A few seconds later, before Terry could get into what he was about to say, Gregor returned to us. In his hand was a strange box. I’d seen things like that in Daddy’s study. They were puzzles, meant to make it so you needed to figure them out to get what was inside. “We have to go to the monastery before opening,” Gregor explained, tucking the box in his pack. “We shall take cliff. It is good training.”
“That’s okay, I’ll walk the path,” Terry said, trying to talk his way out of it. “The cliff seems unnecessarily dangerous.”
“I can fly up after you and catch you if you fall,” Burin said, unfurling his dragon wings as he spoke.
“That settles it,” Gregor said, grabbing the back of Terry’s coat. “Come. We climb.” He the leapt halfway up the cliff and pressed the now terrified assassin against the rock face. Even from where I was, I could hear Gregor’s command. “Up or down is up to you, but either way… you climb.”
I glanced over and saw Persephone doing her best to hide her laughter from Emily, but the best she could do was keep it to an evil grin. I’m not sure I understand their relationship, to be honest.
Speaking of Emily, she made a disappointed noise. “Aww, I thought Dad was about to tell us a story,” she whined.
“This is where you were born, baby girl,” her mother answered. “Sergei took us in. Oh, it looks like your father is having trouble. Hop on, baby.” She then transformed into her manticore form and flew up, catching Terry just as he fell and carrying him up to the top, holding the back of his jacket in her mouth like a mother cat carrying a kitten by the scruff.
“We should follow them,” I said, casting a quick spell and turning Nebula into a vortex dragon – the fastest type of dragon Daddy’s research mentions, capable of flying through the depths of space at incredible speeds. She let Greta and Anastasia climb on her back, and together we flew up to the top of the cliff.
The monastery looked like it had taken some mild damage from a fire, but it was constructed mostly of stone and was none the worse for wear. So we made our way inside once Gregor was done giving Terry disappointed looks.
Once inside, we began working on the puzzle box. Only…it was impossible. Maybe Daddy or Juiz could have figured it out. But I even had Cortana run multiple simulations, and she had nothing. So, yeah, we were stuck, even after an hour of work.
Something had to break. I was about to suggest that we figure it out later and investigate first, but before I could, Terry pulled out his gun and tried to shoot the box. But Persephone realized what he was doing and struck him, pushing the gun away. His bullet struck the floor and ricocheted, grazing Anastasia’s forearm, causing her to drop the box, as she was the one holding it. Only Burin’s quick reaction prevented it from crashing to the floor.
You ever watch those forensics shows? Mama loves them. So I’ve managed to pick up a thing here and there about how blood spatters depending on the wound. And there was little statistical chance of it hitting the box. Trust me, I had Cortana run the numbers. The odds were something like one in four hundred thousand based on the location of the wound, the angle of her body and the placement of the box. It shouldn’t have happened.
Which makes me think that the box pulled in her blood. Well, that and the fact that not a single drop of blood seemed to hit the ground. Runes appeared on the box and it began to move on its own, turned and gyrating – jumping out of Burin’s hands as it did so – until finally it was open.
Terry couldn’t have looked more smug than he did at that moment. “See? Violence.”
“Hush,” Persephone chided as she and Emily finished tending to the princess’ wound and Emily had finished apologized for the actions of ‘the Doofopath’.
The open puzzle box levitated out of Burin’s hand, and the spirit of a man – he looked older, and based on what I’d heard of him, I was sure this had to be Sergei. Or maybe, it wasn’t a spirit, but a magical projection. A message, of sorts, as it didn’t really address us. It simply turned to Burin – the last person to touch the box – and began to speak. “Hello. If you are seeing this, then I am dead and you have been sent by Baba Yaga. How else would you have a drop of her blood? Please tell her that I have kept her artifacts safe, at the cost of my life. You are here to retrieve them. You will require one of my disciples. I have left instructions in the pages of my journal to open the key, and only they can decipher them.”
I looked at Gregor, but the fighter’s face betrayed no emotion at the sight of his old mentor.
The image continued. “If Gregor is alive, please give him the journal when you are done. He deserves to know of my failure.”
Then the image disappeared and tendrils of purple flame shot out of the box, and into the deeper monastery. They were gone in a flash, then the box clattered to the floor.
I turned to talk to Gregor, but he was halfway across the room, inspecting some damage to one of the walls. I walked over to him. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I will need to repair monastery,” was his only answer.
