Dub muttered under the sleeping bag.
“They call it moral support.” Henri’s sleep-deepened voice came from across the room. He sat up, and his red hair fell around his face, loose from its band. He ran a hand down his scruffy face and then met my stare with a quiet intensity. “It was their idea, not mine.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I watched as he got up, tossed his sleeping bag over his shoulder, and shuffled out of the room.
I hadn’t heard anyone come in last night. Moral support, I thought. My gaze fell on the empty sleeping bag across the room.
“Bastian slept here too,” Crank said, getting up and readjusting her overall straps. I wondered if she ever took them off. Then she stilled and worry came into her eyes. “I’m sorry about your dad. Will we ever get them back, you think?”
My father, I wasn’t sure. Not after witnessing what Athena was doing to him. I had no clue how to save him and I had no idea where Violet was being held. I only knew she was missing from the sleepover in my room, and we wouldn’t be complete until—
“Ari?” Crank asked slowly. “What’s wrong?”
I blinked. My entire body hummed like it was one gigantic goose bump. I couldn’t believe it; it’d been staring me right in the face all this time. “Crank. The laundry.”
We had a laundry room downstairs with an old machine that Crank had fixed. I’d taken a basket down with my dirty clothes a few days ago and hadn’t washed them yet.
“Huh?”
“Please tell me no one has thrown my clothes in the laundry.”
“No, we all do our own. Ari, you look weird.”
Sebastian appeared in the doorway, his hair damp with sweat, still clutching his drumsticks.
“You felt her go all weird, didn’t you, Bas,” Crank asked.
And then I was up, darting past Sebastian and practically flying down the curving staircase. Footsteps echoed behind. I leaped over the final three steps and rounded the corner, my socked feet sliding on the hardwood. I swung into the laundry room.
There. My basket. My hands were shaking. I threw my clothes out, looking, looking. . . . I froze.
My shirt. The shirt I was wearing the day Violet disappeared.
I picked it up, heart pounding, seeing the memory so clearly in my mind of Violet leaping onto Athena’s back and shoving her dagger into the goddess’s chest. They’d disappeared and the dagger had dropped to the ground. The same dagger I’d picked up. The one covered with Athena’s blood. The one I’d wiped clean using the end of my shirt.
I turned to see my friends crowded in the threshold. I lifted the shirt, shocked. “Athena’s blood opens the doorway.”
Sixteen
“I’M GOING.” DUB CROSSED HIS ARMS STUBBORNLY OVER HIS CHEST.
I frowned at him and said for the hundredth time, “You’re not going.”
“Well, if he goes, then I go,” Crank said.
“Crank,” I said, “Dub is not going. And neither are you.”
We’d gathered around the coffee table in the living room, and the resulting conversation was giving me a tension headache behind my left eye.
“You guys,” I said tiredly, “I have no idea if this will even work.”
“Well, why would you want it to?” Henri asked. “You’ll just end up right back in Athena’s hall.”
“No, I don’t think so. The instructions I found are to Athena’s old temple, back before she killed Zeus and took his temple as her own. Everything I’ve learned so far says that she abandoned her temple for Zeus’s, and that’s the one Sebastian and I were in.”
“But there’s no way of knowing what awaits us in her old temple either,” Sebastian pointed out.
“I know, but it’s our only alternative. Athena closed the gate we found in the ruins, so even if we wanted to use that one, we couldn’t. She won’t be expecting us to come back. She thinks we’re on her time, at her mercy. And if her old temple is in the same realm and abandoned, like the history books say, then we might have a shot.” I rubbed a hand down my face. “I get that there are a ton of things I don’t know about the doorways, or gates, or whatever the hell they’re called. But I still have to try.”
Sebastian and I stared at one another for a long moment before he turned his attention to Crank and Dub. “We’ll make the symbols away from the house, in the cemetery. We’ll pack food and water and weapons.”
Dub started to complain.
“Dub. It’s too dangerous,” I interrupted. “End of story.”
“You know me and Crank can take care of ourselves.”
“I know that. Taking care of yourselves is one thing, but entering the realm of a goddess is another. I can’t worry about Athena getting ahold of you. I can’t be constantly checking on you, looking over my shoulder . . . those things could get us killed. And it’s not because I think you need babysitting—it’s because I care. A lot. So just, please, don’t give me a hard time about this. Please stay so I know at least you two are safe. Let me worry about Violet, okay?”
