Theta (12 page)

With unlimited power at my fingertips, I
could also stop the apocalypse, if I understood better how to
manage my power. Repressing it wasn’t going to give me that
edge.

I set Mrs. Nettles down on
the chaise and gazed around me at the ribbons hovering above and
around the objects in my room.
Mnemosyne
, the goddess of memory, had
explained to me in a vision of my past that I was able to create
and destroy and manipulate the fabric of reality. I didn’t
understand what that meant exactly, or how I could use my power
without the kind of mass destruction I’d already exacted upon the
city. Leandra and I had discovered I could animate objects better
when I wasn’t thinking about them too hard, when my mind was either
distracted or under the influence of alcohol.

Cecelia had instructed me about how to pay
attention to the signs my magic was about to fly free of me, so I
could stop from unintentional creation. The more I used it, the
more it grew, which was bad, if I wanted to protect those around
me.

As I stood in my room, contemplating how to
stop the fate I’d seen, I began to think I suffered not from a lack
of power, but a lack of imagination. I didn’t know what I was
supposed to do or how I should try to do it. Herakles had taught me
to be part of my world, to be aware of my physical self and
capabilities at all times. He valued practicality over imagination,
and I’d adapted his way of thinking.

What if I had to supplement what I’d been
taught to believe about the world my whole life with something less
tangible?

You aren’t ready yet to
handle what comes. You MUST use your power in order to grow
it.
The voice originated from Mrs. Nettles.
I had heard it once before, so I knew it didn’t belong to my
animated stuffed animal but to the goddess temporarily possessing
her.
Do not view what’s before you as parts
in a puzzle, but as a whole.

I glanced towards the teddy bear sitting on
the chaise, watching me. I didn’t want to say her name aloud, in
case Cleon caught on.

“
I don’t understand,” I
replied, heart quickening at the thought of speaking directly to
this goddess, one of the two deities I was raised to respect and
worship.

You would handle a piece of pie differently
than you would a whole pie, wouldn’t you?

In my very limited interactions with gods
and those touched by them, I’d discovered the divine to have a very
unusual speech pattern. They didn’t seem to understand how to say
something directly and spoke in circles. Even Adonis shared this
trait most of the times, leaving me floundering in the space
between what was spoken and what he intended.

When you destroyed the
temple and the buildings, you didn’t manipulate them one by one,
did you?
She tried again.

“
No,” I said aloud. I had
grabbed the ribbons of everything for a five-block radius then
crushed them.

See the whole, not the parts.

“
But … I don’t want to use
my power. What if I hurt someone?”

Your power can do only what you will it to.
If you use it for good, then it will hurt no one.

“
That’s kind of the
opposite of what Cecelia says,” I hedged. “I’ve hurt enough
people.”

Do you trust me?
Artemis asked.

My pulse raced.

I have protected you your entire life. I
stood beside your mother when she gave birth to you, and I will be
with you when you defeat your enemies.

My face felt hot. Even the priests who
raised me – and Herakles – had always assured me Artemis was the
one goddess we all could trust, because she wanted what was best
for humanity.

“
Yes,” I said. “I trust
you. I’ll do as you ask.” Even if it scared me. “How do I see the
whole? I’m standing in the middle of the pie.”

Shift outside of it.

I was about to ask how in
Hades it was possible to shift outside of
reality
when the door opened. Leandra
carried a tray loaded with food, and I glanced at Mrs. Nettles then
back. The stuffed animal was shuffling towards one of the pillows
on the chaise. She was obsessed with bright and soft things, and I
sensed the goddess who spoke through her was gone.

“
Most of your faves are
here,” Leandra said and set the food on the table.

I ignored her, distracted by the idea of how
I was supposed to see the whole when I was in the middle of it. I
closed my eyes and formed a picture of the room in my head, to
include seeing Leandra and me. The scent of mac-n-cheese distracted
me temporarily, and I breathed it in deeply, imagining a tub of it
appearing in the middle of my room.

“
I could eat a vat of that
right about now,” I murmured. Torn between my empty stomach and
understanding the lesson Artemis was trying to teach me, I chose
food.

“
Really?” Leandra asked,
hands on her hips. “You have the powers of a goddess, and you use
it for
that
?”

Opening my eyes, I spotted the meter-tall
tub of steaming mac-n-cheese in the middle of my room, where I’d
seen it in my mind.

I started to laugh then stopped, uncertain
what this meant. It was another unintentional creation. I had to
get better about purposely using my abilities.

“
You don’t need that much
pasta,” Leandra lectured me. “You won’t fit into your clothes if
you eat it. Can you send it away?”

I’m not sure where it came
from,
I admitted silently. I tried to form
the picture of my room in my head without closing my eyes and found
it impossible while Leandra was moving around. So I closed my eyes
again and imagined the room without the tub of pasta.

“
Much better,” Leandra
said. “Now, come eat.”

I had sent it away without knowing how. As
with my first vision, I was too immersed to notice the details. But
I swore I’d try it again later and pay attention to how exactly I
could manifest anything seemingly out of thin air then send it back
to wherever it came from.

“
Does my power bother you?”
I asked her and sat at the table.

“
No.”

“
It bothers me. How can you
be so calm?”

Leandra met my gaze briefly and then
shrugged. I sensed she had a response but feared giving it when my
mind was violated by Cleon. If I couldn’t talk to my only
confidante, life was going to become more difficult, very fast.

I ate in silence.

She left me alone, and I sat down on the
chaise and closed my eyes.

