Gretchen
After spending the last four years risking my life to hunt down freaky monsters and their hybrid offspring, I don’t have much tolerance for elitist snobs who care more about the state of their closet than the state of the world around them. Gee, I’m proud to have a sister who’s one of them.
I shift Moira into the next gear and floor the accelerator.
If anything, I feel bad for Grace. She’s so much more optimistic than I am, so much more hopeful and willing to believe the best in people. She’s going to get burned by that eventually. Too bad I can’t help her learn that lesson without making her heart break in the process.
And I hope Greer isn’t the one who does it.
“Frigid, snooty heifer.”
Cutting the wheel sharp to the right, I squeal onto the Embarcadero, heading south.
As if her freakin’ tea is more important than her sisters. More important than her legacy.
I could cut her some slack, give her a little leniency for the giant, out-of-the blue whammy we plopped on her front stoop today. But I can’t get the image of her out of my head, in diamonds and cashmere, looking down her upturned nose at the pair of urchins who dared to ring her doorbell. As if she’s untouchable royalty who can’t afford to waste a single second on anyone below her on the social ladder.
No thank you. I’m better off without her. So is Grace—not that she realizes that.
Still, I can’t suppress a very reluctant grin at the thought that Grace and I are triplets. It makes so much sense, what with there originally being three Gorgon sisters. Our ancient ancestors liked cycles and repetition. If I’d thought about it for more than a second, I might have guessed. Grace figured it out in less than a week.
She’s a smart girl. I just hope she smartens up about Greer.
I’m just about to make the turn onto Bryant, heading for the loop onto the Bay Bridge, when I catch a glimpse of something small and furry in the shadows of the bridge above.
With lightning-fast reflexes, I slam on the brakes and pull a sharp U-turn. The beastie looks up, its orange eyes widen, and it starts to run. Unfortunately—for it—it heads in the wrong direction. I maneuver Moira to pen the cercopis, a small monkey-shaped monster, against the dirty brick wall fencing in one side of the empty lot.
When it starts to run back the other way, I swing open my door to block its path.
“Going somewhere?” I ask as I jump out and grab the creature by the shoulders and haul it out into the open.
“No, no, no,” it cries, shaking its furry head violently. “Going nowhere.”
Not anymore.
“Don’t send me back,” it pleads.
“Back?” I smile sweetly. “Back where?”
“You know where,” it says. “Huntress always send back.”
“That’s the general job description,” I agree. “Send bad beasties home.”
It must be a sign of my frustration that I’m taunting the monkey. Usually I just get my bite in and go home. But for some reason, I feel like playing with my prey a little.
And besides, I could use some answers about this supposed bounty on our heads. Maybe the monkey knows something useful.
“Not bad.” It shakes its head again. “Not all bad beasties.”
“What do you mean? I send home every bad beastie I can find.” I’m definitely not counting the hybrids that got away recently. Before that my track record was pretty perfect.
“No, not all beasties are bad,” it says carefully.
I laugh.
It takes advantage of my distraction to wriggle out of my grip, crawling up my arm and heading for my shoulder. Before it can reach my neck, I squat and then jump, flinging myself back in a somersault over the monkey and knocking it to the ground as I land. I press my right foot to its furry little chest, securing it against the crumbling blacktop.
“And I thought we were getting along so well.”
“Why you toy?” It lifts up a foot, presenting it for my biting pleasure, I guess. “Do already.”
“Not so fast.” I shake my head, surprised that the creature isn’t fighting back. “I have some questions first. Tell me about the bounty.”
“Bounty?” it echoes. “What bounty?”
“Nice try.” I press down on its chest. “Talk.”
“Ow, okay,” it says. “Sillus hear about bounty.”
I release the pressure from my foot slightly. From the broken speech, I’m going to assume that it is Sillus.
“Word say, big honcho on Olympus want huntress. Any huntress. Any way, live or no live.”
“What big honcho?” I think back to Ursula’s hushed conversation I overheard a few months ago. “Zeus?”
“Maybe.” It pushes against my boot with tiny monkey hands. “May not be. Sillus no go home for many months. No hear firsthand.”
Many months? “Do you mean you’ve been here, in San Francisco, for—”
The blaring ring of my phone interrupts my thought. The monkey is instantly forgotten, because I’m hoping it’s Ursula.
