Sweet Legacy (Sweet Venom) (24 page)

“Yay, you found Thane,” Grace cheers.

“No,” I say, annoyed. “I mean, yes, I found Thane.”

“Is he there?” she asks. “Is he okay?”

“Yes, he’s here,” I explain. “And yes, he’s fine.”

“Can you put him on?” Grace asks.

Fighting an eye roll, I punch the speaker button on my phone. “You guys are on speaker now too.” I glare at Thane. “Say hello.”

“Hey, Grace-face,” he says, his eyes on me. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, Thane,” she says, and I can hear the emotion in her voice. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

I give him a look that says,
Yes, I know exactly how right I am.

“Is that all you found?” Gretchen’s voice makes it clear she’s not quite as forgiving as our sister.

“No, actually. I found one other thing,” I say, not trying to hide my pride. “Well, kind of.” I scan the area around the Palace lagoon. “I believe I’ve located the door.”

Grace gasps.

“Where are you?” Gretchen demands. When I tell her, she says, “Stay put. We’ll be right there.”

The phone goes dead. As I put mine away, I give Thane a sunny smile.

“That went well,” he says gruffly.

I smile bigger. “It did, didn’t it?”

He gives me that insane-genius look again. I take him by the hand.

“Come on, we can go watch the ducks while we wait for the girls.” As I tug him over to one of the benches, I ask, “Have you ever heard of a coot?”

CHAPTER 28
G
RACE

I
pull out my phone and find the note where I typed in the translation of the oracle’s riddle. It feels like a million years ago that Greer and I captured that monster and forced it to interpret the ancient Greek. We were so desperate to get Gretchen back, we risked everything.

Just like Gretchen risked everything tonight to rescue Nick.

He’s still a bit groggy from whatever the boss used to knock him out—judging from the giant knot at the base of his skull, I’d say a baseball bat. Gretchen hasn’t left his side since she got him out of the trunk of her car.

Gretchen also called Euryale to let her know we might have located the door. She and Sthenno are on their way here to meet us. From what she said, it’s going to take them a while to get here. Who knows where they ended up on their missions. Guess we didn’t need the oracle to find the door after all. She left us the riddle instead. I have a feeling that’s not all we’ll need from her before this is over—she’s too important to the whole thing.

I can’t help grinning at Thane, who is practically glued to Greer’s side. He’s never been a particularly happy person—the burden of that dark secret he’s been carrying his whole life, I guess—but standing with Greer, he looks as close to content as I’ve ever seen. And now that his secret is in the open, maybe things will start to get better for him.

Sillus looks exhausted, leaning up against Gretchen’s legs with his eyes drifting shut. I can’t believe we’re friends with a monkey monster. Who would have imagined?

All in all, the whole world around me feels completely different from the one I inhabited just a few weeks ago. And I feel like an entirely different person.

“Were you going to read that?” Gretchen demands, nodding at my phone.

Oops. Caught daydreaming. My cheeks burn as I start to read the riddle out loud again. “In the space beneath the sky—”

“That must mean it’s outdoors,” Greer says, clearly excited by her find.

“Right,” Gretchen agrees. “That makes sense.”

Greer gestures at the park space around us. “And this is most definitely outdoors.”

“Definitely.” I smile at her before continuing. “Between harbor and haunted ground . . .”

That line is a little more specific.

“There is a giant cemetery in the Presidio,” Greer says. “The Palace is between the Presidio and the water—the harbor at the marina.”

“Between harbor and haunted ground,” Nick says. “Check.”

“Where graces and muses weep at gentle water’s shore,” I read.

Greer points up at the statues surrounding the roof of the building. “See how the women—the Graces and Muses—look like they’re weeping?”

“I see the weeping muses,” Gretchen concedes.

Thane nods.

“And the pond is definitely gentle water,” Greer says smugly. “It fits all the criteria.”

“What about the rest of it?” Gretchen asks.

If the first half of the riddle is meant to help us locate the door, I think the second half tells us what to do when we find it.

