Touch of Sibyl

Chapter Twenty.nine

Later that night, Nica came over to my dorm room with a pizza in one hand and a six-pack of soda in the other as part of our plans for a serious study session and a total gossip fest. I'd been responsible for dessert, of course, and Grandma had loaded me up with chocolate, peanut butter, and pumpkin fudge when I'd seen her yesterday.

Nica and I spread the food out on the floor and sat down in front of the TV, which I turned to the latest Project Runway marathon, per Nica's request. While the Valkyrie stared at the fashions on the flickering screen, I opened the pizza box and stopped cold.

"What is this?" I asked.

What was inside the box didn't look like a pizza to me. Oh, there was a crust and some mozzarella cheese under there somewhere, but the whole top of the pizza was covered with some sort of exotic meat, a suspicious spicy-smelling white sauce, and steamed vegetables, cut into fancy shapes, of course. My eyes narrowed. Was that wilted spinach? Yuck.

"I got it at the dining hall," Nica said, digging into the steaming pie and grabbing a slice. "It's a grilled lamb Florentine pizza. It's the latest thing on the menu."

"Whatever happened to plain old cheese and pepperoni? Or ham and pineapple?"

Nica rolled her eyes. "Pepperoni? That is so boring and so over." Her black eyes flicked to my clothes. "Just like all those hoodies that you wear. We seriously have to go shopping, Ava. You totally need some new threads."

I might not have been friends with the Valkyrie long, but I was starting to learn her moods-and that there was no point in arguing with her about my hoodies. So I sighed, grabbed a slice of pizza, and bit into it. Okay, so it was actually kind of good, spinach and all, but I wasn't going to tell Nica that. At least, not yet.

"So," Nica said, cracking open a soda with her fingernails and causing pink sparks of magic to fill the air. "I ran into Morgan at the dining hall when I went to get the pizza."

"And how was that?"

Nica hadn't really had much to do with Morgan and the other Valkyries since she'd gone to the homecoming dance with Carlos. We'd been hanging out a lot, though, and were slowly becoming real friends. I liked a lot of things about Nica. She was cool and funny and a complete nerd when it came to talking about computer stuff. She wasn't at all like the spoiled, selfish Valkyrie princess I'd thought she was that day when I'd first confronted her in the girls' bathroom.

Nica shrugged. "About what I'd expected. Morgan tried to get me to sit with her and the others. They wanted to know all about my big date with Carlos. But I knew that if I told Morgan anything, she'd make fun of me behind my back just like Jessy did."

"I'm sorry."

Nica shrugged again. "Don't be. I told Morgan exactly what I thought of her and what a ho-bag she was for sleeping with Samson behind Jessy's back. And then, I gave the other girls all the e-mails that I pulled off Jessy's laptop, all the ones that Morgan and Jessy had swapped back and forth, talking about everyone."

I almost choked on my pizza. "You didn't!"

Nica gave me a wicked grin. "I did. You should have seen their faces. They were all so pissed that they started yelling at Morgan right in the middle of the dining hall. They were all still screaming at her when I left to come over here."

It wasn't the bloody, gruesome revenge that Jessy had wanted, but I supposed it was something. Maybe now at least the other girls would know what Morgan was really like and they could steer clear of her.

"What about you?" Nica asked. "Did you meet with Tin like you were supposed to? What did she say?"

I wasn't quite ready to tell Nica about the goddess Nike picking me to be her Chosen One , so I glossed over that part. But I told Nica everything else, including the fact that Tin thought I might be in danger from Jessy's family since they were all Chitauries.

"I've met Jessy's family," Nica said. "Tin is right to be worried. Her brother is especially freaky. I always thought he was wound a little too tight, no matter how cute he was."

"Tin didn't tell me that," I said. "But she rearranged my schedule. Now I get to have private lessons with a combat tutor every morning before classes start. Tin wants me to learn how to actually use my sword."

I gestured at Nick, who was in his scabbard and hanging on the wall right next to my Wonder Woman poster.

"Combat tutor?" Nica asked. "Tin assigned you a tutor? Who?"

"Zac Quinn."

Nica's black eyes gleamed. "Really? That's very interesting."

"It's not going to be like that at all," I said, a bitter tone creeping into my voice. "Zac told me so himself. He pretty much gave me the I-like-you-but-we-can't-go-out-for-some-stupid-reason speech. And then, he stuck his tongue down Samantha Warren's throat right in front of me on the quad."

Nica winced in sympathy.

I hadn't told Nica how I felt about Zac, but I was pretty sure that the Valkyrie had guessed. It was probably as obvious to her as her feelings for Carlos had been to me.

"I'm sorry, Ava," she said.

I just shrugged.

We ate in silence for a few minutes, before Nica steered the conversation back to a safer subject-Carlos and how wonderful she thought that he was.

"Did I tell you that he wrote a song for me?" Nica said in a dreamy tone. "It goes something like this... ."

Despite my other problems, I found myself getting caught up in Nica's story, and soon we were laughing and giggling like we'd been BFFs forever. Once again, that sense of normalcy, of peace, crept over me. Gossiping with a friend over pizza. I couldn't think of a better way to spend the night.

Sure, there was still a lot of stuff going on. A goddess had given me a sword and declared me to be her Chosen One , and Jessy's family and the rest of the Chitauri bad guys wanted to do some pretty nasty things to me. I'd just told the boy I liked that I actually, well, liked him, and before going off with another girl he'd told me that we couldn't be together

My eyes went to my mom's photo, which was on my desk right under Nick's spot on the wall. I planned to get a frame for the picture of her and Tin and put it there as well. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed like my mom was always smiling right at me whenever I looked at her picture now. Like she could see me from wherever she was or something. Maybe she could. Mythical Academy was a place of magic after all, where legends were real and anything could happen.

And I'd finally figured out something else, too. That the people you loved never really died, not as long as you kept your memories of them alive, not as long as they lived on in your heart. And my mom would always be in mine.

Nica snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. "Earth to Ava!"

"What? What did you say?"

She gestured at the pizza box in between us. One single slice lay inside. "I asked you if you wanted the last piece of pizza."

I looked at her, then at my mom's picture again and Nick and the rest of my cozy little dorm room. Finally, my eyes landed on the small statue of Nike that I'd bought from the campus bookstore. The winged figure of the goddess of victory sat on my desk, right next to my mom's photo.

As I stared at the statue, Nike's eyes suddenly snapped open, just like Nick's had done to me that first night in the library. They were the same color as Nick's eye, the same color as the goddess's eyes had been when I'd seen her. A beautiful mix of purple and gray that always made me think of twilight.

As I watched, mouth hanging open, one of the eyes slowly lowered and went back up again. Was she ... winking at me? I blinked, and the figure's eyes were closed just like they had been before.

But for once, the sight didn't freak me out. Instead, I felt like I'd earned the goddess's approval, like I'd achieved some sort of ... peace or something. Some sort of victory. At least for tonight.

"Ava?" Nica asked again. "Are you okay?"

"Tell you what," I said, looking at my friend. "Why don't we split the last piece?"

Nica smiled. "Works for me."

"Me too."

So we did.