I take a deep breath and try for some of Nola’s Zen calm.
“You’d better go,” I say, thinking calm, calm, calm so he won’t read that I’m still freaking out. “Mom will worry.”
“Of course.” He nods and starts to glow. Then stops and says, “Oh, and tell Miss Matios that if she returns the record she borrowed from the archives to my office before I return, there will be no detention.”
Then he glows and is gone.
Only Damian could know that a student broke the rules from thousands of miles away. Some principals have eyes in the back of their heads . . . he has eyes everywhere!
We’re lucky he never found out about the time Nicole and I switched places to take fall finals. If he knew she had taken my physics exam and that I’d taken her history test, we’d be in detention until graduation.
Griffin is pacing back and forth on the Academy steps. Troy and Urian are sitting on the top step, watching him like spectators at a tennis match. On one particularly long pass, Troy notices me in his peripheral vision.
“Phoebe!” He jumps to his feet and starts toward me. “Did you—”
Griffin shoves past him and grabs me by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. Didn’t they tell you?”
From the dark look in his normally bright eyes, I’m going to guess no.
He twists to look back over his shoulder and practically growls, “They didn’t tell me anything. Except that I had to wait out here.”
“Um, I need to go,” Troy says, backing down the steps. “I have class in the morning.”
“Coward,” I taunt.
“Right.” He stumbles when he gets to the last step, tripping back in his hurry to escape Griffin’s wrath. “That’s me.” With a gulp, he adds, “Later.”
Then Troy turns and rushes around the corner of the Academy, probably heading for his dorm.
Urian, realizing that he’s been left to fend for himself, says, “I’ll just make sure he gets home without incident.”
I cover my mouth to keep from laughing as Urian follows Troy around the corner at light speed. They clearly don’t know Griffin like I do. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. But—he turns his attention back on me and I’m presented with the full focus of his fury—he is a descendant of Ares. He does a decent god-of-war impression. If I didn’t know he had the heart of a teddy bear, I might run away, too.
Instead, I laugh.
“What,” he bites out, “didn’t they tell me?”
“The identity of the secret e-mailer.” I didn’t think his eyebrows could furrow any deeper, but they do. “It was Damian.”
He jerks back. “Headmaster Petrolas?”
I nod.
“Why would he send you anonymous messages? Why would he send you on a hunt for your father’s record?” He’s still holding on to my shoulders, but his face has softened into confusion. “And isn’t he in Thailand?”
“He is,” I say, answering his last question first. “It’s a long story.”
Shaking his head, he glances down and notices the book clutched to my chest. “You found it, then.”
I look at the soft brown leather, at the slightly yellowed pages that smell faintly of dust and library—not that I sniffed them or anything. That would be a little obsessive . . . right? Contained in those pages are answers to questions I never knew I had until a few months ago.
“Have you looked inside?”
I slowly shake my head.
Griffin brushes his fingertips across my cheek. When I look up into his shining eyes, he asks, “Are you going to?”
“I—” I feel the tears line the bottom of my eyes. This should be an easy answer. Of course I want to know what really happened to my dad. Of course I want to see what made the gods decide to smote him—so I can avoid accidentally doing the same thing to myself. But when I have to actually spit out the answer, it’s anything but easy. “I don’t know. Should I?”
Griffin takes my hand, pressing our palms together and lacing his fingers through mine. As he leads me down the steps, he says, “I can’t answer that question for you.”
“I mean, I should find out what happened, right?” We step onto the lush lawn, heading toward my house. “He’s my dad. I should want to know.”
“Maybe,” Griffin says, squeezing my hand. I melt a little as he rubs his thumb back and forth across the sensitive spot between my thumb and forefinger. “But if something inside is holding you back, then you should probably clear that up before doing something you can’t undo.”
“I definitely can’t unlearn whatever I read in here.” I wave the record in the air. “Once I know, I’ll always know.”
“The important question is”—he lifts our joined hands and presses mine to his lips—“. . . what are you really afraid of finding?”
He’s right. That’s the question. Why am I really holding back?
From what everyone has said about Dad’s death, he knowingly used his powers to help the Chargers win the AFC play-offs. That violates a major hematheos rule about using our powers for advancement in the nothos world. If we didn’t have that rule, then hematheos would control the planet—which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but it wouldn’t be fair. He broke a rule and he was punished. That’s the bottom line. Right?