Cpov
I don't know what made me decide to follow Will and Amorette, but I wished I hadn't. Not when everything had gone so wrong, and I now felt the life I'd so carefully built and so desperately wanted was crashing down around me. I was barely aware of the students running out of the damaged building. I pushed them out of the way, as if they were my own deafening thoughts and swirling emotions, with one idea lodged firmly in my mind.
Get. To. Max.
'It was all lies.' A voice in the back of mind whispered but I locked it down refusing to feel. I didn't want to. Not when it was so painful I felt like I couldn't breathe.
I wasn't crying anymore. I refused to do that over someone like Will. Never again would I allow myself to be so weak. My mother thought I needed a body guard, but she was wrong.
I found Max not by his locker or evacuating with the rest of the school, but in the weight room pummeling a battered punching bag.
"Max." I started uncertainly, but he ignored me continuing to hit the bag.
"Max, c'mon."
He stopped and I saw blood dripping down his fingers from where he'd split his knuckle.
"What do you want?" he said bitterly glaring at me.
"I want to talk."
"I already talked to your sister." He said turning back to the bag. "I think I'm done talking for the day."
"Just let me explain."
"Explain WHAT?" he said suddenly shouting and hitting the bag with a final force filled punch then turning to face me, his expression the picture of fury. "How you've been LYING to me my entire life? How you've been meeting up with your sister at camp all these years and never told me ONCE?"
I winced but he wasn't finished.
"There I was just walking to class with Amber, when out of nowhere this super model looking nut job just pops out of the crowd and starts going on about how she's your sister and she's seen pictures of me at camp." He continued to glare at me. "And I KNEW she had to be even if I didn't admit it to her, because she's JUST LIKE YOU!" he almost screamed. "It's not natural how she looks, she's too beautiful. It's not NORMAL." He said running bloody hand through his hair. "But I thought she couldn't be Cali's sister. Cali would have told me. I know she has her secrets, but Cali would never hide something like this from me." His eyes narrowed. "But you did didn't you?"
"Yes." I said quietly and he let out a bitter laugh.
"I can't believe this." He said shaking his head still laughing slightly. "This is so typical of you. I thought you'd changed."
"Max," I said desperately. "I was trying to protect you."
"From what!" he shouted and I winced again. "You always say that Cali and so does Will. You're both always trying to 'protect' me from something so horrible you both can't seem to talk about it or stop talking about it."
"Max, I can't-"
"Of course you can't." he said bitterly. "No one else is allowed inside your little world are they Cali? And apparently that blonde haired nutcase's world too. That's all you guys ever do isn't it? Lie. Is that what they teach you at that stupid camp?"
I didn't answer him. I could only look at him feeling tears of frustrating fill my eyes. What was happening to me? I'd cried so few times in my life and lately, it was like I couldn't stop.
"You know what the worst part is?" he said his voice breaking and turning away.
"What?" I asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
"Even Will knew about her," he said bitterly. "Didn't he?"
I nodded feeling as if someone had twisted my heart at hearing his name.
"Not even he would tell me." He muttered darkly. "I thought we were friends you know? I mean, I knew he was cool and a senior and I knew he liked you, I could see it the first time I saw him look at you, but I actually thought he liked me. And even when I saw him falling in love with you, I was ok with it. Unlike everyone else who was always obsessed with you growing up, I actually thought he was pretty cool. I thought he actually cared about me. Unlike all the other boys that ran after you that never gave a damn about anything about you other than your looks, he seemed like such a nice guy. But now all I can think was that he was just trying to use me to get to you."
"He's a liar." I said coldly and he looked up at me.
"What?"
"Will's not who I thought he was either Max." I said bitterly. "Trust me you're not the only one who's mad at him right now."
"Why are you?"
For a second, I thought of saying I couldn't tell him. I thought about lying and making up an excuse for why I was so angry at Will but I couldn't. I found that the more I looked at my little brother, the only person that had truly been there for me my entire life, I couldn't lie to him any more. He was the only person that had always cared. He'd never needed a reason.
