THE ETHAN ST. CLOUD CHRONICLES

THE SCEPTER OF POWER

A/N: Hello, fellow fanfiction users! It's me again—PJATOSROCKS09, bringing you the third book in the Ethan St. Cloud Chronicles. This one is called, if you haven't noticed, The Scepter of Power. So please enjoy and please review! I hope you like the first chapter of…Ethan St. Cloud and the Scepter of Power.

Ethan St. Cloud & the Scepter of Power

CHAPTER ONE

"Andrea was arrested!" Dmitri shouted over the phone. How this happened you ask? I thought it was going to be a normal day hanging out with my sister and girlfriend.

Ellie and I had just finished our freshman year of high school, and it was our first day of summer vacation, and days before, Rosa, Ellie and I made the agreement that we would hang out on our first day of vacation. In addition, we would get to see Rosa's new baby sibling, a girl who Miguel, Rosa's father, and Marianne, her stepmother had decided to name Alexandra VanCleaven.

It was relaxing to be out of school again. The only type of homework we had was summer reading, which of course I would probably fail to complete considering I had to return to the Institute.

When Ellie and I got home, we relaxed for an hour or so until our mother got home from work. Then, she drove us over to Rosa's.

If you'd had ever been driving in Halifax, Massachusetts, you'd notice that the houses can be very big, but weren't too big. That rule didn't apply to my girlfriend. Her father, an actor, was particularly rich and therefore had the only mansion in Halifax, and it was pretty big.

Rosa was already waiting for us outside on the front steps to her house. I noticed that her hair was wet and she had changed clothes, therefore making it obvious that she had just recently showered after getting home from school.

My mom pointed her finger at Rosa and me and said "No fooling around, you too," before driving off. I rolled my eyes.

Ellie and I hugged Rosa, and then stepped inside her marvelous house. Immediately, I was greeted by Marianne, who was holding a baby in a pink blanket. Rosa and her stepmother began cooing over the baby while Ellie and I looked over Marianne's shoulders to look at the newest addition to their family.

Ellie, Rosa and I walked through her kitchen, and then through her living room, where I saw her three cats—Buddy, Blossom and Midnight. Despite her allergies to cats, Rosa kept them at her house, though supposedly she was supposed to be giving Buddy and Midnight away to some other relatives of hers, though I didn't know when that was going to happen. Ellie's favorite cat was Midnight, for his black fur, and she was distraught that she was being given away to Rosa's uncle, Hugo.

Despite being French and Italian and not even having a single drop of Hispanic blood inside of her family, a lot of her family members had Spanish names—like her father, Miguel, her uncles' Roberto and Hugo, her aunts' Sofía and Raquel, et cetera. Most of her family seemed to show an interest in Italian names, though Rosa had an interest in names which were a part of her actual heritage. In other words, she liked French and particularly Italian names instead.

I glanced at Blossom, Rosa's other cat. That cat in particular seemed to dislike me. One time, as I tried petting her, she hissed, and legit smacked me with her paw. And then, another time, Rosa and I were talking over an online chat, and Blossom looked between Rosa and the computer with distasteful glares as if to say: Stop talking to him. Despite her hatred for me, she loved Ellie and all of my other friends.

Buddy, who was sleeping in a chair, purred softly in his sleep.

Miguel VanCleaven lugged a suitcase down the stairs. As usual, he was dressed fancily. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, he walked over to Rosa, Ellie and I.

"I've gotta catch a plane, Rosie. We're starting to film Jackie's first book."

I looked at him. "You're in a movie based off a book written by Jackie?"

He nodded. "The one about faeries and wizards: 'The Gemini Diaries'? Yeah. She wants her newest book based on you guys to be made into a movie, but they want to finish at least two of The Gemini Diaries books."

I smiled. I remembered two years beforehand when Jacqueline Green, the mother of one of our other friend's, Melanie Green, had talked about writing a book series about demigods, based on us. I didn't know if she was using the same names, but if she were, it would be quite interesting to watch a movie that was based around me and had the same names as all of my friends and I.

Miguel looked at his watch. "I've gotta go." He kissed Rosa's forehead, then proceeded towards the front door. He kissed Marianne and baby Alexandra goodbye, and then closed the front door after him.

Rosa heaved a sigh before leading us upstairs and into her room. Her room was relatively large, definitely bigger than the rooms Ellie and I had. I mean, of course our mother was a single parent while her father was married and very wealthy, but I still couldn't believe I was dating the daughter of a famous actor. The room was decorated with posters—one of them was a cat yawning, with a banner below it reading: It's tiring to be this cute. She also had a poster of a werewolf howling at a full moon, and a framed photo of a drawing she made in art for a project. She had a bunk bed, a desk, and a full body mirror.

Remembering the nickname Miguel had called her, I raised my eyebrow at Rosa.

"What?" she asked.

"You don't let me call you Rosie," I told her.

"That's my dad's nickname for me," she responded, "and only my dad's."

