“No, no, of course not. Immortality is reserved for the gods,” he says with a little laugh. As if that’s the most absurd idea floating around. “We descendants are more like the heroes of ancient legend. Like Achilles and Prometheus, we have some, ah-hem, supernatural—”

“Whoa,” I interrupt. “We?”

“Damian is a descendant, as well,” Mom says.

I close my eyes and take a deep, deep breath. This just keeps getting better. “All right.” I wave my hands at myself as if to say, Bring it on. “You’re like heroes. . . ?”

“Yes,” he continues. “Like those you may have read about, we have varying degrees of supernatural powers. In most descendants the powers manifest pre-adolescence, though there are cases in which they remain dormant until after puberty.”

“It’s really quite amazing,” Mom says, bubbling with enthusiasm. “There are apparently built-in controls to protect the rest of the world, with the gods monitoring all use of—”

I tune out. I mean, Mom seems honestly convinced and, until recently, I’ve always trusted her judgment, but this isn’t exactly the kind of thing that’s easy to accept. Like I can suddenly decide that everything I’ve ever learned about the Greek gods is not just some fluff story English teachers make you learn. No, it’ll take more than Damian’s say-so to move the Greek gods from the fairy-tale land of Santa Claus, werewolves, and Cinderella into everyday reality. But even if I’m not a believer in “alternative realities,” as Nola calls them, I’m willing to keep an open mind. Sure, I’ll believe they’re real. Just as soon as I see one. . . .

“Well, well,” the girl who just appeared next to Damian says. “I see the barbarians have arrived.” When I say appeared, I don’t mean she walked up and there she was by his side. No, she appeared. As in out of nowhere. As in she wasn’t there and then she was. She, like, shimmered into place.

That’s the kind of proof that’s hard to ignore.

“Stella,” Damian says, a serious hint of warning in his tone. “What have I told you about materializing?”

“Please, Daddy,” she coos. “I just had to see them for myself. They’re like a new exhibit of rare animals at the zoo.”

Her voice is sickly sweet, like those sirens in The Odyssey who used their beautiful singing to attract men to their deaths. There isn’t a trace of sincerity in her. Not from the brown roots of her overhighlighted hair to her bright red painted toes. And I don’t think it’s a simple case of overenthusiastic tweezing that makes her look like a bi’atch with a capital B-I-A-T-C-H.

“We will speak about this later,” Damian says. And he does not sound happy. “I apologize for my daughter’s . . . rude behavior. Barbarian is a term applied to non-Greeks.” He shoots her a sharp look. “It is not meant in a derogatory manner. Not only is it misapplied, since Phoebe is half-Greek and Valerie is now Greek twice by marriages, but, as Plato once said, the term is absurd. Dividing the world into Greek and non-Greek tells us little about the first group and nothing about the second.”

Stella looks completely unfazed, like she pisses him off every day. Why do I think she excels at getting herself out of trouble with her dad? I have a gut feeling that she’s going to enjoy making my life miserable—and probably won’t get in any trouble at all.

“I never thought of it that way,” Mom says, taking Damian’s hand, “but that’s also true in modern psychoanalytic theory. If one defines their world in terms of ‘object’ and ‘other’ then one only knows what the object is and what the other is not.”

Stella rolls her eyes. Damian nods. I have learned—after many years of theoretical nonsense talk—to ignore the psychobabble. Trying to follow along only ends in headache.

“Besides,” Damian says, giving Stella one last disapproving look before smiling at me, “you are not the only non-Greek to attend the Academy. We are primarily a boarding school and many, if not most, of our students are from abroad. Our ancestors were not, shall we say, confined to a particular geographical area.”

Right. I remember all those stories about Zeus and Apollo and the other gods jumping around from one seduction to the next. There are probably little mini-gods all over the world.

Stella smiles tightly, as if saying, Whatever.

“You must be Phoebe,” she says, stepping forward and offering me a hand. “I’m Stella . . . your new sister.”

Now, I’ve always wanted a sister, but not one like this. In my mind I picture a little girl with ringlets and dimples who follows me everywhere and copies my every move to the point of driving me crazy. Stella is not a follower. That much I can see in the icy gray shallows of her eyes. She crushes those foolish enough not to fall into place behind her. I am not that foolish.

“Yeah,” I say, taking her hand and letting her pull me up. I’m shocked when she doesn’t let go halfway and send me falling back on my butt. “Nice to meet you.” The words choke out around the gagging sensation in my throat.

Then she shocks the living crap out of me by pulling me into a hug. Over her shoulder I see Mom take Damian’s hand and look at me with pride, like they can already see us having sleepovers and sharing secrets and painting each other’s toenails. She thinks we’re halfway sisters already.

Only she doesn’t hear what Stella whispers in my ear.