Chapter Twelve
I left the armory and went back to the briefing room, where the others were waiting. Takeda nodded at me, while Zoe and Mateo both gave me encouraging smiles. Ian ignored me, and I did the same to him.
“Let’s move,” Takeda said. “We need to get to the party before the Reapers show up.”
Takeda led us to the back of the Bunker to the door marked Stairs that I’d noticed on my tour earlier. But instead of opening the door and climbing up the stairs, he went over to a bookcase along the wall and pressed a button on the side of it. A green light flashed, scanning his thumb, and the wooden case creaked back, revealing a stone passageway.
“Another secret entrance? One that’s really a secret tunnel that leads to yet another secret entrance on the other end?” I brightened. “Awesome!”
Gwen had her comic books, but there was nothing I loved more than a good mystery. Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes. I devoured those kinds of books, along with all the movies and TV shows. And you couldn’t have a proper mystery without secret passageways, hidden compartments, and the like.
Mateo grinned, picking up on my excitement. “No spy lair is complete without one, right?”
I grinned back at him. “Right.”
We stepped into the tunnel, and the bookcase swung shut behind us. Lights clicked on in the stone ceiling, and then we started walking, walking, walking.
About fifty feet in, a tunnel branched off to our right. Then, fifty feet later, another tunnel branched off to our left. Given their placement, I was guessing that those tunnels led to the student dorms and some of the other outbuildings.
Eventually, we reached what looked like the heart of the underground labyrinth, with tunnels branching off in five different directions. Unless I was mistaken, these passageways led to the other buildings on the main quad. I eagerly peered down each of them, trying to figure out which one went where, but the other corridors remained dark. I would have to come back down here one day and explore all the secret entrances and exits for myself.
We kept going. We weren’t in the tunnel for more than a few minutes, but it seemed much longer than that before we reached another door at the far end. Takeda opened it with his thumbprint, and we stepped into a basement office crammed full of free weights, exercise balls, yoga mats, and other fitness equipment. Coach Takeda glimmered on a gold nameplate on the desk in the corner.
“No wonder you’re the new gym coach,” I said.
Takeda gave me a small smile and led us through his office, up some steps, and out a side door that opened up into the parking lot on the back side of the gym. A single van was sitting in the lot, with the words Pork Pit Catering on the side. Not very incognito as far as spy vehicles went, but I supposed it was a little less conspicuous than something that had Property of the Protectorate painted on it. Takeda slid into the driver’s seat, while Ian, Zoe, Mateo, and I climbed into the back.
This wasn’t any old van. A large desk was bolted to one wall, along with several monitors, laptops, and other computer equipment. A shelf clung to the opposite wall, crammed full of swords, staffs, hammers, pliers, walkie-talkies, and other odds and ends. Mateo plopped down in a chair in front of the desk. Zoe sat in the chair next to him, and Ian and I took seats across from each other in the very back of the van.
No one spoke on the ride over to Lance Fuller’s house, although Takeda tuned the radio to a classical station and started humming along with the music. Thirty minutes later, he steered the van into a ritzy subdivision and pulled over to the curb.
“We’re down the street from the Fuller mansion.” Takeda twisted around in his seat. “Mateo, you’re up.”
Mateo rubbed his hands together in anticipation, then grinned, leaned over one of the laptops, and got to work. “Come to Papa.”
Mateo had impressive speed, even for a Roman, and his fingers flew over the keyboard in a quick, staccato rhythm, as though he were playing an elaborate piano concerto. Less than a minute later, images popped up on the monitors, showing different views of the mansion. The party was already going strong, with dozens of kids talking, laughing, drinking, and dancing inside the mansion and around one of the heated outdoor pools.
Mateo kept typing, his gaze locked on the monitors. “I’m in the security system. I can see and track you guys through most of the mansion, although it looks like several rooms don’t have cameras covering them.”
Takeda nodded. “Zoe, time for comms.”
Zoe pulled the glass case out of her purse and passed out an earbud to everyone. We all wiggled the devices into our ears. Mateo hit some more buttons on his laptop, then leaned forward and spoke into a microphone on the desk.
“Wakey-wakey, guys.” His voice echoed in my ear, along with his gleeful snicker.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re awake,” Zoe muttered. “Why do you have to say the same stupid thing every single time we use comms?”
Mateo grinned at her. “Just to drive you crazy.”
