Arianna sighed. “She was obsessed with power and proving herself. I thought sending her to Troy and Victoria might scare her out of it. But when her letters arrived and all she talked about was how great it was not to hold back her power, I knew I’d lost her.”
“So, you stopped reading the letters and returned them unopened.” I remembered the drawer full of letters Abby had kept.
“I thought if she knew how upset I was…maybe she’d come home.” Arianna nodded to Chase, unable to continue talking about Abby. “On second thought, you take Jodi upstairs. Run her a bath and then wait for her in her room. Keep Lexi away from her.”
“Sure thing.” Chase took my arm, but this time my blood didn’t react. I stared at his hand on me, wondering why his touch was different now. He leaned down and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’m not using my powers.”
He’d been doing that on purpose?! I thought it was the way our blood naturally reacted to each other, but it had been Chase doing it all along.
Arianna put her hand on my shoulder as I walked by. “I’ll be up to check on you soon, and then we can talk.”
I knew she wanted to explain about Abby and Lexi. I had a lot of questions for her. Like why she never told me, and why she didn’t hate me for sending Abby to the underworld. I wasn’t sure I could handle that today, though. So much had already happened.
“Maybe our talk can wait until tomorrow? I think I could sleep until morning at this point.”
She nodded and gave me a weak smile.
Chase walked me upstairs. He kept his arm around my back and was being a gentleman for once. Not forcing his power on me or trying to bully me into choosing him. Now that Alex was gone, he didn’t feel the need to compete anymore. It was the first time I had thought about Alex since he left. Since he walked out on me and my world came crumbling down. This was more proof of how much I needed him. But what was I going to do about Chase?
We’d combined powers twice today, and both times, it had made me feel better than I’d ever felt in my life. My blood craved Chase, but look what I had done when I gave in to that craving. I’d taken out every Ophi under this roof. I knew I was responsible for their deaths. I’d felt my blood doing things it had never done before. It was like the night Leticia was choking in my room. The night she’d died. Chase had been touching me, combining our powers, and Leticia died because of it. I was convinced Chase and I could do both amazing and devastating things together. We were that powerful, and it scared the hell out of me.
Inside my room, Chase left me sitting on the bed while he drew me a bath. I reached up and took the locket from my neck. Nothing good had happened since I’d put it on, and now I wanted it off. I wished I’d never drunk the blood from the bloodstone. I wished I’d never killed the human in me. That I’d never become the leader of the Ophi. I didn’t want any of this anymore. None of it seemed worth it. Not without Alex.
I put the locket back in my dresser drawer before slumping on my bed and crying. My tears washed most of the blood from my face and I wiped the rest away with my sleeves. Chase came back into the room and sat down next to me.
“Oh, Jodi.” He leaned over me and kissed me. I stopped crying, taken aback by his action. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He wasn’t Alex. We’d only kissed once, and that had had terrible consequences. I pulled away.
“Don’t worry. Nothing bad will happen. I promise. I’ll keep my powers under control, and you will too.” He leaned forward and kissed me again. He didn’t let me go, and finally, I gave in, kissing him back. He brushed the hair from my wet cheeks and looked at me.
“What are we doing?” I asked. This was all so confusing. It wasn’t what I wanted, not really. So, why wasn’t I stopping him?
“What we’re supposed to be doing.” He kissed me again, more passionately this time, and he let a tiny bit of his power find its way to me. The tingling spread through my lips and into my chest, filling me with energy. I felt better, more alive. He was on top of me now, and still I was trying to pull him closer.
“Jodi, are you—”
I pulled away from Chase to see Arianna standing in the doorway. Embarrassed, I scrambled out from under Chase and stood up. He leaned back on the bed as if he’d done nothing wrong.
“I came to see if you were finished with your bath,” Arianna said. “But I see you haven’t even started.”
“That reminds me,” Chase said, “I left the water running.” He ran to the bathroom, hopefully before the tub overflowed.
“Um, I was waiting for it to fill?” It came out more like a question than a statement.
Arianna walked over to me and kept her voice low. “Jodi, do you know what you’re doing? Alex left today, and already you’re with Chase?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not with him. He kissed me. I was caught off guard. That’s all. With everything that’s happened, I was upset and I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
She sighed. “Honey, that boy is pouncing when he should be giving you time. I don’t like it at all. You be careful around him.”
I nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
“What if Alex had come back and seen what I saw?”
“Alex doesn’t want to be with me.” The words stung my chest.
“No, what Alex doesn’t want is Chase’s hands all over you.” She shook her head like she was trying to get the image out of her mind. “I’m not telling you what to do, but if I were you, I’d be focusing on trying to get Alex back here. Not trying to replace him.”
Replace Alex? I couldn’t. I was about to tell her that, but Chase came back into the room. “It’s all set.”
“Good,” Arianna said. “Then you can come downstairs and help me with dinner while Jodi takes her bath.”
Chase looked annoyed, but he followed Arianna. He brushed his hand along my arm on his way out, and the tingling sensation of his touch rippled through me. God, how did he do that? It made my common sense go out the window.
I got into the bathtub and lowered myself so that only my head was above the water. The warmth felt incredible, but it was powerless against the events of the day. Seeing Alex walk out of my life, Tony fall to his death, Randy’s soul float away, lost forever—it was all stuck in my mind. But as huge as those things were, they took a back seat to Chase. He was becoming more and more of a mystery to me. Why could one touch from him make me lose control? Why was he so different from all the other Ophi? Then, the biggest question of all popped into my head. Something I should’ve asked myself right away, but I’d been too caught up in the moment to notice.
Why hadn’t Chase died with all the others?
Chapter 17
That was all I thought about for the rest of the night, long after the water in the tub turned cold. Long after Arianna brought me dinner on a tray because I never came downstairs. Long after Chase knocked on my door and I pretended to be asleep. When I woke up in the morning, the only explanation I could come up with was that Chase had survived because our powers had been connected. I had kept him alive.
Then, another thought struck me. How far had my powers reached? Had Alex been far enough away that he wasn’t affected? I had to ask Medusa. She would know. She had a way of sensing all of us, of knowing what was going on.
I threw the covers off and ran downstairs. All I was wearing was the long-sleeved shirt Alex had given me my first night here. It was like a dress on me. Well, more like a mini, but I didn’t care. I needed answers now. I reached the statue and grabbed Medusa’s hands.
“Medusa?” I called with my mind. “I need you.”
Her face appeared to me. “Yes, my child?”