Shadow Hills (18 page)

When we got back to Devenish, it was almost time for dinner. Afterward I went back to my room and locked the door behind me. Getting out the book Sarah gave me, I settled onto the bed. I untied the leather straps on the book’s cover and opened it. The pages were thick, yellowed with age, and gilded along the edges. I flipped through the pages in alarm; it was in a different language with a completely different alphabet! I let out a groan of frustration. Sarah had given me a book written in what I could only guess was Greek, and I had
thanked her
. What was the matter with the woman? Now I was right back where I started.

Well, not quite. I knew the name of the mark on my hip. I went over to the computer and typed Hekate’s Wheel into Google. And there it was.

Hekate’s Wheel

Just looking at it set the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

I read the paragraph below the picture, “This mazelike symbol represents the labyrinth of knowledge. It also represents Hekate’s affinity with the number three.”
Maybe this explains why my dreams always come to me at 3:33
.

“Her power is triplicate, giving her control over both nature—heaven, earth, and the underworld—and the life cycle—birth, life, and death.”

I clicked on a link for the page titled “The FAQs About Hekate.”

As I read the section on her origin, I saw that there was some confusion, but the prevailing theory was that she was a Titan who preceded the Olympic gods. And according to this, her realm of powers was vast:

“Hekate is the goddess of witchcraft and spirits, and she is considered to be a dark goddess. It is also said the she sends demons that cause nightmares.”

Goose bumps rose on my arms.

I read on, “Hekate could be kind, and she often helped people move from life to the underworld
as she did with Persephone.”

I jumped up from my chair and started pacing.

Naturally, I’d heard the myth of Persephone. She’d been kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld; and her mother, Demeter, had blighted the earth so no plants would grow. Eventually, Persephone was allowed to return for all but a few months out of the year. And during the months when Persephone was in the underworld, everything would die again, and that was how winter was explained. But I didn’t remember Hekate having anything to do with it.

I returned to the computer and typed in a search for Hekate and Persephone together. A lot of the information was dense and confusing, but as I made my way through it, I came upon something very interesting.

Hekate had helped Demeter by guiding Persephone from the underworld back to earth, lighting the way with her trademark torch. After this, Hekate was the protector of Persephone.

Ever since Athena’s death, I had felt as though I was searching for something even though I didn’t know what it was. Could it be that I’d been led to Devenish by Hekate? Was I being guided? My dreams always seemed to be trying to tell me something. And I couldn’t deny that what I’d read about Hekate resonated with me. I picked up the strange book I’d tossed aside and ran my fingers over the leather cover.

They offered courses in Greek at Devenish; maybe the Greek teacher could tell me what the book said. Luckily, tomorrow was
Friday, which meant we had shorter classes and no electives, to give us time for our advisor meetings and extra study. I had my first advisor meeting with Mr. Sherwood, but after that I could drop by the Language Department.

As I slipped the book under my mattress, I noticed something was missing from my wrist—Athena’s ID bracelet.

I panicked. I began to dig through my purse, then dumped its contents out and checked the zippered pockets. They all turned up empty.

I checked the desk drawer, but there was nothing but my iPod.

Okay. Think
. So much had happened today. I was pretty sure I’d put on the bracelet this morning. I always did. Swimming—of course. I took it off for swim class and put it in my purse. But I couldn’t remember if I had put it back on after I dressed. It had all been so confusing, with that vision and Zach rushing in to help me. I could have dropped it when I was feeling faint, or it could have fallen out of my purse. I wouldn’t have noticed it. The odds were it was lying at the bottom of my locker or on the floor of the gym.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. There was no reason to work myself into hysterics over nothing. I knew where it probably was. I could just check the next day and find out. But no matter how hard I tried to put it out of my mind, I couldn’t shake the fear that I had lost Athena’s bracelet forever.

When I woke up the next morning I went to the Athletics Center to look for my bracelet, but it was closed until three for maintenance. I figured if I was going to be forced to wait, I might as well get something done, so when I left Mr. Sherwood’s office after my advisor meeting, I cut across the campus to the Language Building.

I checked the directory and headed up to the third floor. The very last classroom had a plaque beside it stating:
PAMELA CARR, LATIN AND GREEK
.

I peeked through the narrow window in the door. The room was empty except for a small woman seated at the teacher’s desk, red pen in hand, skimming through papers.
So this is Mr. Carr’s wife
, I thought. She was dressed in a plain gray suit, and with her wire-rimmed glasses and mousy brown hair, she was the very image of a teacher of dead languages.

Tentatively, I knocked on the door, and Mrs. Carr glanced up. She gazed blankly at me for a moment, then waved me in.

“Yes? May I help you?” she asked when I stepped inside the room.

“Hi. I’m Persephone Archer. I’m a junior here. And I have this book someone gave me. I think it’s in Greek, but I wasn’t sure. I was hoping maybe you could look at it and tell me?”

She raised her eyebrows a little but nodded, reaching out her hand for the book. I pulled off my backpack and dug out the book, handing it to her.

“My,” she said softly. “It’s quite large.” She set it down on the desk and studied it. “And quite old. Where did you say you got it?”

“It was a gift.” I wasn’t going to tell a complete stranger about my insane interaction with Sarah. “My, um, aunt sent it to me.”

“Well …” Mrs. Carr opened the book and frowned. “I’m not sure how much help I can be. About the only thing I can tell you is that this is not written in Greek.”

“Oh.”