I couldn't help but feel bad for Rosa in a sense. With her father's career, he was always very busy and didn't always have time for her.

Rosa picked up her computer off of her bunk bed and began going online. Things were peaceful for a while, until we realized we left the door open. Blossom easily got into the room and starting rubbing her body on Rosa's furniture in her cat-like ways. I picked Blossom up to gently set her out of the room, but she bit me then jumped onto Rosa's bunk bed. My hand started bleeding slightly, so Rosa told me to go into the bathroom to get some disinfectant and a band-aid. After doing so, when I got back into the room, I noticed Blossom was nuzzling Rosa, and Ellie picked up Blossom and proceeded to take her out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

I sat to Rosa's left while Ellie sat to her right, and we decided to try an online chat with someone. We found that our friends Melanie, Olivia and Ben were online. We began online chatting with Olivia and began a video chat with Melanie, while Ben quickly logged offline before we could speak to him.

After logging off of the online chat, we went to our summer school's website. The dormitory of Hephaestus somehow charmed it for only demigods and gods to see it, unless, of course, the mortal knew about Greek mythology or was the mortal parent of a demigod. The Hephaestus dormitory had actually created the website. We checked out when the Institute of Demigods would be opening again, and also looked at other things—such as the photos of the school they had posted, information on quests, et cetera. We also discovered there was going to be new classes at the Institute, which was exciting to know. I couldn't wait to return to the Institute that year, but my mood was slightly rained on when Ellie, Rosa and I noticed a new tab: Ouranos' Army.

For a year or two, monsters that were allied with the legendary Greek being Ouranos figured out how to have children, but also how to become immortal with a magical locket. We took the locket away from them, and because of that they're immortality would eventually start to fade, which was good news, but we were distraught to figure out the year before that Ouranos' army had gained a new weapon that we didn't even know the name of, but was somehow powerful enough to threaten war.

After getting bored of going online and looking at the repulsive information about Ouranos' army, Ellie and I decided along with Rosa that we would visit baby Alexandra. We went into the neighboring room—Alexandra's nursery—and looked at the nine month old baby. She had her mother's dark brown hair and her father's chocolate brown eyes. Considering Rosa's eyes changed color, she would occasionally look like the older version of her baby sister when her eyes changed brown.

"She's so cute," cooed Ellie.

"I know," agreed Rosa with a smile.

I couldn't help but agree that the baby was adorable. I knew that Rosa was obsessed with babies and little kids that she even joked that she really wouldn't mind having children in high school, which was evidently a trait that ran in her family. She simply found little kids adorable and I expected her to be all over Alexandra in her toddler years. She had already planned out the names of her children, and also assorted each of them a personality, physical appearances, clothing style, et cetera. So, if she saw a boy that she dreamt her son would look like, she'd point to him and call out, "Look!" then say the name of the child it was described as. Ellie and Rosa even started saying how much they wanted to be sisters, but knew the closest they would be is sister-in-laws, and jokingly arranged a marriage between Rosa and me.

For the rest of the day, we just kind of hung out and talked. We explored her mansion and talked about our excitement to be returning to the Institute for the summer. My friends and I spent both of our first years at the Institute on quests, and I wondered if we would be going on another quest this year. I wondered if there was going to be any new students, and if my friends and I were going to be sent on a quest, then what for.

Just as soon as Marianne, Ellie, Rosa and I were starting to prepare dinner, the phone rang.

"Could you answer that?"

"Sure," I said, walking over to the small table with the phone on it. The Caller ID read GARDNER, DMITRI. I picked it up.

"Dmitri? It's Ethan."

"Andrea was arrested!" Dmitri shouted over the phone. Gasping, I looked over at my friends.

"Andrea was arrested!" I told them. Ellie and Rosa looked shocked, while Marianne looked at me questioningly, obviously not knowing who Andrea was.

"Who's Andrea…?"

"One of our friend's, a daughter of Hermes," I told her. Marianne knew all about the existence of the Greek gods and goddesses, so I had no problems with telling her about our friend's being demigods, even though she wasn't really known for knowing that much about Greek mythology.

"I'll drive you too the police station," Marianne promised. She quickly grabbed her keys, and walked outside. Ellie, Rosa and I were about to follow her outside, but Blossom jumped in our way.

Ellie tried picking her up, but Blossom bit her hand.

"Blossy!" Rosa shrieked, obviously surprised by Blossom's actions.

Blossom smiled at us mischievously, growled, then began growing, and growing, until no longer Blossom seemed to look like a cat, and then leaped at us with bared fangs.

A/N: I hope you liked the first chapter! Chapter two should be coming up soon! I'm sorry if this chapter is somewhat short, but I promise the chapters will get longer! I was just running out of ideas to put in here. Please answer these questions in a review/PM:

One: Do you like the Scepter of Power so far?

Two: What monster do you think Blossom is?

Three: What do you think Andrea was arrested for?

Four: Are you excited for more?