Goddess in Time (2 page)

As Troy tromps into my room, rubbing his shoulder where the shock probably traveled up his arm—thankfully there is no evidence of smoldering tee—I close the door behind him. Like it’s any other day, he collapses onto my bed, falling in a careless heap across my black comforter.

Only it’s not any other day. And when he flops onto my bed, the bounce knocks a pillow onto the floor, and when Troy reaches down to pick it up, he dislodges some of the clothes covering up the book.

And, because the book is probably cursed to cause me more trouble than it’s worth, it’s glowing again.

“Seriously, I don’t know how Ms. Alatza gets away with some of these lessons.” Troy lifts himself up onto one elbow, his ankles crossed and his sneakers hanging off the end of the bed. “She gave us an unknown sample in the morning, and we had to spend all day performing tests to identify the compound.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask absently, wondering if there is any way I can rehide the book without being obvious about it.

“You wanna know what my sample was?” he asks. Not waiting for a response, he answers, “Potassium.”

“Huh.”

Maybe if I fake tripping, I could fall right in front of the book and flick some clothes back into place while I’m down. I think I could pull it off.

“Do you know what happens to potassium when you add water?” He sits up. “Of course you don’t, because your parents aren’t making you take the Summer Intensive Premed Program so you can get into med school, even though you want to be a musician. It
explodes.”

In my heavy-duty combat boots, it would only be a matter of taking a step, catching the toe of one on the heel of the other, and voila! Instant klutz.

I’m ready to begin my fake fall when Troy says, “Sorry.”

“What?” I look up, wondering why he’s sorry.

Guess I’d been too caught up in my tripping plan to listen to what he was saying. He pulls himself up into a sitting position—right above the book, darn it—and gives me a sad, apologetic look.

“Your parents,” he says, leaning forward over his knees and looking completely embarrassed. Pink cheeks and everything. “I didn’t mean to mention them.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t even noticed. “It’s fine. No big deal.”

I wave off his apology.

His head jerks back and his eyes widen. Then narrow. A look of utter suspicion furrows across his face. Uh-oh.

Troy knows me well enough to expect talk of my parents to make me—at the very least—grumpy. I haven’t seen them face-to-face in years, and can’t until after graduation. Nonchalance on this issue is definitely cause for alarm.

“No big deal?” he echoes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Of course.”

“You’re acting a little off.” His brow scowls deeper. “Even for you.”

“Thanks,” I retort, trying to act like my normal sarcastic self. Nearly impossible at the moment. Nothing feels normal right now. In his current position, forearms resting on his knees out in front of the bed, all Troy has to do is dip his head to see the glowing book.

It takes all my willpower to keep my gaze from darting down to check, which would only make him want to look, completely defeating my whole hide-it-under-the-bed purpose. But it’s hard to ignore a glowing tome sitting inches below your best friend’s butt.

“I’m fine.” I force myself to maintain eye contact. “Really—no!”

Apparently, I didn’t force myself strongly enough.

Following the direction of my wayward gaze, Troy drops his head down to peer under the bed. Seeing the book, he glances back up at me with a question in his eyes before reaching down and grabbing the edge.

Oh Hades. If only I’d kept my eyes where they belonged.

If only I hadn’t lost my cool. I
never
lose my cool. This whole situation is messing with me.

“Did you know your book is glowing?” Troy asks with a laugh.

I watch, in horror, as he reads the illuminated words.

In a heartbeat, his eyes spear me to the spot. “Where did you get this?”

“Where?” I shrug, trying to play it off. “I don’t remem—”

“Cut the crap,” he interrupts, which is so unlike him. “This is serious, Nicole.”

“Maybe,” I say, turning away to fiddle with the drawer handles on my desk. Mostly so he won’t see the signs of panic I am sure are playing in bright red across my face.

“Maybe?”
he scoffs.

The mattress squeaks and I feel Troy walk up behind me.

“Definitely.”
He drops the book on my desk with a
thwack.
“You know this is illegal. You shouldn’t even have this book.”

