Olympus Drive Book 3: According to Plan

Chapter 29

Rhea

I look down at my hands, feeling the all too familiar creeping panic. Barad is dead. Already dead somewhere. I'll find the little one's bodies, drained of their immortal fire. The storm will clear and as I watch the clouds dissipate I know that he's truly gone. That I failed again. That they're gone for ten, twenty, or two hundred years and they died and it's my fault. That I couldn't save them---

"Elena," I say, sharply, taking a deep breath. As I say it of course the feeling vanishes. And I'm standing again in the sunlight and everything is clearly fine.

"Well, I'm bored," she mumbles, sitting on top of an old car. We are back at the junkyard. I swear I spend as much time here as I do in the laundry room.

"Do you want me to drop you off with your mum? Because, as I understood the agreement, we weren't telling her you got expelled if you were nice for me all day," I ask, tiredly. Her mother will twist her mind into submission we both know that isn't pleasant. But I am actually busy today and I do not need to have panic attacks every hour.

"No," Elena says, crossing her arms, "It isn't fair though. Everyone else gets to do things now and then."

"You get to do things in haunted houses—or during the odd robbery," I sigh, "We shipped your brother off to another continent you really don't get to moan."

She sighs.

"Need something set on fire?"

I snatch the Darkness up in a hug immediately.

"Good to see you baby girl," I say, squeezing her tightly. She's a wild one. Usually neither here nor there, avoiding trouble and detection given the number of fires that tend to be started in her presence.  But she answers her phone when I call unlike fifteen other people.

"What's up?" she asks, as I release her from the hug, "Helen's not trying to kill Basil again?"

"No not lately---your nephew opened a gate to the Underworld we need it closed," I say, gesturing at the grounds.

"What---- Thyme?"

"Yeah," I say.

"I didn't know he could read," she says, frowning at the extensive markings.

"He can't. Dara helped him," I say. Thyme has one of those learning—things. He reads horribly. Also he doesn't try very much he likes hitting people. His dad and Lisa took him to all sorts of therapists for years to help him learn how to read properly.

"Oh, that makes sense—sure I can close it," she says, shrugging.

"Excellent, thanks, you want to come by the house---"

"No, I'm not interested in seeing Helen let alone Basil's latest way of destroying his own life—facebook is sufficient—,"

"Now, your brother's been sober for six months," I point out.

"But he's got a live in boyfriend," Elena says.

"There it is. Nope I'm good," she says.

"Cool, we're off to solve a murder and hopefully prevent another one, bye," I say, backing away and taking Elena's hand because she would most certainly not follow me.

"The murder you're preventing---did you cause it to begin with or is this one of your personal bleeding heart crusades to save people you became emotionally attached to? Because those never work?"

"Goodbye, former bleeding heart crusade that did work, thank you for the help!"

"Fuck you too dad."

"I am not your dad!"