Touch of Sibyl

Chapter Twenty.seven

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Zac Quinn --->

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What happened at the Library of Antiquities the night of the homecoming dance was the talk of Mythical Academy for the next week.

But not in the way that I expected.

Even though she didn't seem to remember anything, Morgan Houston still managed to take credit for everything, from thwarting Jessy to destroying the Bowl of Death to killing the Nemean panther. It was like Zac and I hadn't even been there and she'd saved everyone at the academy from a fate worse than death.

Not all of the kids believed her, though, and wild rumors spread as fast as people could text them. Everything from how a group of Chitauries had planted a magic bomb on campus to drunk kids performing a crazy ritual to Jessy coming back from the dead and destroying the library because she was pissed that she hadn't been crowned homecoming queen before she'd been murdered. The last one was a little truer than anyone knew.

I kept my head down through the whole mess. Something told me that the fewer people who knew that I'd been involved in what had happened, the better. I still remembered the glowing red eyes that had been swirling around in the cloud of magic when I'd destroyed the Bowl of Death. How the eyes had been fixed on me and exactly how full of hate, rage, and anger they'd been. I remembered what Jessy had said about being a Chitauri and how there were other Chitauries at the academy, other kids and profs who served Loki, who wanted to free him from his prison and return the god to the mortal realm so he could bring about another Chaos War-something that Nike had told me I was somehow supposed to help her with.

Despite my unease, life returned to normal. I went to my classes and worked my assigned shifts at the library. Actually, I worked double shifts, because Nickimedes had more or less decided that I alone was responsible for the destruction of his precious library, so he was making me help him clean it from top to bottom as punishment. If I thought that Nickimedes hadn't liked me before, he absolutely hated me now. So yeah, my world was pretty much back to normal.

I'd called Grandma the night that everything had gone down at the library and told her what had happened. She'd immediately offered to come to the academy to comfort me, but I'd told her that I was okay. The truth was that I'd needed some time to myself to think about things-a lot of things. Finally, a couple of days later, I managed to get away from Nickimedes long enough to sneak off campus and go see her.

"You knew all along, didn't you?" I asked Grandma as we sat in the kitchen eating the sticky, sinfully sweet chocolate fudge that she'd just made. "That we come from a long line of warrior chicks who serve a kick-ass goddess."

"Warrior chicks? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" Grandma smiled and reached for another piece of fudge, her bright scarves fluttering with the motion. She'd just been doing a reading for a client, so she was dressed in her usual Sibyl clothes.

I rolled my eyes. "Come on, you know what I mean."

"Of course I know. That's what makes us Sibyls, Ava."

I frowned. "How does being warrior chicks make us Sibyls? You never told me that before."

Grandma stared at me, a serious look on her face. "Ava, why do you think that we can do the things that we can do? Why do you think that I can see the future or that you can touch objects and know everything about them? Where do you think that power comes from?"

I opened my mouth, but no answer came to me. I shrugged.

"We can do those things and more because Nike has gifted us with that power. Back when our very first ancestor served Nike, the goddess rewarded her by giving her the gift of seeing the future. Over the years and generations, that psychic gift has taken on many different forms, like your mother's ability to sense the truth and your psychometry."