“This is the hand of the very first corpse raised by someone at this school. It was preserved to remind us that our power is our greatest gift.”
“I don’t want gifts like that.” Leticia pointed to the severed hand.
“I don’t expect you all to understand it now, but one day you will. When you understand how important this school is.” Tony loved this school. It was all he had. He was thirty-eight and had never had a wife. I’d heard a rumor that he’d fallen for an Ophi who was already engaged to someone else. He never got over her. That meant he never had had a child either. Being Ophi and not being able to have a child was ten times worse than it was for a human. Tony hadn’t been able to contribute to the Ophi line, so he’d dedicated himself to teaching Ophi kids.
“Why did you want to get the hand?” I asked. “I thought you had an idea for what we could do this evening.”
“Maybe he wants us to raise a few corpses and chop off some hands of our own,” Randy said.
We all turned and stared at him.
Randy shrugged. “What? Tony’s the one who brought that thing down here.”
Tony laughed. “I brought it because I had an idea for a game. A game that will let us get to know each other a little better.”
“And it involves a severed hand?” I asked.
Tony shrugged. “I needed a spinner.”
The guys burst out laughing. I had to admit it was kind of funny. I mean, a bunch of necromancers playing with a severed hand? But poor Leticia looked horrified.
“I’m not touching that thing,” she said.
“You won’t have to. I’m not actually playing, so I’ll be in charge of spinning.” Tony nodded toward the living room. “Come on. Let’s learn a little more about each other.”
“So, it’s a get to know you kind of game?” I flopped down on the couch.
“Exactly. If we are going to be like family, then we should know a few secrets about each other.” Tony dragged over the coffee table and another couch, so we were sitting in a rectangle. He placed the hand in the middle of the coffee table.
Maybe this game wasn’t such a bad idea. I could get some answers out of Chase.
“Sounds interesting,” Chase said. “I can’t wait to hear everyone’s darkest secrets.” His gaze fell on me.
“Shall we begin?” Tony was already spinning the hand. It stopped with its fingers facing Leticia.
“Ugh, why did that creepy thing have to point to me?”
“All right, Leticia,” Tony said, “tell us something we don’t know about you.”
“Okay.” She paused, thinking of what to share. “Oh, I know. Once when Abby borrowed my shampoo and didn’t return it, I snuck into her bathroom and dripped toilet water into her toothpaste.”
“You mean you put perfume in her toothpaste?” Arianna asked.
“No.” Leticia shook her head. “I used a cup to get water from the toilet, and I dripped it into her tube of toothpaste.”
“Why didn’t you just dunk her toothbrush in the toilet instead?” Randy asked.
Leticia’s face turned red. “I didn’t think of it,” she said in a small voice.
We all started laughing. Poor Leticia. She really was kind of helpless—for someone who could raise the dead.
Tony spun the hand again. This time it landed on Randy.
“Um, I don’t have any secrets like Leticia’s, but I did steal a bag of Troy’s favorite chips once. Man, he went crazy looking for it. He even blamed the servants. Like a bunch of living dead would eat potato chips.”
“Boring.” Chase dragged out the word. “At least Leticia’s story was funny. You’ve got to have a better secret than that.”
Randy fidgeted with his hands in his lap. “I do have one secret, but it’s not something I want to share.”
“Come on. That’s the whole point of this game, isn’t it?” Chase was pushing awfully hard. I hoped that meant he’d be more than willing to share when it was his turn.
“Yeah, Randy, you can tell us.” Leticia put her hand on his arm.
Randy squeezed his fists. “All right, but before I tell you all this, I want to say that I know I was overreacting at the time. I don’t feel this way now.”
We all nodded.
Randy inhaled loudly. “When I first saw my dad after Victoria brought him back, I wanted to…I wanted to kill her. I wanted to make her pay for the way she’d mangled his body.”
I remembered all too well how wrong Victoria had been to try raising the Ophi. It was a power reserved for me, but she wouldn’t listen. She insisted on using my locket, the one Medusa had given me with her blood infused in the bloodstone, to raise those poor people. All she’d succeeded in doing was creating an army of living dead Ophi. I reached my hand up and touched my bare neck. The locket lay broken in my dresser drawer now. I hadn’t been able to part with it. It didn’t hold Medusa’s blood anymore, but it still had special meaning to me.
No one had said a word for several minutes. We all waited to see how Alex would react to this. Finally Randy said, “I’m sorry, man.”
Alex shook his head. “I don’t blame you. Victoria was a monster. She acted without thinking about any consequences. I’m sorry for what she did to your dad, and to Leticia’s parents.” Alex was talking about her in the past tense. He’d already written her off as dead, and even though she was really serving Hades, I guessed she was as good as dead.
Randy leaned forward. “But she was only trying to help. I realize that now.”
“You’re saying you don’t blame Victoria anymore? You’re not upset that your father’s soul was ripped from wherever it was and forced back into a body that was so mangled you barely recognized it?” I was on my feet now and practically yelling.
“Jodi,” Tony said. “Please.” He nodded slightly toward Alex.
“I’m sorry. Alex, I know they were your parents, but Victoria and Troy were awful.”
Tony put a hand up to stop me. “Jodi, it’s still Randy’s turn, so why don’t we—”
“I don’t care about the hand or whose turn it is right now. You wanted us to share and get to know each other better, so I’m sharing.” Tony nodded, and Alex looked up at me with pain in his eyes.
“I watched you eat mac and cheese at every meal, trying to get her attention, but she wouldn’t give you the time of day. And when it came down to choosing sides in the end, your own father put a knife in your chest.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?” Alex asked.
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to tell you you didn’t deserve that. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“So your big secret is that you feel sorry for Alex?” Chase asked.
“No!” That was the last thing I wanted Alex to think. That I was with him out of pity. “My big secret shouldn’t be a secret at all. My big secret is that I think Alex is the greatest Ophi I’ve ever met, and I wish his own parents could’ve seen him for who he really is.”
I sat back down, worried that my outburst had only hurt Alex. I hadn’t meant to go off like that, but I couldn’t handle listening to Randy forgive Victoria for what she’d done.
Alex stood up. “I’m going to call it a night. See you all in the morning.”
“Alex,” I said.
“In the morning, Jodi.” He walked away, leaving me staring after him.
Chase got up and sighed. “Well, if Alex gets out of sharing, I’m going to bed, too.”
“I think it’s best if we all turn in for the night,” Tony said.
I turned to him. “Sorry. It was a nice idea to get to know each other better.”
He nodded and picked up the severed hand. I followed him up the stairs and said goodnight when I reached my floor. I saw Chase walking down the hall to his room, and I ran after him. It wasn’t too late to get the answers I was looking for.