On Monday morning, I sat on my bed fully dressed but not ready to head to school. As the birds outside my window sang their good morning to me, I ran my thumb across the thumb-shaped burn on my wrist. Another reminder of Nix's growing impact on my life. What am I gonna do when I see her today? Maybe I should just stay home. I stood up with that question and prepared myself to find out. It was like Nix had said. It wasn't going to get easier if I ran from it. I might as well face it head-on.
"Hey," Nix called from behind me.
I closed my eyes and grumbled to myself as her perfume entered my nostrils. Okay, so this confrontation is going to happen sooner than I wanted it to. I turned around to face her. She stood at the foot of my bed wearing her usual black hoodie, but instead of jeans, she wore a black denim skirt. My eyes moved down her smooth legs on their own. I forced myself to look her in the eye. She started moving toward me, and I tensed up.
"I know we need to talk, but I just need to get this out of the way," she said and pushed me against the wall beside my bed.
Before I could react, her mouth slammed onto mine. Her lips were as soft and charged as storm clouds. I tasted mint as she deepened the kiss. Her fingers sent a different kind of electricity surging through my body as they slid through my hair and interlocked behind my head. The kiss was aggressive and intense. Yearning replaced the initial shock quickly. I gripped the sides of her hoodie just above her hips and pulled her into me. I poured all the frustration I had into it. When she finally pulled away from me, we stood in front of each other, breathing heavily.
"Walk me to school, please?" She said and vanished.
I shook my head, grabbed my bookbag, and headed for the front door. She was standing on my front porch, twisting a strand of her hair when I stepped out of the house. We walked in silence for a few minutes before I couldn't take it anymore.
"What the hell is going on with you lately, Phoenix?" I asked.
I used her full first name so she could understand I wasn't in a joking mood. My lips still tingled as I spoke.
"Okay, I'll go backward. I kissed you because I like you, and I've wanted to since we met."
That was startling to hear. Over the last year, she had become the best friend I had ever had. To know that she could've been even more upset me.
"Why didn't you say something sooner?"
"Two reasons. I didn't think it was reciprocated. Also, I had to watch you, and becoming involved with you romantically might've clouded my judgement."
Her reasoning was sound, but I still felt cheated. Why introduce these new feelings to me only to snatch them away?
"So why kiss me today?" I asked.
We were only a few blocks away from school.
"Because I'm out of time. We don't have time to explore that possibility anymore with all the other things going on. I just needed to do it before our relationship changed completely."
A sharp, stabbing feeling hit me in the chest. My glimpse at romance had come and gone, and now it was back to my regularly scheduled shitty life. I hated it, but what was there to say? She understood the threat that her old friends presented better than I did. If she said we didn't have time to focus on romance, I had to accept it. If the day ever came where that could change, I was going to make sure it did. For now, I was following her lead on this. She was moving on, so I was as well.
"Okay, then why did you have to attack me the other night? I feel like words would've worked fine."
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear before speaking. That had to be the cutest nervous tic in the world.
"Don't hate me for this, but that was a test. I needed to know that you could control that killer instinct in a fight. But I also wanted to see how you would handle yourself in a fight."
I frowned. The first part of her statement made sense. I was marked for death because of my inner monster. The second part, however, seemed pointless.
"But you've seen me in a fight. I fought the Spartan right in front of you."
She nodded as we approached the school entrance. She turned to me, placing her hand on my elbow.
"That threat was easy to spot. I needed to see how you would react when the attack came from an unexpected opponent. From now on, we have to neutralize any threat first and question their motives later."
That didn't make any sense to me. It seemed like the two tests contradicted one another.
"But if I had attacked you back, wouldn't that have made me fail the first test?"
Her head tilted as she considered my question. I absentmindedly rubbed my thumb across the burn she had given me as she thought.
"No, I wanted you to hesitate enough to show me that you were in control of your actions, but no more than that. If you had looked as if violence was the only thing that mattered to you, then you would've failed," she said as her eyes snapped to my arm. She stiffened up.
"What's that?" She asked, nodding at my arm.
I held out my arm so she could see the burn mark.
"It's my receipt from the other night." Her face turned bright red, and she reached out and took my arm in her hands.
"I'm so sorry about how hard I hit you with that attack. I was kind of mad about the attack you hit me with, and I gave in to my petty side. I didn't really mean to hurt you."
She lifted my arm to her face and kissed the burn mark. I felt a vibrating sensation the moment her lips touched my skin that made my breath catch in my throat. When she lifted her face again, there was a tattoo of three black stars covering the burn.
"If you gotta wear my mark, it's gonna be a mark I like seeing," she said and winked at me.
I rubbed the new mark, suddenly feeling proud to have it.
"How'd you do that?" I asked, staring at the new mark.
"I just left some dark magic there. I can change the shape or take it back if you want," she said, blushing.
"No, it's mine," I said and smiled at her.
We walked into the building and separated. I went to my locker to put my bookbag away and grab the books I needed for my first class.
"Happy Monday Snakeface, I would ask you what you did this weekend, but I know you don't have a life," Eddie said from behind me.
With everything that had happened recently, I had forgotten all about Eddie.
"Now is your chance to finish him," Typhon said as I closed my locker door and turned around.
I planned on making a smart comment and walking away, but my words died on my tongue when I saw Mike standing beside Eddie. He looked perfectly normal, as if the incident last week had never happened. I stared at him dumbfounded until a hand landed on my right shoulder.
"Yeah, we just sat in his basement and played DnD the whole weekend. Do I smell like onions?" Nix asked and leaned forward to let Eddie sniff her.
"You're so damn weird," Eddie said before walking away in disgust with his two goons.
I couldn't take my eyes off Mike. How was he okay? I could see his literal skull just a few days ago. Had we travelled back in time somehow?
"Okay, Mike was treated by a member of Apollo's bloodline. Since he's the god of medicine, a lot of his children have supernatural healing abilities."
Her explanation lifted a weight off my shoulders. I was okay with things around me changing, but people didn't heal from injuries like Mike had suffered. Learning how that was possible to put the world back in order for me. The rest of the day passed without further incident. Eddie and his friends made faces and comments at me whenever I saw them, but it was nothing like what they had tried last week in the bathroom. I met up with Nix again at my locker at the end of the day.
"Wanna go to your house and do some training until your parents come home?" She asked as we headed for the main entrance.
A group of people walked past us, moving in the opposite direction, and the familiar feeling of divine presence stopped Nix and me in our tracks. I stared at the group, afraid that Zeus had paid me another visit. This pressure was far less intense than his, though. The group contained three female cheerleaders in their powder-blue uniforms and two large, muscular guys in gold and black basketball uniforms.
"Those two reek of Olympian power," Typhon said.
A guy with long blonde hair and olive-colored skin walked with his arm around a short white girl with orange hair with red streaks in it. Both of them stared me down as they walked by. I watched him until the eagle tattoo on his shoulder was no longer visible.
"Who the hell are they?" Nix asked, staring at them as hard as I was.
I grabbed her hand as we walked out of the building into the bright afternoon sunlight.
"I don't know, but I have a strange feeling we're gonna be seeing them again," I said.