Armed with a large, dusty book, I propped up on one of the sofas to read. It was all I could do while my body recuperated from the recent Fury-eruption and subsequent ass-kickingâby dragon and by fellow Fury. And, finally, I was making headway on the information front. The book had to have answers.
There was another one the meal substitute waiting for me on the couch. I ate it without thinking, even though I wasn't hungry.
Jasper and I spoke very little after our encounter the night Lindsay was released from her jail cell. He took my comment, made in anger, to heart and wasn't hanging around the apartment anymore.
I took a bite of my makeshift meal. Alex and Gregory emerged through the mirror uninvited and unannounced. With a mouth full of granola-y sustenance I grunted at my teachers through closed lips. I didn't have the energy for a real "hello" anyway. Gregory headed for the kitchen, and Jasper. Alex, wearing a sleek outfit of blacks and greys unlike her usual training duds, spread out of the sofa across from me.
For a moment we said nothing; I didn't have anything to say now that I knew just enough to be dangerous. So I chewed. She examined her fingers. I turned back to my book in an attempt to study for what would inevitably be my doom. Alex twirled a knife in her hand, flipping the blade upwards to praise the ceiling and then back down to stare at her belly. I don't know where she had been hiding it.
Ten minutes of pretending I was alone later and I cracked. "Can I help you with something?"
Alex looked at me with a smile. It wasn't the first time I'd been graced with her grin, but it never reached her eyes before. Outside of the training room Alex was almost pretty. Gone were the scary smile and the dark hatred in her face. Even her wings had disappeared. In the days we had spent together, I had gotten used to her wings. Now without them, she looked almost human.
"No. Gregory had a meeting with Jasper and I just tagged along to have something to do. Did you know that all hours not spent with you are hours wasted? At least that's what Jasper says. I think he has a crush." Her wrist flicked the knife back and forth rhythmically as she spoke. "Everyone thinks you're pretty important."
"They have a funny way of showing it. Jasper avoids me, Gregory beats me up, and Hector ignores me. I feel like I'm not doing anything right."
Alex nodded. "Hades ignores most everyone these days. There was a time when he trained with us, when he walked the River with Charon and smiled at his servants, but now if he doesn't get the Nectar soon, he'll cease to be a god outright. It's kind of a big deal."
Don't take it personally, Autumn.
I continued eating, mulling over her words. Forget the knife, forget the situation, forget the location and it almost felt like we were friends. One could be easily fooled into thinking that we enjoyed each other's company.
It was nice, sitting here with her in near-companionable silence. We could gossip about how much everyone hates Lindsay, what her relationship with Hector is or was, and whether or not Alex was seeing Gregory when they weren't kicking my ass. There was something about Gregory, a magnetic pull that made me want to impress him, and Alex emanated an attitude of aloofness; a perfect fit. I took another bite to mull it over.
Alex's calm demeanor fooled even me. Usually she was on edge, like she was itching to kill something, but laying on the couch opposite from me there was no evidence of tension in her body.
She didn't look at me while she spoke. "Do you know what's in those things?"
I didn't. And that should have bothered me, right? It could have been poisoned or drugged and I didn't even care. Even as Alex brought the thought to mind, I kept eating it. I felt fine, didn't I?
"Do you want a bite?" I offered her half of the bar. Sometimes they tasted of chocolate and sometimes of fruit or pumpkin or oatmeal.
She scrunched up her face like I had offered a plate of hot garbage. "Jasper calls it Fury food, says you need it to keep up your strength. I wouldn't be caught dead with it. Plus, it's gross. I don't know how you eat it."
"'Fury food'?"
"Like dog food but for Furies. Well, one Furyâyou. Hector and Jasper concocted something specifically targeted to help you build your skills as a Fury. They didn't want the human in you to weigh you down too much. It's sort of a back-up plan in case we can't get the Fury to emerge."
"Like steroids?"
She nodded emphatically. "Exactly. You being the last Fury of your generation and all, can't take too many chances."
Thanks for that vote of confidence, guys. They set me up to fail before I even knew I had a chance. I crumpled the empty wrapper in my hand and pretended to read a page I'd started six times already. Something about the origins of the gods. Alex had distracted me before I'd gotten very far.
I couldn't focus. Something she said stuck in my mind like a song you can't stop singing. Jasper was in a meeting with Gregory. "What kind of meeting?"
"The kind that I'm not invited to." She sounded almost dejected but whatever she was actually feeling was indiscernible in her attitude. The woman in front of me was unlike the Alex that I knew and tolerated in the training space. Alex stopped flicking her knife and sat up. "Do you want to go spy on them?"
Of course I did.
"Why not? This whole everybody-keeping-secrets-from-Autumn thing has gotten really old." Plus, after eating something, I was feeling like myself again. The anthology of Greek myths landed forgotten on the sofa and together Alex and I maneuvered through the carefully arranged clutter.
We stood on one side of the doorframe, where Jasper and Gregory wouldn't see us but we could hear them. Crouching on the floor with Alex standing curved over my body, we listened to the top-secret meeting.