My cell number is unlisted—not even the school has it—so if things ever get hairy and we need to slip away, I won’t need to get a new number. It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve heard from Ursula. I’m a little disappointed when I answer and Grace is on the other end. I forgot I gave her the number just in case she’s ever in danger.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “Not really.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. “What happened? Are you hurt?” I swallow hard. “Is Greer—”
“We’re fine.”
I exhale a huge sigh. I’m not used to having people to worry about, but apparently my sisterly instinct is strong enough to make me panic at the thought of them in trouble. I shouldn’t give a centaur’s backside what happens to the ice queen, but I do.
Sillus starts to wriggle under my boot, as if I’m so distracted it could just sneak away. I press down harder and wag a finger at the naughty monkey.
Grace says, “We were fighting a monster and—”
My muscles tense up again. “What kind?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Some kind of serpent-tailed lady who came out of the Bay, but—”
“A sea dracaena?” I squeeze my eyes shut. “You fought one of Scylla’s spawn alone?”
“I guess.”
“Idiot.” A sea dracaena. Of all things. “Grace, they’re among the most dangerous creatures out there. She didn’t scratch you, did she?”
“No,” she says, sounding a little exasperated. “But Gretchen—”
“You’re lucky.” I don’t care if she thinks I’m being overprotective. This is serious. “One scratch is all it takes. There’s no antivenom for—”
“I saw Ursula!”
I nearly drop my phone. “What?”
“After the fight,” Grace explains. “I was about to call and tell you what happened when she appeared right in front of me. Out of nowhere.”
“What do you mean?” I shake my head. “Out of nowhere?”
“She materialized,” she says. “Gretchen, she autoported.”
Autoported? That must mean— “She has your same gift. She has Euryale’s power.”
A part of me aches at the realization that Ursula has kept this secret from me for so long. How did I not know this? How did I not figure out that she was a descendant just like me? She sees the monsters, used to fight them. I should have guessed. I feel so dumb.
Sillus struggles again. I’m too stunned to deal with it right now.
“Hold on,” I tell Grace.
Reaching down, I grab the little monkey by the scruff of the neck.
“Please,” it begs. “Don’t send me—” When it sees my fangs drop, it sighs. Lifting up its foot, it says, “Fine. Make quick.”
I almost feel sorry for the little monster. With my quick bite to the sole of its foot, it’s gone.
“Okay, Grace,” I say, my attention back on the call, “so Ursula is a descendant too. What else did she—”
“Gretchen,” Grace says, like she’s bracing me for something, “Ursula is Euryale.”
For a second I think I’m going to collapse to the ground. All the air whooshes out of my lungs. I sink to my knees, sitting back on my heels.
“She’s—what?”
“There’s more,” Grace says.
How much more could there be? Not only is my longtime mentor secretly my relative, she’s one of my immortal ancestors.
“Wait, why did she come to you?” I ask. “Why didn’t she visit me?”
“I’m not sure,” Grace says. “At first she called me Gretchen, so she must have been trying to reach you. But I think her situation probably made things more difficult.”
“What situation?” I’m so not used to being the one asking questions of Grace. I’m usually the one with all the answers.
“Gretchen, she’s been taken prisoner.”
I lurch to my feet. “What? Where?” In three quick strides, I’m pulling open Moira’s door and sinking into the driver’s seat. As I turn the key in the ignition, I say, “I’ll pick you up so we can go get her.”
“We can’t,” Grace says. “She says we can’t come get her, but she’s safe.”
There is a hesitation in her voice. “She said she was safe?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t believe her.”
“No, I—” Grace takes a breath. “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. She’s trying to protect us, I know. She knew about me and Greer and that we’re all in danger right now.”
That doesn’t surprise me. Those are probably some of the answers she kept promising to tell me. I lean back against the headrest.
“What does she want us to do?” I ask, knowing Ursula wouldn’t go to these measures just to not tell me where she is.
“She wants us to find her sister,” Grace says. “She says we need to find Sthenno.”
Her sister. I already know that from her cryptic note. “How?”
“She didn’t know.” Grace makes a frustrated sound. “They have been out of communication, trying to keep us safe. She only knows that Sthenno is in San Francisco and that she knows me. She told Ursula about me.”
“Do you have any idea who she means?”
“No clue.”
I squeeze the phone. “Then how are we supposed to find her?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
This is a lot to take in. I’m usually pretty steady on my feet, but all this news has me a little shaken.
