole days that go by when I don’t think about you.”

“Whole days, huh?” His eyebrows lift. “Minutes. Maybe.”

And then before I can think of a clever response—he’s gone. Vampires do that a lot, moving so fast it’s hard to keep up with them. Tina zips in and out of our room so fast that sometimes I don’t even realize she’s come and gone until I hear the squeak of a live mouse being slowly eaten by Vee in the corner.

After a moment, I remember this is what I wanted—to be able to go about my business without a hot vampire following me. Nice. Good choices, Edie.

Shoving both hands in my pockets (the one Val held still tingling with cold in a way that shouldn’t be pleasant but somehow is) I saunter across the path and then after a quick glance assures me no one is around, quickly scurry down the steps to the lower library door. It’s already opened a c***k. I pull it just wide enough to slip through.

The hinges whine and I freeze, certain the whole campus can hear. But there is only quiet.

I step inside and shut the door behind me, leaving myself in darkness.

“Cassie?” I call.

“Not Cassie.” A voice says next to me, and I totally scream, which makes her scream too.

“s**t!” I yell, falling to my feet. My arms pinwheel around me and I hit someone. There’s the sound of papers falling, some of which flitter down in front of my face, immediately going up in flames.

Dammit, I’m setting things on fire again.

“Oh my god!” I say, as they turn in ashes in mid-air.

“Oh my gods,” I’m corrected, by that same female voice. Suddenly, the lights are on and there’s a woman standing over me, her brown hair in a long braid hanging over one shoulder. She holds a hand out to me.

“You must be Edie,” she says, pulling me to my feet in one surprisingly strong yank. “Cassie has told me all about you.”

“She has?” I ask, flustered. “Oh wait, are you her mom?”

“Yes,” she nods. “Merilee Madges, hello.”

“Hi,” I say, brushing dirt off my butt to buy some time. Cassie’s friend or not, I need to have a reason to be in the secret entranceway to the archives after hours. Cassie’s face appears at her mom’s shoulder, eyes large, mouth gaping, completely unhelpful.

“Cassie and I were hoping you could teach us more about—”

“Oh, yes, of course!” Merilee says, dropping the papers she had managed to hold onto. “I love when students take an interest in our records!”

She’s so happy that someone wants to learn something she doesn’t question us at all, simply takes both our hands and leads us down the corridor to her office, which appears to be called that only because it’s four square feet of space without paper in it.

Stacks surround us. Literal stacks. I’m worried I’m going to knock something over and ruin everything, but Merilee doesn’t seem concerned. She claims to be tidying as she walks, still talking to us, but there’s no way she’s doing anything right. She just jams papers in random places.

But I have to admit, she does it with confidence.

“Mom’s filing system,” Cassie says, beaming with pride. “They can’t fire her because no one else understands it.”

I remember Dad getting mad at Mom the one time she cleaned his maze of an office, claiming he couldn’t find anything because she’d organized it. Sounds like Merilee figured out how to use her ability as a finder and ensure job security at the same time.

“So, girls,” she says, l*****g the back of the last piece of paper and just sticking it to the wall. “What is it you want to know about?”

She’d been so excited about my use of the word teach earlier, it gave me time to come up with something.

“When I was at my other school we had an assignment in class, to look up world events in the year we were born and then write an essay about how those events have shaped our lives, even though we were just babies when they happened.”

I toe the ground, appearing sheepish. “I thought, you know, since I’m having such a hard time fitting in, maybe if I did something similar, learned about what was happening at Mount Olympus in the year I was born, maybe I could start to understand how history has shaped this school, and find a way to…” I’m supposed to be lying, but I find tears in my eyes, anyway.

“Maybe you can find out if the world you really belonged in has shaped you, too?” Merilee asks, breathless, one hand on her heart. “Oh sweetheart, that’s so…” She can’t finish. She just hugs me.

“Nice,” Cassie mouths at me.

“Alright, well…” Merilee wipes her eyes. “You’re what, seventeen? Let me show you where some of the histories for that year would be.”

“Some?” I ask, now jogging to keep up with her, Cassie at my heels.

“Well, yes, some,” Merilee says. “Why would I keep them all in the same place?”

I don’t answer, since she has this all figured out. Still, she didn’t seem all that upset when I accidentally ashed a whole bunch of paper right in front of her. I wonder how much of her “I’ve got this” attitude is true, and how much is just an act.