She rolled her eyes, leaned over, and punched him in the arm, causing blue sparks to flicker around both of them. Mateo snickered again.
“Everyone good on weapons?” Takeda asked.
Zoe patted her blue bag. “Electrodagger in my purse.”
“I’ve got a dagger tucked into the side of my boot,” Ian said.
I tapped my finger on Babs’s hilt, since the sword was still belted to my waist. “I’m good too.”
Takeda nodded. He slid out of the driver’s seat, came around, and opened the back door, and Ian, Zoe, and I got out of the van.
“Be careful,” Takeda said, looking at each of us in turn. “A couple of Protectorate guards who have been following Lance around campus are stationed outside the mansion, and a full team of guards will be here soon in case we need backup, but we don’t know how many Reapers might show up tonight or might already be inside the mansion. Remember, they could be regular kids, just like you guys. So get in, find the chimera scepter, and get out. Good luck.”
We all nodded back to him. Takeda climbed inside the van with Mateo and shut the door behind them. That left me standing in the street with Ian and Zoe. We all looked at each other.
“Let’s get this over with,” Ian said.
For once, I didn’t argue with him. Together, the three of us stepped onto the sidewalk and headed toward the Fuller mansion.
* * *
Lance’s party was definitely the place to be tonight. Luxury cars and SUVs lined both sides of the street in front of the mansion, and every single light in the house seemed to be on. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, the party’s official start time, but the Mythos kids had kicked things off early, given the loud, thumping music that reverberated up and down the street.
We left the sidewalk and hiked up the cobblestone driveway to the mansion. The front door was standing wide open, so we stepped inside.
People were already packed inside the large living room that took up the front of the mansion, talking, laughing, and dancing. Kids stood two and three deep in front of a glass table along the wall, passing soda and beer bottles back and forth and pouring the fizzing and foaming liquids into their plastic cups. Still more kids trailed along behind a couple of guys who were rolling an enormous beer keg along the floor, heading toward the kitchen so they could tap it. Some folks had even started smoking, and the harsh stench of cigarettes made me want to sneeze.
“Come on,” Ian said over the din. “Let’s find Lance.”
Zoe and I nodded, and together the three of us moved deeper into the mansion.
It was a massive house, three stories tall, with room after spacious room. At least, the rooms would have been spacious if so many people weren’t crammed inside. Mateo had been right. It looked like Lance had invited every single kid at Mythos to his party, and they were all determined to kick off the school year with a loud, drunken bang.
Zoe grinned and started shimmying to the music, but Ian winced, looking as pained, uncomfortable, and out of place as I felt. Something else we had in common. He caught me staring at him and shrugged. I shrugged back. I had never understood why people thought that the louder you turned up your music, the better time you would have. I actually liked to listen to music, not have it burst my eardrums.
“Where do we start?” I asked, almost having to yell at Ian to get him to hear me, even though I was standing right beside him.
“In the kitchen!” he yelled back. “That’s where Mateo says Lance is.”
I hadn’t heard Mateo say anything through my earbud, but that wasn’t surprising, given how insanely loud it was in here. I gave Ian a thumbs-up, telling him I understood, and pointed toward the kitchen. The three of us fell into step behind the kids following the beer keg. It was slow going, but we finally made it into the kitchen. It was actually a little less crowded in here, since the room had a set of double doors that opened onto a stone patio. Outside, kids shrieked and splashed in one of the heated swimming pools.
Ian, Zoe, and I moved over to the corner of the room, out of the way of the crowd gathering around the beer keg.
“Now what?” Zoe said.
Ian glanced around. “Now we find Lance—”
“Rory! Hey, Rory! Over here!” Someone shouted my name over the music.
I turned around. From the opposite side of the kitchen, Lance waved at me.
Ian leaned down. “You keep him distracted. Zoe and I will start searching for the chimera scepter. As soon as we find it, we’ll let you know, and then the three of us will get out of here.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Ian nodded at me, for once completely serious and without a trace of his usual hostility. I nodded back. He and Zoe disappeared into the crowd, and I plastered a smile on my face and started threading my way over to Lance.
“Hey! Great party!” I called out when I reached him.
Lance grinned. “Thanks!” He pointed at the guys tapping the beer keg in the kitchen sink. “You want some?”
I shook my head. “Nah. I don’t drink.”
I never drank. Alcohol dulled the senses, something that could be fatal for warriors. Especially in a place like this, where I didn’t know who was a friend—and who might secretly be a Reaper.