"She's not progressing as quickly as we would have liked. I'd like to take her to see the Fates; maybe they can convince her to take this seriously. Nothing I do works." Gregory spoke as focused and serious as ever, no hint at all at the dragon that lived under his skin. His tone reminded me of someone I think I forgotâa person in my life before who sucked the life out of everything and had white hair. Or perhaps I was thinking about Jasper. He was dry and boring, and the way he looked at me like he was hungry really gave me the creeps. "I'm not sure that she will be ready in time. We have but an unknown number of days."
It never occurred to me that what they were saying might be something I didn't want to hear. Gregory made it sound like I wasn't even trying.
Every day they pushed me for hours. Weapons training, hand-to-hand, physical endurance tests back to back to back. The only time I had outside of the training room was in my apartment or on my field trip to the dungeon. The portal refused to open for meâno matter how hard I triedâand I was trapped in a windowless tower inside a cavern in hell.
Rapunzel in her tall tower this was not; I wasn't living a fairy tale but a nightmare. So I might not have been "progressing" but at least I was trying. I worked hard for every bruise I'd gained. Most of them given to me by Gregory himself.
Jasper answered with promises to see what he could do, his sighs an even worse conviction than Gregory's accusations. Even Jasper thought I was a failure.
Twisting in my crouched state below Alex I could see that she had stowed her knife in an exposed holster at her hip. Quickly, I reached up to slip the blade from its sheath and palmed it in my right hand.
Before she could stop me I shot up in the doorway, forcing her to step back or get a mouthful of my hair. I flung the knife at Gregory with everything I had. Both men had coffee mugs in front of themâhow humanâand without aiming the knife stuck point-down in the table just before the hand gripping Gregory's mug.
"A few days ago, I couldn't have done that. You can take your Fates and your progress and your disapproval, and shove it."
Alex stepped into view behind me. "Autumn, you know we haven't done anything with throwing knives, right? No stars, no targets, nothing small and pointy; I bet you've never even tried to toss a knife before, let alone throw it hard enough to sink a inch into the table like that."
She was right. Of course she was right. Even in my wildest dreams I couldn't accurately hit anythingânot a far-away target, not a large wooden table. I wanted to be proud of my new ability but Gregory's disappointment still stung.
"I'm not field-tripping to see your magical Fates. And I'm done eating your weird granola." Color me indignant.
Jasper smiled at me proudly, like he knew better than I did. If he could just keep his face like that I might be able to forget that he wants to eat me. "If you want to keep proving Gregory here wrong and grow up to be big and strong, you'll eat the Fury Food. How do you think you were able to so beautifully throw that knife? You're welcome, by the way."
It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the magical steroids Jasper had been giving me. That was good news: I could go back to normal after all of this.
Normal. What did that even mean anymore? I could barely remember a time before Hector and myths and war. Did I want to go back?
Of course, I didâdo. That was the goal, wasn't it?
Interrupting my internal crisis, Gregory said, "Really, there are more important things going on than one knife in the table. Fates, capital 'F', for instance, and what they wanted from you. Traditionally the sisters serve Zeus but they've been spending an awful lot of time in the Underworld as of late."
Alex didn't have much to say but Gregory and Jasper were adamant about a visit to the Fates. Fates who they thought would convince me to be a better Fury, like I was making the conscious choice to suck at it. Nobody seemed to register that this kind of rapid-fire training would be difficult for someone without a history of physical activity or a discipline in control.
They argued, completely forgetting that I could hear them. I tried to tune them out; Jasper felt if I just continued to eat his magical Fury Food I would be fine where Gregory insisted the Fates intervene. Every word out of their mouths only served as more kindling on the pyre in my chest, the great fire where my heart used to be; every spark from that fire a new burst of determination to prove them all wrong.
I couldn't remember the last time I went to the gym. My hands had probably never picked up a set of weights. I think my idea of running was to become winded after a minute of jogging and slow to a walk. Regardless of what I could and could not remember about past workouts, I knew that this was the hardest I'd ever been worked in my life. My body hurt in places I didn't know I could hurtâthe backs of my knees and the muscles in my armpits ached in accompaniment to my shoulders, back, glutes, and thighs.
Everything throbbed for days, but did anyone care? No, there was more training to be done. Weapons on Mondays, offense on Tuesdays, hand-to-hand on Wednesdays, and back to weapons on Thursdays. I briefly wondered if they had Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the Underworld. It didn't seem to matter much when all the days ran together.
No windows made for a gloomy atmosphere. I never knew what time it was. Was it morning, or evening? I slept when I was tired; we trained when I was awake. At some point, I stopped trying to track the days. It might have been a Saturday. Maybe I would be at the beach if I hadn't come here. Maybe I didn't like the beach.
And that scared me. All of the anger and frustration flooded out of me in a full-body detox leaving me with an immense, bottomless fear.
I wanted to go home.
"Autumn, snap out of it." Alex clicked her fingers in my face. Her eyes were soft for the first time since I met her. She had been worried. "We've been talking to you for ten minutes and you're too busy daydreaming."
I didn't tell her that I was trying to remember things I had forgotten, who I had been before.
"Recap the last ten minutes then. Please." It wasn't exactly rude, but the tone of my voice came out unintentionally harsh.
"You need to change clothes: the Fates are coming here now."