Persephone was right behind me. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Your teacher was a good man,” she said. “He gave us a home when no one else could, least of all my own father.”
He didn’t respond, and luckily for him, he didn’t have to, as Emily came over as well. “Mister Gregor?” she asked, obviously embarrassed. “Um, is there a place that I can…um, you know?”
“Ah, you are looking for the latrine. Yes, you must run three miles down path outside. Take a left at the tree.”
Her eyes bulged in obvious terror that she’d never make it that far. Persephone shook her head. “That’s just for the older disciples,” she said. “There’s a place for the new kids that you can use. Come on, I know where it is.”
They were gone for a long time. Eventually, Burin walked over to the door to the room where the younger kids would bunk and called through the door. “You okay?” he asked.
“It’s magical!” Emily called back excitedly. Greta gave me a confused look, to which I retuned a shrug.
Thankfully, they returned a few moments later and explained. It seemed that Emily had spotted a hidden cache where someone had stashed some gear. One of the items they’d found was a pair of magical bracers. Gregor explained that they were used to help the new kids be a little better at fighting.
“I guess you’ll want them then,” Emily said, handing them to the fighter.
He handed them to Terry. “Your form is sloppy. These will help.”
Terry looked at them. “That’s okay,” Terry said, handing them to Emily again. “If I’m punching things, we’re dead anyway.”
Emily looked at them. “I don’t really hit things. Would they help you, Momma?” she asked, handing them to Persephone.
The woman looked at Gregor questioningly. “I believe they would help you fight,” he said after a moment.
“Then I’ll use them,” she agreed, putting on her new bracers. I used my magic to study them as she did so, and apparently they did nothing to help the kids fight. Instead, they protected the kids from injury a bit, like wearing armor might. I guess the rest was just told as a placebo, maybe? Either way, those really would help Persephone since she couldn’t wear armor as a manticore.
Back together, we headed in the direction the purple flames had traveled, and entered Sergei’s quarters. It was a mess, with papers and other objects strewn everywhere. But the most noticeable thing was a section of wall limned in purple fire, about the size of the door.
“Do you see a mechanism?” Gregor asked Terry.
The assassin pulled out his tools. “I’ll try to find one.” But no sooner had he inserted his picks between two stone bricks than purple flames shot out at him. He narrowly dodged, but his tools weren’t quite so lucky. They were completely melted. “That’s it, I’m shooting a rocket at it!” he said, but Persephone restrained him.
“Maybe I should try punching it?” Gregor then asked, not entirely sure.
“And let your hands melt like Terry’s tools?” Burin asked. “Shouldn’t we find the journal instead, like Sergei told us?”
“Yeah, Terry!” Persephone said. “Use your head for once!”
“I think what Momma’s trying to say is that this is your master’s sacred place,” Emily said. “And I think the box wants this to be a test of smarts, not muscle.” She handed him all the papers she’d been gathering up from the floor. “Maybe these will help?”
“Let’s split them up,” I suggested. “It’ll go faster if we’re all looking at them.”
We split up the pages and began reading. In a few moments, Terry whistled in triumph. “Found something,” he said. “This is definitely from a journal.” He then began to read aloud. “‘This thing is infuriating. Curse Katinka for leaving it with me. I told her she was sick, but she does not listen. She never listened.’ I guess he got a pet?”
“Terry,” Persephone chided.
“Fine,” he said, grabbing the next page. “‘It will not stop crying. I have tried everything. It is fed. It is clean. It is warm. Even when a disciple holds it, it still continues its wailing. It will only cease when I hold it, and that makes it impossible to train. I will grow fat from lack of exercise at this rate.’ I can attest to babies being like that. Emily would cry if anyone other than her mother held her,” he commented.
“That was just you she would cry for. She had no problems with Sergei or the disciples holding her,” Persephone. “Now stop being an ass and read the rest.”
“‘At last, peace. The thing has begun to sleep through the night. I have resumed my normal training. I can barely climb the wall, it has been so long.’” He held out the pages to Gregor. “That’s all the words, but there were doodles. Do you know what they mean?”
Gregor looked at them. “Those are forms. I do not recognize them. Perhaps he was working on a new fighting style. Still…” He approached the “door” and began going through the motions of the forms. As he did so, blue runes began appearing on the wall and moving as he performed each motion. It kinda reminded me of a combination lock, the way it was moving.
