Sweet Shadows (6 page)

I move on to the dining room, resetting chairs and re-tying drapes. Then to the living room, where the shredded couch cushions need more than just a straightening. I’m taking a bag full of stuffing to the trash chute when I hear a car pull into the garage downstairs.

My heart thuds and my palms turn clammy. I like to think of myself as a strong young woman, prepared to face most anything with calm and poise. Anything, that is, except my mother.

I fight the instinct to run, to escape to my room and pretend it’s all a bad dream. That would only make things worse.

Footsteps on the back stairs echo closer and then the door is swinging open.

Mother steps into the kitchen, looking like a queen. Her icy blond hair is swept into a crisp chignon, her deep purple business suit is still perfectly pressed after a full day of wear, with bold but tasteful jewels around her neck and wrist. No one would mistake her for anything less than she is: perfect.

“Why is the garage open?” she demands. “Are you trying to invite thieves into our home?”

“No, Mother,” I say automatically. I brace myself for the lie I have to tell. “There was a break-in. I was just—”

“What did they take?” She sets her satchel on the counter and strides into the house to inspect.

Dad steps into the kitchen, worry creasing his distinguished, graying brow. “Are you okay, Greer?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I reply.

He steps close, lifts a hand, and rests it on my shoulder. For a second I think he wants to hug me. And in this moment I would let him.

But then Mother returns. “What was taken?”

“As far as I can tell,” I say, hiding the quiver in my voice, “nothing.”

Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

I resist the urge to shrug. “I did a cursory inventory when the police were here, for their report, and I couldn’t find anything specific missing.”

She studies me, trying to gauge whether I’m telling the truth, whether she needs to interrogate me about the situation, whether I’m guilty of some minor transgression that requires punishment.

I can’t take the pressure, not after tonight. For the first time in my life, I lift my gaze and look her directly in the eye—not slightly to the left, so it appears that I’m meeting her gaze while avoiding her usual lecture on the importance of eye contact. Staring straight into her suspicious eyes, I say, slowly and carefully, “Nothing was taken. The police think it was vandals.”

When Grace told me about our hypnotic powers, I thought she was being ridiculous. I also thought I would never have reason to use them, even if they were real. I have no trouble getting people to do what I want. Everyone but my mother. So I have to try.

When I see her eyes lose focus and she repeats, “Nothing taken. Vandals.” I feel a giddy bubble rise up inside me.

It worked. It really worked.

Dad, oblivious to what has just happened, walks up to her and rests a hand against her lower back. “It sounds as if Greer has everything under control, Helen.” He throws me a sympathetic smile. “We’ve all had long days. I’ll have Natasha call the housekeepers in the morning, and the house will be back to normal when we return home tomorrow night.”

“Of course.” I smile, trying to appear positive when I know
I
will have to be the one to talk to Natasha because Dad will be at the office before dawn. I will take care of it, as I always do.

Mother just looks at him, her face still oddly blank, and she lets Dad lead her to the stairs up to their second-floor bedroom. As he guides her into the stairway, he looks back at me and we share a knowing smile. If he notices Mother’s unusual malleability, her slightly odd behavior, he doesn’t comment.

I nod good night to Dad and wait until I hear their bedroom door shut before I release the tense energy coiled up inside me.

My bath is calling me, but I have to face the rest of the cleanup first. Yes, I will make sure the housekeepers come tomorrow, but the better things look when Mother comes down in the morning, the better things will be for everyone in the household.

As I move throughout the first floor, smoothing rugs and straightening portraits of ancestors who no longer belong to me, I can’t keep the tremor from my hands. Even if my hypno powers helped give me the confidence, I just told my mother and the police bald-faced lies. My boyfriend is proving to be too callous and selfish for my taste. And tonight I escaped death by six-armed giant, manticore, and explosion. My life is changing faster that I can keep up with, and for the first time in my life, I’m not 100-percent certain I can handle it.

There are little cracks forming in my controlled facade, and I’m afraid it will take more than a hot bath and a good night’s sleep to repair them.

For tonight, though, they’ll have to suffice.

D
espite my crazy late night, I’m waiting outside Ms. West’s office first thing the next morning. Actually, I left home so early, I got to school before the front doors were open. The custodian let me in when he saw me sitting on the front steps, and then the secretary let me into the office so I could wait for Ms. West on the bench outside her door.

One reason for my eagerness is that I want to talk to Ms. West and find out for certain if she’s the Gorgon Sthenno. I’m pretty sure—as sure as I can be—but it pays to be cautious. Especially after last night. I have to be a little strategic.

But the other reason is that I wanted to get out of the house before Mom and Dad were up. I knew Mom said Dad and I should talk this morning about my irresponsible behavior, but I couldn’t face the prospect. I couldn’t sit there and listen to them explain how disappointed they are in me and how I know better and how they thought they could trust me. It breaks my heart that I can’t tell them the real reason I disappeared last night. It breaks my heart that this new part of me, this shadow life with triplet sisters and a mythological legacy, might be causing a crack in the relationship I have with my parents. It kills me, but I don’t have another choice. Telling them is not an option. I have to keep my shadows to myself.

“Grace?” Ms. West asks as she arrives at her door. “Is something wrong?”

She looks the same as always: tall, elegant, poised. Wearing a crisp suit in a soft shade of gray and heels that would make Greer proud. Hair in a tight, low ponytail. Simple gold jewelry. Same generically welcoming look on her face.

Even though she hasn’t changed since yesterday, the way I’m looking at her has. I see the little details I missed before. The sense of strength emanating from every inch of her body. The ancient design of her earrings. And, most of all, the wisdom in her soft blue eyes. The wisdom of someone far older—by millennia—than the thirty-something image she presents.

