I shrug. I don’t want to touch it, either, but it wouldn’t bode well for me to show any hesitancy so early in my quest. My eyes move over a group of girls sitting at a far table, and then scan the faces of the people who stand in line at the opposite end of the room. Where is she? Have I lost track of Daphne already?
I’d hung back and watched her leave the classroom after the bell rang, but had lost her trail in the hallway. It is impossible to make out one person’s scent in the cacophony of body odors and strange perfumes that permeate this place. I don’t know how these humans can stand it. The smell is even worse here in the cafeteria.
As are the sounds and sights that assault my senses. Human teenagers are just so loud. And the brightness that floods in through the long rows of windows above the tables makes my eyes burn. How am I supposed to locate Daphne in all of this chaos? How am I supposed to observe her if I can barely see?
I pull my sunglasses out of my jacket pocket and shove them on my face—despite Dax’s warning that wearing sunglasses indoors in public might make me look like a “creeper.”
Creep. Daphne had called me that in the grove. Does she still think of me that way? She hadn’t looked back at me again before leaving class, and I can’t help feeling like a dung spout for the things I’d said to her.
I worry my new strategy is failing. My online research into “how to get a girl to like me” had suggested, time and time again, that to win a human girl over, I had to be mean to her. I’d spent the bulk of class either ignoring her, contradicting her, or acting like a “bad boy,” which I gather meant showing off my muscles and leaning back in my chair after saying something sexually suggestive.
So why do I feel like I am in an even worse place with her now than before?
What’s more, she’d deserved my derision for the offensive things she’d said—her accusations against the god of the Underrealm had bordered on blasphemy. Hades is everything we Underlords aspire to be, but both she and the text of the book had treated his memory as if he were a villain. How could I not be angered by her words even if I wasn’t trying to be rude?
“It’s just so vile,” Garrick goes on, about the foodlike substance on his tray.
Vile? Harpies, why did saying those things about virginity and exploring sexual desires to Daphne make me feel so vile now?
I mean, it’s not as if I know what I’m talking about. Only Champions who ascend to the Court are allowed to mate—and only after they’ve returned victorious with their Boons.
I can’t help wondering if Daphne really is this Cypher, and not just an ordinary Boon. Will she still be my mate when I bring her back to the Underrealm? Or will the Court claim her for another purpose? Gods, I hope not, I think as I imagine the possibility of she and I together.…
“It’s wrong. Like … like … I don’t know. What on earth could it be?” Garrick’s voice trails off in disgusted awe.
That strange heat I’d felt when I first met Daphne in the grove fills my hands. I try to pick up my knife, but little sparks jump off the metal when I touch it. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my hooded sweatshirt, not sure how I could have lost control so easily.
“I believe it’s called mashed potatoes and gravy,” I say, looking at the sign that hangs over the cash register, where I had paid a woman with the credit card Dax had given me.
Garrick picks up his tray and plops it back down on the table as if to test what would happen. The yellow, congealed gravy moves as one mass and slops over the side of the mashed potatoes, laying waste to what I think are kernels of corn.
“Gross,” Garrick says almost gleefully.
He had been reluctant when Simon informed him that he would be attending school with me, but this environment has a strange, enlivening effect on him. I don’t think I have ever heard a Lesser speak so many sentences in the presence of an Underlord.
A warm breeze rustles through the room, and I look up toward one of the cafeteria doors, which leads to a grassy courtyard where some of the students eat. I expect to finally see Daphne—maybe my strategy is working after all—but instead, the person standing in the doorway is the boy I saw her with on Saturday. The one who’d had his arm around her at the lake. I almost stand to see if Daphne is somewhere behind him, but then he looks in my direction. An expression almost as dark as an Underrealm storm crosses his face. He leaves the doorway and advances toward our table.
“Harpies,” I whisper under my breath. I know that look on his face all too well—it’d been perfected by Rowan years ago. My first instinct is to pick up a knife and ready for an attack, but it takes all my willpower to do the opposite. I drop my head and hunch my shoulders, as if making myself smaller will deflect some of the other guy’s anger.
“Are you Haden Lord?” the boy asks as he comes to stand at the opposite side of our table.
I don’t respond.
“Are. You. Haden. Lord?” he says, more forcefully this time.
I give a slight nod, hoping he’ll go away once I’ve answered his question.