The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 26: Like Tea

It now felt like days were passing instead of hours.

Ares followed Emery and Wes around for the rest of the day, asking them questions about their professors, the curriculum, what the campus looked like in the spring, and even how well the air conditioning worked when it got hot in the summer. Though he ate almost nothing, he'd seemed to come to a conclusion about the food quality himself ("excellent!"), and stopped random students and staff passing by to ask how they liked living there.

The hairs on Emery's neck stood on end the entire time, the need to check over her shoulder so fierce it felt like her insides were on fire. It was only the outpouring of Dream pressure from Ares, not a result of any nightmare—or doppelgänger—coming closer to her, but rationality couldn't pierce the paranoia. It didn't help that she'd lost her edge around Ares. Anything smart or sarcastic she could've said died inside her with the worry that he'd glean some hidden information in it. He was a trained spy and interrogator. He could probably get information from anything she said. Hypnos's balls, he could probably get information from anything she didn't say.

Wes didn't seem as perturbed, but then Wes never seemed perturbed. She couldn't talk to him with Ares around, so she couldn't ask what else he knew about his uncle that she didn't. He must have known Ares worked in Argos, and that was why he hadn't been thrilled to see Ares in Grandpa Al's office. But if he had known, why hadn't he said anything while they were fixing Ares's room? Or on their way to weapons training? Did he think she wouldn't give anything away without knowing where Ares was from?

Ares finally left them after dinner—he wanted to supervise some of the student hunter missions, and Wes and Emery weren't allowed off-campus—and the first thing Emery did while they still sat at their table was pull out her phone and scroll through the texts from Joel and Jacqueline that she'd been ignoring all day.

From Jacqueline: What's taking so long? I thought there was a rush on this thing—let's go!

From Joel: operation gateway to heaven is a go, meet in kirk lobby

"Joel found a place we can practice," Emery said. "We have to meet up in Kirkland."

"Tonight?"

"If Ares is going to watch students on missions every night, when else would be a good time?"

"What if the mission ends early and he comes back?"

"Then we stop and take care of it." Emery put her phone down. "Did you know that he was with Argos?"

"I—yeah, I knew, but I—I didn't know if he was here for that or if he was really just here for the review."

"Even if he was just here for the review, you didn't think it would be prudent to tell me your uncle was a spy? And that he might, I don't know, pick up on something? You cannot get on me for thinking my grandpa's gonna be cool with knowing about my doppelgänger when you do stuff like this."

Wes held his hands up and lowered his voice. "I get it. I'm sorry, you're right."

Emery narrowed her eyes at him until she felt he'd appropriately submitted. "Is there anything else I need to know about him?"

"He's a huge softie."

"Yeah, I got that."

"He knows how to torture people."

"Got that too."

"If he's here for Klaus, we might be shorter on time than we thought."

"Then we need to go right now and find Jacqueline and the others."