“Because men are incapable of living without fighting, and we know that one day the fight will come to us.”
“But the things you did—” said Nim.
“I’m stronger, faster than…well, than ordinary people. All of my sisters are.”
“And you can shrug off bullets like mosquito bites, knock over temples, and survive fiery explosions?” said Nim.
Diana opened her mouth, then closed it, as if uncertain what to say. In that moment, she looked less like the brave, self-assured girl who casually wrecked the egos of subway-going bros in business suits. She looked dazed, a little lost. Like a girl who’d stayed too late at a party and missed her ride home.
“Honestly, I’m not totally sure what I can do,” Diana said. “I’ve never done it before.”
“Well, you’re one hell of a quick study,” grumbled Jason as he extracted a roll of gauze and packets of what looked like aspirin from the medical kit. Alia wanted to reach across the aisle and slap him. She knew he was hungry for concrete answers, but Diana had saved their lives. She deserved to keep whatever secrets she wanted to.
“Let’s say I choose to believe all this,” said Nim. “What happens next?”
“We get to the spring,” said Diana.
“In Sparta,” said Theo, “where dudes run around yelling in leather undies.”
“I’ve never heard that particular story,” Diana said. “But Sparta is where Helen was born and raised, and where she was worshipped after her death.”
That didn’t sound right to Alia. “People worshipped Helen? I thought everyone hated her.”
“There were those who did. But Helen wasn’t just the cause of the Trojan War. She was a mother and a wife, and a girl once, too. There are stories that she used to run races along the banks of the Eurotas.” Diana smiled slightly. “And she won.”
It was strange to think of Helen before she was Helen. “Her tomb is in Therapne?” Alia asked.
“That’s right,” said Diana. “It’s called the Menelaion, but before that it was known as Helen’s Tomb. ‘Where Helen rests, the Warbringer may be purified.’?”
Nim tapped her fingers against the frayed knees of her jumpsuit. “Okay, so we just have to get to the spring before the bad guys get to Alia.”
Alia wanted to say a long prayer of thanks that Nim seemed to be taking all of this in stride and hadn’t tried to throw herself out of the airplane. But if they were going to tell the truth, they should tell all of it.
“Actually,” said Alia, “I’m not sure they are the bad guys.”
“They blew up the Sackler Wing of the Met,” said Nim. “They’re monsters.”
Theo took a sip of his ginger ale. “Or maybe just not art lovers.”
“They’re people willing to do anything to see Alia dead,” said Jason grimly. “And a lot of people lost their lives because of it.”
“Right,” said Theo softly. “Sorry.”
Jason wasn’t wrong, but Alia also knew that they were all dealing with their fear and horror as best they could.
She gestured to the laptop propped on the banquette. “From what I can see, plenty of people are looking to identify and eradicate Warbringers—”
“In other words, you,” said Theo.
“Yes, me. And they have pretty good reasons.”
Nim tossed her sheaf of black hair from her eye. “How good can their reasons be if they’re trying to kill you?”
Alia sighed. “They don’t know about the spring. They’re just trying to stop a world war. So, according to everyone but present company, they’re pretty good.”
“That’s perfect,” said Theo, sitting up.
Jason crossed his arms. “How’s that exactly?”
“We’re the villains! It’s always cooler to be the villain. You get to wear black and have a lair and brood. Besides, girls can’t resist a bad boy.”
“You are such an idiot,” said Nim.
He tapped his temple. “It’s not my fault you lack the vision.”
Nim opened her mouth to reply and Alia cut in with a sharp, “Hey! Have you guys ever noticed that you get along fine except when I’m around?”
“That’s not true,” said Theo. “We have never gotten along.”
“Think about it. Do you go home and rant about how much you hate Nim?”
“I—” Theo hesitated. Even his locs looked like they were thinking. “Well, no. It’s just when—”
“Just when you’re around me. So next time you guys feel like killing each other, maybe take a break and go to your corners. Literally, just get away from me or each other.”
Theo and Nim shared a skeptical glance.
“See?” said Alia. “You both think I’m nuts so you have something to agree on already.”
“What will your people make of the attack on the museum?” Diana asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Jason, his voice weary. “There’s a lot of bad stuff happening around the world right now. They’ll probably chalk it up to terrorism, an attack on the Foundation because of its international policies. We’ve had threats before, problems at some of our facilities abroad.”
“But nothing on this scale,” said Theo.
“No,” said Jason. “Nothing with a body count.”
“And do we have any idea who those particular good guys were?” Nim asked.
“They were speaking German,” said Theo. “Ich bin ein blow the museum up.”
Jason shuffled through a stack of files. “There are a number of international organizations who make it their business to try to track the Warbringer’s bloodline. There used to be more, but either they’ve gone to ground or just died out. There’s the Order of Saint Dumas, and a splinter group called Das Erdbeben that once operated out of Hamburg, but it’s hard to tell which are real and which are fiction.”
“Those bullets seemed awfully real,” said Nim.
“But why now?” asked Alia. “Why wait until so close to the new moon to try to…get rid of me?”
Jason shifted uneasily in his seat and looked down at his hands. “I think that may be my fault.”
“As long as it’s not my fault,” said Theo.
Alia waited, and Jason smoothed his thumb over the knee of his jeans. “Mom and Dad hadn’t transferred a bunch of the old files to digital. I thought I should back everything up, make a record. So I scanned it all in—”
“On a Keralis Labs computer?” Theo said, sounding genuinely horrified for the first time since they’d started talking. “Were you even running encryption?”
“Yes,” said Jason. “And we have all kinds of confidential information on those servers. Research. Proprietary data. It should have been safe.”
“But someone in the company could have recognized something,” said Diana. “All it would take was one word, one mention.”
“I’m sorry, Al,” Jason said. He looked physically ill. “I never really believed in all of it. Not the way they did. I should have been more careful.”
Alia sighed. How could she be angry with him for something he couldn’t possibly have understood? “I don’t know whether to smack you for being so stupid or do a victory dance to celebrate the fact that this time you’re the one who screwed up.”
“You could incorporate a smack into your victory dance,” suggested Nim.
“Efficiency,” said Alia. “I like it.”
“Efficiency,” Diana repeated thoughtfully. “It’s possible these organizations are exchanging information now. It would be the strategic thing to do. As near as I can tell from the scroll, tracking and identifying Warbringers was no easy task. The first recorded assassination of a Warbringer happened in the modern world. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“One more thing to blame on the Internet,” said Theo.
Alia held up one of the folders. “What about all the text that’s been blacked out? Are there complete versions of the files anywhere?”
Jason shook his head. “Not that I’ve found. I think Mom and Dad may have been pursuing separate lines of research at some point. I’m not sure.”
Theo refilled his glass. “Okay, we get to Greece, we find the spring, we’re all good.”
So they weren’t going to run screaming. Alia could have hugged Theo. But that was pretty much always true.