Did inheriting Orpheus’s voice mean that I had inherited his supernatural abilities with music, too? Maybe my musical OCD isn’t an impairment at all—maybe it truly is a gift, like I had always thought. Maybe Orpheus had been able to hear the tones and sounds that the world and people around him gave off—and tapping into that was how he used music to control the elements.
Maybe this is why I’ve always felt my voice was meant for bigger things than what Ellis had to offer.
There’s a small potted bonsai tree on the coffee table in front of me. Its serene tone reminds me of Asian meditation music. I’d always thought it had a calming effect. I listen to it for a minute, soaking in its song. Then concentrating all my energy at the little tree, I hum the same tone back. Move, I tell the tree with my thoughts as I hum. Come to me.
Just when I start to think that this whole idea is as cracked as possible, the little bonsai tree—pot and all—lurches forward a good two inches. As if it is actually trying to come to me.
I jump and glance around the room. Nobody else seems to have noticed what I’ve done. What I can do. I decide that, for the moment, it might be best to keep this new development to myself. Until I know how I want to use it.
I start nodding off to the sound of Haden’s rhythmic breathing. It reminds me of sleeping beside him in the hotel. I am about to give in to the slumber that pulls at my mind when Tobin shakes me awake.
“Daphne?” He sticks a framed photo in front of me. It’s one that normally hangs on the wall between the bathroom and my bedroom upstairs. “When was this taken?”
I blink a couple of times and focus on the picture. “Last winter. The town has a Christmas party every year. Jonathan made us all matching elf costumes.”
“Last winter? As in, a year ago?”
The urgent notes coming off him make me sit up—the usual syncopated beat that had attracted me to him has increased in rhythm tenfold.
“What’s going on?”
“This girl,” he says, tapping the glass. “Who is she?”
I look at the photo and see who he’s pointing at. Her untamed red hair curls out wildly from under her elf hat, and she looks so pale compared to the rest of us desert folk in the photo. She could never spend much time in the sun because of her fair complexion. “That’s CeCe Caelum.”
Dax makes a noise from the kitchen.
“The girl who’s missing?” Tobin asks.
I nod.
He sinks into Jonathan’s easy chair with the photo on top of his knees.
“What is it?”
“That’s my sister,” Tobin says, holding his fingers splayed over his mouth. “That’s Abecie.”
“What?” Dax says, dropping the taco onto his plate.
“Are you sure?” I ask. “I mean, you’re Japanese and CeCe … um, isn’t.”
“Half sister,” Tobin says. “But I never thought of her that way. My mom had her before she married my dad.”
I nod. The reason Tobin reminds me so much of CeCe in both tone and personality finally makes sense. Almost all that time she’d been missing from his life, she’s been in mine.
“She’s alive,” he says.
Dax grabs the photo from Tobin. “Abbie,” he says. “I’ve been looking everywhere.… And she was here. That’s why I couldn’t find her.”
“You said she was dead,” Tobin says, standing. “Daphne said that you told her that she died!”
“Not exactly,” Dax says. “I just didn’t deny the idea.”
“Why would you do that?”
“It was better for people to think she was dead—for her protection—and I had vowed not to speak of her. Or of what happened. I … I don’t know why I can speak about her now.… The Oracle must have released me from my oath when she died.…”
“Then you’d better start explaining.” Tobin looks like he wants to punch Dax in the face.
“What do you know about Abbie’s biological father?”
“Not much,” he says. “I know my mom hates his guts. She never treated Abbie the same as me and Sage. It was like Abbie was some burden she had to bear.”
“Abbie’s father was a Skylord.”
“Whoa, you mean Abbie is like those people who were chasing us? She’s part Skylord?”
Dax nods. “Though her powers were mostly dormant when I met her. Your sister wasn’t just any Boon I was sent to fetch. The Court was desperate to have her, so they made a deal …”
“With my mother,” Tobin says, and I can hear a string of discordant notes rattle through him. “I started putting the pieces together after Joe admitted to the deal he made—why my mom was covering up those attacks in Olympus Hills. My mom was always all about her work when I was little. She was obsessed with this new wind turbine that she and my dad engineered. She said it had the power to change the world, but they couldn’t get the backers they needed to finish it. That is until some mysterious benefactor came along. He made my parents’ company take off the way it did.… And then they sold the company to him and brought us to Olympus, and she took over as mayor. That benefactor must have been Simon. My mother is working for the Underrealm, isn’t she? And she didn’t just know that Abbie had been chosen to be taken—she traded my sister and her allegiance for the money she needed to finish her life’s work, didn’t she?”