He finished the three forms and then tried repeating them, but the runes fizzled out. “It is as I thought. It appears we need the full set. Maybe fifteen or sixteen in all, I am thinking.”
“That’s probably why he said we’d need a disciple,” Burin said. “I looked at the papers and had no idea what those drawings meant.” He then turned to me. “Do you know of any magic that would help us find the pages?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I could find pages of paper, but with so many around, I’m not sure that would help us.”
“Then we will search everywhere,” Gregor said, now fired up.
We next made our way to what had been the adult barracks. Within, we found a few more pieces of equipment. Most interesting was a shield that Emily picked up. “What’s it do?” she asked Gregor.
“It’s for practice catching arrows and bullets. The shield magically pulls them to it, so you know where the arrow will be.”
“Ooh!” Emily said. “Now Dad can shoot at us all day.”
Persephone looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “I was teaching her to dodge,” Terry said defensively.
Gregor ignored it and had the girl hold up her new shield. He then threw a shuriken at her, purposely throwing it off to the side. It veered through the air as though it was pulled by a magnet and bounced off the metal shield.
Terry then began speaking, using that tone of voice you use when reading. “‘I have begun teaching it as the other disciples. It is infuriatingly stubborn, refusing such simple tasks demanded of all children who train with me. Typhon Lee has suggested that he could take it into his care, but Katinka wanted it to stay with me, so I politely declined. I am not so sure I trust that man, anyway. I suspect him to be a wolf masquerading as a sheepdog.’” Terry laughed bitterly. “Yeah, you can say that again.”
“What else does it say?” Burin asked.
“‘It skinned its knees while fighting with one of the new disciples. There was hair pulling, so I shaved both of their heads and made them stand in the hallway holding water buckets. I returned an hour later to find that they had thrown the water at each other. The look on their faces was infuriating, but for some reason, I could not help but laugh as soon as they were out of sight.’ Is holding buckets of water that much of a punishment?”
“For a few minutes?” Gregor asked. “No. But if you do it for three hours, at the end of an extended arm? That is good training. I will have you do it later.”
“I think I’ll pass. Oh, look, there’s another page here. ‘The child has taken to drawing. Constantly, all day it doodles. I even caught it painting on the walls of the meditation room. I had to punish it severely for that, with a run around the monastery. It caught a cold. I did not tell it not to wear a coat, the fool.’”
“My little brother started doing that,” I said.
“Oh? What did your parents do to stop that?”
I laughed. “Mom thought he needed to be taught not to because it was bad for discipline, but Daddy pointed out that he’d painted the entire house in an advanced paint that would come clean of everything with a light spray of water and a quick wipe of a paper towel.”
“Anyway,” Terry said, holding out the pages to Gregor. “There are more of your dance moves. One looks a little smudged by a shoeprint, though.”
I looked at the print as the pages were handed over. “Those look like kid’s shoes. And the style isn’t consistent with the shoes made in this region. Whoever wore that came from pretty far away. You can get those in Absalom, but they can be found within five hundred miles of the city.” Everyone was staring at me like I’d grown a second head. “What? I like shoes.”
“The print is less than two days old,” Gregor pointed out.
“People passing through?” Burin asked.
“It’s possible,” Persephone agreed. “Maybe they got caught in a storm and stayed here for shelter?”
“Maybe,” Gregor admitted. “It does look like it rained or snowed in the last few days.”
We continued searching, making our way next to the adult baths. There were lots of those small footprints, all the same style of shoe. “I don’t think those were worn by a child,” Burin said. “Halflings, or gnomes maybe?”
Greta shook her head. “I smell a musk here. Like rodents.”
“Beavers,” Gregor said. “Were-beavers.”
He seemed really sure of that. “Were those a problem around here?” Emily asked, looking nervous.
“One of the older disciples warned me of them. And these things spent a lot of time around the baths. Just like beavers would have.” I had never heard of were-beavers and was starting to wonder if the older disciple had been messing with him, but didn’t say anything as Terry chuckled in triumph.
“You thought you could hide it from me?” he asked, opening a hidden cache and pulling out some valuables. “Ooh, that’s a pretty necklace.” He immediately handed it to Persephone.
“I’m not putting that on before someone tells me what it does,” she said sensibly.
