My Ex From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy) (18 page)

I yanked Bethany to her feet none-too-gently.

Then I looked at the massive cliffs that were rapidly collapsing. “How am I supposed to get hold of those things long enough to propel us back up? Our way out is on top.” Panic laced my voice.

“We have to try,” Theo urged. “Fast.”

I tried to run and take Bethany with me, but she dug in her heels and fought me with all she had. Enough of her.

“You want to die here? Fine!” Exasperated, I let her go.

She immediately bolted back toward the narrow stone bridge. “Hey! Get back here.”

“Follow her!” Theo roared over the now deafening noise of an avalanche of stone.

I hesitated for a millisecond and he shoved me. Dodging the deadly debris as best I could, and shooting what I hoped were preemptive blasts upward to break up the larger pieces, I took off running, not allowing myself to think what would happen if the bridge crumbled beneath me as we practically flew over it.

“Bethany has awesome survival skills,” Theo yelled, “She wouldn’t have gone this way if there wasn’t a reason.”

He and Hannah sprinted along, holding a once again chanting Cassie. Hopefully she’d remember some of what she was saying later, because I didn’t exactly have pen and paper to write it down.

We’d cleared the stand of laurel trees by this point, only to find a cave opening in the rock face behind them.

We dashed inside. Bethany stopped by a rock at the back of the cave and murmured some words.

A portal glowed.

Of course. If I was a crazed not-so-mythical beast kidnapping and killing to further my obsession with fulfilling my duties, I’d have built a back door into my madhouse as well.

Without thinking, I shot a ribbon of light from my right hand to grab onto Theo, Hannah, and Cassie, and with my left, sent my light straight across the cave to grab Bethany’s ankle as she stepped through.

Momentum pulled us forward, but not fast enough. The portal was rapidly closing and we were nowhere near close enough to get through it.

So I did the only thing I could. With a snap of my wrist, I sent everyone else flying through the portal. They made it through as the portal winked out, leaving me behind in the cave.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad if the next thing that happened hadn’t been that this entire reality with me in it, ceased to exist.

13

Like father, like son-of-a-bitch

ιγ
’

Yeah, yeah. I didn’t cease to exist. Artistic license and all that. Sheesh. Give a girl a break.

Delphyne’s alternative “reality,” however, did totally blink out of space and time. Luckily, that was a fraction of a second after I got out. When I finally had the chance to look back, I figured that the extreme amount of energy that Delphyne had put into the labyrinth in the first place, took a certain amount of time to break down. Lingering echoes of her will.

Here’s how my escape played out. Right as the portal closed, the bottom dropped out of the cave and dumped me in the spring below.

Stinky water filled my eyes, nose, and mouth. I couldn’t breath; I couldn’t tell which way was up.

I was convinced I was going to die as I was buffeted every which way by torrents of H2O. No longer a gentle (albeit odiferous) body of water, the currents now swelled violently, threatening to drown all in one final act of reclamation.

Mr. Locke’s favorite phrase from
Romeo and Juliet
sprung to mind; “good night, good night/parting is such sweet sorrow.”

What an absolute crock. Parting may have been sweet, but dying was messy, thrashing, choking misery. Also, my life didn’t flash before my eyes. (How ironic would that have been to finally see my life, in all its Persephone entirety, right as I bit it?)

Instead, a pale hand waved in front of my face.
Death wears blue nail polish
? I thought. Then died.

Fine. Fainted. Next time you’re drowning and black out, tell me you didn’t think you were dead.

I came to blinking at a viciously bright white light. Not sure if I was in Heaven, Olympus, or an entirely different afterlife, I tried to be clever about getting my bearings.

I always liked stories in which people played dead to fool their captors. Granted, I thought I was dead, but I figured the principal held true for a subtle sussing out.

“Finally,” a female groused. “Like I’ve been sitting here for a gazillion and two hours.”

That voice. What could I have possibly done to deserve to spend eternity with Nysa? I opened my eyes.

There she was, half out of the water, filing her nails. “You gonna get up already, lazy bones?”

I pushed myself up onto my elbows in surprise. I was in the creek back at Hope Park. Aware that I was laying in less than two feet of water, I tried to reconcile how Nysa could be half emerged from the creek. While she was definitely standing, unless she’d suddenly gotten a ridiculously short pair of legs, I had no clue where the rest of her was. “I’m not dead?”

Nysa laughed. A beautiful sound reminiscent of perfectly crafted wind chimes. Hell, she could have sounded like a donkey braying and I would have found it lovely at this point. “Big silly. I don’t hang with dead guys. Icky!”

I heaved myself out of the water. “You saved me. Thank you.” My appreciation was enthusiastic.

She shrugged and bit off a hangnail. All class, that girl.

“How did you know where I was?”

“Prometheus. He sent out a super signal.”

“But I wasn’t even in this world.”

“No matter,” she replied. “If it has water, I can get to it.”

