Touch of Sibyl

Chapter Fourteen

I didn't get much sleep that night, mainly because I was still feeling the after effects of touching the ripped-up photo, still feeling the echoes of Jessy's rage and the massive migraine it had given me.

Maybe I should have known better by now. After all, my Sibyl gift had let me see and feel a lot of things over the years-the good, the bad, and the just plain awful. But I still couldn't believe that Jessy Ashton, the pretty, perfect rich girl who seemed to have everything, could feel that much rage at her best friend. Even if she did think that Morgan had something going on with Samson. Guys. They so weren't worth the drama.

My lack of sleep put me in a grouchy mood the next day, especially when it was time for my fifth-period gym class.

I hated gym class.

Going to a school full of the descendants of mythological warriors was bad enough. But the Powers That Were actually expected me to be coordinated, too. Gym class at Mythics was completely different from what it had been back at my old school. There were no basketballs, softballs, or volleyballs in sight.

There were too many weapons crowded into the gym for that.

Like everything else at Mythics, the gym was enormous, with a ceiling that soared several hundred feet into the air. Colorful banners announcing various academy championships over the years dangled down from the rafters, while glossy wooden bleachers ringed the gym on two sides. Thick mats lined the floors, hiding the squeaky basketball court from sight, and racks of weapons butted up against one of the walls. Swords, daggers, bows, staffs, and other things that I didn't even know the names for but that looked like they would cut you to the bone if you so much as touched them.

The point of gym class at Mythics wasn't to score the most or run the most laps like it had been back at my old school. Oh no. Here? You were actually supposed to learn how to use all the weapons on the wall. How to kill, maim, and torture your opponent, whoever it might be.

At the moment, though, I was the one being tortured.

"Hee--yah!" the girl in front of me screamed before darting forward, raising her sword high, and bringing it down toward my head with every intention of killing me dead, dead, dead.

I winced, backed up, and raised my own sword. Her weapon hit my blade, the sharp clanggg of it reverberating all the way up my hand and into my shoulder. The sword slid from my suddenly numb fingers and thumped onto the mat, the way it had five times already in the last five minutes.

"You're supposed to block my blow and try to hit me back. Not drop your sword every single time I hit you." Tiffany Pizarro rolled her eyes at me. "Geez, Ava. You really suck at this."

"Tell me something I don't already know," I muttered.

At the start of gym class, we drew names to see who would fight whom. Tiff had the misfortune of being my sparring partner today. She was an Amazon with ebony skin and short black hair who was almost six feet tall. Tiff also happened to be the captain of the girls' fencing team and could make a pincushion out of me with her sword if she really wanted to. Like all the other Amazons, she was gifted with supernatural quickness. Tiff looked like a blur when she moved. One second, she was in front of me. The next, she'd hit me with her sword six times already.

"Let's go again," Tiff barked. "You might not get anything out of this, but I want to be able to pass my advanced weapons test next week."

Oh yeah. There were tests, too. I was actually being graded on how well I could chop off someone's head or put an arrow through his eye. I'd prided myself on my perfect 4.0 GPA at my old school, but gym was one class at Mythics that I was definitely going to fail this semester and every other one. Students were required to take gym and all the weapons training that went with it every single semester until they graduated. Yippeeskippee.