I hadn’t meant to go on like that or get into my feelings. For a moment no one responded.
“I have an extra sheath you can borrow,” Dub offered, finally giving up.
I relaxed. The fight was over. Thank God.
“And I found a box of ammo a while back. Not sure if they’re the right kind of bullets for your gun, but you can have them if you want,” Crank said.
“Sneaking in, just the three of us, without an army or a bunch of Novem heads,” Henri contemplated. “I like it. We can move faster and not worry about egos and everyone fighting about who’s in charge.”
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Crank got off her chair and yelled behind her as she jogged from the room. “Stay there! I have a surprise!”
She banged around the kitchen and then returned with . . . a cake? She set it down on the coffee table and handed us forks. I pretended not to notice her shaking hands. “You know what a king cake is, right, Ari?”
“I know there’s a plastic baby in it, but that’s about it,” I answered, hoping that Crank wasn’t losing it. She was extremely worried. We were leaving and our chances were one in a million. If Crank wanted to have cake, we’d have cake.
“It’s twisted deep-fried dough with cream cheese filling. Trust me, you’ll like it.”
There was icing poured and hardened on the top, and sections were colored purple, green, and gold.
“Where’d you get it?” I asked, taking a slice and shoving a bite into my mouth.
“Perks of running the mail,” Crank said. “I smell cake and the box mysteriously never gets delivered.”
I laughed. “You stole it.”
“Hell yeah, I did. It was addressed to the Pontalba apartments.”
Which for us was enough said. Everyone knew that Novem families lived in those swanky apartments. And they sure as hell wouldn’t miss a king cake.
“Right on,” Dub said, clinking forks with Crank like a toast, his cheeks filled like a chipmunk’s.
Henri found the baby, so it was his responsibility, they all said, to find a cake next year. And I damn sure would do everything in my power to make sure there would be a next year.
Crank drove us the four blocks to Lafayette Cemetery. We could’ve walked, but she insisted, saying we shouldn’t tire ourselves out. She parked on the curb. We slid the rear door up and jumped out.
We headed down the first row of tombs, then the second. “How about that one there?” Dub pointed to an intact tomb at the far end of the row. It had roughened marble sides and was big enough to make the doorway.
“Perfect. Let’s use the other side, though, since it’s hidden from the main gate,” I said.
Once we were there, I let my heavy backpack slide off my shoulders and placed the small plastic container I carried on a flat bit of stone nearby. While the boys had packed the bags and weapons, Crank and I had used as little water as possible to wet the stiff blood from my shirt and squeeze it into the container. It was Athena’s blood for sure, but watered down.
Dub handed me my notebook with the symbols. “We can each do one,” he said.
“No. It has to be me. The tablet said it has to be done by a woman in order to work.” My cheeks turned hot and I kept the whole virginity thing to myself. “Once it’s made, though, anyone should be able to go through.”
Sebastian and Henri brushed off the spots where I’d make the drawings.
After they were done, I took the container and dipped my finger in the blood. I drew each symbol slowly and perfectly, referencing my sketches from the notebook. The watered-down blood was so light, I wasn’t sure it’d work, so I waited for the symbols to dry and then did another coat.
Four coats later I stood back. The wall looked like the wall in Entergy Tower, though not exactly. The symbols were slightly different.
I set the container down, used a bottle of water to rinse my hands, and took a deep breath as the guys stood in front of the wall trying to note any energy disturbance or increase, any sign that the symbols held the power to open a doorway.
“Uh, guys. Check this out. I’m thinking Ari’s doorway works.” Crank stood next to the wall with her hand inside. Gone.
Relief washed over me, making my knees weak. We were really doing this. Going into Athena’s realm. I sat down and rubbed a shaky hand down my face.
After the shock and reality dimmed, Henri, Sebastian, and I secured our backpacks over our shoulders. I pulled out my blade with one hand and drew my 9mm with the other. Henri swung a shotgun off his back, which he had strapped there like a bow, and Sebastian went empty-handed. His hands were—as I’d seen—pretty destructive things.
“See you guys soon.” I hugged Crank and Dub, and then waited for the others to say good-bye.
Deep breath. Game face on. “Last one in’s a rotten egg,” I said, and walked through the gate.
