Renegade

Griff's POV

The rest of the day seemed to pass within the blink of an eye. I spent most of the day distracted as I thought about planning a date for Emily. Then suddenly, the conch horn blew for dinner. Emily and I tried to sit together, but Chiron gave us a stern look with more then one raised eyebrow, so she sat at a guest’s table.

After dinner, as I was walking back to the Big House to get ready to go to bed, I was approached by the one person who I had actually wanted to talk to: Nico di Angelo.

The son of Hades looked better than he had this morning, when he had been disheveled and comfy. And yet, he looked a lot worse. When Emily and I had talked to Nico in the morning, he had been content with wearing his pajamas to breakfast, even as a thirty-three year old man. When

Nico walked up to me after dinner, he looked scared. Like, fearing-for-his-life scared.

“Let’s take a walk, shall we?” He asked.

I had a feeling that that was a rhetorical question. So, I followed him as he walked at a jogging pace towards the forest. I mean, he was booking.

“I saw him,” he said, looking over his shoulder.

“Saw who?” I asked, “And Nico, is everything okay? You seemed really…spooked.”

“That would probably describe my emotions right now,” he said frantically, his eyes darting everywhere as we darted into the cover of the trees.

“Nico,” I said, breathing louder so that he could copy my breathing rhythm, “calm down. You’re fine.”

He took a couple deep breaths, and then I asked him,

“Who. Did. You. See?”

“The sniper. I saw the guy we’ve all been looking for the past few days.”

He seemed to believe that we were all alone, so I kept pressing him. This was the best lead we had had in days.

“When, Nico?” I asked, looking into his eyes for answers.

“Maybe three o’clock. I had been taking a nap in Cabin 13, and at three or so the sun started to hit my face through one of the windows. I woke up, and when I looked through the window, I saw movement in the Attic window.”

“What did you see?” I asked, “Could you recognize him?”

He shook his head, disappointed but still on edge.

“He was pointing his gun at me, Griff. I don’t he could see me through the screen of the window, but he was practicing his aim. Griff, this is bad. This is really, really bad.”

“It’s okay!” I said, actually happy that Nico had approached me.

“No, child, it isn’t okay! I’m going to die if I go back in that Cabin!” He responded, his voice cracking with the panic.

“Are you kidding?” I asked, “Nico, first be glad that I don’t think you’re the sniper anymore.”

“What?” He asked incredulously.

“Yeah. Em and I…well, originally, we thought you were the one sneaking up to the Attic, placing your equipment up there. Admittedly, you can shadow-travel to the Attic, a completely silent way of transportation. You have access to sniper rifles through the Camp armory, and you do have a grudge against a lot of people here.”

“Why would I want to kill them, though?” He asked, the anger and hurt apparent in his voice.

“We ruled you out, too!” I said, trying to defend my case, “From our training, we realized that there could have only been two cabins he was aiming for: Cabins 3 and 13. If you were the shooter, you couldn’t have wanted to aim at your own cabin.”

“Thank you!” He said, obviously happy to hear some good news.

“But if you saw a shooter in the window, who is he?” I asked into the open evening air, “I mean, who would want to kill anyone at Camp?”

We were both silent after that. We both must have felt guilty at the fact that we were contemplating which one of our fellow campmates would be a good suspect to try and kill someone else here. It felt like we were distrusting every person we thought about as we pondered the possibility that they could be the shooter.

“Look, Griff, the reason I came up to you was to inform you of the guy. Personally, I don’t feel comfortable sleeping in my own cabin tonight. So, I’m going to spend the night somewhere safe.”

“Where, Nico?” I asked, but he just stayed still, staring over my head at the U-shaped ring of cabins.

“Can’t say,” He murmured softly, absent-mindedly, “I’ll let the shadows pick.”

And with that, he slipped into a pine’s shadow and disappeared. I mean, I couldn’t blame the guy for being frightened. I would too, if I saw someone brandishing a rifle towards my cabin.

As I walked back towards the Big House, I realized how tired I was. And yet I was buzzing. I couldn’t stop thinking about Nico and the shooter, and how eventually someone was going to make a mistake. Either Nico was going to get shot, or the shooter was going to reveal himself. For now, it was just a deadly waiting game.

As I climbed into bed, after kissing Emily, of course, I looked past her bed and rested my eyes on Xavier. I marveled at the fact that he could sleep so peacefully after the life that he had gone through. I felt a mixture of pride and pity towards him as I realized that he had been through a lot. He had probably spent many nights not able to sleep because of the images in his head. I realized that he slept so peacefully because he had been forced to get sleep whenever he could.

Suddenly, a bad thought occurred in my head. A thought that I cursed myself for even having. A thought that I knew was going to give me nightmares. A thought that was so dangerous, so deadly, that it could rip apart my and Emily’s lives.

A thought that I was destined to forget by morning.

Notes

So yeah, this chapter is kind of short, but it isn't filler, I promise. And what was that mysterious thought that Griff had? *Hint* That thought is VERY important, and will be mentioned later.

Enjoy,
Grafon