[ 02 - CHAPTER TWO ]

― the boy with the eagle tattoo ―

"Ms. Wheeler," Chiron greeted, syllables drawing out like the last, mellow tone of a guitar solo. "I appreciate you coming so hastily."

Carol nodded, lowering herself into a leather chair. It dwarfed her, as did everything else in the living room. She wouldn't have been considered unusually small, by popular standards - she assumed five feet and five inches was the norm for female height. But everything in the large space, from the array of antique Greek artifacts to the extensive wooden furniture collection, and especially the stuffed living leopard head that sat atop the fireplace, made Carol feel like she was smaller than was deemed natural. She felt like she should slouch her shoulders, tuck her head in closer to her chest, as if the mountainous decorations of the interior Big House were weighing on her posterior.

Her gaze began to flit anxiously around the room. She'd had no idea why Chiron had called for her, and it was rather unnerving. From the moment a satyr had clopped toward her after archery practice, the hairs of his hindquarters brushing against one another as he relayed Chiron's message, her heart had begun shaking her sternum like it was fleeing from something. Her anxiety probably. She would flee from it if she could.

She couldn't. So, unfortunately, she'd settled with facing it head-on, and had ambled regretfully up a hill to the Big House.

Her heart wouldn't have been begging so insistently to tear through her chest if she was ignorant to Chiron's reasoning. To why he'd requested her presence so urgently. She knew, though. He'd been checking in with her periodically ever since she'd told him about her vision a week ago - popping up in places he normally wouldn't to ask her things like 'How are you?' and 'You haven't had any more visions recently, have you?'. He was obsessed with her irregularity.

Therefore, it shouldn't have come as a surprise to Carol when he asked, "Forgive my, uh...my brevity, Ms. Wheeler, but you haven't been plagued with any visions in the past few days, have you? None like the last?"

Carol gnawed at her bottom lip, white boulders chipping away at pink flesh. Pink sand, as the abrasive ridges on the ends of each tooth began to peel away layers of skin and they fell, drifting ever so lazily, until they sat on her lap like a layer of dust over ancient artifacts.

She suddenly despised the lemony aroma of the Big House and the age-old leather beneath her. She wanted to be anywhere else but there in that moment, because maybe then, if the Fates were feeling generous, she could ignore the fact that she was still getting visions. Lots of them, actually - repeats of the one from before, skipping like a broken record in the recesses of her conscience - but luckily, no one had noticed these sequels. Alas, avoiding the topic of her so-called gifts from Hestia didn't seem to be in her near future. She was still seated in front of Chiron. Still trapped under his steel gaze.

It still didn't change the fact that she needed to blend in. Most of the campers hated her enough already, but if they found out she was receiving divine visions? It would be a death sentence.

So she lied.

The words slipped off her tongue like silk. "No, I haven't. The mad titan radio has been totally silent, actually."

And now, her lips tasted of lies like she'd been smoking them all day.

Maybe she had.

Maybe she'd spent the entire morning rolling sweet, savory lies into a brown paper cigarette, letting it slip perfectly into her curved hand, sucking on the tip until her hand was red with stinging burn marks. Maybe she'd been breathing in her sugar-tinged lies since the Titan War, giggling as the fumes of her nicotine-ridden breath wafted too far up her nostrils.

Or maybe she'd been a drug addict her whole life.

It was possible. She could vaguely recall fragmented memories from her days at a boarding school. She could picture her feet, sewn together with frilly socks, clicking against tiled floors as she traveled the incessant journey from her classrooms to her dorm. Those were her days of gossamer dresses and chocolate pudding. But they were also days of abandonment and neglect, of devils creeping out from between her teachers' teeth, cackling even as the instructors assured her that her dad would be back for her, whispering that he most definitely would not.

The more Carol dwelled upon it, the more certain she was: her addiction had started the moment her father had dropped her off at a boarding school.

