Furious

Chapter Seventeen

I was miserable. For days—I lost track of how many—Gregory and Alex fetched me from my room or my kitchen or wherever in the jail cell of an apartment I was waiting. My schedule was all train, shower, sleep, repeat since I stormed out of my heart to heart with Hector.

Alex, my savior, had been waiting for me at the portal, as if she knew that meeting wouldn't go well. Gregory didn't show his face until the next day but when he got down to business, he was ruthless. They hardly let me sleep in between trainings, which wasn't getting any easier in that strange place thanks in no small part to the looming unknown deadline. Lucky for me I had a handy-dandy lamia with super weird mind control and the ability to make people take naps.

Not that I was grateful to him for it. On the bright side he hadn't tried to mind control me into doing anything nefarious. Yet.

I avoided thinking about Hector almost as fervently as I avoided seeing him. It was easier than avoiding my mother: Hector stayed out of my room if I yelled at him to stay out, which I may have done when we returned from his dungeon. Hector left me alone when I demanded it. Mom would give me five minutes and then knock softly on the door in an attempt to talk it out, as if all I needed were a few spare moments to collect myself and then I could be an adult again and stop throwing whatever was in reach at her.

Or was I confusing her with Jasper, who kept trying to feed me, who never offered to talk but constantly told me to grow up? Maybe Mom hadn't tried; I wasn't altogether sure. After Jasper had so quickly bent my will to his, I spent as much time as possible out of earshot. With no information about the extent of his freaky mind control abilities, not to mention his creepy I-eat-children deal, I wanted as much space between us as humanly possible.

Though the evidence of his presence stood out too plainly to dispute. Jasper left those plastic-wrapped bars everywhere I was sure to see them: next to the sink, on the bed, stacked up on the kitchen counter. I don't remember when I started eating them. Maybe day three or four—it was hard to tell. They tasted like chocolate covered cardboard.

Jasper made sure to replenish the stash daily. He was not thanked or acknowledged for his efforts.

Hector didn't visit at all after our conversation. Before practically running away from his study, I rudely told him to take his war and shove it somewhere unpretty. Every the masochist, I had visions of Hector telling his good friend Lindsay about the look on my face when he answered that there was nothing special about me. I had to force myself not to think about where they were, if they were together, whether or not she had learned to dress herself in real clothes.

I didn't bother wondering if Hector was feeling better. I really didn't want to know if Lindsay was helping him regain his energy they way she had in the dungeon or if she was nursing him back to health in other ways. Or what was wrong with him in the first place. He had seemed so drained when he came to see me after Jasper put me to bed and the only thing that perked him up had been Lindsay and her magic healing lips.

I didn't want to know if she was with him when she should have been training me. I certainly wasn't worried about his ability to feed on the realm's energy. Not even a little. I swear.

Thinking about him had me distracted. Unfortunately for me, Hector wasn't the only one with energy deficiency in the Underworld and all of Jasper's attempts at keeping me healthy didn't seem to be helping any. The difference was that Hector definitely wasn't getting his ass handed to him daily by some hot guy with an attitude.

Clear evidence that I had been hit in the head too many times: I thought Gregory was hot. A nerd with muscles, the kind of guy who got more attractive when he took his glasses off; he had serious Clark Kent potential.