“I could kiss you.”

She blushed, gazed down as if embarrassed, waved a hand at me, then with a flip, dove into the water and disappeared.

Ohmigod. Nysa had a crush on me. Persephone. That’s why she was always around. She didn’t want to be me, she wanted to
do
me.

A weird thought but flattering nonetheless. I had a moment of feeling bad that I didn’t reciprocate. Liking someone who didn’t like you, sucked.

Take me, for instance, and the stupid male who had betrayed me and left me to die. I was still harshly crushing on him. How pathetic was that?

‘Course I quickly realized that spending five seconds in a relationship with Nysa would drive me to nymphicide, so it was probably for the best.

I wanted answers, but first I wanted to find my friends. And get out of these wet clothes. Was there even anything clean for me to change into? This goddess trip had been brutal on my wardrobe and it’s not like I’d had a chance to do laundry in the past couple of weeks since my life had turned upside down.

Ten minutes later, I was pushing through the crowded hallways en route to my room. I had no idea what time it was. Given that I’d gone into Delphyne’s maze this morning and the number of students milling about now, it could have been lunch or after school. I’d have to check.

I received more than one odd look at my soaking wet, filthy, and scorched self. Sadly, mass gratitude was not part of the package. Only a cemented weirdo status.

It wouldn’t bode well if I’d missed yet another day of class. Not like I could give Principal Doucette a note reading “
Please excuse Sophie. She was battling dragons in order to save your students. Signed, her mother
.”

To access the stairwell up to the girls’ dorm, I had to pass by the counselor’s office. Or the faker formerly known as Ms. Keeper. I paused as I reached her door. I had to look inside and see if anything had changed as a result of us killing her.

I think I was still hoping that maybe everything had reset itself with Delphyne’s death. That I’d open the door and find Mrs. Rivers, smiling as she attempted to locate a specific piece of paper among all her general clutter.

I brushed the dampness from my eyes and turned the knob. As I stepped into the room, I was tackled in a huge hug from behind.

“Don’t ever do that again, you big stupid!”

I disentangled myself from Hannah and spun to face her. “Okay. That’s nothing like ‘thanks for getting me through the portal Oh Great and Glorious One.’”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Me too,” I grimaced, hating what she must have felt.

“Are you okay? Your head?”

She grinned. “Hamata pumped me full of migraine pills. Bliss.”

“How long were we dealing with Delphyne? It must have been hours.”

“About five minutes.”

Curious and curiouser. I glanced over at the portal which looked like a normal window again. “Why is the window back to its regular self?”

“No clue. What happened after we got separated?”

How to answer that question? “I’ll fill you in while I change.”

Finally, I was dry and Hannah and I had reviewed everything that had just happened. She explained how the moment Delphyne died, she could remember everyone clearly. Which was great except it also meant she understood what she’d lost with Mrs. Rivers. We both shed more than a few tears over her.

Hannah was unsurprised at Kai’s behavior. “What did you expect?” she chastised. “He’s a god.”

“You sound like you’re excusing him,” I protested.

“I’m not. But I think we all assumed he would act like a human. That was our fault. It’s like expecting a tiger to act like a house cat just because there’s a furry resemblance. The tiger will tear your throat out when you pet it and it’s your fault for thinking otherwise.”

Intellectually, it made a certain amount of sense. Emotionally, I wanted a rally cry to cut off his balls. I had to console myself with putting on grey leggings and a cute tunic and stuffing my feet into extremely warm, comfy suede boots. Fortified, I took a last glimpse in the mirror.

“Ready?” Hannah wanted to go find Theo and Cassie.

I nodded, then grabbed her in a huge hug.

“What’s that for?”

I released her. “If it hadn’t been for our friendship and all our silly rituals, I would never have broken Delphyne’s hold on my mind.”

“Yeah, well. I’d hate to have to break in another best friend. Took me years to train you properly.”

I grinned at her. She grinned back. “Okay. Moment over,” I said. “Move your butt, Swedeling, and let’s find the Rock.”

That took a while. We searched his room, Cassie’s room, the sick bay, the front office and the library. We couldn’t figure out where they might have gone.

“Cafeteria?” Hannah suggested.

“The place of food? Why yes, we should look for him there.”

Theo and Cassie were seated over hot drinks and a plate of freshly baked muffins.

“Muffin!” I squealed, realizing how ravenous I was.

Cassie looked up, pale but happy at my approach. She pushed her chair back as if to get up, but I motioned for her to stay where she was. “Sit. You need to get your energy back.”

She thanked me profusely.

“Do you know exactly what happened?” Part of me was curious to find out if she remembered my real identity.

“Some of it. Some Theo told me.”

Cassie filled us in. My suspicions about the truth exercise were correct. Ms. Keeper had only assigned it to see what Cassie came up with. It turned out that I had popped up on Delphyne’s radar and brought attention to this place, and Cassie with it.