This time, when I tried to zoom out on my
room, I noticed how grainy everything appeared. It wasn’t the
crystal clear, high-density screen of a television but more like I
was viewing the world through a thin veil or watching shows on a
super old television in black and white. I was present yet apart.
Uncertain how this would work, I pulled back into the corner
farthest from my bed, until I could see my seated form and the
names on the wall. The ribbons floating around everything were
still visible despite the sense of being separated from the
physical world.

Instead of mac-n-cheese, I decided I needed
a chocolate fountain in the middle of my room. I caught the
movements – subtle yet speedy. Ribbons from around the room sent
fibers to the center of the room, where they coalesced and twisted
into new ribbons to form a new object.

My power was to rearrange matter, not
necessarily create it. On instinct, I stretched out with a ghostly,
translucent hand and gathered up the ribbons over the fountain.
Crushing them, the fountain disappeared, but the ribbons remained.
Usually, I absorbed them, and this circumstance was no
different.

Glancing down, I almost screamed when I saw
myself. Translucent, my body was made of millions – billions? – of
fibers in every shade of gray, white and black in existence. When I
patted my thigh, the ribbons I had crushed disappeared into the
myriad of fibers inside of me.

The reason I sensed and felt the rhythm of
the world became clear. I was part of it, and it was part of me –
literally. Creating and destroying were simple rearrangements of
matter and energy. Which meant, in theory, if I could perform those
tasks, I could also alter my world in any way I could dream of.

Scared by the thought of losing control, I
reminded myself that Artemis had encouraged me. It was going to
take me a while to trust myself, after the fear Cecelia had drilled
into me about what went wrong, if I unleashed my magic.

“
Artemis said it’s okay,” I
said aloud.

I was about to think of what I wanted to
try, when I became aware of the strange sense of not being alone.
My instincts had been right about the stranger at the soiree the
other night. I wasn’t about to ignore my gut now, even when my
rational side said it wasn’t possible for someone to be here with
me now.

I turned away from the room. The wall was
behind me … and not. The harder I stared at it, the more
transparent it became, until I was able to see through it into the
neighboring room. The guest bedroom was empty, but the presence
remained.

I strode through the wall with fascination,
walked through the neighboring bedroom, then through a small study
in this wing before I passed through its walls, too, and paused in
the grand foyer of the villa.

Cleon was present – twice. It took me a
moment to realize what I was looking at. His solid form in
black-and-white sat on a chair in the formal waiting area, while
his in-color spirit stood nearby, gazing around in consternation.
We were both the only things in color here. Unlike me, he was not
made up of the fibers. He appeared more like a rock in the middle
of a stream – solid whereas the magic of the world moved through
and around me.

“
What have you done?” he
asked when he spotted me.

“
I don’t really know,” I
replied, frustrated he found me here, too.

“
But you are doing
this?”

“
I believe so.”

“
We are both spirits,” he
observed. “How is it possible for you to displace us? Can we return
to ourselves?”

“
I imagine so,” I replied.
“I’ve never done this before.”

Not again. Come. Back. Lyssa.

I was yanked from the foyer, through the
study and guest bedroom, and back into my room fast enough to knock
the air out of my lungs. Shaking off the sense of being pulled
away, I focused on my surroundings until the veil was thin enough
for me to see through.

Leandra was crouched beside me. Her
fingertips were on my cheeks, and her hands glowed with magic of
her own, a collection of blue fibers that swirled around her as she
called me back again.

“
Lyssa,” she
said.

My eyes snapped open, and I once again
joined my reality. “I just had the weirdest experience,” I
breathed.

Relief that was not mine trickled through
me, a sign Cleon had returned to his body as well. For a moment, I
was seated in the foyer, gazing at the pillars flanking the grand
space. Blinking, the image was replaced by Leandra’s concerned
face.

Was it just me, or did my connection to
Cleon become stronger, the more I used my magic?

I opened my mouth to tell her everything,
when she spoke first.

“
Is it something you can
discuss with your loyal, faithful servant?” Leandra asked
pointedly.

“
Cleon’s here at the
villa,” I said.

“
He is,” she replied,
eyebrows lifting. “He came to drop off your schedule of events for
the next week.”

“
Because the most powerful
man in the world just happens to drop by when he could send a
servant.”

“
I’m sure he came to check
up on you after your three day nap.” Leandra stood. “I’ll set out
your clothing for your two o’clock.”

I was curious about the abilities I was
discovering yet leery as well. Cleon knew what I did, which was
going to make it hard to plot how I was going to escape DC and find
Herakles again. How did I defeat a man inside my head, let alone
the apocalypse?

My headache remained. Leandra set out my
clothing then took away the tray of leftover food. I changed, and
thirty minutes later, I was in the gym with Niko. I settled into
our sparring round without speaking. It was hard for me to believe
I’d been out for three days, until I realized how rested my body
was. I fought better than usual, probably because no part of me was
achy or bruised from a previous session with Niko.

When we’d finished, I went to my corner to
down water, breathing hard and tired.

“
You going to tell me
what’s got you spooked?” the former mercenary with the keen eye
asked.

Damn you, Niko.

“
I’m not spooked,” I
retorted. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“
Hmm.”

Rolling my eyes at him, I ducked between the
ropes and started away, not about to be cornered or tranquilized
again.

“
Someone wants to talk to
you,” he called after me.

I paused. “Who?”

“
Come on.”

He leapt down from the elevated ring and
strode across the room, towards the men’s locker rooms. The gym was
ours this time of day, and I didn’t hesitate to follow him in.
Uncertain what to expect from someone as unpredictable as Niko, I
was on guard when I stepped into the wide-open space.

A boy around the age of eleven or twelve sat
on one of the benches, cell phone in hand. He glanced up with a
smile as he caught sight of Niko.