The Blood of the Hydra (27 page)

“Me, too,” I told him, figuring that was the closest thing to an apology that I would get.

Hypatia stepped forward, her hands clasped in front of her. “Have you given any more thought about what you’re going to tell your mom?” she asked him.

“Yes.” He nodded. “I’ve decided to tell her the truth. Rachael would have wanted her to know what really happened to her.”

A tear dropped out of my eye, and I brushed it off my cheek. Because Ethan was right. Our parents deserved to know the truth about us. I’d kept everything secret from my family since finding out about what I am, because I thought that would be the best way to keep them safe. But lying to them was eating at my soul every day. And until I came clean, the lies would never be able to stop.

As Hypatia prepared the portal, Ethan toyed with the chain around his neck. The amulet from his father was under his shirt, but seeing it reminded me of one more thing.

“I have one question before you leave,” I said to him, and he looked at me, as if waiting for me to continue. “How does your amulet work? You just think of your father while you’re wearing it, and he comes to you?”

“I have to be touching it,” he said, reaching for the chain again. “It doesn’t work every time—I guess it depends on how busy my dad is. But whenever I’ve
really
needed him, he comes.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Hopefully it’ll work the same way with my father, too.”

Blake took my hand, and I leaned into him, feeling stronger than ever. Because yes, I wanted to speak with my father more than anything. But I’d gotten this far without him. And I knew that going forward, Blake and the others would have my back. That even included Danielle—which was something I would have never thought possible if you’d asked me when I’d first moved here.

But somehow, in the past few weeks, they’d all become my family.

We watched Ethan walk through the portal, and his gaze locked with mine the moment before he disappeared. I froze in place, a shiver running down my spine at the way he’d looked at me. Because even though he’d apologized, I recognized the look in his eyes.

Pure, absolute hate.

He still blamed me for Rachael’s death. And I had a sinking feeling that despite what he’d said, he would never truly be able to forgive me.

I couldn’t blame him. Because even though I wanted to move forward, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to forgive myself either.

* * *

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Elementals 2: The Blood of the Hydra
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Elementals 3: The Head of Medusa
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Book three in the Elementals series

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“What was it like growing up in Georgia? You lived on a farm—a peach tree farm. Right?”

Blake sat across from me at dinner, watching me as I dipped a piece of bread into the fondue pot of cheese. I spun the bread around so the cheese was evenly dispersed, unable to keep myself from chuckling as I thought about the answer to his question.

“What?” He leaned forward, clearly concerned. “It
was
a peach tree farm, right?”

“It was.” I nodded. “But that’s not why I was laughing.”

“Hm.” He dipped a carrot into the cheese and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Once finished, he said, “Since you’re obviously not volunteering the information, then I guess I’ll ask—what’s so funny?”

“This.” I motioned around the fancy fondue restaurant, where people ate and chatted as if they had no cares in the world. “Us. Trying to pretend like we’re normal.”

“I thought that was the point of this first ‘official’ date?” he asked. “For us to go out like a ‘normal’ couple.”

I smiled when he said it—
couple
. After all the craziness these past few months since I’d moved to Kinsley, Massachusetts and discovered that I was a witch descended from the Greek gods, Blake and I were finally an official couple. Up until recently, I didn’t think it would actually happen. Because when I first met Blake, he had a girlfriend. Danielle. Their relationship was on the rocks, but even so, they were still together.

He eventually broke up with her, but by then, me, Blake, Danielle, Kate, and Chris had already been gifted with elemental powers by the gods themselves. As Darius—the Elder of our town and the person in charge of teaching young witches how to use our powers—explained to us, we’d been chosen because the gods believed we were the five who could stop the Titans from returning to Earth from the prison world—Kerberos—that they’d been locked in thousands of years ago. The only thing keeping the Titans from Earth was a sealed portal between Earth and Kerberos, but that portal was weakening enough that a few less powerful monsters were able to sneak through.

Our job was to destroy those monsters before they could harm anyone in the mortal world. We also have a larger job—to seal the portal before it opens completely on the summer solstice. We still weren’t sure how we were supposed to do that, but along with training every day, we were researching to find the answers.

So after Blake and Danielle had broken up, I’d considered him off-limits. We had to focus on our mission, and I didn’t want any personal drama between the three of us to mess that up.

There was also another reason why I’d been hesitant to let Blake in. Soon after receiving our elementals powers, I’d realized that my power to heal with a touch wasn’t all that I could do. I had the ability to kill with a touch, too. But to kill, I had to call upon black energy, which, according to witch law, is illegal. Witches caught using black energy could have their powers stripped, or worse, they could be killed.

Terrified of the consequences, I didn’t tell anyone about the darker side of my ability. Not even Blake. And since it would be impossible to get close to him without telling him the truth about my power, I’d kept my distance, making sure we were never alone together.

