She waves her hands around.
“Tell me now,” I say through clenched teeth.
“When Nick and I autoported back to my apartment,” she begins, “we found it overrun with bad guys.”
Cassandra returns to the bed with a vial in one hand and a cotton ball in the other. She sits down next to Greer and starts dabbing the wet cotton ball on her forehead. “This should help you relax.”
My heart pounds. Old fears and doubts seep up into my brain. Once again, our enemies show up where Nick goes. Another coincidence? What if she tells me he betrayed us? Again. I trusted him with the thing I value most: Grace’s safety, her life. At least she’s unharmed. He had better not have turned against us if he knows what’s best for him.
“He saved my life, Gretchen,” she says quickly, as if she can sense the direction of my thoughts. “But he sacrificed himself.”
My stomach plummets to my feet. “What do you mean sacrificed?” He can’t be dead. He just . . . can’t be.
Every moment of our rocky relationship flashes through my mind: The first time I ran into him in that dim sum place. When he showed up in my biology class at school. Fighting the griffin and the skorpios hybrid. That kiss before the monsters dragged him into the abyss. Going in after him. Him letting me beat him to a pulp when I found out he knew more than he’d let on—before I knew everything about his involvement.
We’ve been through a lot together in a short amount of time. He can’t be gone. We have a lot more to go through before I’m done with him.
“Oh, no, that sounded bad! I’m sorry. He’s not dead,” Grace says. “I just meant he stayed behind to delay them so I could get away.”
“Stayed behind?”
“He threw me into the elevator and told me to autoport away. Then he attacked the bad guys to keep them from coming after me.” She shakes her head. “I think he was taken prisoner.”
That sounds like Nick.
If he’s been taken prisoner, then the odds are in our favor. The boy is a genius at talking himself out of situations—he’s done it with me at least three times. He’ll be fine until I can rescue him. I hope.
“Who were the bad guys?” I ask. “Did you recognize them?”
“No, but I think he did,” she explains. “One—the lead guy—had a dog’s head and flippers for hands.”
Bad news. I know exactly who she means. “The boss.”
Last time I saw that creep was in his office in the abyss, with half of monsterkind bearing down on him. Too bad he got out of that alive.
“Yeah, that’s what they called him,” she agrees. “The boss.”
Maybe Nick won’t be fine. One run-in with that flippered freak was more than enough for a lifetime. He’s creepy with a capital everything. The boss learned Nick was a double-agent mole when I went in the abyss the first time. Nick said the guy would have killed him if I hadn’t shown up to save him. I don’t doubt that he would have.
I can’t imagine his opinion of Nick has improved in the meantime. And I’m not there to stop him.
I hope Nick can sweet-talk him enough to buy us some time again.
“Bad?” Grace asks, her face twisted in concern.
“Yeah,” I say with a nod. “Bad.”
“Well, then,” she says, pushing to her feet, “let’s go get him.”
I laugh. Just like that. Let’s go get him.
Sometimes I envy her naïveté. Everything is so simple for her. “Go get him.” As if we’d even know where to look. They could be anywhere. It’s been how long since he and Grace came back? One day? Two? More than enough time to get well and truly lost.
The sad thing is, that naïve response is also my gut reaction.
Part of me—the girly part that was just getting used to having him around, to feeling that connection with another person, to the idea that maybe fulfilling my legacy doesn’t have to mean going it alone—wants to drop everything and go rescue him, if it’s not already too late.
But the rest of me knows that’s not possible.
“It’s not that easy,” I say.
“Why not?”
“Because we can’t,” I bark.
She jerks back, and I immediately regret the outburst. From the corner of my eye, I see Greer and Cassandra flinch on the bed. Even Sillus stirs in his sleep. I shouldn’t take my anger out on them—especially not on Grace. She didn’t take Nick away. She didn’t start this war. None of us did. But we can finish it. That’s our priority. “Because we have other priorities. We have responsibilities that are bigger than one boy. Bigger than one life.”
He of all people would understand.
As a servant of justice, he knows the cause is more important than rescuing him. He knows our first duty is to restore balance. It’s what he came here to do; it’s why he sacrificed himself to save Grace. The best thing we can do to help him, to save him—if it’s not too late already—is fulfill our destiny.
I turn to the group. “We have to find the door.”
“The gorgons think the oracle is the only way to find it,” I say, “but clearly they haven’t located her yet, or they’d be back already.”
I look around the table: Sillus, our mother, Greer—who is recovering quickly—and Grace. They are two girls who didn’t know until a few weeks ago that mythology wasn’t myth, a furry monkey creature, and the woman who brought us into this world but is herself powerless. Not much of a think tank, but it’s what we have to work with while the gorgons are out searching.