“I’ll take a look,” Burin said. “Oh, it’s a powerful, but nasty little charm. While wearing it, your claws and other attacks will be considerably more powerful, but the magic will hurt you as well when you use it. Not as much as it’ll improve what you do, but you need to be careful.”
“Okay, I can do that,” she said, putting it on.
“There are more pages,” Anastasia said. “Though I can’t read them.” She offered them to me, as the nearest person.
I looked at them. Sergei had beautiful handwriting, by the way. “‘The child has once more been a burden on discipline. Today, it convinced Maksim to skip training and go exploring the woods outside of the monastery. When I found them, Maksim was half dead, mauled by wolves, and the child was crying. It was mere luck that I got there in time to rescue them. Maksim has sworn to redouble his efforts in training, so that it would never happen again, so that he could protect his friend. The child wept, and kept apologizing to me and him, burying its head in my chest as it did so. I could not even bring myself to punish them, only holding the child as it wept.’”
Gregor nodded. “Sergei warned us about exploring. The wolves have a taste for children.”
I kept reading. “‘This summer, the child shot up nearly a foot. I do not know what I fed it that caused such a growth, but I will determine what it was, that I might make sure my youngest disciples can benefit as well. It appears less like a child now. I can see Katinka in its features.’” That last line was written a bit shakily, as if Sergei was overcome by emotions or something. I kept reading the next entry. “‘She and Maksim had an argument today that threatened to shatter the very windows of the monastery, it was so loud. I do not know why they fight, as they have always been such good friends, but it seems like it was a trivial matter that did not deserve such hysterics from either of them.’”
There was a girl here? This didn’t seem like a place where there would be a lot of girls. Terry seemed to agree with my question. “Who is Katinka? And what about Maksim and this girl? I don’t remember any girls here when I was here.”
“I do not know,” Gregor said. “Sergei never mentioned any of them.”
“It does show Sergei gave some of the disciple special treatment, not just you.”
“What?”
“You got special training, and you seem to be his successor.”
“You’re mistaken. I had to train extra hard just to keep up. Why do you think I would be his successor?”
Terry gave him a look that said he thought Gregor was being stupid. “The ghost mentioned your name specifically. Oh my god! It makes sense! This is a setup! Why am I the only one who can see the dots?”
Burin tilted his head. “Sometimes when I push on my eyes, I see dots.”
Emily immediately began pushing on her eyes with her fingers. “I see dots too!” she exclaimed excitedly.
Persephone gave her a look and walked over to Terry, who was still ranting some strange conspiracy theory I couldn’t follow. “I’m doing this because I love you. I need five or ten minutes.” She pulled out a roll of duct tape and put it over his mouth.
From there, we went to the dining hall. The place was a mess. Something had gotten into the preserved food stores and there was stuff all over the place. Gregor began recreating the steps of what he was sure was a food fight, trying to figure out what had happened. “Three, no four, individuals. It started over there and escalated.” Eventually, he managed to produce a large pickle with a bite in it. “Beaver teeth,” he said, showing some satisfaction as he showed us the mark.
The whole time he had been doing it, Terry had been silently mocking him, culminating in Terry rolling his eyes when Gregor showed us the pickle, then doing his own investigation.
“It’s awfully quiet in here,” Gregor said with a bit of a smirk. Terry gave him some annoyed side-eye at that.
“Does Dad know he can just take the tape off?” Emily asked her mother.
“He loves me too much to do that,” Persephone answered. Terry responded by making a very rude gesture towards her back.
We then went into the kitchen, where we found that something large had torn open a barrel with its teeth. “See? It eats wood. Definitely were-beavers,” Gregor said.
Terry produced a tuft of hair he found and handed it to Greta. She sniffed it. “Is it from a beaver?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she answered. “I’ve never seen a beaver. But the smell is familiar…not quite the same, but it reminds me of scents I’ve smelled while visiting the homes of human slaves.”
Oh, right. Her country was pretty screwed up and she had probably not been kind to those slaves.
I didn’t want to think about it, and was relieved when Terry handed the closest person his next find – a few pickle-juice stained pages. Burin took the pages and began reading. “‘Young Vasily came to me today and told me that he had seen Sasha and Maksim sneaking into the tool shed out in the garden. I went to investigate, and I found them in such a state that I nearly beat Maksim until he could no longer stand. Only Sasha’s intervention cooled my rage, but even now I seethe thinking about what I saw.’ Oh my. That seems private. I’m not sure we should be reading this.”
