Renegade

Emily's POV

Breathe, I told myself, just breathe. It’s okay.

I could still taste his lips on mine. Gods, I had rushed it, hadn’t I? And then he had had the nerve to say that he had a girlfriend when she was his Ex! I had wanted to kill that boy, but it was all over. We had kissed. Gods, we kissed!

In the morning, Griff tapped my shoulder to wake me up, and I groaned, keeping my eyes closed,

“What? Whadd’ya want?”

“Emily,” he whispered, “wake up. I have to show you something.”

His breath smelled like mint toothpaste, with a slight hint of coffee. It made me feel warm inside, and then I realized, with a wave of embarrassment, that I probably looked like crap.

I opened my eyes, and found myself disappointed. I had expected Griff to be smiling at me, but he looked serious, his emerald eyes full of worry.

“Griff, no offense, but whatever you’re worried about can wait. I look like Hades, I haven’t had breakfast yet, and I’m barely awake.”

To prove my point, I sat up really slowly, exaggerating my tiredness. I looked into his eyes as I rubbed the sleep out of mine, almost begging him to let me get a few more minutes of sleep. Still sitting up, I closed my eyes and started drifting back to sleep.

Suddenly, I felt a breath on my face. Then, he surprised me. Griff leaned in and kissed me, softly touching my cheek. At the touch of his lips, I was instantly awake, and his touch sent a buzz down my spine like an electric chair. I smiled like a little schoolgirl, and he smiled back, showing off his emerald eyes.

“What did you want to show me?” I asked, getting up and walking to a mirror on the wall and combing my hair.

“Em,” he explained, “I had this dream last night.”

“What about?” I asked, looking into his eyes in the reflection, “and what does this have to do with what you want to show me? You can’t show me dreams, right?”

“In the dream, I saw something really bad. Em, I saw a sniper.”

That can’t be good, I thought, and wait, he called you ‘Em’ twice. What’s up with that?

But I decided that I actually liked the new nickname. It was cute.

“Where was this sniper?” I asked as I finished combing and dug out a toothbrush and toothpaste.

“He was in the Attic, this Attic. He was setting up a tripod and rifle by the window, and I thought he was going to shoot, so I ran upstairs to check, and nothing was there. Then I came back down and you found me and…”

His voice trailed off, but in my mind I heard his voice say, “we kissed.”

“I’ve been having a bad feeling all morning,” he continued, and I thought we should check again, just to see if there’s any evidence of a tripod, or a rifle, or anything like that.”

I shrugged, “I think it’s a good idea. Wait, you just said all morning. Griff, what time is it?”

“Around 11:30,” he responded, checking his watch.

“11:30!” I said in astonishment, “Gods, these quests are tiring! How long have you been up?”

“Since about 4:30,” he replied calmly, “the jetlag from coming over from Europe should have theoretically made us wake up real early, but you just slept through it. I haven’t checked the Attic yet because I wanted to have breakfast. I had forgotten how good nymph-made coffee was.”

My stomach, of its own accord, started rumbling at the mention of breakfast and coffee. But then I realized that Griff wasn’t really smiling.

In the reflection of the Nig House bathroom mirror, his eyes darted around the room, nervous and jittery. But a huge part of me said that that wasn’t from the coffee. He was actually worried about this sniper thing, and that scared me.

“Well then,” I said, clearing my throat as I finished washing my mouth out, “let’s check the Attic.”

I quickly changed into an SPQR t-shirt, I grabbed a flashlight and Griff led the way up all four flights of stairs. Once we reached the Attic door, I felt a sense of foreboding. Why were we doing this? I mean, what were the chances of there being an actual sniper trying to pick off random demigods? But nevertheless, we pushed the old door open and walked in.

The Attic was probably one of the weirdest places I had ever been. I saw trophies from all sorts of battles, jars filled with monster parts, and even weirder things. But Griff ignored them, leading me straight towards the only window in the Attic.

“Here,” he said, “this is where I saw the sniper. I couldn’t get a good look at his face because he was shrouded in a black robe. But he was right here, setting up a sniper rifle.”

