Revealed

to the men, staring at the two shapes that were crumpled at the base of the ridge. One of them moaned. The other’s arm twitched.
    The sky opened and ropes of rain began falling, so that I couldn’t tell if the wetness was water or blood or my tears.
    I didn’t think. I just ran.
    I didn’t need to call mist and shadow to me. The thunderstorm cloaked me. No one noticed a lone girl, running through the rain, away from the burning park, especially since emergency vehicles and the police were swarming in the opposite direction.
    I ran around the school wall, entering back through the hidden door. And I kept running until I was inside the stables, gasping and shivering. I went to the tack room and got a clean towel. Wrapping it around myself, I walked down the long line of stalls until I found Persephone. I slid the door open and entered the warm, dark stall. Persephone was sleeping the way horses do, standing with one leg cocked and her head low, eyes half-lidded. She barely moved when I went to her and wrapped my arms around her neck and sobbed into her thick, soft mane.
    What was happening to me?
    The guys in the park had been jerks, but they couldn’t have hurt me. Sure, they preyed on girls, scaring them into throwing cash their way, but they couldn’t have hurt me. I could’ve walked away and made an anonymous call to the police, given a description of them, and told the cops that they were loitering in the park, threatening girls. The cops would’ve run them off.
    Instead I exploded on them.
    I hadn’t even thought it through. I hadn’t done it on purpose. It had just happened. My anger had literally exploded through the Seer Stone at them.
    What was it Aphrodite had been trying to tell me? Something about her vision and Old Magick and me losing control of my anger. I hadn’t listened to her. I’d cut her off and believed she’d betrayed me. I’d let anger control me.
    “Oh, Goddess, that was wrong—so wrong of me,” I cried.
    Then, through my sobs and the thunderstorm that roiled in the sky, I heard a siren. It wasn’t a fire truck. It wasn’t an ambulance. It was a police car. And it wasn’t speeding past the school toward Woodward Park. Its siren was getting closer and closer. It had to have entered our gate and pulled up to the school.
    As if I were walking through a dream, I unwrapped myself from Persephone’s consoling neck. I dropped the towel. I left the stable and made my way outside to the sidewalk that led to the entrance foyer of the school.
    Rain pelted me, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.
    “Z! There you are! Shit, you’re soaking wet.” Stark ran up behind me, holding a big coat over himself.
    “You shouldn’t be out here,” I told him woodenly. “The sun’s up. You’ll burn.”
    He gave me a weird look. “I’m tired and it’s not real comfortable, but the clouds are covering enough of the sun that I can be out here. Well, at least for a little while. Z, get under my coat with me and let’s go back to our room. I know something’s wrong with you, but I don’t know what it is.”
    I shook my head. “No. I have to go to them.” I kept walking toward the front of the school. There were two police cars, lights still on, parked there.
    “Them who?” Stark asked, trying to hold his coat over my head and his.
    “Stark, go back to bed. You can’t help me out of this.”
    “Zoey, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”
    I put my hand on the front door. “Go back,” I repeated. “You can’t save me anymore.”
    He looked scared. Really scared.
    I didn’t let myself feel anything. I turned my back on him and opened the door.
    Thanatos was there. Darius was, too. As well as Aphrodite. For an instant I was surprised to see them, then I realized that Aphrodite must have gone to Thanatos after I’d taken off. It was the right thing for her to do. I would have done it if I’d been in her place. If I’d been thinking like myself, like Normal Zoey.
    Detective Marx was there with two officers in uniforms.
    “Z, did you get done walking the perimeter with Aurox?” Aphrodite spoke quickly, walking up to me. “I was telling Thanatos that I was worried about you out there in the thunderstorm. There’re even tornado warnings for Tulsa County.”
    “Don’t,” I told her. “I don’t ever want you to lie for me.” I looked from her to Darius. “I don’t ever want any of you to lie for me.” Then I met Detective Marx’s gaze. “Why are you