The Cassandra File
Prologue
I woke up from my recurring dream with a start, a bead of sweat rolling down my face. It had been months since it happened, but seemed like it happened only yesterday. I checked my alarm clock. Seven fifteen. Hopefully she'd be up by now. Rolling out of bed, I adjusted my plaid pajama pants and t-shirt before treading quietly to the bathroom. I checked in the mirror momentarily before running my brush through my dark blonde hair and pulling it up into a pony tail. I poked my head in to the bedroom I shared with the girls in the academy, before heading down the back stair case to the main hallway.
John Dewey Academy was a therapeutic boarding school that housed forty to fifty kids and took place in a castle, so when I reached the grand entrance, no one was really up by now. We had an eight o' clock wakeup call that made sure we were up, but we could get up earlier than that. A lot of us did so that we could catch showers before classes started. The only person I saw was Aaron who had desk duty. Normally, phones didn't ring this early in the morning, so it was kind of pointless for him to be there. But Tom Bratter (the school's founder and owner), Ken, and Andrea (the other psychologists and deans of the academy) expected someone to be there and take the shifts. Speaking of which…
I peered into the domed office. Andrea was sitting at her computer, typing. As usual, stacks of papers took up all the space on her desk, taunting her with the constant reminder that when Tom died (his ancestors had all died at the early ages in their fifties) she would be taking over the school and have to deal with much more paperwork than she already had. I knocked quietly and opened the door, one foot stepping inside. She looked up from the computer, and swirled in her chair to look at me.
"Yes, Cassandra?" she asked.
"Can I talk to you?" I asked her. As her primary, she was supposed to be my therapist and help me with my problems-or deal with whatever ghosts from my "past life of crime" that came back to haunt me. Which leads me to one more thing. I'm not a criminal. As a half-blood, it's in my nature to get into trouble and be framed for things all on the count of grudge-holding gods, monsters, other demigods, dyslexia, and the ADHD. Which is what got me landed first to Wilderness School then this therapeutic boarding school in the first place.
"Of course. Did you have another dream again?" she asked. I nodded and took a seat in one of the red velvet seats. Above me were intricate designs carved into the white, domed marble. The whole wall behind me was glass, although the room was sound proof. To my left was a large, black marble fire place, and to my right was another window as large as a door. She had one of the nicest offices here at the school.
"Tell me about it," she instructed, leaning forward in anticipation. I took a deep breath, and began my story.