He was her gateway drug. The introductory course to a world of tobacco and headaches that rose with the sun, the man that had taught her that false truths tasted like candy if you lingered on them long enough. If you chose to believe them. If you chose to let your tongue influence your mind, because if you started as a child, the sugar embedded in your immature brain lobes would coat the lies with its powder and that would be the end of it all. For all eternity, cigarette filters were your kryptonite.

But that was how it worked with all things. You make a foolish decision while under the influence of your naive, youthful mind, and you're screwed for the rest of your life. Drugs become candy and true companionship - the only thing that truly matters, the only thing Carol could never seem to grapple with - becomes asparagus. Wretched to the touch and oh, so hard to keep down.

Thus, it was not a strenuous challenge in the least for Carol to lie to Chiron. She'd been lying her whole life. My father will come back for me. Another drag from her cigar. I fought on the titans' side for a noble reason. An empty pack of cancer sticks in the wastebasket.

"I haven't even had visions in my dreams," Carol said. Smoked. "Why do you ask?"

Chiron lifted his hand to his chin, fingers stroking the gray streaks that lived in his beard. His eyes looked to the blanket on his lap for a moment, and that's when Carol saw it - the distress in his eyes. It was rooted deeper than usual. Bred from fear of sour brewings in the immortal world, perhaps, for what else would line the fragile skin around his mouth so deeply with stress? Whatever it was, the tone of his voice reaped the anxiety-trodden consequences of his thoughts when he next spoke, saying, "You are familiar with one of Camp Half-Blood's satyrs, Gleeson Hedge, yes?"

Carol's brows furrowed in contemplation for a moment, but were quickly put at ease when she nodded. She remembered him, if only a little bit. She'd caught him trying to hit one of the more pestilent campers with a baseball bat.

"I thought so," Chiron continued, his hands smoothing his frayed hair. "He's on an assignment at the moment, supervising two demigods and waiting for the right moment to...you know..."

"Let them down gently?" Carol suggested.

Chrion's head tilted to one side. "Well, that's probably not the case with Gleeson, but yes, that would be correct. He's waiting for the right moment to inform them of their parentage. But it appears he's run into a problem....we received his call for reinforcements a few hours ago. According to him, a third demigod has just appeared at the school out of nowhere."

Three demigods. Carol tried to evade it, the thought that had plagued her mind like an affliction of illness, but the iron weapons of her mind bent when the phrase's hammer struck it. It was a hammer of the past, of supernatural origins. What else would plague her but the remnants of the dream that almost took her life?

The images that were playing out before Carol's eyes flickered. Suddenly, Chiron was engulfed by a fiery blaze, its tips a translucent green hue. She could see that he was trying to speak to her. His lips were moving in rhythmic patterns, his eyes paying no attention to his boiling skin, but she couldn't hear a word. Chiron's face began to melt, and even so, the only sound that graced her lips was that of her nails, the soft pitter-patter as she tapped insistently on the table beside her. The flames licked at Chiron's wrist, engraving a set of solid black lines into his wrist. Just like the ones from her vision. Tap. Tap. Pitter-patter. The fire leaped greedily at his face. Its eagerness was so real that Carol nearly screamed in anguish for the mentor, but every time she tried, nothing escaped her lips. Nothing but fading croaks, and Chiron's face was still left subject to the smoldering heat.

Tap. Tap.

The sound was a band of drums in her ear now, deafening and pillaging the cartilage there until there was nothing left - only drums and the cracks of the glowing flame.

Chiron's nose began to melt. Then his eyes, his cheeks. His ever-so-gentle smile. Tap. The overbearing heat of the fire was turning him into wax: lifeless, and ready to bow down at the fiery monster's feet to be molded at its will. Tap. Tap. Tap. And, looking back at her in place of his crooked features was....herself.

Carol Wheeler. Mouth quivering, optic beads trembling in their sockets, staring back at her new mirror.

"Ms. Wheeler?" an urgent voice prodded at her ears, a needle pressing into the plush edges of her conscience. "Carol, are you all right?"

