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The person ahead of me stepped forward, and suddenly, I was at the front of the line.
“Ticket, please,” Winifred chirped in a bright voice.
“Here you go.”
I showed her my phone, which she zapped with a handheld scanner. A cheery beep sounded, a light on the scanner turned green, and the conductor gestured for me to step forward through the archway into another, much smaller waiting area. The other passengers were already opening the glass doors in the far wall and heading outside to the tracks. I moved out of the way of the folks coming up behind me and looked back over my shoulder, but the girl had vanished.
I glanced around, but I didn’t see her anywhere in the main lobby. A bit of unease trickled down my spine. There was no way any of my old enemies from Ashland could have possibly tracked me here, much less sent some girl I had never seen before to spy on me.
But that didn’t mean other, new enemies weren’t lurking around somewhere, just waiting to strike.
If Finn were here, he would have said I was being paranoid, which admittedly was my usual state of mind. Oh, yes. Finn, Bria, Owen. They all would have told me to relax and enjoy the ride and not even think about enemies or danger or anything else untoward.
But I couldn’t do that. I hadn’t been able to do that since my mother and older sister were killed when I was thirteen, and I certainly couldn’t do it now, given everything that had happened to me as both Gin Blanco and the Spider over the years.
A compromise, then.
As I pushed through a door and stepped outside to board the train, I told myself I was going to do my very best to relax—and still be on the lookout for trouble in the meantime.
Chapter Two
Gwen
“I don’t like this,” I muttered. “Not one little bit.”
“Oh, stop worrying, Gwen,” a voice with a biting English accent piped up. “Everything is fine, and so far, everything is going exactly according to plan.”
I glanced down at the sword sticking up out of the top of my messenger bag. Instead of being plain and featureless, half of a man’s face was inlaid into the sword’s silver hilt. An arched eyebrow, a sharp cheekbone, a hooked nose, even the round bulge of an eye. The features were as familiar to me as my own face, as was the sword’s larger-than-life voice and confident, boisterous personality.
I shook my head. “I still don’t like this.”
Vic, my talking sword, rolled his purple eye. “You never like anything having to do with artifacts.”
That was certainly true. During my time at Mythos Academy, I had encountered far too many artifacts that had been used, wielded, or worn by various mythological gods, goddesses, warriors, and creatures over the centuries. And I had witnessed all the damage the magical weapons, armor, clothing, books, jewelry, and other items could do, especially to the people I cared about. But I was an Oracle, someone who had been gifted with magic by the gods, as well as the Champion of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, so it was my duty to protect artifacts from anyone who wanted to use them to do bad, bad things.
A while back, I had helped defeat Loki, the Norse god of chaos, and the Reapers of Chaos, people who willingly served the evil god. Once Loki was imprisoned, I’d thought that would finally be the end of all the death, danger, and destruction that had plagued me at Mythos Academy, but it hadn’t been—not by a long shot.
Okay, okay, so things weren’t quite that dire. Many of the Reapers had either been killed or captured during the Battle of Mythos Academy or had gone into hiding afterward, but there were still plenty of Reapers and other bad folks running around who would do anything to get their hands on mythological artifacts that would give them amazing abilities—and let them hurt and manipulate innocent people.
A long, loud, weary sigh escaped my lips. Sometimes I thought I would never get done saving the world.
My phone beeped, and I pulled it out and read the text message from Logan Quinn, a Spartan warrior who was also my boyfriend.
“Logan says the convoy is still stuck on the side of the road and Coach Ajax is trying to clear the rockslide so the vehicles can get through. He’s going to text me again when he knows more. Logan also says some female cop from another town is poking around, asking questions and trying to figure out what’s going on. Nickamedes and Professor Metis are talking to the cop right now.”
Vic snorted. “Regular mortals have no clue about the mythological world. Don’t worry, Gwen. Nickamedes and Metis will send that nosy cop on her way, and Logan, Ajax, and the others will move those rocks soon enough. Everything will be fine, and we’ll get the artifacts back to the academy in one piece just like we intended. After all, no one even knows we’re here.”
That was the plan, which worried me more than I cared to admit.
A couple of weeks ago, a group of Reapers had broken into the Crius Coliseum after the museum had closed for the day and made off with dozens of artifacts. Linus Quinn, Logan’s dad and the head of the Protectorate, the mythological police force, had asked me and my friends to track down the Reapers and recover the stolen weapons and other items, but the thieves had seemingly vanished—until three days ago.
Daphne Cruz, my Valkyrie best friend, was a total computer genius. Using security and traffic cameras, along with some other footage, she’d spotted a couple of the Reapers leaving a nearby casino, and she’d eventually tracked them all the way back to a remote mountain cabin on the outskirts of Pine Crest.
Clever of the Reapers to hide so close to Mythos Academy, especially since we’d all expected them to get far away as fast as possible. But this group of Reapers had been much smarter and sneakier and far more patient than most, and they had spent the last two weeks lying low, just waiting for the search to die down so they could slip out of the area. If not for some of the less cautious Reapers partying at the casino, we never would have found them.
At dawn, my friends and I had raided the cabin hideout and recovered the artifacts with no resistance. The only problem was that we hadn’t found the Reapers along with the items they’d stolen.
Nickamedes, Professor Metis, and Coach Ajax all thought the Reapers had fled, but I wasn’t so sure. The artifacts they’d stolen were worth millions of dollars on the black market, and I’d never known any thieves to just give up a major score like that. Especially not now, when so many of the Reapers had been exposed, were on the run, and were desperate for enough money to disappear to some deserted tropical island where the Protectorate couldn’t find them.
