The Child of Hecate

Chapter Six - How I Met My Mom

Necromancy intrigued me very much to say the least. I remember the time when I was no older than six years old and standing in the middle of the street. My dog, snowflake, had died. Being a neglected child that I was, my dad wasn't there when I carried her dog's corpse back into our back yard and buried it. I remembered praying over the dog before putting it in a box, that's when things got too real. I didn't remember what prayer I said, all I could think about was why did a six year-old know how to say an ancient Greek prayer.

It was my first experience of using my powers of Necromancy, the first thing I brought back from the dead was my German Sheppard, snowflake. That kind of magic took a toll on me as a kid I was in bed for days with a fever. When I ran away from home, I knew I couldn't drag snowflake around with me in the busy streets of Spain so I listed him to the K9 unit at the local police station. It broke my heart to leave him, but I knew it was the right choice. A few weeks after giving snowflake up to the police, Chiron found me doing magic on the street.

He knew instantly that I was a demigod; he knew that I was Hecate's daughter. At first, I pretended not to know a single word of English and I instead spoke to Chiron in Spanish to dissuade him. But then he spoke in Greek, that's when I knew he was different.

"There you are!" A familiar voice called out to me.

Leo's voice snapped me back into reality; I opened my eyes and saw that I was sitting on the front steps of cabin 20. I looked up and saw him, tanned skin and curly hair, Leo. He sat down next to me, our knees bumping into each other, "You missed dinner."

"I didn't realize I was in there for so long," I said, motioning to the inside of my cabin, "Lou Ellen and I had a lot to talk about." Cabin 20 does make you feel like you spent 10 minutes inside when really 3 hours have passed and you've already missed dinner. Leo took out a sandwich wrapped in foil from his jacket pocket and gave it to me, "Chicken barbeque, your favourite." This idiot really does know me.

Leo told me about his day in cabin 9, how he now has the bed of a dead half-brother who died in war, how there's a bronze dragon on the loose within the camp, and how every child of Hephaestus is under a curse that makes all of their projects turn to junk. I devoured the sandwich in four bites, it was a good sandwich. I forgot how good the food in camp was. "You're under a curse, I'm under a curse...Huh, what're the odds, right?"

"Speaking of curses," Leo said, his eyebrow rose, "I'm still foggy on the whole Hera erased your memories, go to Camp Half-Blood, and they can help you break the curse thing." So, I told him. I told him how Hera messed my memories up and how little by little they are coming back. Leo was surprisingly cool with my curse, he was interested even.

"You're a kid of Hecate, right? So that means you can talk to ghosts or something like that."

"Yeah, something like that." I noticed he looked pale at the mention of that, something was wrong, "Is this about that old woman you said you saw earlier? Do you know her?" He sighed heavily, his hands turning to fists, "Do you remember that night we talked for hours? I told you about my babysitter, Tia Callida?" Tia Callida was an old woman who took care of Leo as a baby, she was awful. She did the exact opposite of her job which meant she was practically killing him instead of taking care of him.

"You saw her? Here in camp?" I asked looking around the grounds. He nodded and then shook his head no, "I'm not really sure. She looked like a ghost, Angela."

"I hope she does look like a ghost, she should be dead by now – "

"I know – "

"You want me to find out about Tia Callida?" Leo looked at me, his brown eyes glassy "Only if you want to." I nodded, already excited to do practice Necromancy, "I'll try to find her." After I took him on a small tour of my cabin, we headed for the campfire. Knowing how Leo's mom died, I wasn't sure what to make of him when we got there.