Now, Troy is my best friend, and I’m sure he means well. But I don’t deal well with people telling me what I should and should not do—never have. I feel the rebel side of me—which is, I’ll be the first to admit, almost all of me—raise its hackles, ready for a fight.

“Well, I
do
have it,” I say, turning on him, jabbing a finger to his chest. “And I don’t need you to tell me it’s illegal. I’ve done plenty of illegal in my lifetime,” I gloat. “According to Olympic law, I’m a one-woman crime spree.”

Granted, on the scale of major Olympic transgressions, I’m still pretty small-time. But I doubt any of the gods expect me to become an exemplary
hematheos
anytime soon.

“Not like this, Nicole,” he says quietly. “This is serious. Olympus will—”

My fear dissolves like sugar in coffee.

“Olympus can go hang, for all I care.”

And I mean it.

M
t. Olympus and I don’t exactly have a lovey-dovey relationship. More like it’s kind of my personal mission to sidestep the gods and their stupid laws as much as possible. They’ve never given me a reason to respect their leadership. Quite the opposite.

My parents spent their entire lives following Olympic law to the letter. Dotting every
i
and filing every report in triplicate. My dad was an adviser to Zeus, living and working on Mount Olympus, an honor awarded to a devoted few. Mom volunteered as a liaison between Olympus and the
nymphae,
the wild family of minor nature deities. We were happy. Then, in an instant—because of one stupid prank I pulled—all Dad’s years of service and devotion and straight-arrow living went out the window. He and Mom got banished from the
hematheos
world, forced to live as ordinary humans and make their way on their own, without powers or godly connections. They had to start from scratch.

So when it comes to obeying Olympic law, well, I obey the ones I feel like obeying, and ignore the rest. And I don’t feel like obeying too many of them.

I turn my back on Troy before he can see the tears of frustration pushing at my eyes. Normally it would take serious injury to make me cry, but between the book and my parents and the hope I’m feeling for the first time in a decade, the emotions are a little overwhelming.

He makes a quiet growl in his throat. “Is this about your parents?”

“So what if it is.” I grab the book up against my chest, steeling myself against my emotions as best I can, turning to face Troy with all the defiance I feel for Olympus. “They don’t deserve their punishment.”

It was a stupid idea—
my
stupid idea—and Griffin Blake, my childhood best friend, went along with it. We didn’t know what would happen; we didn’t know the consequences. We didn’t know our parents would take the blame.

“I know, Nic,” Troy says, stepping forward and reaching out like he wants to comfort me.

I don’t do comfort, either.

“And neither do Griffin’s parents,” I snap, pulling away from him.

That’s the worst of it. My parents getting banished is bad enough, but at least they’re still alive. I can still call them and email them. After graduation I’ll get to go see them. Griffin’s . . . they’re just gone. They took the blame, and when he tried to explain, they told Olympus he was lying to protect them. For that, for his supposed lies, they got the worst of the punishment. Vanished, off the face of the earth. Because the gods knew that would make Griffin’s suffering all the more excruciating.

Griffin and I didn’t speak for years. Not until he started dating Phoebe and she made us talk through our history. I’d spent ten years blaming him, thinking he’d just let our parents take the fall. That day we lost each other and our parents.

All because of a stupid childhood mistake.

“Nic, I know you feel guilty about what—”

“Guilty?” I gape at him. “Guilty? Because of what I did, my parents got expelled from everything they knew, and Griffin’s got dead. Our parents stepped forward to take responsibility for our actions, and they ended up paying too high a price to keep us safe.”

“What you both did,” Troy argues. “Griffin was part of it, too.”

“Yes, we both fed the ambrosia to Hera’s son,” I spit. “But I was the one who suggested it.”

“You were seven.” Troy puts his hands on my shoulders, trying to make me feel better. “You didn’t know.”

“That doesn’t matter. None of that matters.” I shrug off his hands. “
I
should have been punished, not them.”

I should have been banished. Or smoted. At least then I wouldn’t have to live every day with this all-consuming guilt. There hasn’t been a feast day or holiday since the decree when I didn’t beg Zeus and Hera and the rest of the clowns to let me take the punishments instead.

