Oh. My. Gods.

ask. “Where we caught the yacht.”

“Unfortunately,” Damian says, “only Level 13s are permitted to visit Serifos during the semester.”

I’m about to ask what a Level 13 is and why they’re so special, when Stella says, “I’m a Level 13.”

Of course she is.

“Yes,” Damian says. “Because she plans to attend university in England, Stella must study for an additional year beyond your American twelve.”

Across the table-a massive piece of dark wood furniture worn so smooth it must date back to the original Academy-Stella smirks.

“Yes,” she coos. “British academic standards are much higher.”

“Yeah, well,” I say. It is on the tip of my tongue to say she must need remedial school only her dad’s too nice to say so, but Mom kicks me under the table. Ouch! Clutching my throbbing shin, I cover by saying, “I’m going to USC, so I don’t need another year.”

“If you need anything at all,” Damian says, “please let me know and we will make arrangements. There is very little we cannot get here on Serfopoula.”

Yeah, except TV.

The servant, an older woman with wrinkled leather skin and a loose cotton dress decorated with embroidered blue flowers, sets a plate in front of me. There is some kind of salad, with recognizable cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, and stinky goat cheese that would be edible assuming I can pick around the onions. Next to the salad are two big slimy things that look like green sea slugs.

Damian must be able to guess what I’m thinking because he says, “Those are dolmades, traditional grape leaves stuffed with a rice mixture.”

Stella laughs at me and pops one in her mouth.

“Yia Yia Minta makes these,” I say, poking at one with my fork.

“They’re just not usually so… wet looking.”

“Ah,” Damian says, smiling at the old servant woman. “That is part of Hesper’s secret recipe. She drizzles them with olive oil before serving.”

“Shhh.” The old woman, Hesper, bats at him. “You talk too much.”

“But, Hesper,” he replies, “they are family now.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. At first I think it’s because of Damian’s mushy comment-I don’t think one little City Hall marriage ceremony makes a whole new family-but then I catch Stella’s eye and she’s staring at my plate and looking, well, constipated.

Light from somewhere reflects off my plate, shining up at me.

I look down and

“Aaaack!”

Jumping up, I knock over my chair, trip when my laces get caught on one of the legs, and wind up face-first on the floor.

“Phoebe,” Mom cries. “What’s wrong?”

She rushes to my side, but by then I’ve twisted around and leaped to my feet. I point at my plate-now looking like a completely normal dinner salad-and scream, “M-m-my food!” I glare at Stella, who is looking way too proud of herself. “It was alive!”

Those green sea slug dolmades had come to life and were wriggling around in my salad with the olives and stinky goat cheese.

Any other day in the history of my life I would have checked myself into the nuthouse for seeing things, but after seeing Stellashimmer onto the boat-and zap my backpack-and my plate glowing, I know I’m not crazy.

So does Damian.

“Stella Omega Petrolas!” he yells.

Two throbbing veins pop out on his forehead and his face turns bright, bright red. Wow, he looks like he’s going to explode. Crossing my arms over my gray RUN LIKE A GIRLT-shirt, I smirk at Stella.

Let’s see her shimmer her way out of this one.

Damian takes a deep breath and says a little calmer, “You know the rules about using your powers against another.”

“But, Daddy,” she whines, the fake tears starting. She’s even got the poor pitiful me pout.

I watch with great admiration. I’ve never been able to actually produce tears. Maybe if I pay attention I can pick up some pointers.

“No buts,” he says. He points at her with his right hand and a bright light shoots from his fingertip and suddenly all of Stella is glowing. “Your powers are grounded for one week.”

“A week!” she shrieks as the glow subsides. “That’s not fair. I only-”

“One week. Next time it will be a month.”

Stella tries to stare him down-like that has ever in the history of the world worked to change a parent’s mind. If it did then I’d be in Cali right now, and not on some stupid island trapped with a supernatural teenager clearly intent on making my life miserable. I can only hope that the rest of the kids at this school aren’t this bad.

“Please,” Damian says, oblivious to his daughter’s angry eyes, “continue the meal.”

I pull my chair upright, but hesitate before sitting back down.

I don’t plan on eating anything that was crawling across my plate two minutes ago.

Sensing a searing glare, I glance up at Stella. Her gray eyes burn with undisguised fury. In comparison, the dolmades are much more inviting.

Besides, I need to eat all I can before she gets her powers back.

“So what is this school like?” I ask, forking a piece of cucumber.

“I mean, if everyone is from all different places, then how do they take all the same classes?”

“For many centuries,” Damian explains, “all classes at the Academy were taught in Greek. The gods felt that their descendants should learn their native language.”

Oh great. How am I ever going to pull that B average I need for USC if I can’t even understand the instructor? This is like one of those social experiments where they drop kids off in a foreign country and they have to either learn the language or be stuck there forever.

“When the British Empire rose to power in the early 1800s, the headmaster lobbied the gods to change the official school language to English.” He takes a drink of water. “This turned out to be an extremely wise decision since many of our students go on to study at Oxford, Cambridge, and Ivy League universities.”

Whew! Though, in the great grand scheme of things, the language barrier would be a minor problem.

“And if everyone but me has superpowers,” I say carefully, building up the courage to ask what’s really bothering me, “am I going to get zapped like a zillion times a day? Am I going to get…” I glance nervously at Stella, only mildly secure in the idea that her powers are grounded. “Smoted?”

Damian gives Stella a disapproving look, like he knows she threatened to smote me. “Certainly not,” he says, his voice clipped. “The students have been made aware of your arrival and know better than to use their powers against you. If anyone…” The word hangs there, but I think we all know he’s talking about Stella. “… disobeys my instructions you are to report them to me immediately.”

“Sure.” I push my plate away. But what if I can’t tell him because I’ve been turned into a sea slug? “I assure you, Phoebe,” he says, smiling like I said something silly, “no student has been smoted from the Academy in generations.”

Yeah, like that makes me feel better. That just means they’re out of practice. They’ll probably do it wrong and I’ll end up on Mars or something.

“I know this is a little…” Mom sits down on my bed while I unpack my suitcases. “… hard to absorb.”

“Hard to absorb?” I cry, flinging my good Nikes onto the floor and wheeling around to gape at her. “Hard to absorb? Finding out that Ben Jerry’s had discontinued White Russian was hard to absorb. This is…” I wave my hands in the air, trying to find the words to actually describe how I feel. “… freaking unbelievable.”

She starts taking T-shirts out of the suitcase and folds them into neat piles according to color family.

“I’m sorry,” she says, setting a red RUN HARD OR RUN HOMET-shirt on the red, orange, and yellow pile. “I should have told you sooner, but I thought you had enough on your mind already with all the major changes in our lives. I didn’t want to overburden you with this additional worry.”