Sweet Venom

“What a scary time that must have been,” I muse. “I wonder how many of my ancestors and their friends and family had to risk their lives to keep the Medusa legacy intact.”

I’m in awe of the sacrifice. Their preserving the line made it possible for me and Gretchen to be here today. We owe a big thank-you to whoever made that happen.

I read on, desperate to know more about my legacy, hoping to learn something about my autoporting incident.

The next sentence nearly knocks me off my feet. I have to reread it three times and then read it once out loud to make sure I’m not imagining things.

Into every generation since have been born three children, three daughters to carry on the guardian legacy.

Three children? Three daughters? Every generation?

This can’t be. Can it?

No way.

Tucking the book under my arm, I sprint to the computer and leap into the desk chair. It only takes a few clicks and taps to do a quick search for adoption records. There are tons of sites designed to reunite mothers and their children. I’ve seen all of them before, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I need to find my official adoption records. I know I won’t find that on any of those sites. The documents I need are protected, shielded by strict privacy laws. I need to get inside the Child Welfare Services website—into their internal database of completely top-secret and sealed records.

I wouldn’t call myself a hacker. Most of my coding skills are used for purely legal purposes. But I’ve finessed my way into a server or two. And now is definitely not the time to get squeamish about legality. I might have sorta accidentally peeked at my record before, but that was just the individual record of my adoption by my parents. I never thought of searching for any siblings.

Now that I know what I’m looking for, my entire brain focuses in on figuring out how to get what I need.

By the time I hear Gretchen’s shower turn off, I’ve broken through their firewall, cracked their surprisingly weak encryption, and am entering the keyword search to find our record. When my record pulls up, it contains all the details I’ve seen before about my adoption, but nothing about where I came from. Or who I came with.

Next I try searching my name and Gretchen’s together. Maybe if our mom named us— “Holy goalie.”

“What?”

I jump at the sound of Gretchen’s voice. I’m sure my face looks white as a ghost as I spin around in the desk chair to look at her. She’s rubbing a towel over her hair and doesn’t notice my utter shock.

“I pulled up our adoption records,” I explain.

My hands are shaking and I have to take the Medusa book out from under my arm and set it on the desk so I don’t drop it. Adrenaline fills my bloodstream.

I’ve never felt so completely thrilled and excited and terrified all at once. Not even when I saw that minotaur walk into the dim sum parlor. Not even when I saw Gretchen at Synergy.

“Yeah,” she says, flipping her hair forward to dry the back. “And?”

How can she be so blasé about this?

Gretchen doesn’t talk about her adopted parents. Ever. She just says that she ran away when she was twelve and never looked back. Which, I suppose, tells me everything I need to know.

But this has nothing to do with them.

This is going to knock her to the floor.

“Gretchen,” I say, my mouth spreading into a shaky smile, “we’re not twins.”

“We’re not?” she asks, lifting her head and paying attention for the first time.

If I weren’t freaking out, I might take a moment to gloat, because she looks a little disappointed, sad, even, at the suggestion that we’re not sisters. But there’s no time for gloating. This news can’t wait another second.

“No.” I slowly shake my head, still full of disbelief. “We’re triplets.”

Chapter 15

Greer

I’m telling you, Veronica, an ice sculpture would be tacky on a colossal scale.”

“But Greer,” the edging-on-whiny voice of my Immaculate Heart Alumnae Tea co-chair pleads, “can you imagine our school mascot in beautiful crystalline ice, wings spread wide over the buffet? It would positively be a miracle.”

“Until it melts.” I absently rearrange the sample place settings I’ve laid out on the formal dining table. The gold flatware looks cheap next to the aqua china but goes beautifully with the violet-trimmed porcelain. Perfect. “Then we have a big puddle of dragon all over the hors d’oeuvres and petit fours. Less miracle, more disaster.”

“We can keep the air-conditioning cranked,” she suggests, not willing to let her horrid idea go. “If the temperature stays below—”

“The guests will all freeze.” I’m bored with this debate. Especially since the main reason Veronica’s so married to this idea is that her boyfriend—her poor, starving, tortured artist boyfriend—has recently taken up ice sculpting to pay the bills. I am not about to let the wealthy, powerful, and influential alumnae of Immaculate Heart shiver through afternoon tea so Veronica can indulge her latest fascination with some lowlife guy. Time to end this discussion. “We are not having an ice sculpture.”

“But—”

“Final decision.” The doorbell rings, giving me the perfect excuse to hang up—not that I need one. “The petit four samples have arrived. Must go.”

Before she can get in one more plea, I end the call and set my phone on the foyer table. That girl seriously needs to find another way to get her parents’ attention. Slumming it with that sad, talentless excuse for an artist is only going to turn into a tragic after-school special.