I wanted to retch.
“We need to call it in.” Mr. Brewer grabbed the teacher’s elbow and steered her through the desks toward the far wall of the gym. They stopped in front of the emergency phone.
Mr. Brewer took the hammer off the wall.Crash—he shattered the glass around the phone.
He dialed three numbers, and someone answered on the other side.
“Per protocol,” Mr. Brewer said with an unnaturally high pitch to his voice. “I’m reporting that we had a student whose blood turned the bubble yellow, and... then it burned through. No—it’s not the bottom creature bubble. No, it didn’t set the page on fire. It’s the... top bubble.”
The page disintegrated to ash in his hand.
“Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . the page just disintegrated,” Mr. Brewer said into the phone.
Students turned in their desks and openly talked to one another as they glanced back at me with disgust.
Nyx clicked her teeth. “Everyone mind your own business,” she hissed.
No one heard her.
“The coordinates are . . .” Mr. Brewer squinted at the phone panel and read, “. . . 46.5891 degrees north and 112.0391 degrees west—yes, we are one-hundred-percent sure . . . yes . . . understood.”
He hung the phone back up on the wall.
Boom.
There was an explosion.
The gym shook. Desks clattered. Green lights turned off, then flickered rapidly.
A flash of white light burned my eyes, smoke billowed, and air gusted in a sharp burst like a bomb had detonated.
Two men stalked out of the smoke. They were Goliaths: extremely tall, covered in layers of muscles with tailored suits contoured to every curve of their unnaturally powerful bodies.
They glowered.
The lion of the House of Zeus was engraved on their chest pockets in gold.
“Where is he?” one man shouted.
The room went dead silent.
His voice echoed.
From their outfits, impressive physiques, and lack of crowns, it was obvious who they were—Olympian Spartan mutts from the House of Zeus.
Mr. Brewer pointed directly at me.
A pencil dropped off a desk, and students jumped at the loud sound. Nyx slithered tighter around my neck, and hissed, “Stay away from her!”
The two towering men stomped toward me.
I tasted blood.
“Take off your hood, son,” one of them bellowed. “Look us in the eyes when we speak to you!”
He ripped my sweatshirt off my head, then froze.
“It’s anothergirl, boss—fuck... notanotherone,” the other man said with a gasp.