For a moment, it sounded like a woman's voice - the same one that had spoken to her that day on the climbing wall. And then the warbled strings of her perception untangled themselves, and it was Chiron.

She shook her head. "I...I'm alright."

Her eyelids fluttered, lases tickling the pores of her ivory skin, and all of a sudden, Chiron had been healed again. He was better - much better than he would have been if the fire had been tangible outside the premises of her own mind. There was no sign of skin grafts on his face. No signs of discolored skin, stitched to the left-behind burn marks and wrinkled scars. He was alright. She'd made it all up.

"I just..." Carol's brows furrowed. "I just don't understand why you're telling me this. I'm not sure what it has to do with me."

More nicotine filtering through her lungs. More lies.

"Well, I was hoping it would be obvious, given the contents of your last...ah...vision," Chiron began, a few strands of gray hair falling onto his forehead. "I didn't want to concern you with this, because it may very well be nothing, but it seems rather odd that Gleeson would run into a third demigod, especially when you so recently prophesied about three unusual demigods."

Carol nodded, offering Chiron a bleak smile, but her insides were in turmoil. She couldn't help but think that it was funny, how so many enjoyed referring to demigod abilities as powers, but there was no power involved. And if there was, Carol certainly didn't reign over it. There was no off switch she could flip on her visions. She was a slave to them, every one a whip lashing her back, every one forcing her to wrap her jacket more tightly over her shoulders as she tried to hide the scars they left on her.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, pulling down the sleeves of the thin, ruby sweater she wore. Hiding her scars. Forcing a blank expression onto her face.

"I just wanted you to be prepared," Chiron said, voice like honey but not quite so soothing to her warm, irritated skin.

"Chiron!" a shrill voice sounded from the entrance to the living room. "This is Jason. He's totally awesome!"

Carol had to swivel in her seat to catch a glimpse of who had spoken, and when she did, she was not pleased. Not in the least.

It was Drew Tanaka. Daughter of Aphrodite, Camp Half-Blood's queen bee, and royal pain to every demigod that had ever set foot on the campgrounds. She wore a cocky smirk on her face, as usual. Metallic bracelets slapped against one another on her wrist, ringing out in their own shrill mimicry of Drew's voice, and her voluminous ebony hair rested atop her head like a crown. At least, that's how she held it - her shoulders back and her head poised like a peacock. She even sneered in Carol's direction, reinforcing the shimmering mirage that nothing was out of the ordinary. But wrapped in her hands...

An eagle tattoo. She was hand-in-reluctant-hand with a boy Carol had never seen. Or so she thought. It took Carol a moment to see it. She'd been distracted by Drew's boisterous entrance at first, and had further been engrossed by the storm that was embedded in the boy's icy blue eyes, but now - there it was. Unabashedly displayed on the boy's wrist: the predatory bird in spotless, black ink, underlined by the letters 'SPQR' and twelve horizontal lines.

This was the boy from her dreams.

From her nightmares.

"You." Chiron's voice fell an octave, and the smile on his face crumbled into pieces. He glanced at Carol, words lingering uncertainly on his lips as if they were frightened in her presence, but when he turned back to the boy, the phrases flew out like doves being released from a granite cage. "You should be dead."

Carol didn't even bother looking at the golden-haired boy as Chiron's unorthodox greeting registered on his face. She'd seen his face once, and that was enough.

She shot to her feet and fled to the door, head ducked and shoulders turned in as she passed Drew and the boy. She despised his presence. She despised the fact that he'd dared set foot in the Big House, the moment she'd received another dreamlike slash on her back. She despised the fact that her visions were actually manifesting, tangibly, surreally, right in front of her eyes.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

She was totally and completely powerless. Impotent to her own mind, helpless at the feet of an immortal goddess that seemed to have nothing better to do but wring her insides like a dirty towel.

The world was evolving, and she was but its mouthpiece, too feeble to do anything but suffer as envisioned prophecies of the tumultuous future to come.