“And Gretchen,” she says, her voice taking on a sympathetic tone. “She wanted me to tell you she misses you. Terribly.”
I can’t remember the last time I cried. Maybe the time Phil turned his violent anger against Barb and I pleaded with her to leave him. Maybe the night I ran away and found myself alone and scared in that empty warehouse. Maybe my first night in the loft, when I realized I would never be alone and scared again. But there is no mistaking the sting of salty tears in my eyes.
I quickly wipe them away.
“Thanks, Grace,” I say, trying to sound fine. “I appreciate it.”
What I can’t tell her is that I’m relieved to have her on my side. Even if I am scared at the moment, terrified for Ursula and whatever is going on, I know I don’t have to go through it alone.
“No problem,” she says. “Do you need me to come over?”
“Nah,” I say, not wanting her to think I’m as concerned as I am. “I’m out. I’m fine anyway.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound convinced, but she lets it go. “I should probably get home.”
“Be careful,” I say, meaning it more than ever.
“Yes, boss.”
My finger is shaking as I click off the call.
Why is everything going so wrong so quickly? Two weeks ago, I was totally certain. Ursula was here, I was a runaway with no family, and I hunted monsters—one at a time after dark—to protect the human world from real creatures straight out of Greek mythology. Now Ursula’s imprisoned, I have two sisters and two great-many-times-over-aunts, and the rules I used to know and love have gone to Hades.
And there’s nothing I can do about any of it.
I give Moira’s floorboard a solid kick, like that’s going to solve anything. Exhausted—from the fights and the news and everything just adding up—I’m headed home, pulling out into traffic, when my phone rings again.
“Yeah, Grace,” I say, thinking she must have forgotten to tell me something.
“Sorry,” the male voice at the other end of the phone says. “Not Grace.”
If it’s not Grace, then who could have this number? “Who the hell is this?”
“It’s Nick,” he says with a laugh. “Glad to know your manners are just as endearing on the phone as they are in person.”
I want to scream. I do scream. “Aaargh!”
Why won’t he leave me alone? I’ve given him every possible stop sign I can without breaking any bones or major laws. So why does he keep trying?
I should hang up. I should block his number and change schools, but curiosity gets the best of me.
“How did you get this number?” I snap.
“I have my ways.”
I can hear his cocky grin through the phone. Trust me, if I could reach through the airwaves and strangle him, I’d do it. Twenty to life would be worth it right now.
I should have let the skorpios hybrid get him.
“How?” I repeat. “It’s unlisted.”
“Nothing is that unlisted.”
“My cell number is.” I clench my hand around the steering wheel as I cut over to Market. “No one has this number.”
“Someone must,” he argues. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have it.”
“Where did you get my number?” I shout.
Normally I have a lot better hold on my emotions, but it’s been a rough few days. Plus, this boy has an unparalleled knack for pushing all my buttons in the wrong order. For a moment, I consider flinging my phone out the window. The only thing that stops me is that if Grace is in trouble or if—scratch that—when Ursula gets free, they’d have no way to reach me. I consider throwing myself out the window. Or maybe driving into the Bay. An icy-cold dunk might be exactly what I need right now.
“Relax,” he says, in a tone that makes me do anything but. “Look, I just have a question about biology. You don’t need to jump down my throat.”
“Didn’t you promise me you’d back off?”
“I did.”
I grind my teeth in the brief silence.
“I lied,” he admits. “Sorry.”
Okay, enough. “Look. Haven’t I made it crystal sparkling clear from the start that I want less than nothing to do with you?”
“You’ve tried.”
“Don’t I keep saying, over and over and over again, that you should back the hell off?”
“And over again,” he echoes. “Yep, I remember something like that.”
“Then why,” I ask with a sigh of despair, taking a turn without signaling and ignoring the angry horn blast that follows, “do you keep trying?”
Seriously. What kind of psycho masochist keeps returning for more rejection? Is he trying to drive me insane? After all the craziness lately, it’s not a long trip.
“Guess I never learned to take no for an answer.”
I don’t know what else I can say or do to get him to back off. Seeing me throw down with beasties on two occasions—even if he couldn’t see their true form—didn’t scare him away. What kind of guy wants a girl who gets into fistfights on a regular basis?
Obviously, this kind.