“Be three within three, join life with death in thee,” I finish. “To find the lost and take up destiny.”

My heart races a little faster. We are so close to the end- game, to opening the door and beginning our guardianship. It’s terrifying, but also thrilling.

“Last line seems obvious,” Nick says. “‘Find the lost’ means find the door.”

“And ‘take up destiny,’” Greer adds, “must mean embracing our legacy. Guarding the door.”

I put my phone away and look around the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts. I haven’t visited here yet. I’ve been too busy chasing and being chased by monsters to do much sightseeing at all since we moved to the city a few weeks ago. But this looks like a nice place to spend an afternoon. Plus Greer says the science museum inside is amazing. I wish we had time to go explore.

Probably should take care of saving the world first, though.

“The part about joining life with death,” I say, glancing at Greer. “What if that means joining our blood? Like when we open a portal.”

“That makes sense,” Greer says. “Merging the healing blood of one side with the deadly blood of the other.”

“That leaves one part to figure out,” I say.

Gretchen kicks a rock out of the path. “Three within three.”

“That part is tougher,” I say, surveying the area.

Nick adds, “There are a lot of threes around here.”

“It’s neoclassical,” Greer says. “It’s practically all threes.”

Thane squints into the sun as he looks around at all the threes.

Gretchen frowns, like she’s still not one hundred percent convinced this is the right spot. I am.

“You have to admit,” I say, “a lot of the criteria make sense. There can’t be many places in the city that fit all of those things.”

“Especially the weeping muses.” Greer points to the carved women on the structures across the pond. “That feature is quite unique.”

Gretchen clenches and unclenches her jaw.

“They’re right,” Nick says. “This has to be the spot.”

“If that’s even what the riddle is talking about.” She considers it for a moment and then shrugs. “It can’t hurt to look. Let’s split up.”

We agree to separate, to split up so we can search the area more thoroughly and quickly. Hopefully by the time the gorgons arrive from wherever they are, we’ll be ready to open the door. Greer stops us.

“One thing,” she says, leaning in close to whisper. “If you find it—or think you have—don’t draw attention to the location. Let’s meet back here when we’re done searching.”

Her voice is strained, like she’s worried about something.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing, I—” Greer looks over her shoulder, like she’s expecting someone to be eavesdropping on us. Considering how many people are trying to control the outcome of this war, it wouldn’t be a surprise. “I got a couple of weird texts earlier, and I think maybe . . .”

“We’re being watched?” Gretchen suggests.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been feeling it, too,” Gretchen says.

“I—” I want to say that I’ve noticed something, but I haven’t really. Maybe I’m just not as observant as my sisters. I whisper, “Then we’ll be extra careful.”

Gretchen volunteers to check out the parking-lot side of the Palace, the entire far side of the building that’s full of locked doors and service entrances, in case the door turns out to be an actual door, I guess. Nick goes with her.

Greer and Thane head off to the pond side of the building, the exterior rotunda and open-air porticos with lots of columns and great photo ops. It’s swarming with tourists trying—and mostly failing—to get pictures without anyone else in the frame.

Gretchen orders Sillus to go take a nap so he won’t slow us down. She sounds harsh, but I think she feels bad for him. He scrambles to the nearest empty bench and curls up in a tiny ball.

I get the lucky job of checking out the grassy areas and the open space around the eastern side of the pond. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m glad to be out in the sun. It almost makes me feel like I’m back in Orangevale. Not back
home
in Orangevale, because San Francisco is finally starting to feel like home. I wish Milo was here to enjoy the day with me.

There’s not very much to inspect on my side of the pond—a few trees, some benches, a tree-dense minipeninsula at one end. Lots of ducks and a pair of pristine white swans. Nothing that looks like a door, or even a door that’s not a door. It takes me only a few minutes to walk the entire length and back again.

I don’t notice any standout threes—I’m not counting the trio of seagulls that tried to chase me up a small hill. Nothing exceptional. Now what?

I sit down on the bench next to Sillus and stare out over the water.

The door is probably somewhere near the building anyway, right? The building has doors and archways and other door-like things.

