My Ex From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy) (4 page)

Nice thought. But bullying hardly mattered if I was about to drop dead from a tumor. “Can I call my mom now?”

She gave a reluctant nod. “Of course. If you aren’t ready to let me help you, I’m glad you at least have your mom to confide in.”

I may have laughed out loud at the idea of confiding in Felicia about anything because Ms. Keeper gave me an odd look. “Yeah. My mom’s great,” I covered.

She patted my hand. “We’ll talk more another time.”

The second she left, I booted it to the phone on the far end of the counter, which was specifically for students in the event of an emergency. I figured this qualified.

With shaking fingers, I dialed Felicia’s number up at her swanky chalet in the ski resort town of Whistler and prayed that she’d answer.

“Hello?” At least she sounded sober.

I fought back the absurd urge to cry “Mommy, I’m dying.” I hadn’t called Felicia “mommy” since I was six years old. The desire to do so now must have meant there was something seriously wrong with me.

“Felicia?”

“Sophie? What’s wrong? I hope you’re not calling for money again. And you certainly better not be in any kind of trouble.”

Yup. That killed any comfort fantasies I had about this lady.

Felicia was all about appearances. To have a child be anything less than exceptional was a huge disappointment. Having a child at all was a huge disappointment, so it was odd she’d adopted me in the first place. I think she’d been trying to impress a guy. Which should give you an idea of the lengths Felicia would go to get what she wanted.

She’d learned to spin the truth about most of my shortcomings—imagined or otherwise—pretty well, but there would be no getting around it if I got myself kicked out. And since my prime directive was to stay on mom’s payroll and graduate, buying me time to figure out what I was going to do with my life, I had to suck it up and deal the best I could.

I put on my best “good girl” voice. “I was wondering what you knew about my birth family?”

“God, Sophie. It’s far too early for me to remember ancient history like that.”

This was going well. “Just the medical history. Any mental illness? Any problems with brain cancer?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You came from a perfectly healthy family. Can you see me taking some sickling?”

She had a point there. “Maybe you weren’t told?”

“Sophie, you’ve barely even ever had a cold. Your robust health is one of the few consistently admirable traits about you.” Oh yeah, I glowed at that stunning compliment.

“So don’t get all hypochondriac on me now,” she admonished.

I had one more question for her. “Am I Greek?”

She snorted in disdain. “Why would I adopt a foreign?” Which to Felicia meant anyone not of Anglo-Saxon origin, no matter how many generations here in Canada. Oddly, her straightforward racism kind of cheered me up. “This is an exceedingly strange conversation. Are you on drugs?”

“Drugs!” I yelped happily. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?” she asked, annoyed.

“Nothing. Nice talking to you, Felicia.”

“Uh-huh. Goodbye, Sophie.” She hung up.

I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t crazy. Somehow I must have touched something or drunk something that had been laced with drugs. Not an impossibility at this school.

Last night, I had sipped from a drinking fountain. That was when it must have happened. Just someone’s idea of a Halloween prank. I almost fainted with relief.

I practically skipped out of the office back to my bedroom. I paused at the door that separated the boys’ corridor from the girls’ corridor in the dorms. The one that was
supposed
to stay locked but most of the time was not, allowing free access during the day between our bedrooms. Now that I was ensured of a long happy life, I wanted to know what Theo’s deal was. No time like the present.

After a furtive glance to make sure no teachers were around, I raced down the hallway and threw his door open, revealing his minimalist decor. I knew we’d have privacy because his roommate had been sent home to recover from mono, which he definitely hadn’t gotten from kissing.

“What’s up with the punching, sunshine?” I asked.

He didn’t even look up from fixing the arm on his glasses. “You should be thanking me. You’d have seen six kinds of trouble if you’d been late for bed check. Maybe expulsion.”

I sunk onto the brown blanket on his bed. “Then you come out and call me. You don’t punch the guy I’m kissing. A little much, don’t you think?” I picked up a wind-up fifties style robot from a low shelf, turned the key, and released it on the soft folds of the blanket.

“I did call you. Three times. You were too busy sucking face with Kai to notice.”

Whoa. “You know him?!”

Theo shrugged. “We’ve met.”

“Where? Why didn’t you mention this?”

He finally looked up. “It was ages ago. I didn’t know you were going out to meet
him
. Believe me, if I had, I would have locked you in with Bethany.” He took the robot away from me.

