Melpomene (PJO)

30. The new arrival

Guys! I went to the Eras Tour! It was incredible! I was like ten meters away from the front! Definitely one of the best nights of my life. 😭😭😭

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ADELA

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Tick Tick Tick

The clock in the Rec room was incessant over the silence as Adela and Chiron waited for something to happen. The drawing on the floor lightly shimmered in the early afternoon light, as if it was glaring at Adela for her obvious failure.

"She should be here by now," Adela said.

"Patience, child," Chiron reassured her. "Sorcery is finicky. These things can take time."

"And what if you're wrong?" Adela asked. What if she'd messed up the drawing somehow, and Lou Ellen was wounded on a highway somewhere, or worse, disintegrated into atoms? "Why did you let me do this? This was a bad plan. I'm a bad sorceress."

"I would have to disagree," Chiron told her. "You may lack... the adequate training in your craft, but the mark of a good sorceress is not merely talent. I'm sure your older sister Circe would vehemently argue that she's the most powerful sorceress ever to walk the earth, yet few would willingly call her a 'good' sorceress."

"I don't understand-"

Adela had to shield her eyes as a bright flash of purple light lit up the room. It dissolved to reveal a shaking figure.

Adela's... sister looked like she'd seen better days. She was wearing a tattered pink hoodie that was soaked in blood around the hem, and her eyes were bloodshot, like she hadn't slept in weeks.

Lou Ellen groaned and swayed on her feet, like she was three seconds away from falling on her face. She staggered out of the circle with an exhausted expression. It was pretty obvious that she wasn't going to be able to hold her own weight for very long. That would have been fine under normal circumstances.

If she wasn't stumbling right at Adela.

Lou Ellen's right foot caught on a chair leg halfway there. She was close enough that if Adela wanted, she could have grabbed the girl's shoulders and stopped her from falling.

Adela sidestepped out of the way and Lou Ellen careened into the chair, banging her chin against the wood in the process.

"Ow!" The pain seemed to shake Lou Ellen from her daze, and she blinked, rubbing her eyes with one hand and clutching her chin in the other. "I think I need an aspirin."

"We have ambrosia, child." Chiron handed Lou Ellen a shimmering squidgy block of the stuff. "Are you alright?"

"Better, I think." Lou Ellen nodded as she chewed. Already, the colour was coming back to her cheeks. "I was a little out of it. I think the teleportation might have made things all fuzzy up here." Lou Ellen waved her hands around her head. "I could've sworn I was walking towards someone, though."

Adela looked away.

"You were not mistaken, child," Chiron told her. "Lou Ellen, meet Adela, another daughter of Hekate."

"Mari mentioned you!" Lou Ellen said. "Why didn't you catch me?"

A lot of answers raced through Adela's head in that moment. She could say, 'I don't owe you an explanation' or even something like 'I am not about to waste effort on a girl who joined Kronos, sister or not' if she really wanted to dig the knife in and stop Lou Ellen from getting too close. She could go with something like 'I didn't see you there' - if Lou Ellen was stupid enough to join Kronos, she might believe it. Or she could tell Lou Ellen the truth.