Ms. Allie had been talking all period, but James was hardly paying attention. The past two days, the students had all been talking about the power outage, even though there hadn’t been a storm. But thoughts of betrayals and seductions had been plaguing James’s mind nonstop. He thought he was comfortable with his decision, but for some reason there was this strange and consistent tugging in the back of his mind like his subconscious was doing its best to tell him something. James couldn’t quite pin it down. He glanced at his friend next to him. Of course Tres would be mesmerized by the young and beautiful woman; he looked like he was in dreamland whenever he saw her. Hard to believe Tres could ever get any work done in this class. Eliza hadn’t talked to him very much since Sunday morning, and he didn’t like that at all. He enjoyed their battles of words and wits, and without them, he felt empty. Even Svet had been more subdued recently, as if her best friend’s emotions h

The next day James’s arm was so sore, he could barely write. James usually liked to write up all of his notes instead of typing them into his iPad, but today that proved impossible. Dr. Thomas was discussing some of the missions and preparations leading up to D-Day, and he didn’t want to miss anything. Of course, some of the missions being discussed are only found in special textbooks available to descendants of demigods. Many of them were infiltrated behind enemy lines and helped to disrupt the Axis war machine. As his typing skills were not up to par, a downloaded recording application did the trick, and he taped everything for post-class review. Dr. Thomas was talking about possibly showing Saving Private Ryan—with a commentary of which characters were based on actual soldiers that were demigods—after they finished studying D-Day in order to get a better visualization of it all. It was one of James’s favorite movies, so it suited him just fine. The class bell rang, putting an end t

Saturday night. The week had flown by so fast that James barely had the time to catch up. Scratch that. The past three days as a whole flew by, but the days themselves seemed to move as slow as molasses. He knew why: Eliza still wasn’t speaking to him. He didn’t blame her, though. What he had done was wrong. James had deliberately chosen a very painful topic for her and used it like a whip to make lashes across her heart. Despicable. He would be patient, and when she was ready for him to apologize, he would. It was a weird feeling for James to long for a friendship so desperately. Not a normal thing for him. His friendship with Tres made the entire situation awkward as well. That next day Tres had sat with him for breakfast, but James could tell his friend was only doing him a favor. Eliza and Svet were who he was closest to. He knew it wasn’t fair to Tres, so James told him that he’d be fine sitting by himself. And that’s exactly what he had been doing since.

Sure, James was elated he had made the lacrosse team. He was ecstatic that he would, once again, be playing lacrosse and that even more of his time would be taken up because of this and maybe, just maybe, his mind would have some time off from its ceaseless chipping away at the problem. It was almost as if bits of his sanity were being plucked away at random intervals like a girl plucking away at a flower’s petals saying, “He loves me. He loves me not.” But, no. Because at the end of the day, none of it really mattered. Not training. Not lacrosse. There was only his problem with Eliza that kept pervading into the forefront of his thoughts, be they awake or dreaming. The internal dialogue continued on, endlessly, drowning out all else because, as it happened, the past two weeks had passed with little to no improvement with Eliza. Just when it seemed the gifts were having an effect, she would offer a slight smile only for a wave of confusion, frustration, an

With an easy pull, the wall-door swung open. A large, cavern-like room—lit by several torches along the walls and a massive wooden chandelier high overhead, all of which flared up by themselves—met James’s eyes. There was so much to take in he didn’t know where to look first. Directly in front of them, on either side of the room, stood numerous statues that looked to be made out of pure gold and ivory. He tore his gaze away from the intricately crafted statue of Athena when Blakeney said, “Follow me.” James followed as he led them deeper into the room. A musty smell invaded his nostrils and the dry, cool air raised goosebumps on his skin. A fine layer of dust covered everything, as if the cavern had been vacant for quite a while. It reminded him of the caverns in Carlsbad. Questions danced in his head, but Blakeney answered them before he could speak. “Many of these statues were saved from the Greek and Roman empires. History thought them lost, but apparently they have been i