I apologized, but Cassie waved me off saying it wasn’t my fault. She explained that when she said those “truths” about me, Ms. Keeper had started to press her on other things. When Cassie had gotten freaked out by her intensity, Ms. Keeper drugged her.

After that, Cassie had been kept in a zoned out state. Everything was dreamy until she found herself gagging on a potion Theo made her drink that cleared her mind.

“Do you remember all the truths you’d said to me? The prophecy?”

Cassie nodded. “I do.”

I leaned forward eagerly. “What did it all mean? Am I really an ‘instrument of destruction?’ And the other stuff in the ravine? Something about the dark and overthrowing?”

She must have heard something of the bleakness I felt in my voice, because she squeezed my hand in a reassuring manner. “Not everything is literal. These things I see, that I say, they’re fragments of truth.”

“Not the whole picture?”

“More like maybe the whole picture but you have to know how to interpret it.”

“You need the key,” Hannah said.

We turned and looked at her. “Cassie,” she continued, “when you were zonked on Chlorpromazine, you said something about a key.”

“OneaboveonebelowakeyawakeitisnomoreITISNOMORE,” I chanted. They looked at me, bemused. “It stuck in my brain.”

“Anyway,” Hannah shook her head at me, “could the key be a metaphorical key, rather than Sophie being a literal key to something?”

“Sure.”

Not much of an answer. I’d hoped maybe Cassie could clear up a few things, not make them more convoluted.

“Sorry, Soph. Guess I don’t fully get how to use my own power.”

“Can’t fault you for that. I’m in the same boat.” Not to mention all the questions I couldn’t answer. Like why had I been in Tartarus? Why had Demeter wanted to come to Hades that fateful night? What, if anything did my pendant do? What did all of Cassie’s predictions mean? Who had wanted me dead? And how could I get my memories back in order to figure out the way to save humanity?

I was broken out of my reverie by Theo asking Cassie a question.

“What about the blood that you saw?”

“That one was clear. Wish it hadn’t been. It was Mrs. Rivers.” Cassie turned haunted eyes to us. “She died in a pool of blood, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Hannah replied.

“I thought as much.” She gazed down and plucked at her sleeve. “I never saw her. Not physically. But I did ‘see’ her death. It was because of me.”

“No,” I insisted. “It was because of Delphyne. You were both victims.”

“Is Delphyne going to stay dead?” Cassie asked anxiously. “Since you left the box back there and all?”

“Even if someone did find the box and manage to open it without invoking its self-destruction properties, there’s no way to reattach her head and bring her back to life. She’s gone.” Theo sounded certain. I decided to believe him and have one less thing to worry about.

“Besides, the entire dimension is gone.” I caught them up on what had happened. Then I hugged Theo. “Thank you. For everything, but most especially Nysa. You both saved me.”

Theo shrugged. “Just sent out the bat signal, is all.”

Dragon dead? Check. Cassie rescued? Check. “What are we going to do about Bethany?”

“She wasn’t a victim,” Theo said.

“Bethany was just herself,” Cassie agreed. Even through the fog of the drugs and the water from the springs, Cassie had thought Bethany’s behavior reprehensible. “She was getting off on it.”

Speaking of Bethany … “Hannah, I know you think Bethany is this fabulous—”

“I’m over it.”

“Really? Is she back to normal levels of toxicity?”

“Not exactly,” Hannah replied. “Whatever Delphyne did to her in terms of her looks has stuck.”

“She’s supermodel amazing,” Theo clarified.

“Yes. Thank you,” I snapped.

“And she still gives off this charm. Or something that makes people look twice, want to get to know her. But it’s not like it was back at the ravine. I don’t feel like I’ll die if she won’t be my friend,” Hannah said.

“That’s good.” I was relieved. I had no idea what I would have done if Hannah had crossed to the dark side.

“Yes and no,” Theo said. “The fact that the enhancements that Delphyne gave Bethany remained means that the line between mortals and gods is blurring. We don’t want humanity to be aware of us. Hannah excepted. And we definitely don’t want humanity messing around with gifts they don’t know how to control.”

“So we keep a closer eye on Bethany.”

“If Bethany knows who you really are,” Hannah fretted, “it could be a problem.”

“Eh. I’ll kill her if she talks.”

“Subdue her,” Hannah corrected. “Still ixnay on the killing of humans.”

Cassie paled. I patted her hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Cassie. You and I are freak sisters. We have to stick together.”

She nodded her head thoughtfully. “We do.”

“If you really want someone to kill, my vote is Kyrillos.” Apparently, Theo was still very very angry over the loss of his chain.

“Explain something to me,” I said to him. “I get that it’s wrong to steal and he absolutely should not have taken what was yours. But you acted as if it was a big manipulation.”

For a second Theo looked as if he wanted to rip me a new one for even asking the question, then he sighed. “I keep forgetting. You really don’t remember. It’s like this—”