Lance put down his plastic cup and pointed to a set of stairs at the far end of the kitchen. “You want to go somewhere a little quieter and talk?”
“Sure! That would be great!”
At this point, I didn’t care if Lance was a Reaper and might be luring me into a trap. I just wanted to get away from the crowds and the thumping music that was rapidly giving me a migraine.
Lance and I went up the stairs to the third and top floor of the mansion. It was much quieter up here, and I could finally hear myself think again, as well as the others murmuring updates in my ear.
“That’s it, Rory,” Takeda said. “Keep Lance busy. Ian and Zoe have found a wall safe in a library on the second floor. We think that’s where the chimera scepter is. Zoe is working on opening the safe right now.”
Takeda stopped talking, but Zoe’s voice sounded. She was muttering to Ian, telling him what tools to pull out of her purse. I blocked her out and focused on Lance again.
He led me to a pair of open double doors at the end of the hallway, and we stepped into an enormous office. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases took up one wall, filled with the same sorts of old, thick, leather-bound books that were in the Library of Antiquities. Gold-framed paintings of famous mythological battles hung on another wall, along with more than two dozen swords, daggers, and other weapons. A wet bar stood in the corner, while an antique desk sat in the back of the room. Behind the desk, a couple of glass doors led out to another stone patio that overlooked the pool.
“This is my dad’s office, but he won’t mind us borrowing it,” Lance said. “He’s on a trip, of sorts.”
His calm, matter-of-fact tone made a cold finger of unease slide down my spine, especially since I knew that his dad had been killed by the Protectorate. What kind of game was Lance playing? I didn’t know, but I was getting a sinking feeling that the others were right about him being a Reaper.
Lance shut the office doors, then walked over to the bar, grabbed a bottle of Scotch, and held it out to me. “You want some?”
“I told you already—I don’t drink.”
“Afraid it might interfere with your Spartan killer instincts?” A faint sneering note crept into his voice.
“Something like that.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Lance put the bottle down and leaned back against the bar. I wandered around the room, looking at the weapons on the walls. No identification cards hung next to the swords, but they were all finely made, with fancy jeweled hilts and sharp, polished blades. I wondered if any of them were the weapons Lance’s dad had stolen from the Protectorate warehouse, but there was no way to tell.
“Rory,” Takeda murmured through my earbud again. “There aren’t any cameras in that office, so we can’t see you. Say something and let me know that you’re okay.”
I stopped in front of a bronze sword and pretended to admire it. “Your dad has a really cool weapons collection.”
“I guess. I’m not into weapons myself,” Lance said. “I like artifacts much better. What about you, Rory? Do you like artifacts?”
My back was to him, so he didn’t see my eyes widen. I blinked away my surprise, schooled my face into a neutral expression, and turned to face him.
“Artifacts?” I shrugged. “They’re okay, I guess. I’ve never really had much to do with them.”
Lance’s gaze sharpened, as though he’d caught me in a lie. “Really? I find that hard to believe, since your parents were such bigtime Reaper assassins. Surely they must have stolen some artifacts too.”
Shock rippled through me. Why was he talking about my parents? Especially about them stealing artifacts? Once again, I got the feeling that Lance was fishing for information. That sinking feeling in my stomach intensified. The only reason he would be doing that, the only reason he would be asking me these kinds of questions, was if he was a Reaper himself.
I wasn’t surprised. Not really. Not after everything Takeda and the others had told me about Lance wanting revenge for his dad’s death. But disappointment filled me all the same. I had liked him so much last year, but now he was a bad guy. Or maybe he had always been a bad guy, and I had been crushing on him too hard to see the truth until now. Either way, I was sick and tired of Reapers and all their stupid mind games.
“Well, Rory?” Lance asked again. “Do you think your parents ever stole any artifacts?”
His snide tone burned away my disappointment and made anger sizzle through me instead. I crossed my arms over my chest. “I didn’t know anything about my parents being Reapers. Not that that’s any of your business.”
Lance held up his hands in apology. “You’re taking this the wrong way. I didn’t mean it as an insult. Just the opposite. I think it’s really interesting that your parents were Reapers.”
“And why is that?”
“Haven’t you ever thought about what it would be like? To be a Reaper?”
I frowned. “Of course not. Why would I think about something like that?”
“Why wouldn’t you think about something like that?” His blue eyes glittered with a strange, bright light. “I mean, surely there were hints that your parents were Reapers. Didn’t you ever suspect them?”
