Changing Fate (Book 2: We're The Same But Different)

13

WHEN I WAS A GOD, I would've been pleased to have a beautiful woman pull me behind a building. But as Lester with Emma, I was more likely to get killed than kissed.

We crouched next to a stack of milk crates by the kitchen entrance. The area smelled of cooking grease, pigeon droppings, and chlorine from the nearby children's splash park. Emma rattled the locked door, then glared at me.

"Help!" she hissed.

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Well, now would be a good time to have a burst of godly strength!"

I should never have told her and Leo about that. Once, when facing Nero at Camp Half-Blood, my superhuman power had briefly returned, allowing me to overcome the emperor's Germani. I'd thrown one of them into the sky where, for all I knew, he was still in low earth orbit. But that moment had quickly passed. My strength hadn't returned since.

Regardless, Leo and Emma seemed to think I could summon godly bursts of awesomeness anytime I wanted, just because I was a former god. I found that unfair.

I gave the door a try. I yanked the handle and almost pulled my fingers out of their sockets.

"Ow," I muttered. "Mortals have gotten good at making doors. Now, back in the Bronze Age—"

Emma shushed me.

Our enemies' voices were getting closer. I couldn't hear Lityerses, but two other men were conversing in a guttural language that sounded like ancient Gallic. I doubted they were zookeepers.

Emma frantically pulled a bobby pin from her backpack. Aha, so bag is magic! She pointed at me, then pointed around the corner. I thought she was telling me to flee and save myself. That would have been a sensible suggestion. Then I realized she was asking me to keep watch.

I didn't know what good that would do, but I peered over the rampart of milk crates and waited for Germani to come and kill us. I could hear them at the front of the café, rattling the shutter over the order window, then conversing briefly with lots of grunts and grumbling. Knowing the emperor's bodyguards, they were probably saying something like Kill? Kill. Bash heads? Bash heads.

I wondered why Lityerses had split his people into two groups. Surely they already knew where the griffins were being kept. Why, then, were they searching the park? Unless, of course, they were searching for intruders, specifically us....

Emma snapped her hairpin in two. She inserted the metal pieces in the door lock and began to wriggle them, her eyes closed as if she were in deep concentration.

Ridiculous, I thought. That only works in movies and Homeric epics!

Click. The door swung inward. Emma waved me inside. She yanked the pin shards out of the lock, then followed me across the threshold, gently closing the door behind us. She turned the dead bolt just before someone outside shook the handle.

A gruff voice muttered in Gallic, probably something like No luck. Bash heads elsewhere.

Footsteps receded.

I finally remembered to breathe.

I faced Emma. "How did you pick the lock?"

She stared at the broken hairpin in her hand. "I—I don't luck I guess."

"Luck?"

"Yes luck."

I didn't think I was how, but I couldn't argue with the results.

"So it wasn't your powers, then?" I tried to contain my disappointment.

"No," she said. "You'll know when I use my powers, because you'll find yourself being tossed across Indianapolis."