“You met this guy, what? On summer vacation?”

“Yeah. We held hands and made out on the beach. Don’t be a total muppet. Our families are acquainted.”

“Your problem with him is …”

“He’s a player.”

“I had one kiss with him, Theo. It’s not like I was going to be used and abused.”

“I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Theo’s angle seemed plausible, if a little big brotherish for him. “Thanks for looking out for me, but I can handle myself.”

“Not with that dinklord,” he said gravely.

I rolled my eyes. “Now who’s the drama queen?” I strode to the door, then paused. “What was that language you spoke?”

He glanced up. “Huh?”

“To Kai. Last night. You said something in some language and it seemed to keep him from coming over the fence.”

Theo stared at me like I was nuts. “I swore at him. In English. You okay?” He put down his glasses. “Something happen last night?”

“No. Well, maybe. I think someone might have laced the water fountain down by the gym. Because I had all these crazy hallucinations.”

Theo looked very concerned. “What kind?”

I couldn’t figure out why he looked so intense about this. “Just random, weird trippiness.”

He relaxed slightly, gave me a thorough looking over, and turned back to his tiny screwdriver. I guessed that meant I was dismissed.

The entire morning so far had been incredibly strange and draining. Not to mention, I’d missed breakfast. I went back to my room and flopped on my bed. Hannah was peering at some slides under her microscope.

“Everything kosher?” she asked.

“Yup. Cassie?”

“Didn’t want to talk about it but seemed calmer.”

I frowned. “Did you hear anything about Mrs. Rivers leaving for a family emergency?”

“No.”

“She did. We’ve got a new guidance counselor. Guess she’ll be taking my class tomorrow. Also, I talked to Theo.”

Silence. Hannah tended to space out when she was working on her microscope. “Hannah.” Still nothing. I crept over, licked my finger, and stuffed it into her ear.

“Brat!” she brushed me off. “What?”

“Five minutes and you can go back to curing cancer. I talked to Theo. He claims the reason he hit Kai while he was kissing me—“

“He hit him? You didn’t bother telling me this last night?”

“Keep your panties on.” We both snorted at the word “panties” which we agreed to be the most offensive word ever. “I’m telling you now. It’s because he’s a player. Apparently Theo knows his family.”

“Makes sense,” Hannah said. “Bethany would pick that type.”

“Yeah.” I thought a moment. “Zeus had a wife, right? What was her name again?”

“Nice non-sequitur. It was Hera. This is relevant how?”

“Someone laced the water fountain last night.”

“Again?”

“Apparently. I had the full ancient Greece technicolor tour of hallucinations, complete with seeing Zeus and Mount Olympus and some woman who I guess must have been Hera.”

Hannah finally looked up from her microscope at me. “Was this before or after the kiss?”

“During.”

“Seriously?! What if it wasn’t the water fountain but his lips that were laced?” she asked.

“Doubt it.”

“Stranger things have happened, Neo. And it was Halloween.”

“It was, Morpheus. But since I wasn’t abducted, thrown into a shipping container, and sent on my way to the Baltics to be sold into sex slavery, highly unlikely.”

Hannah gave me a look of ultimate disbelief. “Right. That rack of yours would command such a good price.”

“Try my highly prized virginity.”

“I dunno. You’ve done a lot of biking.”

I shuddered. “Go back to your slides.”

She did. While I easily dismissed her ludicrous theory, part of me still marveled at how nuts the entire night had been. If I had been the one on drugs, why did Kai say “finally” before he kissed me that last time? Unless he was on drugs, too, and we were sharing some kind of bonding moment? Plausible, much? This entire thing bothered me.

I decided to go outside, get some fresh air, and think. There was no conscious plan to end up back at the sight of my tryst. My feet just sort of went there. I leaned on the back fence and looked out.

The area looked normal aside from some freshly overturned earth. Like a small animal digging something up. Not like Kai burying something.

My stomach contracted in a knot of dread. I was drama queening again. Letting my imagination run riot. It was a beautiful fall day, birds were singing, and I hadn’t fallen victim to a tragic demise the night before.

All was well here. I knew I should go back inside but chose door number two, where I ignored the prickling on the back of my neck to jump over the fence. I scurried toward the site of my alleged near miss.