Burin is far too ridiculously pure sometimes.
“Please keep reading,” I said, wanting to avoid having to touch those gross papers.
“Okay. ‘Maksim informed me that he was leaving. He said that he was going to move to the village near to the monastery, to aid his family at their farm after his father was killed in an accident. He is dutiful, I will give him that. Sasha tells me that she wants to go with him, but I forbade it.’ I wonder who Maksim is,” Burin thought aloud.
“Mister Burin, please keep reading?” Emily begged. “I wanna know what happened next.”
“‘Once more, Typhon Lee asks me to join him, to turn my back on Baba Yaga. And once more, I told him that I would never betray Baba Yaga. She was the one who gave me the monastery, and my sacred charge. I will never turn my back on her.’” He turned to Emily. “Sorry, that’s all that’s there. I’ll use my magic to dry these out, then we can put them with the others safely. Want me to show you how?”
“Yes, please!” the girl said enthusiastically.
While Burin had been reading, Terry and Greta left the room, returning after a few minutes to questioning looks from me and Persephone. “We were following the scent,” Greta explained.
“Find anything?”
“They spent a lot of time in another set of baths. We found these,” she said, holding up a bullet casing. At first I thought they were the ones Rasputin had left when he had come here, but Cortana’s analysis suggested otherwise. They were too primitive to be from early twentieth century Earth.
We looked at Terry, waiting for his analysis of what he saw, but he just pointed at the tape on his lips. Persephone rolled her eyes and reached up to remove the tape, but he dodged around her and slapped her ass. It jiggled rather nicely, I must say.
“Good!” Gregor said. “You’re using the training! Now for something more difficult to dodge!” He dashed forward and punched out faster than I could see. His hand went just close enough to Terry’s face to literally punch it off of his lips.
You ever pull off a bandage too quickly? It rips off hair. Well, that’s what people tell me. I’m basically hairless aside from my head and eyebrows. It’s another one of those mutations I inherited from Mama. Anyway, even then, if the adhesive is too strong and it’s pulled off too hard, it does pull off a thin layer of skin even without hair. Well, imagine that with high grade duct tape being ripped off your lips with a force capable of punching a dragon into submission.
Terry’s lips mostly came off.
He dropped to his knees in a mixture of pain and panic, too freaked out to even scream audibly. Emily left Burin’s lesson and went over to apply another nanite injection, instantly regenerating his damaged lips. Even Persephone comforted him. “I found more pages,” he said.
Persephone took them from him and began reading. “‘Late last night, Sasha ran away from the monastery. She has gone to live with Maksim. They are to be married, if what I have heard is to be believed. Perhaps it is for the best. This place is not a place for a girl, especially one who never wished to train, only to play and to draw and to fill the halls with the warmth of her laughter. She is so very much like her mother that it hurts to know that she is gone, but I think my dear sister Katinka would approve of Sasha finding happiness. I will not get in her way.’ Good for her. A girl should be allowed to go out in search of what she wants in life.”
“Yes, dear,” Terry said. “Freedom and all that.”
She shot him a look. Her face went pale as she looked over the entry. “Oh no. ‘I received word last night that bandits attacked Swindle. I sent my oldest disciples to the farm immediately. Maksim was dead. He died fighting to protect Sasha and his elderly uncle. The uncle was alive, or at least, had clung on to life desperately hiding the only one untouched by the ravages of the bandits. What he described as happening to Sasha…I cannot write it. I cannot even think it, for it causes my blood to boil so. I contacted Typhon Lee, asked him to send one of his killers. The bandits will pay for what they did to Sasha.’” Her voice broke as she read it.
“I can read the rest if you’re having trouble,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Persephone answered, taking a breath to steady herself. “‘Typhon Lee’s dwarf, Popovic, arrived today, his new apprentice in tow. I explained to him what I wanted, how all of the bandits must pay for what they did to my beautiful Sasha. He assured me that his apprentice would make sure they did, and that he would personally confirm it. While the young man talked with my disciples, I explained to Popovic that there was something else I needed. Sasha had worn a silver locket. It contains two portraits, one of Katinka, and one of her and Maksim. I told him there would be a bonus for its retrieval.’”
