Stormbreacher - Book 1 of Titanomachy Series

Chapter 2: Can't Live With 'Em

I'll tell ya: driving through Veridian is horrible. Even when you have a native with as good navigation skills as Mom did, there wasn't a single part of the city that wasn't flooded with cars, no matter how early or how late into the night it was. And knowing your routes did almost nothing to help—one minute, the roads you needed to take were clear as a whistle, and then the next, the car's navigator would scream at you that they were completely blocked up. Cities in general are like that, but Veridian in particular is simply awful.

I had already gone through my rock music playlist by the time we got ThreeBees for Persephone. It's a pretty long playlist. Persephone was freaking delighted that she could finally hold greasy chicken nuggets in her grubby hands, and was bouncing all over the place and squealing delightedly until Mom finally told her to tone it down.

"Persephone, what do you say when people do something nice for you?" Mom asked.

"Thank you, Mommy." Persephone said half-heartedly. I groaned and loudly slurped on my medium-sized Coke, the only halfway decent thing on the menu. Mom coldly turned her gaze on me as she heard my very obnoxious guzzling, and I reluctantly shut up. "Do you do that intentionally?" She asked.

"No." I lifted my brow. "And what do you care if I do or not?"

Mom sighed frustratedly and began to pull the car out of the drive-through onto the busy, dirty street. The skyscrapers I mentioned earlier that Persephone thought were so pretty? They only exist in Veridian's central Skyreacher district, where rich folks had the money to care about their architecture. Everywhere else? Almost everywhere else is shit. If you're lucky, you won't find graffiti or homeless people within your immediate sight. The whole city is an neglected concrete junction of colorless, paint-peeling buildings and shattered glass. A building out here is considered fairly big if it's more than five stories tall.

"Let's get out of here," Mom murmured, turning the car away from the ThreeBees. "'Bout four more miles until we hit our new apartment. Sound good?"

"Sounds absolutely brilliant." I growled sarcastically, lifting the straw to my lips. Mom restrained herself from sighing and directed the car towards a busy four-way intersection. Someone's gonna end up in an accident here, I thought, watching the chaotic blurs of cars as they tried to weave between each other without the comfort of a street light.

"Athena?"

"No." I snapped bluntly. I swear, Persephone was going to be the end of me.

"Hey!" She cried. "You're really mean!"

"And you're insufferable. Get a vocabulary bigger than those four words."

Mom didn't even bother to shut us up. She profusely glared into the intersection, waiting for her opportunity to push past the endless stream of cars.

"Mommy, why is Athena so mean? She wasn't mean before Daddy left."

"Daddy is not a casual conversation subject in our family," Mom grumbled, and she turned her cold gaze on me. "Mostly because your sister is still furious and still venting about whatever-on-earth happened to him."

I snarled under my breath. "He disappeared. Let's not be dodgy about it." I argued.

"Disappearing is a dodgy art, Athena. There isn't much we can do to avoid that."

I winced, and pressed my earbuds tighter into my head. She had a good point.

I began scrolling through the playlist on my tablet, trying to think of a good song to play. I was on the verge of seething; maybe I probably should shut up.

I found Here Comes the Sun and turned it on, listening to a guitar strum in the background. It wasn't quite as hard-hitting as I usually preferred, but frankly, I think I needed something softer to unwind. Seven hours of car-riding will make you really mad.