Children of the Lost Ruler- Ghost Goddesses Book One

Florida Here We (I) Come!

Fuck! FuckFuckFuckFuck! Shit! Why Nidian? Crap! I need him and Hazel to stay sane.
Taking a deep breath, I calm myself down. I know I’m the last person I need to worry about right now, so I walk over to a crying Hazel. Frank looked at me with piercing eyes, but before he could say anything, I grabbed Hazel and shadowed us to my room. “Hey Goldy. It’s gonna be alright. I swear on the Styx that I’ll find Nidian.” She hugged me, shuddering sobs racking out of her body. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
After she calmed down a bit, she looked at me. “You never told me why you call him that.”
“I don’t even think he knows,” I told her with a soft smile. “Nico di Angelo. Ni. di. An. Nidian.”
She smiled a bit. After another long hug, I shadowed us back down to the bedroom where everyone else was. The first thing I saw was Salem holding a sobbing Lara in the shadows. Smiling, I walked over and gave them a hug, too. I do not hug, but they’re my family, and they’re actually starting to grow on me.

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After a lot of crying from most everyone, we all decided to take a nap. I couldn’t really sleep, and I expected Lara not to either, but she fell asleep in Salem’s arms.
Anyway, when everyone was deep asleep, I started thinking. What’re you doing?
Being subdued.
Stop complaining. At least you can talk now. Or do you wanna go be silent again, like you have been for the last two years?
Fine. But can we at least do something? Olympia is getting boring.
We haven’t found our clue here yet.
I suddenly felt like I had just been slapped upside the head. Evil book. Hidden mythological knowledge. That was the clue. So can we please go?
Fine. Where to next?
Clearwater, Florida.
Why?
Because I want to go to the beach, and I have a feeling.
Getting up from bed, I quickly shadowed us to a hotel in Clearwater and booked a few rooms. Shadowing back to the other, who were all still dead asleep, I shadowed them and all their stuff to their new rooms.
They’re gonna freak when they wake up!
I snickered Abso-fucking-lutely.
Going out, I took a nice stroll down to the beach. There were a lot of people there, but through all the noise, I heard the unmistakable sound of repeated metal on metal hits. Looking around, I suddenly saw, deep out in the water, a figure frantically waving something while standing on a metal buoy.
Looking around, nobody else seemed to see or hear it, so I knew it was being covered by the mist. Coving myself in shadows and grabbing a newby boat, I drove out there.
As I got closer, I saw, to my dismay, Jason trying but failing to fight off a swarm of sharks with his sword. I tried to get to him, but the sharks weren’t letting me get within one-hundred metres of him.
Standing up, I took down the shadow wall. “Birdie! What’re you doing?”
He jerked to look at me. “Fight sharks!”
“Why don’t you just fly away or kill them or something?”
“They won’t die, and my powers aren’t working!”
Fuck. How am I going to get him?
You could just leave him.
Shut up. It may seem simple and stupid, but opening my backpack, I pulled out a harpoon. Shooting it onto the buoy, Jason looked at me quizzically. “Why do you have that?”
“I have a lot of things! Now climb on!”
After a minute, Jason was sitting in the boat with me, and the sharks swam away. “Why’re you here, anyway? And where’s everyone else?” Jason asked me cautiously.
“A clue sent us here, and the others are at the hotel, unaware we’re here.”
“Unaware that you’re at the beach?”
“No. They don’t know we’re in Florida. Everyone had a meltdown and fell asleep after we rolled Nico out, so I shadowed us all here.”
He stared at me, but stayed silent as I drove us back to the shore.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

When we got back to the hotel, everyone was still sleeping. “They haven’t had much sleep the past few days, have they?” Jason asked me.
“No. Have you?”
“None, but I don’t feel tired.”
I nodded. “Try not to wake anyone up. They’re fucking crankey as hell.”

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By eleven thirty that night, nobody had woken up, and it was starting to get suspicious. Going to check on Jason, he seemed to notice the same thing. “Should we wake them?”
“Yeah.”
We walked around shaking everyone, but nobody would wake up. We made loud noises, tickled then, dumped ice water on them, but nothing. “This is bad.”
“Ya fucking think,” I snapped at Jason.
“What should we do?”
“I don--” Before I could finish, the dice appeared in front of me. I checked my phone. 23:59.
I looked at Jason, and he sighed. “Who’s next?”
Once the clock struck midnight, I rolled the die. Seven. “Frank.”
Looking over at his bed, Frank was gone. Not knowing what to do, Jason and I just sat there, waiting.
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At nine o’clock the next morning, everyone started to wake up, and I swear I’ve never seen Jason or myself more happy.
Everyone in the room looked around at our new surroundings, and most everyone else somehow managed to find their way here, all barging in at once.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Lara asked angrily.
“I got Birdie back.”
Just then, Hazel and Piper managed to find the room. Smiling, Hazel hugged Jason, but after looking around for a second, it dimmed. “Where’s Frank?”
I didn’t really care about Frank, but I did Hazel. With as much sympathy as I could muster, I looked up at her and held up the die. She started sobbing, but just then, Will spoke up. “Didn’t we just lose Nico an hour or two ago?”
Jason and I shared a look. “Um… guys? You do know you’ve been asleep for like twenty-fours hours, right?” I asked.
Everyone went silent and looked at me like I was crazy. “She’s right,” Jason spoke up. “We tried everything to wake you up, be we couldn’t.”
“Wait!” Percy screamed. “Where are we?”
“Florida.”
The stares I got. Literally. “Why?” He asked. “More importantly, how?”
“I shadowed us here because of a lead I got in Olympia.” Blank stares. “I—“
Before I could finish what I was saying, the floor opened up below Salem and I, and we disappeared into a black abyss.