So I look away, unable to meet his steady gaze.
“Clearly you’re freaked out,” he says, dropping his hands. “I am, too, after you materialized out of thin air onto my soccer field and then you told your parents the monsters found your house—”
My gaze flies up. I hadn’t even been thinking when I said that on the phone. I’d been totally intent on making sure my parents stayed safe. I hadn’t stopped to realize Milo was listening.
“So why don’t I go grab us a couple of sodas from the fridge,” he continues, as if the world around him were still perfectly normal. “We can sit down at the dining table, and then you can tell me what’s going on.”
He turns and walks away before I can respond.
My heart races.
As much as I don’t want to, as much as I think it’s a horrible idea, he already knows too much. Right now I have no one else to trust. I have to keep my parents safe, my sisters and my brother are back in the abyss—or, hopefully, by now, on Mount Olympus—and the supernatural boy who came with me to help is now a prisoner of my enemies. Milo is all I have.
As I sit across the dining table from Milo, my courage vanishes.
It seems like such a small thing, only a few words. But when it comes to actually getting them out . . . My mouth goes dry.
Our relationship, whatever it is, is still so new—just as new as the world of myth being part of my life. I remember how hard it was for me to process, and it’s a part of me. How on earth will Milo understand?
“Listen, Grace,” he says, not looking at me. He has his forearms braced on the table, fidgeting with a flyer for an outdoor movie series Mom left out. “We haven’t known each other very long, so I get it if you don’t want to tell me.”
Oh, but that’s not true. I do want to. I hate keeping secrets—I’m terrible at it. I want to tell Milo everything. I’m just afraid of what will happen once I do.
“You should know that I like you a lot,” he says, not looking up from the bright yellow paper.
My heart does a little flip-flop.
“And that I’m a pretty open-minded guy,” he continues.
“I—” I stare down at my hands. “This is a really hard thing to explain.”
When I look up, he’s carefully folding the flyer into smaller and smaller shapes—first a square, and then a triangle, and then a smaller triangle.
Two things connect in my mind. When I saw the unicorn in the abyss, I knew I’d thought about one recently. I’d chalked it up to something I read or Gretchen mentioning the one she met, but now I really remember.
Milo once gave me an origami unicorn.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I think about Nick suddenly appearing in Gretchen’s life and turning out to be more than human. There’s something special about Thane, too. Maybe Milo is more than he seems. Maybe he and Thane didn’t become friends by accident. Maybe his interest in me isn’t purely romantic. At least that would make sense.
“You make origami,” I say dumbly.
He shrugs. “Yeah. When I’m nervous.”
“You’re nervous?”
I almost laugh. I’m the one on the verge of telling the boy I like that I’m a freak creature from mythology, and he’s nervous. Of course, seeing a girl appear out of nowhere and hearing her say that monsters are after her is pretty scary. He probably thinks I’m mental.
“The other day,” I say, “when we were at lunch, you made an origami unicorn. Why? Why a unicorn?”
He glances up at me through his thick lashes. “Honestly?”
I nod.
He holds up the piece of paper he’s been meticulously folding. He tugs on both ends, and the paper pops up into the shape of a unicorn. “It’s the only thing I know how to make.”
This time I do laugh.
For a second, I’d started to believe maybe Milo had given me the unicorn as a hint that he’s part of this mythological world, too. Maybe I was hoping that was the case. But it was only a coincidence—just my frightened brain trying to see a connection that isn’t there.
I take the unicorn from his outstretched palm.
The relief that Milo is a normal boy—with a normal interest in me—relaxes me. For some reason, that makes this easier.
“You’re sure you want to hear the truth?” I ask.
“Without a doubt.”
I hope he still feels that way in a few minutes.
“In case you didn’t already know,” I begin, “Thane and I are adopted. . . .”
Milo watches, focused, as I explain everything. I tell him about my sisters, about our mythological heritage, about the door and the legacy and the brewing war that might turn San Francisco into a battleground.
“One group,” I say, “wants to stop us before we can open the door. We think Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and a few other Olympians are on that side.”
He doesn’t flinch when I start naming gods. I’m impressed.
“Another group wants to take us out after the door is open.” I lower my gaze as I trace figure eights on the tabletop. “That’s most of the monsters. We don’t know who all is on their side. Maybe Hades and Ares because, well, they like to stir up trouble.”
He shifts in his seat, and I glance up to see if he’s ready to bolt. Not yet.
“We’re kind of caught in the middle,” I say, describing the third and final faction. “A handful of gods, spirits, and even some monsters want us to open the door and guard it like it was meant to be guarded.” I shrug. “That group is the smallest one.”
I lay it all out for him—every last detail. Through it all, Milo watches me intently.
Then I tell him about Nick being taken prisoner and my mission to find my birth mother.
“I managed to find her name in our adoption records, and I wasn’t in that big a rush to find her. But now our enemies are trying to kill her,” I explain, “because they think that will destroy our powers.”
“Powers?”
Oh yeah. That.
“Um, I can kind of . . .” I can’t think of an easy way to tell him about autoporting. I’ll have to show him.
Closing my eyes, I focus on the space behind his chair. There’s a light and then, when I open my eyes, I’m looking at the back of his head.
“I do this,” I say as I tap him on the shoulder.
He spins around in his seat, his pale eyes wide and unblinking. He stares at me for several long, torturous seconds before he says, “So you
“Yeah,” I say, “I did.”
I pop back to the other side of the table, back into my chair. Milo turns back around to face me, his features frozen with shock.
He finally blinks and swipes his tongue across his lips.
“Grace, I . . .”
I close my eyes. This is the part where he decides that he didn’t see what he just saw, that I’m nuts, completely delusional—dangerously so, probably, since I’m talking about biting monsters and coming war—and that he should be as far, far, far away from me as he can possibly get. Like in Japan, or on Mount Everest.
“It’s okay,” I say, pushing back from the table. “I know it sounds crazy. Believe me, I know.”
I start to stand, but Milo’s hand wraps gently around my arm before I can push up.
“Wait.”
I sit, frozen, staring at the spot where he holds my wrist.
Then his other hand slides forward, under mine, so I’m sandwiched between his palms. I look up, uncertain but hopeful.
“It does sound crazy,” he says, his pale eyes watching me, “but you’re not. You’re as far from crazy as anyone I’ve ever met.”
I swallow hard, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