Terry raised an eyebrow at that. “Pops never mentioned anything about a girl or a locket. He just said bandits hit a town and we were supposed to kill them back. That was my first solo job, a bit before I met you. Remember, the vampires kept talking about it? It was pretty fucked up. And it’s why I stopped working with Pops. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he didn’t tell me anything else. Asshole.”
Gregor looked over the forms. “We’re missing a page. But we have searched everywhere. I do not think I will be able to open it with just this much, but I will try. Let us return to the door.”
As he tried several random final moves, we pored through the pages again. There had to be something we’d missed. And there was. Anastasia found it. The pickle juice pages had stuck together a bit, and sandwiched between them was one final page. She held her prize in her hand and tried to read it…only to realize that she didn’t know that language. Nothing a little magic couldn’t fix. So I waved my hand and spoke a word, giving her the ability to understand.
She began reading it aloud immediately. “‘It is done. The bandits are dead and I have the locket. Perhaps, one day, when he is older, I will give it to Gregor, tell him about his mother. But for now, I will instead train him. She was not strong enough to defend herself. That was my fault. My mistake. I loved her too much and so I could not be as hard on her as I should have. I did not make her strong. I will not make the same mistake with Gregor. No matter how he suffers, I will not give him a single inch. He may think I hate him. If that is so, then it is a price I will pay. He will be strong, the strongest disciple I have ever trained, even if it kills him. I owe Sasha that much.
“‘And one day, when I am too old to continue my duty, he will take my place and train new disciples, as should have been Sasha’s role, had I not been so weak. He will understand then, perhaps, why I had to be as hard on him as I was. Why I could not tell him how proud of him I am. And perhaps one day he will tell his own children or disciples about me, and I hope he will do so fondly, knowing how much it hurt me to do what had to be done to make him strong.’”
Gregor took the page from her and we watched him as he read it silently for several moments, staring at it, seeming lost in the words. Then, just as silently, he handed her the page back and went to the door. He completed the full sequence, and the door opened. He charged through without even waiting for it to open all the way, and we ran after him.
He was so much faster than us. But we could hear a voice ahead. “Come. Prove you are worthy!”
We could hear sharp cracks – sonic booms? – as fighting commenced. As we finally reached the end of the winding stairway, we saw Gregor locked in combat with the ghostly form of Sergei, who was engulfed in that same purple flame. Each of their strikes was too fast to keep up with. I only know how many blows were struck by the sound of the air cracking at the sheer speed.
Gregor had the obvious upper hand, and even Sergei acknowledged it. “Your fists are strong! But now we must test your resolve!” He disappeared into a shadow, reappearing from the shadows behind Gregor and striking him with a deadly attack to the chest as Gregor spun around.
If it had been a kung-fu movie, Gregor’s heart probably should have exploded in his chest. As it was, the shockwave from the blow nearly knocked me from my feet. And I wasn’t the only one. Greta had to catch Anastasia.
But Gregor remained standing, his stance defiant as his master’s spirit drew up into formal stance before bowing. “You are worthy,” Sergei said. I could see Gregor’s eyes beaming with pride as he returned the bow.
The two raised their heads and shared one final look before Sergei’s ghost disappeared. In its place, a silver locket clattered to the floor. He picked it up and then walked to the far end of the room, where a chest stood. Inside, he found two objects. I got a look at them as he handed them to Burin. One was a miniature carving of the Dancing Hut. The other was an ancient portrait – around the size of a picture frame you’d put on a table, though it had to be hundreds, if not thousands of years old – that depicted a man, a woman and a child. The woman looked a lot like Anastasia, though their hair was different.
There were two of them. They had to be keys. And if the picture was of who I thought it was, then I was really curious as to where they would take us.
Terry walked up to Gregor and held out his fist, which Gregor bumped in triumph. “Machine of Death,” the assassin said approvingly. Gregor didn’t even notice that Terry had taken the locket from him during the motion. He probably wouldn’t have noticed for a while, but Terry immediately opened it. “Your mom’s kinda hot.”
“Terry,” Persephone said disapprovingly, taking the locket from him and looking at it. “You look just like your father,” she said to Gregor as we all crowded around to get a look.
“Except the eyes,” Anastasia said. “You have your mother’s eyes.”
Damn. That girl had it worse than I thought.