But last month, we realized that the monsters we thought we’d killed weren’t really dead—they were just being sent back to Kerberos, where they could escape again. We learned that we needed to gather three magical items to create a potion for our weapons that would put the monsters in limbo for a year so they couldn’t come back. The three items could only be found on the hidden, magical islands in Greece, so the five of us had journeyed there to retrieve them. Blake and I grew closer during that journey. After a talk I had with Danielle where she told me that she wouldn’t let any personal drama between us distract her from our mission, Blake and I finally decided to be together.

And now, two weeks after returning home, Blake and I were on our first official date as boyfriend and girlfriend.

I’d been anxious about the date for the past few days. I’d never
been
on a real date before. The adult kind of date, where he made a reservation at one of the nicest restaurants in town for a Saturday night, picked me up, and we sat down to talk and learn more about each other. It always looked so romantic in the movies—and when Blake had asked me out earlier that week, I’d jumped to say yes.

The date was supposed to be perfect. But so far, it was going terribly. In an attempt to be “normal,” we’d agreed to avoid mentioning magic… but because magic had brought us together, we were straining for things to talk about. It was awkward. And “awkward” was
not
how I wanted our first date to be.

“I was laughing because my life in Georgia doesn’t feel like it was
mine
anymore,” I finally said. “I’ve changed so much since moving here. Now that I know what I am, I feel like I have a real purpose in my life. I’d never had that before. So it seems silly to try to pretend like we’re a ‘normal’ couple, when we’re so much more than that.”

He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, his gaze locked on mine. His warm, burnt brown eyes were starting to become so familiar that I’d memorized the placement of each fleck of gold within them. “Does that mean you’re ready to stop trying to force all this small talk?” he asked. “Because I definitely am.”

“Yes,” I said, not needing to think twice about it. “I hate pretending that everything that makes us
us
—the magic, our abilities, and the adventures—doesn’t exist. Pretending makes me feel like there’s a wall between us. Besides, why should we try to be normal? Normal is boring.”

“Good,” he said, holding his hand above the fondue pot. “Because this cheese is getting cold, and I know just how to fix it.”

Seconds later, the cheese simmered, fresh waves of steam drifted up from it toward the ceiling. I dipped another piece of bread into it, pleased to find that it was now the perfect temperature.

“How did you do that?” I asked once I’d finished chewing. “I thought these stoves were electric.”

None of us could create our element—we could only manipulate it. Chris, Danielle, and I were lucky, since our elements surrounded us at all times. It was a bit more difficult for Danielle, because if she wasn’t around liquid water she had to pull the water out of the air, but she’d eventually gotten the hang of it. Kate needed to be near the Earth to use her ability—she’d been powerless at sea, so far away from her element—and Blake carried his lighter at all times so he wasn’t at a disadvantage. After all, thanks to electricity people rarely relied on actual fire anymore, unless it was for aesthetic purposes.

“There’s a spark of fire in electricity,” he said. “To control fire, all I need is a spark.”

“But I thought it was too hard to do that with electricity without making it short circuit or explode?”

“I’ve been practicing.” He smirked. “Why—are you impressed?”

“Very.” I leaned forward, feeling more energized than I had all night. “Especially since you did it without even seeing the burner.”

It was amazing how far we’d come in using our powers. My ability was unique because it was the power over spirit—and spirit wasn’t something that could be seen—but the others each could control a physical element. Blake was fire, Danielle was water, Kate was Earth, and Chris was air. Until recently, we thought they had to
see
their element to use it. But in Greece, we were in a life or death situation while fighting the hydra, and Kate made tree roots grow into the cave even though the trees weren’t in her line of sight.

That moment taught us that with more focus, it was possible to control elements without having to see them.

“Does it take up more of your energy to do that?” I asked.

“It does.” He nodded. “But warming up our cheese is hardly going to drain my energy completely.”

“So you were just showing off, then?” I asked coyly.

“Of course,” he said. “After all, I have a hot date to impress.”

His words made me blush, and I reached for the sun pendant on my necklace, running my fingers over the charm. The pendant had been sent to me by Apollo—my father. Yes,
that
Apollo—the Olympian god. But even though my father was a god, my mom was still a human… which made
me
a mix of the two. A demigod.

I was the only demigod in our group of five. The others were descendants of the gods, like most witches. Actual demigods were rare. I’d only met two others, Ethan and Rachael, who were twin children of Zeus. We met them in Greece, when we saved them from being trapped forever on the Land of the Lotus Eaters. To thank us for rescuing them, they helped us on the rest of our mission, but Rachael, who had been impulsive and quick to show off, lost her life during the battle with the hydra. She and Blake had been injured at the same time, but Blake’s injury was worse, so I’d rushed to save him first. What I hadn’t known was that the bite of the hydra was poisonous, and that it killed quickly. By the time I went to Rachael to heal her, she was already gone.

At that point, there was nothing I could do. My ability to heal didn’t extend to resurrecting the dead.

Ethan blamed me at first. But after sleeping on it, he told me that he understood why I’d saved Blake first. Then he went back home to Australia, and none of us had heard from him since.