Then what Sthenno said echoes in my mind: the door doesn’t
look
like a door. It’s a location—a certain place where, if my sisters and I open a portal, the door will appear.

Maybe I need to reorient my thinking. If we’re looking for a door that’s not a door, then the things that look like doors—the arches and actual doors—are less likely to be right.

As I survey the world around me, I run the third line of the riddle through my mind over and over again.

“Be three within three,” I mutter.

Three columns? Three benches? Three . . . I-don’t-know-whats.

Three within three, three within—

I gasp. “Three trees.”

It’s right there, right in front of me. As in
directly
in front of me.

Three gnarled and ancient-looking trees arranged in a triangular shape on a little piece of land that juts out into the pond just a tiny bit. They are tall, and their bark is almost black. Three within three. Three sisters within the triangle of three trees.

I quickly compare them to the other trees in the park. The rest look completely ordinary. There are none like them.

This has to be it.

Part of me wants to jump up and down, run over to the three trees—maybe hug them—and shout for my sisters to hurry up and join me. But I remember what Greer said about the weird texts, and what Gretchen said about feeling like we’re being watched. The last thing I want to do is draw attention to the door.

If anyone from the Olympic faction—Zeus, Apollo, or one of their many allies—finds out we’ve located the door before we’re ready, they won’t think twice about killing us to keep us from breaking the seal.

For all I know, one of their agents is somewhere here among the tourists, just waiting for a reason to strike.

Or someone from the monster side is hiding out nearby so they’re ready to attack the moment we open the door.

If we thought things were dangerous before, when we were just beginning to figure things out, then it’s going to be all-out war when the factions involved find out we’ve found the door.

There is no place more dangerous for me and my sisters to be.

So, without sparing the three trees another glance, I lean back on the bench, drape my arms over the back above Sillus’s snoring body, and wait for my sisters to return.

“Nothing,” Gretchen says with a huff when she and Nick return. “All normal doors and architectural details. This is a waste of time.”

She flops down on the bench next to me while Nick stays standing in front of us. Sillus sits up at the sound of her voice and climbs over my lap to cuddle into hers.

I can barely contain my excitement. Her hand moves to pet Sillus’s furry head.

“Um, Gretchen?” I ask offhandedly.

She turns her head to look at me.

“Don’t look,” I say, moving my lips as little as possible, “but the door is right in front of us.”

She immediately looks. “Where?”

“Gretchen,” I growl.

She quickly turns back to me. “Right. Where?”

“There—”

“I found several likely candidates,” Greer says, stepping in between me and Gretchen and the three trees. “We will have to test them to be certain. Though I’m not really sure how to do that.”

I glance up and give her a try-to-be-subtle look, but she’s not paying attention.

“We should narrow it down before we attempt anything. The rotunda would be a prime candidate,” she explains, “but there weren’t any noticeable threes. They could be hidden, of course, so we might as well start there.”

When Thane nudges her, she looks at him. Then, following his gaze, she finally looks at me.

Gretchen cuts to the chase. “Sit down, shut up, and act like nothing’s happening.”

Sillus lifts his head. “Huntress quiet.”

Greer purses her lips like she’s irritated, but then Gretchen gives her a fierce glare and her eyes widen as she sits down on my other side. I lean back and stare off to the south. Nick stands casually in front of Gretchen, while Thane—more relaxed than usual, but still way more tense than Nick—stands practically at attention between me and Greer.

“Directly in front of us,” I whisper, “is a triangle of trees.
Three
trees.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Gretchen subtly scan her gaze over the trees, checking it out. She returns her attention to me.

“You think that’s it?”

I shrug and shake my head. “I can’t be one hundred percent sure until we try.”

“Of course. It makes perfect sense,” Greer whispers. “It’s outdoors, under the sky.”

“And it would be easy enough to be three within three,” I explain.

Gretchen scowls, like she’s thinking it through. “And trees could be here forever and no one would notice.”

“Three tree,” Sillus whispers reverently.

“They look like they could have been here since the time of the gorgons,” I say.