What if she can’t actually find what I need? What if— My wings pop out, knocking over two huge piles of paper on either side of us.

“I am so, so, sorry,” I say, as pages lazily float down between us. “I just got a little nervous. It happens sometimes.”

“Don’t worry,” Merilee says, plucking a paper from the air, reading it, then crushing it into a ball and throwing it over her shoulder.

My wings are a bright, iridescent blue at the moment, but the scales have a sheen to them, almost green with tinges of purple.

“Pretty,” Cassie says, reaching out to touch them. I let her, but it doesn’t feel nearly as nice as when Val did it. I was quaking so hard I thought I would drop all my scales, or catch him on fire again.

Wait. Holy s**t.

“You guys,” I grab Cassie’s wrist, stopping her from stroking my wing. “I think I figured out what I am.”

“Oh,” Merilee says, casually slapping at the last piece of paper to fall. “This is exciting! Do tell!”

“I’m…” I swallow, looking from one face to the next. “I think I’m a dragon.”

“Ohhhh….” Cassie says, then looks at her mom, whose eyes have gone super wide.

I feel a heat in my chest. “What? That’s, like, something really special right? Like, rare?”

Merilee bursts into a snort, and Cassie starts giggling. She covers her mouth when I shoot her a dirty look, but tears are streaming out of her eyes.

“What?” I say, the heat in my chest changing to something more like irritation. “What’d I say?”

“Yeah, you’re a dragon,” she says, choking it out between laughs.

“And my boyfriend is a unicorn,” Merilee says, which gets Cassie going all over again.

I cross my arms. “Okay, what?”

“You can’t…” Merilee stops laughing, puts one hand on my arm. “Oh honey, I’m sorry, we’re not trying to be mean. You can’t be a dragon because those don’t exist.”

“What do you mean?” I insist. “Neither do werewolves and vampires and harpies!”

“Oh but they do,” Merilee says. “But dragons…” She shakes her head. “Not a thing.”

“Not a thing,” Cassie agrees.

“Oh shut up,” I snap at her. “You didn’t know cell phones were a thing.”

Merilee takes my arm, leading me further down the stacks of paper. “What we’re trying to tell you is that there are only so many options when it comes to shifters. You can be a cat, a werewolf, an ostrich—”

“Seriously, still with that?”

She shrugs. “I don’t make the rules. A bat,” she continues. “But there aren’t too many of those.”

“I heard,” I say, rolling my eyes and thinking of Greg.

“My guess is that you are a harpy,” Merilee says, and I shudder thinking of Pity and her dry, withered body.

“A young harpy,” Merilee continues. “We haven’t had a new harpy in quite a long time; centuries, I would guess. I doubt anyone living today would remember what a young harpy looks like.”

“But Pity tasted my blood,” I say. “Ocypete,” I clarify, when Merilee looks confused. “She said I’m not a harpy.”

“Ah, well…” Marilee seems sad for a moment. “You have to realize that not everything in the human world and magical world is completely separate. Things like”—she lowers her voice—“dementia can still happen here.”

“You’re telling me Ocypete isn’t all there?” I challenge her. Then I remember that my flying teacher cut her breasts off on purpose. It could be a fair assessment.

“Whatever,” I say, slightly pissed that I’m wrong, and not a dragon.

“Don’t be that way,” Cassie says, touching my shoulder. Her eyes suddenly roll back into her head and she intones, “You will not have a very good time at Persephone’s Spring Fling.”

To her credit, Merilee rubs her daughter’s back and smiles. “That’s right, get it all out.”

Luckily, Cassie’s eyes haven’t come back to the front in time to see me rolling my eyes at her lame prophecy.

“Great,” she says, totally deflated. “As usual, I’m just saying dumb stuff. I mean, I know you’re not going to have a good time at the Spring Fling. You’re just going with Greg so that I can double with Darcy.”

“Well…” I reach out, rubbing her hand. “I mean, yeah, that’s true. But I wouldn’t do it for anybody else. So look at it that way. My date is lame, but my best friend is awesome.”

“Sister wives!” Cassie yells, then tries to high-five me, misses completely and dives head first into three columns of paper that topple and fall on her.

“Sister wives?” Merilee asks. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

“Join the club,” I mumble as I help dig out Cassie. “I feel like I’ve missed all the things.”