"Because this whole time he was working for my mother." I said eventually, not caring about the venom in my tone or how it sounded.
"What?" Max said his eyes going wide.
"Will never loved me." I said shaking my head with a sigh. "In fact, I doubt he ever even really liked me. He was just my bodyguard."
He let out a nervous laugh.
"Your bodyguard?" he said giving me a strange look. "What, does that mean?"
"What do you think it means?" I asked.
"I think you're sixteen." He said frowning. "Will was younger than that when he moved here, and why would she want a teenager? What on earth could you possibly need protecting from?"
"Will's not a normal teenager." I said my hands curing into fists. "And I'm not either. Remember said when we talk to each other, it seemed like we were different?
He nodded.
"It's because we are."
"What do you mean?"
"You wanted to know why Will and I show up to school sometimes looking like we spent the weekend in a bar fight right?"
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I didn't think you'd actually tell me."
"It's because we were fighting." I hesitated, not sure how I wanted to make him understand. How on earth was I going to tell him everything? He was going to think I was insane… "There's people." I said frowning. "People that my mom knows, that know about me, and they would prefer it if I hadn't been born."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that they tried very hard to get rid of me. And I guess she knew they would, which is why she sent Will."
"So… what?" he asked looking at me suspiciously. "Are you like some sort of illegitimate kid of a royal or something? Is that why you never talk about your mom?"
"No." I said with a sigh. "It's so much worse."
Wpov
Amorette left pretty quickly after Cali. I didn't know what she'd been thinking coming to our school and starting all of this. Maybe she hated me and Cali just that much, but after seeing what Cali could do, I had a feeling she regretted the whole thing.
I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
In the span of thirty minutes I'd manage to infuriate not only my girlfriend, but most likely the goddess Aphrodite, and my friends who I'd refused to tell what was going on.
To make matters worse, if that were possible at this point, Max was ignoring me too. I didn't know exactly what, out of the infinite set of things that could have sprang up from today's events, had turned him against me, but I'd spotted him after Amorette left, and he'd looked away without a single word.
I didn't go back to school, but instead went back to my apartment, waiting for Cali to come home in the mean time trying to figure out anything I could say that would make any of this seem ok.
So far, nothing came to mind.
By the time school ended Cali hadn't come back, but I wasn't too worried, I didn't expect her to. No doubt she went to go talk to Max or Madison, possibly even Sadie to try and figure this whole thing out. Chris had called and texted me a few times, but I was ignoring my phone, I wanted to keep the lines open in case Cali did contact me though I didn't know why she would.
But as the hours passed and I still hadn't heard from her, I started to get worried. My parents had come home now, and when they asked where she was, I told them we got into a fight and she was with Max blowing off steam, but it was dark out now, and I had to admit, I was relieved to hear the knocking on the door that came just after dinner.
"Look," I said as I opened the door. "I know you're upset with me right now, but if you just let me… Max?"
He was standing out in the hall way with a worried expression on his face.
"So, she's not here then?" he asked panic in his voice.
"Cali?" I asked. "No, I thought she was with you."
He shook his head.
"Will?" my mother called from the living room where she and Dave were watching the history channel. "Is everything alright? Who's at the door?"
"Don't say anything." He warned. "If anyone finds out your parents lost track of Cali, she'd be put in the system for sure."
"It's Max." I said as she leaned forward to wave at him.
"Hey sweetie, how is Cali, is she feeling better?"
"She went to Madison's." I lied. "Max just came to ask something about track for next year." I turned back to him. "Come with me."
I motioned for him to follow me into the nearest room which happened to be Cali's. The second I shut the door behind us, the words just came tumbling out of his mouth.
"I think Cali ran away." He said quietly.
"What?" I asked frowning.
He nodded.
"What makes you think that?"
"Amber says that Madison said she didn't come to class after I talked to her and-"
"You guys talked?"
"Yeah, and we got into a fight" He said sounding a little desperate. "Will, normally I wouldn't come to you after everything that happened today, but you're always able to find Cali when she's in trouble."
