Now I might never know.

"That's all right, Mrs. Philipoulos," I say, defeated. Thanks for your help."

Nicole gapes at me. "What?" she asks. "You're giving up? When you're this close"-she holds up her palms half an inch apart-"to finding the truth?"

"What truth?" I throw back. "My dad died. The gods smoted him because he abused his powers to succeed in football. Nothing can change that."

"How can you be-"

Mrs. Philipoulos gasps, stopping Nicole midsentence. "You're Nicky Castro's daughter."

"Did you know my dad?"

"No, not personally." She gives me a sad. sympathetic smile. "But I knew of him." After a thick beat, she adds, "Everyone did."

My eyes water. There's something in that beat, in that silence, that tells me the entire hematheosworld knows Dad's story. Like he's a warning. Careful how you use your powers or this will happen to you.

"How did you get this call number?" she asks. "It's not student-accessible in ECHO."

I shrug as I blink away the moisture. "Someone left that note at my door."

"I always say there are exceptions to every rule, honey." She types another quick sequence, turns the monitor to face me, and says, "You have every right to see this."

Nicole hurries around to look over my shoulder as I quickly scan the entry on the screen.


Collection: Mt. Olympus Archives


Title: Council Court Minutes


Topic: Proceedings of the Trial of Nicholas Andrew Castro


Copies: l


Call Number: XI 597.11 FL76


Location: B2-S18D



My heart thuds into my throat.


"The record of my dad's trial? I didn't even know there had been a trial. I thought the gods just decided among themselves to punishhim. If there was a trial, maybe there was testimony or interviews or some kind of documentation to prove that Dad hadn't just sacrificed everything for a sport.

"Follow me, girls," Mrs. Philipoulos says, grabbing a set of keys from her desk drawer.

"I can't believe it," I say to Nicole as we follow Mrs. Philipoulos through the doorway that leads to the stacks. The record of my dad's trial. I didn't know they kept that sort of record."

I'd heard about the "secret" collection-everyone has, but I had no idea what they held.

"Neither did I." Nicole's voice sounds strange.

When I look, she's staring straight ahead, her eyes completely blank. Without question I know what she's thinking about: the trial where her and Griffin's parents got banished. The trial over something she and Griffin did. and for which their parents were punished. Though she and Griff are finally friends again after years of hating each other over it, I know it still kills them inside. I can see it sometimes when Griffin runs. His bright blue eyes get a faraway look and I know he's thinking about his parents. My heart breaks every time.

As we reach the end of one row of stacks, Mrs. Philipoulos stops in front of a janitor's closet and whips around to face us.

"What I am going to show you," she says, sounding very ominous, "you are not to breathe a word about to another living soul." She starts to turn around and then spins back. "Or a dead one."

Nicole and I exchange raised eyebrows.

Mrs. Philipoulos unlocks the janitor's closet and walks inside.

When we don't follow, she leans her head back out and says, "What are you waiting for?" She waves us inside. "This way."

Nicole raises her finger to her temple and makes the universal sign for nutso. But really, what have we got to lose?

I shrug and take a step into the closet. As soon as we're both inside, Mrs. Philipoulos pulls the door shut. While we're surrounded by darkness I hear a bit of a shuffle. Something falls over, crashing to the floor.

"Drat!" Mrs. Philipoulos snaps. "Who put that mop there? Ah, here we go."

I hear a soft click. All at once the tiny closet is bathed in soft light. And it starts to move. Down.

"Whoa," Nicole gasps. "There's a sub-sublevel?"

Mrs. Philipoulos winks at her.

Seconds later, the closet stops moving and Mrs. Philipoulos reaches for the handle. "Remember, girls." she says, turning the handle. "You were never here."

"Oh. My. Gods."

I can't believe what I'm seeing. It's a whole other level that spreads out beneath the school. With just as many rows and rows of bookshelves as the floor above. And every last shelf is full.

"Are these all records from Mount Olympus?" Nicole asks, gaping just as seriously as I am.

"Of course not," Mrs. Philipoulos says, as if that's the most ridiculous thing that's been said all day. "Most of these are from the Library of Alexandria."

"The Library of Alexandria?" I ask. "Didn't that burn down?"

Mrs. Philipoulus scoffs. "Damn fool Hypatia. Athena tried to convince her to install a sprinkler system. But no-o-o,no one was going to tell the librarinatrix how to run her library." As she starts stomping down one aisle, she adds. "Athena saved the collection before it turned to ash, but she couldn't exactly advertise the fact, could she? So, we keep it protected here."

As we hurry past shelf after shelf of ancient books and scrolls and papers, bound in various earthy shades of leather and smelling like dirt and mold and century upon century of history, I try to catch a few titles. The Complete Plays of Sophocles. Plato's Early Writings. Chronicle of the Trojan War. Wow.

Behind me, Nicole gasps. I notice her stop and stare at a book. She runs her fingertips reverently over the burgundy leather spine before tugging it out. Mrs. Philipoulus doesn't notice, but I have a feeling she would freak out a little if she saw Nicole grabbing something off the shelf. I try to distract her.

"How do you keep track of it all?" I ask.

"Hephaestus designed an amazing computer system that scans, categorizes, and keeps track of every document." She keeps hurrying down the aisle, getting farther and farther from Nicole. "He's not just the god of blacksmithing, you know."

"Yeah," I say, picturing his computer-geeky descendants. "I know."

"Aha!" she explains, pulling to stop. "Here we go. Shelf B2-S18D."

She quickly skims a finger across a shelf of books, mumbling thecall numbers as she goes. "Chi Sigma 597.10. Chi Sigma 597.1099.

Chi Sigma 597.121-wait a second." she says, skimming back a fewbooks and then ahead again. "Chi Sigma 597.1099 and then Chi Sigma 597.121. Where is Chi Sigma 597.11?"

I look for myself. She's right. The book is gone.

"That's not possible, she says. "This is a noncirculating collection. No one can check out an Olympic record. No one."

My heart sinks.

Great. The one and only record of my dad's trial is missing. That's like waving a bowl of cookies and cream under my nose and then telling me ice cream's off-limits. Almost having that record in my hands makes me even more desperate to know everything. All of a sudden I have a million more questions. What's in the record? Who took it? Why did they take it? And, most important at the moment, does whoever sent me that note know where it is?

* * *

"Afraid I won't catch you?"

I look back over my shoulder at Xander, standing there looking all cool and passive. He's holding his hands out, palms up, but in a casual way.

"You're not exactly inspiring confidence, I say, nodding at his hands. "Besides, I've done this same thing like a million times before. It's stupid."

All around me, ten-year-olds are giggling. We're in the courtyard again, though I think we should really be on a softer surface. At the moment we're supposed to be doing that team-building trust exercise where you fall back and someone catches you. I'd muchrather crash on grass than on the hard-tile mosaic of the courtyard floor.

All the giggly girls have been paired up, and one after another, they're falling back into one another's arms.

"You almost let me fall!" one girl-Larissa, I think-squeals. She's a descendant of Hades, but with her golden blonde hair and dark green eyes, she doesn't look like any Hades descendant I've met.

"I did not!" her partner, curly-haired Gillian, protests. "I was just softening your fall."

While they argue, I turn my attention back to Xander, who is still watching me patiently.

"You're right," I say. "I don't trust you."