Leaning forward, I scrabbled at the dirt with my hands like a fiend. I’m not sure what I thought I might find. My cold, decomposing body, proving that everything I’d experienced in the last ten hours was just my soul crossing over?

There was nothing there. I sat back on my heels feeling slightly foolish.

Just as a blast of fire struck the ground where my head had been a second before. Without thinking, I threw myself sideways, narrowly missing being blasted again.

My heart was pounding in my chest, my throat was dry and my brain had shut down except for screaming “Get out!” at me. I was in full-on flight or fight mode. Without the fight. I ran as fast as I could into the woods. The very dense, dark woods.

I was too terrified to even look around at what was attacking me. Desperately hoping it wasn’t Kai come to finish what should have happened last night.

Adding a new level of horror was the fact I could smell fire from whatever my tormentor was throwing at me. I was in a forest full of lovely crisp fall leaves and dry pine needles with a madman aiming fireballs at me. The phrase “I was toast” had never seemed so real. Or sinister.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large boulder and dove behind it, shimmying on my belly farther back to a stand of cypress tress I could hide behind.

Carefully, I poked my head out to see what lunatic was on my trail and got the fright of my life. Jason in a hockey mask wielding a chainsaw would have been a more welcome sight.

Picture if you will the figure from Munch’s “The Scream” covered entirely in flames and floating about four feet in the air.

He must have heard something because he whirled around sharply and elongated his arm to impossible lengths to send out a tentacle of fire. It was to my credit that I didn’t pee my pants in that moment.

A man-shaped creature landed hard on the ground beside the wraith. Like he’d just dropped out of the heavens. Which made no sense but seemed perfectly rational after the appearance of the incredible combustible dude.

I say “creature” because while he seemed to be a bald wall of muscle similar to any guy found at a biker bar, he was seven feet tall with a tattoo of a gold thunderbolt snaking over his head and freaky, glowing gold eyes. I could see their light from fifty feet away. Throw in a pair of stretchy leotards and a mask and this ‘roided out aggressor would have made a fortune on the WWF circuit. Snap his opponents like twigs.

Infernorator, the fire floater, looked incredibly displeased to see Gold Crusher, the muscle giant. He managed to convey a flaming frown, which spoke more of death than displeasure. It was matched by Gold Crusher’s annoyance. Think bristling with testosterone and magnified by a billion.

Infernorator whipped his fiery tentacle toward Gold Crusher in a blur of speed. But Goldie was prepared. His eyes glowed even fiercer as gold lightning arced from them to keep the fire at bay. Supernatural stalemate.

I’d never had a religious upbringing so I felt free to invoke every deity I could think of to show me this was just latent hallucinogens twisting the reality of two men in a simple gang war. Fighting for rights to the woodsy turf.

The creatures extinguished their lights. Apparently they had come to some wordless agreement because both began to scan the forest with eerily identical movements. I pulled myself sharply back behind the tree.

My foot caught on a twig. Its snap seemed to bounce off every tree in a kind of megaphone echo. Hoping against hope that luck was on my side and I hadn’t actually been heard, I peeked around the cypress.

Only to find them both staring directly at me.

Flight kicked in again.

“Sophie! Sophie!” I heard Theo bellowing.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. The unexpectedness of his voice had swung the attention of the death twins his way.

I stopped cold. “No, Theo! Run away!”

He didn’t. Before you ask, yes, everything did gear down into slow motion in that car crash kind of way. Except a car crash would have been like a Merry-Go-Round ride in comparison.

My eyes widened in horror as Theo came careening into view. The two creatures turned on him.

A look of dread came over Theo’s face at the same second that both beings shot off their deadly bursts.

I jumped out from behind the tree. I was pure adrenaline.

Also, rage. I’d been picked on once too often. This attack was off-the-charts unprovoked and unfair. Without any conscious thought, I raised my hands. I felt my anger travel through my body to my palms.

They tingled with it. Burned with it.

Then fury took form as a ribbon of moss green light shot from each of my palms like vines to snake themselves around the creatures, causing their hits on Theo to go wild.

Gold Crusher was lifted like he was nothing. As if my light ribbons had substance. Infernorator’s fire was held in check by his bindings.

The ribbons spun faster and faster, engulfing them like a spider entombing its prey for the kill. Dirt, small branches, and rocks were caught up in the fury of its whirlwind. Gold Crusher’s and Infernorator’s faces were going into psycho old person land.