THE SANDMAN ☞ TRAVIS STOLL

NINE

WINNIE IS WAITING IN the arena when Valerie enters at eleven o'clock on the dot, an hour before when the group is meant to be meeting for training.

    "You're here!" The little girl shrieks, her auburn hair threatening to escape from its pigtails. She's bounding up to Valerie in an instant, eyes bright with mirth. "I didn't know if you'd come early, but you did!"

    Her excitement would have been infectious if the crackling pain living behind Valerie's ribs—a lingering side effect of her tumble through Althea Knight's dreams two weeks ago—hadn't reared its ugly head. It dims whatever spark of joy has started to bloom in the dark place within her chest.

    When she doesn't reply, Winnie's expression barely falters. "Are you here to help me with my stuff?" She asks, sincerity in her voice.

    "What stuff? Swordfighting?" Valerie's eyebrows tick up with her unsaid thoughts: Swordfighting, or dreamwalking?

    Winnie shakes her head, and her nose scrunches. "My sister, Lou Ellen—you know her, she's your age—says I'm a mimic. I can copy other people's powers." She speaks quickly, with no space for argument between her words. "I can prove it, too. Name a superhero." She laughs then, a tinkling, happy sound that is far too similar to Noelle's. "Just kidding. I can only copy people I've touched. Duh."

    Her words create a different kind of ache in Valerie's chest, less of a fracturing and more of a longing, a missing. She misses her sister.

    Winnie's confidence is striking. "Have you had a run-in with Jason Grace?" Valerie asks, testing the waters.

    "He pulled me up the lava wall last year." Winnie grins. Something in her expression flickers.

    No, her expression isn't what flickers. Her eyes flicker, flashes of white gleaming  across the depth of her hazel irises. Her hands begin to spark, bright bolts that arc between her tiny fingers.

    Lightning.

    Holy gods above and below.

    Valerie lunges for Winnie, trapping the little girl's hands between both of her own. "Have you shown anyone else this? Does anyone else know?" Her voice comes out in a hushed whisper. Panic. Another emotion she has no idea how to deal with.

    It's not unusual for demigods of the Greek variety to be exceptionally, extraordinarily powerful—Valerie herself is one of the abnormally gifted ones, although there is not a single person other than herself who knows how deep that power goes.

    But a mimic...

    A mimic who can copy the power of a child of the Big Three, of Zeus, is an incredibly dangerous thing. A mimic can start a war. A mimic this young, with no true understanding of her abilities, can alter the course of humanity if she falls into the wrong hands.

    Winnie's grin drops, and she looks startled. "No. Just you. Lou Ellen only knows that I'm a mimic because I copied some Dionysus kid that pushed me in training last week."

    Valerie kneels in front of Winnie, still so tall that they are eye-level now. Even more panic rises in her throat. "You can't tell anyone else what you can do, okay?" Winnie's lower lip wobbles, and gods, damnit, tears well up in her eyes. "I'll help you as much as I can, but you can't tell anyone else. Especially not about the lightning."

    When Winnie sets her jaw, grinding her teeth, Valerie expects a deep breath, maybe a reluctant agreement.

    She doesn't expect Winnie to invade her mind.