How did I miss these signs before? Or am I just seeing them now because I want to?

I can’t take the risk that I’m wrong, that I’ve guessed wrong. My sisters and I have too much at stake. So instead of asking,
Hey, aren’t you an immortal Gorgon?
I say, “Yeah. I need to talk to you about my English class.”

She smiles blandly and says, “Of course.”

As she unlocks the door to her office, I mentally play through what I want to say. By the time she has settled into the chair behind her austere desk, and I’m in one of the facing chairs, I’m still trying to figure out how to begin.

The picture on the wall behind her draws my attention. The pristine white sand, the brilliant turquoise waters. There’s something intensely familiar about it.

In an instant, I know what I have to say.

“That’s a beautiful picture,” I say, sitting on the edge of my chair. I drop my gaze to meet her eye to eye. “Is it the Aegean?”

At first she doesn’t react. I sense a slight shift in her, maybe a narrowing of her eyes at the corners or an imperceptible straightening of her spine.

She blinks once. “It is.”

The right side of her mouth quirks up a fraction of an inch.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, charging ahead now that I feel that I have the tiniest bit of reassurance. “It looks … timeless. Like it might have looked exactly like that for, oh”—I lift my brows—“thousands of years.”

Ms. West leans back in her chair, crosses her arms over her chest, and gives me a small smile. “Not
exactly
. But it’s held up quite well.”

For several long moments we just watch each other across the desk. I imagine she’s trying to guess exactly how much I know, whether I’ve discovered my heritage, found my sisters, seen my first monster.

I’m trying to contain my excitement.

“So …,” she says.

I grin. “So.”

She nods and asks, “What do you know?”

“I know that you’re the immortal Gorgon Sthenno.” I hesitate, waiting for confirmation. She nods, and when I realize I’m not getting more than that—she’s as tight-lipped as Gretchen was at first—I continue. “I know that I’m a descendant of your sister, Medusa.”

Her reaction is almost unnoticeable. She sucks in a little extra breath at the mention of her lost sister. There is a sadness in her eyes that clearly says not even millennia can dim the pain of her loss. I feel immediate sympathy. I’ve only known my sisters a short time and they’re both here and healthy, but I can’t imagine the pain of losing one of them. I wonder if it’s the sort of pain you could ever get over.

From the sudden shine in Ms. West’s eyes, I think I know the answer.

“I know that I have two sisters, triplets,” I continue, trying to save us both from the painful thoughts. “And that we’re the Key Generation.”

“You know quite a lot,” she finally says.

“Not nearly enough,” I reply. “I also know that Euryale has been taken prisoner. And that last night there were co-ordinated, planned attacks on me and my sisters.”

“Planned attacks?” she echoes. Sitting up straighter in her chair, she leans forward across the desk. “What do you mean?”

I give her the brief recap about the simultaneous attacks at our homes and then the explosion at the loft. Her jaw gets tighter with every detail.

“I’ve been out of contact too long, so focused on getting you here to the city that I let myself get cut off,” she says. “I had no idea plans were already in motion.”

“It’s okay,” I say, wanting to reassure her. “Gretchen, Greer, and I are fine. You couldn’t have known.”

“I knew things were going to change quickly now that you three are sixteen, now that the predestined clock has begun ticking,” she says. “I should have known they would try to grab one or both of us.”

She shakes her head, her eyes glazing over like she’s getting lost in thought. Maybe thinking about her own sister, about how Euryale has been taken prisoner. I imagine she feels as responsible for protecting and taking care of Euryale as I do for protecting and taking care of Gretchen and Greer.

“They who?” I ask.

She looks at me, startled from her thoughts. “The factions,” she answers. “They are trying to manipulate the path of things to come.”

“Factions?”

“The two opposing sides in this brewing war,” she explains.

“War?” My stomach clenches.

For once, her face softens. And that only magnifies my unease.

“The time of the Key Generation has been anticipated for longer than most can remember,” she says. “It is the moment in which the mythological scales realign. For too long they have been weighted in one direction; even if that is the direction of supposed good, the scales are not meant to be unbalanced. The opportunity to maintain or reverse that imbalance makes for desperate action.”

“Like trying to kill us.”

“One side, yes, would see you fail,” she says. “Would see the door remain forever sealed.” She taps her fingernails on the desk. “The other wishes to see you open the door, only to have you overrun by monsters from the abyss who have long been plotting to take over this realm.”

She scowls, looking at the ceiling as if she’s trying to piece together what’s going on. That makes two of us.

“The side that wants us to fail,” I say. “What does that mean?”

She answers absently, “That means they want you dead before the seal can be broken. As they have killed so many of our line before you, trying to prevent your birth.”

This is just getting worse and worse. I take a deep breath. Okay, I knew there were people—or monsters—trying to kill us. This isn’t news. At least now I sort of know why. And I know we aren’t the first.

“How many?” I ask.

She looks at me. “How many what?”

“How many of our line have they killed?” I swallow before asking the question burning in my brain. “What about our mother? Is she …?”

I can’t finish the question. I don’t have to. The look on Ms. West’s face says everything.

“Oh, Grace,” she says. “Your mother has been lost to us for quite some time.”

My tears shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve just learned that the mother I’d always hoped to meet, to question, to learn more about, is gone.

“Lost,” I repeat, forcing my tears away. “You mean dead.”

“We honestly don’t know,” she says, and my heart starts beating faster. “We have had no contact with her since shortly after she gave you and your sisters up for adoption.”