“Many of the letters are Greek, but there are some other symbols as well. And the words they form are not any words I recognize. It’s not a language I’ve ever seen.” She flipped through a few more pages, pausing at a drawing of a circle surrounded by various little figures. Taking off her reading glasses, she leaned in closely, her nose inches from the page. “Most unusual. You realize that it’s handwritten, don’t you? Not printed?”

“No. I didn’t really look at it that closely.” In my disgust at discovering I couldn’t read it, I had slammed the book shut without examining it. I peered over her shoulder. It did appear to be a person’s printing. It was too uneven, the lines not entirely straight, the ink fluctuating in color.

“And your aunt didn’t send any explanation?”

“No. She just said she thought I’d get a kick out of it. She’s, um, a little odd.”

Mrs. Carr continued to gaze at the book, tapping her fingernails lightly on her desk. “It almost looks … well, I don’t know, of course, but I am tempted to say that it seems like a made-up language.”

I stared at her blankly for a moment, then said, “You mean—a code of some kind?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t swear to it, of course. But, yes, it looks rather like a code.”

I thanked Mrs. Carr for her time, exiting with the mysterious book in hand.
Great. A lot of good that did
. Breaking some predictable code on a locked box was one thing, but breaking a code written in ancient letters and symbols that mystified even a professor of dead languages? I couldn’t imagine how I would ever do that.

It was past three, so I hurried over to the Athletics Center to look for my bracelet. After I checked my locker and the counter where I’d set my toiletries bag, I crouched down to search the floor. Nothing. I asked Mr. Carr if anyone had turned it in. No one had, but he pulled out the lost-and-found box for me to look through anyway. When I saw that it wasn’t there, he wrote down a description of the bracelet and my name and cell number just in case it turned up. But it didn’t look good.

How could I have been so careless with something of my sister’s?
I wanted to yell at someone, but the only person to blame was me. The bracelet and the dream journal were the two things I had
here at Devenish that had belonged to Athena, and I had the sickening feeling that one of them was now gone forever.

The fact that it was Friday was the only thing that made the whole frustrating day bearable. I was done with my first week of classes. I could hang out with my friends, maybe go to the SAC, take Graham’s cocky attitude down a notch by dominating the pool table. Pretend I was a normal girl at a normal school, at least for one evening.

After our group left the SAC that night at ten p.m.—Graham with his tail between his legs, and rightly so, since I’d whipped him in pool five times straight—Adriana and I went back to her dorm room to hang out. Our discussion ran the gossip gamut, with topics ranging from the hottest guys at school—Adriana’s vote: Trent and Graham; my vote: Zach and Graham—to the absolute worst-dressed boarding students. (It didn’t seem fair to include the townies, since we rarely saw them in anything but their uniforms.) We both agreed that the blonde girl with the pink fixation who worked at the SAC took that honor. Without even realizing it, we managed to stay up half the night talking.

Which was why the next morning Adriana and I were the last ones to make it to breakfast. As I settled in with my plate of pancakes, I saw that Brody was sitting with us.

Brody’s eyes were massively red today. I wasn’t sure if it was sleepiness or just part of the half-stoned state he seemed to perpetually operate under. It was weird that he and Zach were such good friends. Zach was über-responsible, and Brody had this
kind of reckless air about him. Then again, I didn’t really know Brody that well.

One thing I was positive of, though, was that he had developed a massive crush on Adriana. He watched her in rapt attention constantly.

“Okay.” Adriana clapped her hands together, getting everyone else’s attention. “I wasn’t sure what you guys wanted to do tonight, but since it’s Saturday, I was thinking—”

“Thinking, Adriana?” Graham looked concerned. “You better be careful; you don’t want to strain yourself.”

“That’s funny.” Adriana cocked her head to one side. “Especially coming from the guy who got a C on his first physics quiz.”

Graham rolled his eyes. “What kind of teacher gives a quiz the first week of school?”

“You know, if you need some tutoring, I could probably carve out a little time for you,” Adriana continued. “I did tie for the highest score in the class.”

She ducked as Graham threw his napkin at her head.

“So, back to what I was saying,” Adriana started again. “I think we should do something fun tonight.”

“What are you proposing?” Toy asked.

“I was contemplating the revolutionary idea of a party. What do you guys think?” Adriana asked. “Blow off a little steam?”

“I’m in.” The idea certainly appealed to me after the roller-coaster week I’d had. “Although it might be harder with the dorm full now.”

“We could have it at the woods spot,” Graham offered. “Are you in?” he asked Toy.

“Yeah.” She smiled shyly. “What time?”

“How about midnight? Give the dorm heads thirty minutes to go to sleep after lights out?” Adriana offered.

“I’ll be there,” Brody said. As if that had ever been in question—I had a clear picture in my mind of Brody leaning up against a tree, smoking a joint and being vaguely antisocial.
But there was always the possibility he’d bring Zach
. The thought started my pulse racing.

“Course since it’s after hours, probably only boarding students will come,” Brody added, bringing my heartbeat back down to a normal pace.

“We don’t want everyone and their badly dressed mom there anyway.” Adriana picked some invisible lint off her pristine ivory silk blouse.

“As long as you’re there, it doesn’t matter who else comes,” Brody said slyly.

“Not gonna happen, Brody.” She stood up with her tray.

“We’ll just have to wait and see.” He leaned back and cocked an eyebrow at her.

Adriana rolled her eyes, then turned to me. “You going over to the library to study?”

“I can’t seem to find any way around it.”

“You guys wanna meet up later tonight?” Toy asked before we left the table.

“Sure. Meet at the hedge outside my window?” I grabbed my tray.

“Cool.” Toy grinned. “See you at midnight.”