Touch of Death(42)

I staggered and struggled to stay connected so she wouldn't disappear. "What is it? Something's wrong."

"Yes, my child. Something is very wrong. You are no longer safe in this house. Enemies are among you. In these very walls. You must protect yourself. Things are not as they seem." She looked down, her eyes falling on the locket. "Not at all what they seem."

"How do I protect myself? Please, tell me what to do."

"You must find the power within yourself. It is all you have left, but it is strong enough to save you. Your father was like you. He was strong. But he did not heed my warnings. He trusted those who should not have been trusted. They gave him blood to drink. Blood they said would awaken the powers in him. They claimed it was Gorgon blood, but it was not. It was human blood, and they used it to dilute his power. Stifle his abilities."

"He drank blood? Like a vampire?" I shuddered at the thought.

"They slipped it into his wine. Pretended they were toasting his arrival and then every success he found after that. When he questioned the taste and thickness of the wine, they finally told him it contained blood. But they lied to him about why they were giving it to him. He didn't discover the truth until it was too late. I could not save him, Jodi."

My mind was stuck on something she'd said. Wine. The Ophi had toasted my arrival, too. And they'd given me wine on more than one occasion. It was different than any wine I'd ever seen, but everyone drank it. That had to mean it was okay. Unless. My wine might have been the only one laced with human blood. Maybe everyone else had been drinking regular wine. I remembered the slightly metallic taste. Could that have been blood? Ugh! I was questioning everything. I didn't know who to trust anymore. Emotions had been on high lately, especially with the attacks on Ophi, but I'd thought that was all it was. People freaking out and acting funny because of all the bad stuff going on. Now? Maybe they had been trying to sabotage me.

I didn't know what to think about anything. And Medusa was only here in spirit, so she couldn't help me figure things out right now either. Still, there was one thing she could help me with.

"Can you tell me about my dad? What did he look like? What was he like?"

"He looked a lot like you. Green eyes. Dark hair. One dimple on his right cheek just like you. He was tall, too. Almost six feet. He was seventeen when I met him."

"He was seventeen when he died," I said.

"Yes, that is true."

"He was so young." I couldn't imagine my life ending at my age. There was so much I still wanted to do. He probably had felt the same way. Or maybe he didn't know he was going to die. I couldn't bring myself to ask Medusa. I wasn't ready to hear about his death yet. "Derek Colgan." I muttered, without really meaning to.

"I see you have learned his name. And, yes, he was young. When he discovered what was really going on here, he asked me to protect you."

"Me? But he never even met me. He left my mom right after he found out she was pregnant."

"Yes, he had to leave. He was coming into his powers and did not want to hurt her or you, but he did see you. When you were born, he went to the hospital. He told me you were beautiful and so small. He asked me to protect you. I told him you were chosen. You would receive my locket, which would unlock your true powers."

My head lowered. My eyes were still closed, but in my mind I could see the locket.

"Jodi," Medusa said, "that is not my locket around your neck."

"What? But you gave it to me."

"I did give you a locket, but that is not it. That is a fake."

"No, that's impossible. The locket hasn't been out of my sight, except for when Abby stole it. Did she switch them? No, she was upset when I got it back. She wouldn't have been that upset if this wasn't the real locket." My thought and speech were mixing in my mind. A jumbled mess.

"Child, calm yourself. I can sense my blood, any Gorgon blood, and there is none inside that stone."

Had Abby lied about everything? Was this all a big charade? She could've fooled me, pretended to be upset about me getting the locket back when all along it was what she'd wanted. Fueled by anger, I released Medusa's hands and marched up the stairs. My energy level was better than normal now.

"Jodi, wait!" Alex called. I'd forgotten he'd been with me when I connected with the statue. "What's wrong? Where are you going?"

"There's something I have to do." I stormed down the hallway and pounded on Abby's door.

"She's in a lesson right now," Alex said.

"I need to get inside. She took something of mine."

"What did she take? I thought you said nothing was missing from your room."

I froze. That was it! Abby hadn't switched the lockets back when she took it from my bathroom. She switched them a few nights ago when she ransacked my room. "That witch!"

"What?" Alex was trying to keep up with me, but I wasn't exactly filling in any of the details for him.

"Do you have keys to the rooms? Your parents run this place, so even if they don't want you advertising that fact, you must have certain privileges, like a master key."

He sighed and reached in his pocket. "For the record, I never let you in here. Got it?"

I crossed my heart.

He opened the door and stepped aside so I could go in. I went straight to her dresser and began tearing it apart, not trying to be neat or cover up the fact that I'd been here. I wanted her to know I had been there. I wanted her to know this was war.

Alex stayed in the hall. "Aren't you going to help me?"

"No way. This is between you and Abby. I've got your back, Jodi, but I don't want trouble with Abby. If she admits to taking whatever it is you think she took, then I'll go to Troy and tell him. But I'm not going to rifle through her stuff."                       
       
           



       

I stopped for a second and stared at him. "You went through my stuff. You totally wrecked my room, and now that we are on the subject, what exactly were you looking for?"

He lowered his head. "Your diary."

I laughed. "My diary? Isn't that a little elementary school of you? I haven't kept a diary since I was eight, and even then, I never wrote anything good in it. I was homeschooled and grew up with practically no money. What on earth would I have to write about in a diary?"

"How about raising the dead?" He finally stepped into the doorway. "I needed confirmation that you saw the signs."

"What signs?"

"That you were changing. You wouldn't talk to me, so I had to resort to other ways of finding out what was going on with you and how much you'd figured out on your own."

That was easy. I hadn't figured out a thing. Until Alex had told me what I was, I had no idea I was the one doing all those awful things. Raising dead animals, killing people who were only trying to help me. I had been clueless.

"Don't feel bad," Alex said, as if reading my mind. "Most Ophi grow up already knowing what's going to happen to them. It's not something our parents keep from us, so unless we end up orphaned because Hades claimed our parents, we know."

I lowered my head and realized I was holding a pair of Abby's lace underwear. Ugh! I tossed them back in the drawer and moved on to the next one.

"What do you think she took, anyway?"

"My locket." I kept searching, tossing things left and right.

"Um, Jodi." Alex walked over and touched my necklace. "Your locket is around your neck."

"No, it's not." I held it up to him. "This is a fake. Medusa told me so. When I woke up a few days ago, my locket wasn't around my neck. It was missing. I tore the bed apart, looking for it. I found it between the mattress and the headboard. I assumed the clasp came loose or something, that it had simply fallen off, but I was wrong. Abby was looking for the locket, and she found it. Found it and switched it with this fake."

"Why would she do that?"

I moved on to the nightstand and continued searching. "Because she was in Tony's lesson with me when he explained how powerful it is. You saw what Abby did with the Medusa statue. She got herself killed because she was trying to prove I wasn't the only one who could make that type of connection with Medusa. I'll bet anything that she thinks she'll be as powerful as I am if she has the locket."

We were interrupted by screams downstairs. Alex and I exchanged a worried look and raced for the door. We ran down the stairs to the foyer. I stopped short and reached for Alex to steady myself.

Victoria had returned, and she'd brought an army of Ophi with her. Dead Ophi. Living dead. Leticia was still screaming at the sight of a couple, who I could only assume were her parents, now nothing more than zombies. But my eyes were locked on Victoria. My locket was around her neck.





Chapter 28

"What did you do?" Leticia shrieked, falling to her knees.

Randy rushed over to her, but his eyes searched the group of living dead Ophi. "Where's my dad? Did you find him?"

"Yes," Victoria said grimly. "I found him." She stepped aside, revealing a corpse that had been so mangled I could barely look at him.