I started to look around, and then I noticed something. In the wood boards where the tripod would have been, just barely noticeable, there were some weird depressions in the wood, like something heavy had rested there, something with pegs.

“Griff, look!” I whispered, pointing out the imprinted depressions in the wood.

“Three distinct holes,” he said, “like a tripod! Em, I told you something was going on up—”

“What in Hades are you two doing?” asked a loud voice from behind the Attic door. Griff and I both jumped at the sound of the voice, and then I realized who it was. A million different thoughts went through my head at once, but I reigned them in and tried to think of a distraction. The Attic door was still closed, and the voice hadn’t entered the room.

“Griff, quick!” I whispered, almost silent. I pulled him into a kiss and he raised his eyebrows in surprise. But only a second later he closed his eyes, caressing me.

It’s going to be fun having him as a boyfriend, I thought as the Attic door creaked open, and Nico di Angelo walked in.

“Ah,” he said, not surprised at all to find us kissing, “I see. Well, I’ll be going then.”

He turned on his heels, and I smiled as Griff released from the kiss. I could almost feel the red of Nico’s face as the son of Hades walked out the Attic. My dad had told me his story.
I heard him close the door, and even though I didn’t want to embarrass the guy anymore than I needed to, it had to be done to preserve our cover. I released Griff, who realized that we were just trying to draw attention away from the fact that we were investigating the Attic, and said,

“Who’s there?”

“Just me,” Nico responded from behind the door. He opened it again, and, finding us not kissing, he smirked,

“You probably think I’m going to tell your parents, don’t you?”

With a start, I realized that Griff and I hadn’t really made a plan to hide our relationship from our parents, and now it was in the open to Nico. I had kissed Griff because I had no idea who the shooter was, and if Nico was that shooter, we couldn’t just reveal to him that we were on his trail.

“Would it be possible for you to maybe…not do that?”

He laughed, a short, bitter and cold sound, and looked straight into Griff’s eyes.

“Keeping secrets from Percy Jackson is my specialty. Your,” he said, gesturing to both of us, “secret is safe with me.”

But I wasn’t swayed that easily, and I could tell Nico wasn’t convinced that we had gone up to the Attic to kiss. He took one intense look around the area of the window, and then closed the Attic door, muttering something in Ancient Greek.

“Phew,” Griff breathed, “that was close. Quick, let’s finish up before anyone else gets suspicious.”

We both walked back over to the window and looked at the three holes in the wood floor.

“Now,” Griff wondered aloud, “who are you trying to shoot?”

“Well,” I remembered, my training kicking in, “it’s a triangle, right? Three points?”

“Yeah,” Griff responded, “do you think that’ll…of course it will! Where is the most forward point?”

We looked at the points again, and found that two of them pointed in the directions of the cabins, with one of them pointing back into the Attic, which the sniper wouldn’t be shooting towards.

“Now, which cabins are those two points aiming towards?” Griff asked, gesturing to the two impressions pointing out the window.

“That one looks like Cabin 3,” I said, looking worriedly into Griff’s eyes, “your Dad.”

“I know,” Griff said, “I saw the guy originally point his rifle in that direction. But I saw the sniper pointing his rifle at another cabin as well. What’s the other hole pointing to?”

“Cabin…13,” I said, lining up the point with the most probable line of sight.

“Wait, wait, wait, that’s Nico’s cabin!” Griff exclaimed, “If he is the shooter, which we don’t know yet, why would he be shooting at his own cabin? Furthermore, if he is not the shooter, why would he be checking the Attic? I mean, I don’t think he believed that we were actually up here to make out.”

I looked at him in mock anger, and he quickly added, “Although that was definitely a plus.”

I giggled, but then we both took a deep breath, still stuck with the question of the shooter’s identity.

“Let’s worry about it later,” Griff said, trying not to look worried, “c’mon, it’s almost lunchtim—”

He was cut short by a conch horn sounding on the Big House porch.

“Perfect timing!” He exclaimed, and I took his hand as we walked down the stairs and out of the sniper’s lair.

Notes

Enjoy!
-Grafon