The Gatekeeper's Sons (The Gatekeeper's Trilogy) (36 page)

"Fine with me," her mother said.

Pete followed her into the house. When she glanced back at him, he smiled at her. He didn’t seem to mind she was here to see Jen. He was just glad she was here.

Upstairs in Jen’s bedroom, Therese kicked off her shoes and sat on the bedspread crisscross with the crown in her lap. Jen sat against a pile of pillows stacked by the headboard. Jen’s eyes were still swollen and her face pale, and Therese noticed she had a sore on the corner of her mouth.

"I have something to show you," Therese said, her hands trembling a little. "Don’t freak out, okay?"

"I can’t promise anything."

"Listen, before I show you, let me explain. This is a special gift. I know this is going to sound crazy, but it has a special power. I’m not giving this to you, but I want to loan it to you."

"Therese, you’re making it hard not to freak out. What are you talking about?"

Therese licked her lips. "First you have to promise me, I mean swear on our friendship and all you hold sacred, that you will never tell another soul about this."

"Okay, I’m officially freaked now."

"I’m serious."

"Me, too."

Therese sighed. "Don’t be scared. I promise I wouldn’t give you anything that could hurt you."

"Okay. I promise to keep your secret."

Therese’s heart sped up as she lifted the crown toward her head. "Just watch what happens. And don’t scream, okay?"

Jen nodded.

Therese put the crown on her head.

"Jesus! What the heck?"

"
Sssh. Not too loud, Jen. I don’t want your whole family running in here."

"Oh my God!" Jen jumped off the bed and backed into the corner of her room. "Okay, I’m really, really freaked. Where are you?"
Jen accidentally bumped a stack off books off her table, then lost her balance and fell on the floor beside the strewn books. “Where are you?”

"I’m still here." Therese removed the crown from her head. "You want to try?"

Jen blinked. "This can’t be happening." She carefully stood back up, her whole body trembling.

"Go on. Take it to your mirror and watch what happens."

With trembling hands, Jen took the crown from Therese and walked over to her mirror and placed the crown on her head.

"Holy crap!" Jen removed the crown. Then she returned it to her head. "Oh my holy crap!"

"Your crap ain’t holy, Jen."

The two girls laughed, only one of them visible.

Jen took the crown off and turned to Therese. "Where’d you get this?"

"I can’t tell. It’s a secret."

Jen kept putting the crown on and off her head and watching her reflection disappear and reappear several more times. “I still can’t believe it. I must be dreaming.”

"I want to loan this to you because I was thinking…" she struggled to find the right words, "I was thinking that if your dad moves back home, you could wear this crown when you feel like disappearing."

Jen took the crown from her head and turned and looked at Therese, then her eyes gradually moved upward toward the ceiling, like she was figuring math. A smile curled onto her face and her eyes grew wide. Tears welled. She crossed the room and threw her arms around Therese. "I love you." Then she went back to the mirror, stood up a little straighter, and tried on the crown one more time.

The wind had picked up when Therese left the Holts’ and walked down their property to the dirt road. Pete had offered to drive her—had practically begged—but Therese had said she wanted to walk, so Mrs. Holt had given her a flashlight and made her promise to call when she got there. Carol would freak if she knew, but of course Carol didn’t know that the bad guys weren’t after Therese. And without her invisibility crown, Therese would have to be extra careful when she reentered the house.

"Hold on, Therese!" Pete’s voice called from the end of his gravelly drive. "Wait up a minute."

Therese stopped and shined her light on the ground in front of Pete, so he could see. He looked tall and muscular when he wasn’t standing next to Than.

He came up close beside her, and the scent of him was strangely comforting. "Ooh, that wind is something, huh? A northern must be blowing in. Hey, you cold?"

"I’m okay." She
was
cold, and although it would feel good if he put his arm around her, it wouldn’t be good for him. She should be discouraging him.

"You look pretty tonight. That a new shirt?"

She smoothed down the front of her purple knit top. "I’ve had it a while. Thanks." Then she looked at his shirt. "That Bobby’s?"

"What? Oh, yeah. I’m behind on my laundry." Even in the darkness, Therese could see his face color.

“You do your own laundry? That’s impressive,” she teased.

“Yep. My mother is a slave driver.” Then his voice softened. “Not really. She just wants us all to know how to take care of ourselves.”

Therese nodded. “That’s good.”

"Hey, so how’s
Than? Seen him lately?"

Therese’s heart contracted a little harder as she looked at Pete, and she felt sorry for him. She didn’t want to add any more pain to his suffering. With his dad coming back and Bobby’s anguish and Jen’s trepidation, she knew Pete was hurting. She wished she could help. She felt guilty that she couldn’t. "I saw Than earlier. He’s, um, he’s running an errand for his parents today." Never had that line seemed so literal.

Pete nodded. "I see." Then he asked, "He’s leaving soon, right?"

Therese looked at the dirt road beneath their feet. "Yeah, I think so. In another week or so."

Then Pete dug the toe of his boot into the dirt and said, "I guess you heard about my dad."

Therese saw the pain in his face, his need for human affection and understanding, and she wanted to help. "Oh, Pete. I’m so sorry about all that. I wish I could…"

He put his arms around her and held her tight. "You’re a sweetheart for saying that, but there’s nothing anybody can do." With his face in her hair, he breathed in deeply, like he was taking in her scent, and then he released her with his breath. "It was good to see you again. Come by more often, okay?"