I drive in silence, not knowing what else to say, but not wanting—for some unfathomable reason—to hang up yet. When I pull into the garage, I’m suddenly struck by how very empty the loft upstairs is going to feel. For the first time, I don’t have even the tiniest hope that Ursula will be waiting inside. Without her it’s like an empty shell of the place that used to feel like home.
What if Ursula never comes back? The question sneaks into my thoughts before I can block it. Bracing myself on the steering wheel, I take deep breaths. My hands are shaking as fear speeds through my bloodstream. I’ve never felt like this, not even when Phil was on a bender and his fists were swinging.
Until now, monster hunting was business. A duty, a responsibility I upheld as a part of my legacy, because it is my destiny. It was a straightforward job and I did it well. But I cared about as much as I cared about the color of my non-existent nail polish.
Ursula in danger makes it personal, and I feel the fear like a tight fist around my heart.
She’s the only real mother I’ve ever known. I don’t buy for a second her insistence that she’s safe. I can’t just sit around and do nothing while she’s in danger. I might feel helpless right now, but I’m not. I have to do something.
“Gretchen?” Nick prods.
“What?” I snap into the forgotten phone in my hand.
“I have a confession to make,” he says, ignoring my anger, as usual. “I didn’t call to ask about biology homework.”
“Really,” I say sarcastically. “Had me fooled.”
“I’m tricky like that,” he replies. “No, I’ve got tickets to a concert in Golden Gate Park tomorrow night. Actually, the concert is free, but I’ve got a blanket and picnic basket and I was wondering if you wanted to—”
I click the phone off before he can finish his question. I know exactly what he was going to ask, and there’s no way I can say yes.
Slipping the phone into my pocket, I get out of the car and climb the creaking staircase up to the loft.
Girls like me can’t date. Imagine, sitting down to a nice dinner and catching a whiff of rotten meat. It’s not like I could say, Excuse me. Have to go take care of the Nemean lion that’s prowling the streets. Be back in a jiff.
My phone rings again and I ignore it. The situation isn’t going to change. Girls like me have to be alone.
I toss my ringing phone onto the couch and head to the fridge. Maybe some dinner will help clear my mind. I yank open the freezer door. It’s stocked with a month’s supply of frozen dinners.
I grab a turkey-and-stuffing box, tear it open, and pop it into the microwave. While the microwave whirrs and my dinner spins hypnotically in circles, I can’t help feeling more alone than I’ve ever felt. Not only because Ursula, my one and only true friend in this world, is being held prisoner. Not only because I’ve discovered I have two long-lost sisters, one of whom is safe at home with her loving family and the other who wants nothing to do with me. Not only because I can never, in any conceivable universe, let Nick or any other ordinary human boy close enough to discover the true me. Not only because I’m not even sure who the true me is anymore.
No, I feel completely and utterly alone because, for the first time since the day I realized my adoptive parents were abusive trash and I was better off on the streets than with them, I don’t want to be alone. For the first time, I want to let people in. I didn’t want to hang up on Nick, I had to. Because, for the first time, I wanted to say yes.
And I can’t imagine anything more dangerous. For me or for him.
The microwave beeps, and the jarring sound pulls me from self-pity into the real world. It’s like I have an instantaneous moment of absolute clarity.
“I know how to find Sthenno,” I blurt out to the empty kitchen.
Without another thought for my dinner, I grab my phone, jacket, and keys and dash back to Moira at full speed. My best chance of finding Ursula’s sister is the same person who told me I was destined for greater things than what Phil and Barb had planned.
The oracle.
The storefront looks exactly as I remember. Plain, non-descript, with dark velvet curtains that might have been red at one time blocking any view inside. Hanging in the door is a small wooden sign that reads FORTUNES TOLD, with a line of ancient-looking letters below: μαντεοn.
At twelve I thought they were magical symbols. Now I recognize the text as ancient Greek: ORACLE.
Just as before, the place looks deserted from the outside. A thick layer of grime covers the windows, no light shines through even the tiniest crack in the curtains or door, and there is no sign indicating whether the place is open or even when it might be. But I know, in the same unnatural way I knew four years ago, that she’s inside.
I walk up to the door, grab the tarnished brass knob, and twist. The door glides open like it floats on air. Except for the streetlight streaming in the now-open door, the space inside is dark as night.