"What makes you think she's in trouble?" I asked quickly.
"Because she's gone absolutely insane!" he said frantically and I motioned for him to keep his voice down. "You should have heard the stuff she was saying Will. It was nuts. She told me she think's her mom is one of those greek gods we learn about in history." He said his eyes going wide. "She thinks she's being attacked by monsters, and that you're under some sort of oath to protector cuz she's got special powers or something. She's totally unbalanced."
"She told you that?" I asked incredulously.
"I know right?" he asked. "It sounds totally insane and-"
"Cali told you about her mother?" I asked grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him slightly so he would focus.
"Yes," he said giving me a strange look.
I swore.
"What?" Max said. "Will what the hell is going on?"
"Your sister's not crazy Max." I said starting to go trough her drawers to look for something, anything that could be used as a clue as to where she would have gone. "For the first time in her life she might have actually been telling the total truth."
"You believe this?" he asked in shock.
"I don't just believe it." I said looking through her closet and pulling out a demigod emergency kit, aluminum bat, duct tape, and an album of her favorite photos. "I'm living it."
"So you, you think you're half a god too?" he asked backing away from me.
"I don't think." I said tossing the things on her bed in frustration. "I am."
"But then you're crazy too!"
"We're not crazy." I said angrily. "You're just a mortal Max, you don't see the world for what it really is."
"But-"
"How do you explain the way your sister looks?" I asked him impatiently. "Or the way her sister looks? Insanely beautiful, unnaturally beautiful, with out even trying. How do you explain all the things she can do?" I felt a jolt go through me and without meaning to, I put my hand to my chest over my heart. "How she can fight and take down full grown men when she's tiny? She's our age Max. Think. How does she have weapons that she takes everywhere, but seems as if they come out of nowhere each time you see them?" I shoved a book written in Greek under his nose. "How do you explain this?" I said showing him all the demigod gear that had been shoved into her closet, a shield, a jar of Greek fire, and camp pictures with us and our siblings and friends dressed in armor.
"But this is insane…" he said putting his hand to his head.
"Yeah well," I said stiffly. "Skip the stage of disbelief and give me all the information you can about where she might have gone. Why did she run away?"
He didn't answer at first, obviously trying to process what he was being told.
"Max!" I said angrily and he shook his head, as if this would help him organize his thoughts.
"I think it was my fault." He said looking at his shoes. "When she tried to explain all this to me, I thought she was lying and got angry. After everything that happened to day, I kept screaming at her, I told her to go away. And," his voice caught. "I guess she thought I meant forever."
I sighed and sat down on the bed putting my head in my hands in frustration.
"But you can find her right?" he asked worriedly.
"Only if she activates her weapons." I said into my palms.
"What?"
"That's how it works." I said twisting my ring and watching his eyes go wide as it turned into a broad sword. "This sword, it's connected to her daggers. The second they activate, the ring pulses and tells me exactly where she is."
"So then do it now."
"I can't, weren't you listening?" I asked him irritated. "They only work when she's in trouble, defending herself."
"That's it?"
"I'm her body guard, not a psychic." I said irritated. "There's a limitation on what magic can do you know."
"So it's true then." He said his eyes narrowing. "The only reason you followed Cali around was because it was your job."
"It's not what you think." I started.
"I think you're a liar." He said.
"Well that's fair."
"And I think the only reason you ever even bothered with Cali was because you were doing what you were told."
"That's not true." I said quietly looking down at the photo album. On the first page there were three pictures, one with Cali, Malcolm, and Celeste, the second with her and I by the strawberry fields, and the third was a picture of her and Max at the peer, in front of an amusement park ridge at the beach.
"Like I'd believe you." He said his eyes narrowing even further.
"Believe what you want." I said taking out the picture and flipping it over to see 'Myrtle Beach august 22nd'. It was taken the summer before I'd moved in next to Cali. "It doesn't matter to me. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm going to find her."
"How?"
"Because I'm her body guard remember?" I said bitterly. "And I'm very good at my job."