As if they would ever listen to a lowly descendant. A half blood, in their eyes.

Every time I see Griffin, every time I miss my mom, every time I get to do whatever rebellious, crazy thing I want to do, I think about the fact that my parents don’t have that kind of freedom. And Griffin’s don’t have any.

“Your parents knew what might happen.” Troy shakes his head sadly, still trying to make me feel better. “But what’s done is done, you can’t go back and—”

“Can’t I?” I hold up the book.

“No,” he says, reaching for the book. “No way.”

I jerk it out of his reach. “Yes.”

“That’s crazy, Nicole.”

Like I don’t know that.

“Don’t you see?” I stare at the book. “I was meant to find this. It’s why Phoebe came to this island and why I became her friend. It’s why she and Griffin got together and why she forced me to patch things up with him. It’s why I went into the secret archives with her. It’s why the book started glowing when I walked by.”

“It started glowing when I sat on your bed, too,” Troy argues. “Maybe it just likes people.”

“Troy, this is the chance I’ve been looking for!”

Why can’t he understand what an amazing opportunity this presents? Why can’t he see that the potential consequences don’t matter? But he can’t. Which is precisely why I didn’t want him to find out about the book in the first place.

“This is the chance I’ve been waiting for.” I swing the book away from his grasping hands. “With this I can go back to that moment and fix . . . everything.”

“It’s too dangerous.” He stops trying for the book, instead focusing his attention on me. Like he can make me understand his point. “Do you know what will happen when Olympus finds out? And they
always
find out.”

The problem is, I
do
understand his point. It just doesn’t matter.

“I don’t care.”

“You should.” He steps back, shaking his head at me. “You should care a lot. Time travel is one of the unbreakable laws. The gods will rain down punishment on you that will make one of Headmaster Petrolas’s detentions look like afternoon tea.”

And boy do I know from Headmaster Petrolas’s detentions.

Maybe, if it were anything but this, I would be too scared to follow through. As it is, I’m pretty scared. But I’m determined even more.

The potential gain far, far outweighs the risks.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice, Nicole.”

I meet his gaze full on, trying to make him understand my side. “Not one I can live with.”

For several long seconds, he just stares into my eyes, his green and gold trying to read any weakness in my determination. I even feel a tickle in my brain and I know he’s using
psychospection
to feel out my thoughts, too. He might find some fear and doubt in there, but he will also find a steel wall of firm resolution.

I know he senses that when he finally takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

A lot of things in my life may come and go, but I can always count on Troy to be reliable, cautious, and—in the end—completely supportive and understanding.

“Fine,” he finally says. “What do we have to do?”

“We?” I laugh. “There’s no
we
in this game, Travatas. I’m doing this alone.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Troy—”

“Oh, so you
want
me to tell a certain vengeful librarian you have a book from the secret archives out on loan?”

I’m not amused.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

He just shrugs, giving me that adorably innocent puppy-dog look that always seems to get him out of tight spaces. “Or maybe Headmaster Petrolas. I’m sure he’d like to know what you have planned.”

“I could curse your mouth,” I threaten. “Make it so you can’t say anything.”

“Tongue’s already cursed, remember?”

Right. He finally confessed his dream of becoming a musician to his parents, and they cursed his taste buds to ensure a constant reminder of their disapproval. Troy descends from Asklepios, the god of medicine. You don’t deviate from an ancient line of doctors without a little parental fury. He hasn’t been able to eat sweets for weeks.

He’s trying to make a joke out of the situation, but that doesn’t change my mind. Griffin is the only other person with a stake in the outcome, and I’m not asking him—or anyone else—to take this risk on my behalf. Enough people have already paid for my actions. I’m not adding to the list.

“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” I explain. He’s already in enough hot water about the whole musician thing. “I won’t risk you getting hurt.”

Or worse.
When dealing with the gods, there’s always something worse.

“Nicole,” he says, in a tone way more steely and serious than I’m used to from Troy, “you’re my best friend. You need my help. There is no way I am letting you go through this alone. End of discussion.”