Ian’s eyes narrowed to slits, but I smiled in the face of his anger. If I didn’t get anything else out of being on Team Midgard, at least I would get to annoy the Viking. It was quickly becoming my favorite new hobby.
“Great,” Zoe drawled. “Just what we need. Another alpha on the team. Can’t we all just get along?”
“No,” Ian and I both snapped in unison.
We glared at each other for a few more seconds before Ian crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Come to the Bunker this evening, and we’ll talk about how we’re going to handle Lance’s party. If you think you’re up for it, cupcake.”
“Oh, I’m up for it.”
I was still holding my second cupcake, and I saluted him with it before sinking my teeth into the chocolate dessert. Ian’s eyes glittered with fresh anger, but I smirked at him and took another bite of my cupcake.
This was going to be fun.
*
To my surprise, my afternoon classes went by much quicker than the morning ones had.
Zoe was right. The other kids might have been shocked that I’d come back to the academy this year, but they were rapidly going back to their own lives and getting caught up in their own little dramas. For the most part, the other students ignored me, and I did the same to them. I didn’t necessarily like being ignored, but it was certainly better than everyone gossiping about me.
And Ian was right too. Takeda was once again acting as the gym coach, although now I knew better than to mouth off to him, and I avoided having to run any laps. After gym, I went to the cottage, did my homework, took a shower, and put on a fresh pair of jeans, along with a clean T-shirt and my green leather jacket. Then I headed over to the library.
I walked down the main aisle, my steps slow, staring at the space in front of the checkout counter where the chimera had been. The study tables and chairs were in their usual positions, and so were all the couches around the fireplace. Not a trace of last night’s attack remained, not so much as a scorch mark from the chimera’s smoking paws on the floor. My gaze moved over to the spot where Amanda had taken her last breath. Even her blood was gone, scrubbed away like she hadn’t died here last night, with only the faint lemony scent of cleaner left behind to mark her passing.
It made me sad.
Sad that a girl’s life could be cut so tragically short. Sad that no one even noticed that Amanda was gone. Sad that no one would ever notice that she was gone. But Linus Quinn had made it this way so that the other students wouldn’t panic. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to spare everyone this fresh new fear about the Reapers. I just wondered if anyone would notice if I vanished one day and never came back. Probably not.
And that made me even sadder than before.
I pushed my depressing thoughts away and headed deeper into the library. The Protectorate might think that Lance was a Reaper, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others here at the academy. And if any of the Reapers knew I’d been in the library last night, they might try to keep tabs on me to see if I did anything interesting.
So I wandered around the library for thirty minutes to make sure no one was following me. I also used the time to check out the reference books I’d dropped during my fight with the chimeras last night. Midgard or not, I still had a myth-history paper to do.
No one paid any attention to me, so I headed up to the second floor to the bookcase that doubled as the secret entrance to the Bunker. Just like Linus had said, a small silver button was embedded in the side of the wood. I stared at the button, then slowly pressed in on it. A green light flashed under my thumb, scanning it, and a second later, a soft click sounded as the bookcase detached itself from the stone wall and swung outward, revealing the elevator. I stepped inside the car.
A few minutes later, I was in the briefing room down in the Bunker. No one was sitting at the table, and the surrounding desks were empty as well. Since I was the first and only person here, I decided to give myself the grand tour.
I roamed up and down the hallways, making sure that I knew where everything was, from the armory to the computer room to the kitchen. I even opened the refrigerators and all the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen to see what kind of food was in here. Mostly canned and prepackaged stuff that wouldn’t spoil. Even worse, it was all health food, like granola, brown rice, and energy bars that looked like they were made of cardboard. Blech. No cookies, no cupcakes, no sugary desserts of any sort. No fun, in other words. My stomach grumbled in disappointment.
I did find a door marked Stairs, which was another exit that led back up to the main part of the library, as well as some air vents that looked like they were attached to the rest of the building’s temperature-control system. I made a special note of the door and the vents. The Midgard’s supersecret spy headquarters was cool, but I didn’t want to be trapped down here if the power to the elevator ever went out. Or if Reapers somehow discovered the location and decided to attack.
My grand tour didn’t take long, and I wound up back in the briefing room a few minutes later. Part of me wanted to search through the desks to discover what secrets Ian, Zoe, and Mateo might be hiding. I especially wanted to go through Mateo’s desk to see if he might have some more candy bars stashed in one of the drawers. But that would have been totally rude, so instead, I headed toward the back half of the room and started wandering through the shelves full of books and artifacts.
I did a slow, methodical circuit, going up and down each aisle twice, looking at all the objects lined up on the shelves. I recognized many of the items, especially the books, since they were the original first editions of various research tomes I’d read through or used information out of for myth-history papers and other class projects. But I had never heard of many of the artifacts, not so much as a whisper, and with good reason.
They were all extremely dangerous.
Linus had said the Bunker would have been the last holdout against Loki and the Reapers, and the Protectorate had packed the area with powerful, deadly artifacts that they couldn’t afford to let anyone get their hands on—ever—especially not the Reapers.
Things like the Hammer of Hephaestus, named for the Greek god of fire, which burned with red-hot flames whenever it was wielded. Or the Gauntlets of Serket, an Egyptian goddess associated with poisons, which were coated with a magical acid that would eat right through your enemy’s skin and bones if he so much as brushed up against the gold gauntlets.