I shifted on my feet. “No. I never suspected them. I never had a clue.”
And I really hadn’t. Rebecca and Tyson Forseti had been my mom and dad, the parents I loved, the warriors I had strived so hard to be like. I had never suspected they were anything else, and I had never dreamed in my darkest nightmares that they were Reapers. But apparently, being Reapers had been more important to my parents than anything else, including me, since they’d never told me anything about it. Not one single word.
And what had being Reapers gotten them in the end? Nothing but dead, dead, dead, and me with a broken heart, desperately trying to understand why they’d done so many terrible things. That made me angrier than anything else—that I would never get the chance to ask them why.
More and more anger surged through my body, like matches flaring to life, but they burned out just as quickly, replaced by that familiar combination of guilt, shame, and embarrassment. Once again, that icy frost coated my heart, numbing me from the inside out. This time, I welcomed the chill. I didn’t want to feel the sharp sting of my parents’ betrayal. Not again. And especially not now, when I was facing a dangerous enemy.
Lance pushed away from the bar, walked over, and stopped right in front of me. “Ever since I found out about your parents, I’ve been thinking a lot about you, Rory.”
As far as pickup lines went, that was the worst one ever. What kind of sick game was Lance playing? Was he trying to upset me so that he could attack me by surprise? He didn’t seem to be carrying any weapons, but I still dropped my hand to Babs’s hilt.
“Really? Why? Have you been planning how you can mock me like all the other academy kids?” I snarked. “Well, don’t bother. They all did a bang-up job of it last school year, and they’re doing the exact same thing again this year. They’ve made an art form out of it.”
He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. In fact, I admire your parents for being Reapers.”
Of course he did, since he was a Reaper himself. As much as I would have liked to punch Lance in the face for talking about my parents, I forced myself to focus on the others murmuring updates through our earbuds. Zoe and Ian were still trying to open that safe to get the chimera scepter, which meant that I needed to keep Lance busy for at least a few more minutes.
So I decided to play dumb. “Why would you admire my parents? Reapers are evil. They hurt and kill other people. Reapers used to do those things in service to Loki, but now I suppose they do them just because they can, just because they want to, just because they like hurting other people.”
Excitement sparked in Lance’s gaze, and he snapped his fingers. “Exactly! That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I always thought it was stupid that the Reapers worked so long and hard to serve an exiled god. I was actually glad when Gwen Frost and her friends defeated Loki and locked him away for good. Who is Loki to tell us what to do? Why should he rule us? Why shouldn’t we be the ones to rule this world and everyone in it, including the regular mortals?”
“What are you talking about?” I wasn’t playing dumb anymore. Now I was genuinely confused by all the riddles and nonsense that he kept spouting.
“I’m talking about the Reapers doing what they should have done all along, taking control of things, not for Loki or some other god but for themselves.”
Lance grinned at me and stepped forward. I wrapped my fingers around Babs’s hilt and moved to the side, thinking that he was going to attack me, but he walked past me, went to the desk in the back of the office, and opened one of the drawers. Lance started digging through the junk inside, tossing pens, pencils, paper clips, and more onto the top of the desk.
I listened to the others, but Zoe and Ian were still trying to get inside that safe. I opened my mouth to ask Takeda and Mateo if they were seeing Lance’s sudden freak-out, but then I remembered that the office didn’t have any security cameras. So I focused on Lance again, ready to yank Babs free from her scabbard if he pulled a dagger or some other weapon out of that drawer. But he only yanked out a wad of papers, tossed them on top of the desk with the rest of the mess, and kept digging.
Several long, slender pieces of paper slipped off the side of the desk and landed on the floor. I frowned. Those looked like…tickets.
I sidled a little closer and squinted at the black type. They were tickets—more than half a dozen tickets to the Fall Costume Ball this weekend. The annual ball always kicked off the academy’s school year and social events. But why would Lance have so many tickets to it? Weird.
He didn’t notice that the tickets had fallen to the floor, and he kept right on digging through that desk drawer.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “What are looking for?”
“There’s something I want to show you,” Lance said. “Something that will explain everything. Ah, there it is.”
He grabbed a final item from the drawer and straightened up. He smiled at me, came around the desk, and raised his hand. A gold stick topped by a familiar creature glimmered in his fingers.
Lance was holding the chimera scepter—and he was pointing it straight at me.