“You came back,” a gravelly voice says from the void. “I knew you would.”
She steps into the beam of light, looking the same as before. Long black robes swirling around her tiny frame. Long black hair falling down her back in thick waves. Long beaked nose protruding out from a haggard and wrinkled face. She looks like an evil witch from a child’s fairy tale.
“I know what you came for,” she says, her voice crackling.
“I’m sure you do.”
When I passed her door four years ago, taking the long way home from the grocery store to avoid going by Phil’s favorite bar, I was desperate. Searching for any light at the end of the dark tunnel I saw my life becoming. The nameless fortune-teller greeted me, as she did now, with the promise of things I wanted to know.
She led me to a table in the back room, studied my palm, and told me I was marked for a great destiny. Despite my protests, she insisted I had to run away, to get away from the people who kept me from greatness.
I thought it was all garbage until she said, “The creatures are your future.”
No one but Phil and Barb knew I saw monsters, and they beat it into me that I was crazy to say so. But this woman knew, and she thought it was important.
That night I ran away.
Ursula found me a few weeks later. All of Olympus, she later explained, received reports when an oracle—a fortuneteller—read prophecy to a lost descendant. My visit to this oracle four years ago sent immediate red flags up around the mythological world.
Because Ursula had been paying close attention, anticipating my appearance, she found me first.
Walking into this place again brings all those memories flooding back. It’s amazing how much my life has changed since then, and all because of this woman’s reading.
“Then tell me,” I say, stepping inside and closing the door. “Tell me what I want to know.”
Even though my eyes aren’t adjusted to the dark, I sense her turning and walking to the back. I follow her into the same room where my path shifted four years ago.
“Sit, sit,” she says, waving at the table as she lights the candles scattered around the room.
When there is a soft ambient glow illuminating the round table and the otherwise empty space, she takes the other chair and sits across from me.
“First,” she says, a hint of an old-world accent rolling the word, “you wish to find the sister.”
I don’t ask how she knows. She just does.
“Yes, that’s right.”
From the folds of her robes she pulls out a piece of paper. As she smoothes it onto the table, I see that it’s a map. While I’m studying it, identifying it as a map of San Francisco, she pulls another object out of her folds. A small, pointed crystal at the end of a gold chain.
“We must concentrate,” she says, dangling the crystal over the map. “Focus your mind on the woman you seek.”
I do my best, spending the next few minutes thinking about Sthenno and where she might be and what I’m going to do once I find her. But my mind keeps drifting to Ursula, to the news of her capture and her real identity.
“Psha!” the fortune-teller spits, jerking the crystal and stuffing it back into its hidden pocket. “You do not focus.”
I don’t bother denying it. I’m trying, but my mind is just too full, I guess.
“There is another way.” She peers at me in the faint light. “Blood.”
“Blood?” I echo. “Whose blood?”
“Yours.”
I meet her unwavering gaze for a long moment. Then, knowing I don’t really have another choice, I reach down and pull the dagger from my boot. In one swift movement, I slice a line down the center of my palm—my right palm—drawing a fine trail of healing blood from my flesh.
“Here,” I say, holding out my hand as I slip the dagger back into my boot. “Does this work?”
She nods. With craggy, gnarled fingers, she folds my hand into a fist and wraps her hands around mine. Holding it over the map, she squeezes tightly until a single drop of blood drips from the bottom of my fist.
Releasing my hand, she pushes the map at me. “There, it is revealed.”
I wipe my palm on my pants as I look at the map. The single drop of blood landed in the marina district, only a few blocks from my loft. With a shaking finger, I smear the blood away and read the name of the building beneath.
Alpha Academy. Grace’s school.
Well, at least now we know where to look. Sthenno is someone at her school.
“Good?” the fortune-teller asks.
I nod, taking the map and folding it into one of my cargo pockets.
“The other question,” she says. “The one you are afraid to ask.”
I don’t have to say it out loud to confirm she’s talking about Ursula. There are a million questions I’d like to ask. Where is she? How do I find her? Is she safe? But I ask the one that answers them all. “Can I save her?”
“You can,” she says, and I release a tight breath. Then she adds, “But it has yet to be written whether you will.”
I take a shaky breath. I could be terrified by that prediction, by the fear that I might not save Ursula in the end. But I’m not. The bottom line is: I can save Ursula, and so I will. I won’t allow myself to fail.