She felt guilty for feeling good in his arms. She had always liked Pete. If Than hadn’t come into her life, he would have been a natural partner for her. "I will." Then she watched him turn and head back up the drive. She sighed and headed home.

Therese was glad she had been able to help Jen, but she knew the situation around the Holt family would be tense for a while, maybe even forever. She didn’t know exactly what it was Mr. Holt had done to his daughter when he was drunk, but her imagination made her shudder. Bobby had said that Pete was the one who had told, so that meant Jen hadn’t. Therese now wondered how long Jen had kept silent. She also wondered how miserable it had made Pete to rat out his own father in order to protect his sister.

A low roar, like a train, came from the lake. Therese shined the small circle of light across the grassy field toward the reservoir. By the light from the stars and the
half moon in the sky, she saw deer running away from the water, across the dirt road, and up the mountains behind the houses. The roar grew louder, like the train was upon her. Now chipmunks scurried across the road, and the ground beneath her trembled. An earthquake? She looked all around her as panic set in. She wanted to run like the animals, but her feet were like bricks, and so she stood there, waiting.

Then she had this thought: Maybe Artemis was angry that Therese had loaned her gift to Jen.

“Pete?” She shined her light toward the Holts’ driveway, but Pete was no longer in sight. She ran toward the driveway. “Pete?” Nothing.

She ran toward her house, the ground quaking beneath her feet. The dirt road cracked.

"Than!" Therese called. But before she could cry out his name again, a giant wall of cold water washed over her. It entered her mouth before she had gotten air. She lost her footing and dropped the flashlight. Underwater, she couldn’t see. Her body tumbled and turned, and her hair whipped and clung to her face. She frantically tried to gain control by swimming, but she didn’t know which way was up or down. Something like a tree branch scraped against her midriff, cutting the skin. She swam away from the force pulling her, but she couldn’t even tell if she was making progress, and she needed air and couldn’t find it.

Water entered her mouth and her throat
burned and scratched, like sandpaper on fire, hard and hot and scraping everything it touched. She writhed in the water, as her father had the night he died.

All of a sudden she saw her parents drowning in front of her: her father turning his head side to side in a wild frenzy and her mother silently yielding to the terrible depths that took her. Therese called to Than in her mind as the darkness overpowered her, and she lost consciousness.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Ambush

At the gates of Mount Olympus, Than and his sisters had amassed an army to recapture McAdams from Ares and his sons. Than’s heart thudded with fierce determination, for he knew that if Therese could not avenge her parents’ death upon McAdams, she would never be his bride.

As soon as the Furies had left Peshawar,
they had flown straight to their cousin Hermes, who had further solicited help from Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate.

But their greatest ally was Aphrodite, who stood in all her beauty, waiting for Ares, who loved her.

She was also the mother of Phobos and Deimos, who obeyed her.

When the god of war appeared at the gates with his sons and the prisoner, ready for battle, he was caught off guard by the beautiful sight of his one true love.

“Go, boys,” Aphrodite said. “This is between Ares and me.”

Phobos
and Deimos vanished.

“Will you betray me?” Ares said gently.

“What you do is wrong, my love,” Aphrodite said.

“No. What you do is wrong. Don’t interfere. Humans can never rise to greatness without the challenges of the gods! Now stand back and let me through, you coddlers!”

Ares made to charge, but at once, Than and his sisters and his mother and grandmother, along with Hermes and Hecate, descended upon him in a cloud of determination and will, and it took every one of them to bind back the arms of the god of war and recapture McAdams.

Ares
roared and pulled free and jumped up into the sky above them and laughed. “Take him. I have a better prisoner.”

At that moment, Than heard Therese’s cries from below. With bitter hatred, he narrowed his eyes at the god of war and shouted, “What have you done?”

“You’ll soon discover.” Ares disappeared.

Chapter Thirty-Seven
: Poseidon

Therese awoke on a cold hard rock in the middle of a vast, unending ocean. She and her rock were the only things she could see for miles. She was cold and wet. Her shorts and shirt stuck to her like glue, her sneakers were filled with water, and she shivered uncontrollably. Was she dreaming?

She stood up on the rock to see if she could fly, but her feet barely lifted from the ground, she lost her balance, and she fell backward into the cold, salty water. She resurfaced, spitting mouthfuls of the yucky salt water, and clam
bered onto the rock. Now she was even colder, and her teeth chattered, and she shivered even more than she had before.

In her mind, she cried for Than, and she asked what had happened. She asked him where she was and would he please, please, please come and take her home. She clutched the golden locket around her neck thinking she was the least powerful creature in the world right now.

Five feet away, a man emerged, waist high, from the water. His sun-bleached hair clung to his head and neck, and his sun-bleached beard dripped nearly down to his bare chest. He appeared to be about fifty. His eyes were the blue-green color of the sea and his lips sun-burnt red and his skin bronze. His nostrils flared with anger as he lifted his trident from the water, about to speak.

Therese could guess now who he was.

"I could kill you this instant!" he roared like thunder.

His voice had startled her, and she clutched the locket around her neck, but then she took a breath and calmed herself down.

Although she preferred to go to the Underworld as a god, she wasn’t as afraid of death as she had once been, before her parents were killed.
Before my parents were killed
. She had actually allowed herself to think the words she hadn’t been able to think in over a month?
My parents were killed.
It was a small victory, but it made her feel like maybe she wasn’t the
very
least powerful person in the world.