Chapter 14 14
Annabeth's POV:
I woke up drowning in my own sweat, the sheets stuck to my legs and my hair plastered to my neck in wet clumps that felt disgusting. My tank top was soaked through, the fabric clinging to my skin, and when I sat up the room spun for a second before settling.
The clock on my nightstand said 6:47 AM, way too early for a Saturday, but I couldn't have stayed in that wet bed another minute even if someone paid me.
The weird thing was I didn't feel sick.
Like, at all.
I should've been exhausted, achy, that whole flu thing where your body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. But instead I felt... good? Better than good. Awake and alert and strong, like I could run a marathon or lift my car or something equally ridiculous.
I peeled off my tank top and threw it in the hamper, then caught sight of myself in the mirror. My skin was flushed, pink all over, and I could see the heat coming off me in waves. Literally see it, the air distorting around my shoulders and arms the way it does over hot pavement in summer.
What the hell?
I pressed my hand to my forehead. Burning. Way too hot. But I didn't feel feverish, didn't have that foggy sick-brain thing. My head was clear, sharper than usual even.
The thermometer was in the medicine cabinet. I grabbed it and stuck it under my tongue, waiting for the beep while I studied my reflection. My eyes looked normal, no red flash this time, thank God, but there was something different about my face that I couldn't pin down. Like I was more awake, more present, more... I don't know.
The thermometer beeped.
39.5°C.
I stared at the number. That was... that was really bad. Like, go to the emergency room bad. Anything over 39°C was dangerous, could cause seizures or brain damage or a bunch of other scary shit I'd read about in my biology textbooks.
But I felt fine.
I took my temperature again, thinking maybe the thermometer was broken. Same result. 39.5°C, bright red numbers that mocked my attempt at rational explanation.
Okay. So. I had a dangerously high fever but zero symptoms. My body temperature was through the roof but I felt stronger than I'd ever felt. This made exactly no sense from a medical standpoint, from any standpoint really, and the part of my brain that liked things to make sense was starting to freak out.
I put on a clean T-shirt and pajama pants, then headed downstairs. Maybe my aunt would have an explanation, or at least tell me I wasn't dying.
She was in the kitchen making coffee, still in her robe, her hair sticking up on one side. When she turned and saw me, she went pale.
"Annabeth?" Her voice came out tight. "Are you okay? You look..."
"I'm fine. I mean, I think I have a fever but I feel completely normal."
"A fever?" She set down her coffee mug too hard and it sloshed onto the counter. "How high?"
"Uhm. 39.5."
"Jesus Christ." She crossed the kitchen in three steps and pressed her hand to my forehead, then jerked it back like I'd burned her. Which, fair, I probably had. "You're burning up. We need to take you to the hospital right now."
"Aunt Sarah, I'm okay. Really. I don't feel sick at all."
"That doesn't matter. That temperature is dangerous. Get dressed, we're going."
"No, listen." I pulled away from her reaching hands. "I feel fine. Better than fine, actually. I think my thermometer might be broken or maybe I just... I don't know, run hot? Some people do that, right?"
She stared at me with this expression I'd never seen before. Fear, yeah, but something else underneath it. Something that looked almost like... recognition?
"Do you feel strange?" she asked. "Any... differences? Anything unusual?"
The question was too specific, too loaded. Why would she ask that instead of asking about my symptoms?
"No," I lied. "Just the temperature thing."
She didn't believe me, I could tell. Her eyes searched my face and her hands were shaking when she picked up her coffee mug again.
"I want you to stay home today," she said. "No going out. If you start to feel worse, any change at all, you call me immediately. Understood?"
"Aunt Sarah, I have plans—"
"Cancel them." Her voice had that tone that meant arguing was pointless. "Please, Annabeth. Just... trust me on this."
She left for work an hour later, but not before checking on me three more times and making me promise again that I'd stay inside. The way she looked at me before she left made my stomach twist. She was scared. Really scared. And not just normal worried-aunt scared, but something deeper, something that felt like she knew more than she was saying.
The house was too quiet after she left.
I tried to distract myself with TV, with my phone, with literally anything that would stop my brain from spinning in circles. But I couldn't shake the feeling that my aunt's reaction had been all wrong. She should've been calling doctors or dragging me to urgent care, not asking if I felt "different" and telling me to stay inside like I was contagious with something worse than the flu.
Around noon I found myself standing at the base of the attic stairs.
We never went up there. It was full of old boxes and probably spiders and my aunt always said there was nothing interesting, just junk from before I came to live with her. But now I wondered what else she'd been lying about. It was like I was being called to go up there and explore.
Weird...
The attic door stuck when I pushed it, the hinges rusty and complaining. Dust motes swirled in the shaft of light from the small window at the far end, and the air smelled like old cardboard and mothballs. Boxes were stacked everywhere, labeled in my aunt's neat handwriting: "Kitchen supplies," "Winter clothes," "Books."
One box in the corner wasn't labeled.
It was smaller than the others, dark wood instead of cardboard, and it had a brass lock on the front.
I crossed the attic and knelt in front of it, my heart beating faster than it should've been. The lock looked old, the kind you'd need a key for, except the key was nowhere in sight.
I tugged on it experimentally.
The lock held.
I pulled harder and something in the mechanism gave with a sharp crack that made me flinch. The lock fell open in my hands, the metal twisted and broken like I'd taken a crowbar to it instead of just pulling.
Shit.
I stared at the ruined lock, then at my hands. I hadn't pulled that hard, had I? Couldn't have. But the evidence was right there, bent metal and broken parts, and I had no explanation for it that made any sense.
I pushed the thought away and opened the box.
Inside there was a book. Not just a book, a diary, leather-bound and worn, with my mother's name embossed on the cover in faded gold letters.
I picked it up with hands that weren't quite steady and opened to the first page.
The handwriting was my mother's. I recognized it from the birthday cards she'd written before I was born, the ones my aunt had saved for me in a shoebox under her bed.
"My dearest Annabeth," it began. "If you're reading this, it means you've started to change. There are things you need to know about your father, about yourself, about what you really are. I know this won't be easy to believe. I know Sarah has probably tried to keep you safe by keeping you ignorant. But ignorance won't protect you forever, and you deserve to know the truth before it's too late. Your father wasn't human, sweetheart. And that means you're not entirely human either. The fever is just the beginning..."
The next page was in a completely different language. Symbols and characters I'd never seen before, flowing and angular at the same time, covering page after page in tight lines that made my head hurt if I stared too long.
I flipped through the diary. All of it was in that same incomprehensible language except for that first page, that single warning that answered nothing and raised about a million more questions.
"Your father wasn't human."
I sat on the dusty attic floor with my mother's diary in my lap and, for the first time in my life, I had absolutely no rational explanation for anything.