Chapter 4
Randy and Leticia stared at me, looking for an explanation. I tried to come up with something—something clever to make them think I’d done it on purpose to try to teach them to always be ready, but it didn’t make sense. Ophi didn’t raise souls without knowing it. At least no Ophi other than me.
“I—”
“Hey, nice work, Randy. You did it!” Alex said, running over to join us.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were showing Chase to his room.”
“Yeah, yeah. I did. I told him to go up the steps to the right. Fourth door on the right. He’ll find it.” Alex shrugged. “Besides, I got back just in time to see Randy’s raising. That’s awesome, man.” He smacked Randy on the back.
Randy shook his head. “I didn’t do it. I was standing here, watching the girls go gaga over pretty boy, and these two started coming out of the ground.”
Alex immediately turned to me. “Did you do this?”
At least he’d missed the part about me going gaga over Chase. “I don’t know.” I lowered my head, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes or look at the zombies crawling out of the earth.
“Jodi, this is serious.” How Alex could go from caring to stone cold serious so quickly had always been a mystery to me. “If you don’t get control of your powers, you’re going to get us all killed.”
Leticia gasped. “Do you think Hades is going to come after us?”
“That, or Jodi’s zombies are going to eat us in our sleep,” Randy said.
I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, Randy. That’s really helpful.”
Alex grabbed my arm. “He’s not wrong.”
I looked at Alex, feeling completely alone. He was supposed to be on my side, defend me, but he was attacking me like everyone else. I pushed past him and walked over to the corpses.
“Don’t bother getting up. I release your souls. Go back to where you came from.” I didn’t even wait for their souls to leave. I turned and headed for the mansion. I needed to have a talk with Medusa. She would understand. She would listen to me.
I climbed the steps and pushed through the door in a hurry. My head collided with something hard, and I fell back, landing on the floor. “Ouch!”
“You can say that again.” Chase was on the floor in front of me. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a hard head?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” I rubbed the front of my head, which felt like it was the size of a basketball.
“Here.” Chase got to his feet and extended his hand to me. I stared at his hand and then his eyes, noticing the way they sparkled with confidence. Now, it was too much like my dream.
“I’m good.” I used the doorway to help me up.
Chase lowered his hand, shoving it in his pocket. Just great. He was the new guy who didn’t know anyone, and I was making him feel unwelcome by not even taking his hand.
“Did you find your room okay? I’m sorry Alex didn’t give you a real tour. He was eager to get back to the training, I guess.”
Chase smirked. “Yeah, I’m sure that was it.”
“He’s a good guy. He just—”
“Doesn’t want to let you out of his sight.”
I was hoping Alex’s behavior wasn’t as obvious to everyone else as it was to me. Apparently I was wrong.
“Anyway, I found my room and my bag’s unpacked. I was coming back out to join you guys when I ran into you. Or should I say you ran into me?”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I needed a break.”
“And in a hurry. Something wrong?”
I felt like someone was always asking me that. “Nothing to worry about. Tell me about you. How long have you been training?”
“Mason’s been teaching me basic stuff. You know—raising, releasing, being careful around humans. Nothing major. You know how the Serpentarius Ophi feel about using their powers to raise souls.” He leaned against the Medusa statue.
“Uh, could you not do that?” I tugged him away from Medusa.
“Oh, sorry. Is it valuable?”
“More than you know, but we’ll get to that later. Did you spend a lot of time around humans?”
Chase nodded. “Yeah, I was usually in charge of helping the bands set up every Friday when they let humans into the club. Never had a problem being around humans.” He lowered his eyes. “Until three weeks ago.”
I stepped closer to him. “What happened?”
“The bass player wasn’t happy with the sound quality on his amp, so he took out a knife and tried to adjust the wire. I should’ve gotten out of there as soon as the knife came out of his pocket—that’s what I was taught to do, but I was sure I could handle it. I mean, I wasn’t the one using the knife.”
“Did he slip and get you with the blade?” My eyes flew to the scar above his eye.
“No, he didn’t slip. He started going off about this show he played and how the crowd wasn’t that into it because the sound wasn’t right. I made a comment about how maybe the sound quality wasn’t the problem. He didn’t like that very much.”
My eyes widened. “He attacked you?”
“Nah, he wasn’t tough enough to actually pick a fight with me. He yelled at me. Told me I was tone-deaf, and he was flailing his arms. The knife nicked me.” He raised his hand to his scar. “It really wasn’t bad, but instead of getting out of there, I yelled back at the guy and took a swing. Only I’d touched the wound first.”
“So, your punch was deadly.”
“You got it.” He frowned. “I didn’t mean to do it. I got careless.”
“I’m starting to think Ophi don’t belong around humans. I know my experiences with humans were awful after I came into my powers.”
“Should I pull up a chair? Are we going to compare horror stories?” He said it with a smile, and I realized he was trying to break the tension. All this talk about killing wasn’t exactly uplifting.
“You’re right. That’s enough reminiscing.” I pointed to the statue. “You want to meet Medusa?”
“I think the statue and I have already met. Remember? You told me to stop leaning on her.”
“I did. Because she’s not just a statue.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You guys don’t join hands around it and chant, do you?”
I laughed. “You know I kind of thought the same thing when I first got here. But no. We’re not a cult. We don’t worship the statue.” I tugged his arm. “Come stand here, facing her.”
He listened, but he kept looking at me like I was crazy.
“Okay, take Medusa’s right hand in yours.”
“You want me to hold hands with a statue? Really? I mean, if I’m going to hold someone’s hand, I’d rather hold yours.”
I felt my face flush. “Just do it.”
“Okay.” He took my hand in his.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
He squeezed my hand. “I don’t see you letting go.”
“Am I interrupting anything?” Alex asked, walking through the door behind us. His eyes immediately flew to our hands.
My entire body felt like it was on fire. I took my hand away and walked toward Alex. “I was about to introduce Chase to Medusa, but he misunderstood me when I told him to take her hand.”
“Misunderstood you? Yeah, I’m sure that’s all it was.” Alex took my hand in his, and we walked back to the statue.
“Go ahead,” Alex said. “Take Medusa’s hand.” He said Medusa’s name slowly, like Chase might get
