My Life From Hell Read Online Free PDF

warehouses were now closed for the night. Alone out here, my imagination zoomed into nightmare overdrive. Fog seemed to press in on me, held at bay only by a couple of not-bright-enough-for-my-liking street lamps.
    Although my hands shook like mini-earthquakes, I managed to unbolt the locks on the building’s front door and hurry inside. I slammed the door behind me, slumping back against it in relief. Adrenaline still flooded my system. My chest heaved, and I stuffed my hands into my armpits to quell the trembling.
    Goosebumps covered my entire body even though the building temperature was warm. It wasn’t so much hearing the “instrument of our destruction” chant that was getting to me right now. My friend Cassie, who was a descendent of the original Oracle Cassandra had prophesied that months ago.
    I’d chosen to ignore the prophecy. Since they were not guarantees and my alternative was to give up before I’d begun, it had seemed like the right decision. Plus, all the gods I’d met believed Kai and I were the ones who could take on Zeus and Hades, and have a chance of winning.
    But after that vision?
    I’d just been faced with, at the very least, my own death. More likely, I’d been stranded out there with a pretty solid confirmation that everyone else was also going to die, without me knowing how to stop it. Maybe I was naive or just plain stupid but, until now, I had firmly believed that Kai and I would win. That Hades and Zeus would be defeated, taking Demeter along with them, and leaving humans—me included—to live out long, happy, lives.
    A sharp splinter of doom lodged itself in my heart. No matter how I looked at things, I couldn’t see a happily-ever-after in all this.
    I. Was. Freaked.
    I got myself under control as best I could. Got ready to face Theo and Festos. I opened the bronze gate that served as a door for the old cage elevator, squeezed myself in, and pressed four.
    The elevator began its slow, grinding ascent with a hum, bumping to a none-too-gentle stop when it reached its destination on the top floor.
    Festos had the only apartment on the fourth. In fact, he had the only apartment in the building, keeping the rest of it, which he owned, empty of other tenants—supposedly for safety’s sake in the event of unwelcome beings. But I figured it was just an excuse since he tended to irritate easily. Also he wanted as much room as possible to spread out his various metalworking and technological experiments.
    I creaked the cage open, stepped out into a small concrete foyer, and opened the door to Festos’ place. My home sweet home these days. Much as I’d complained about being shipped off to Hope Park as a child, I couldn’t believe how much I missed the place now. Even going to class. I’d been keeping up my coursework through online correspondence but that meant me being 100% self-motivated. And I’d learned I was more the “have teachers ride my butt with deadlines” kind of student.
    Also, it was sort of hard to care about high school classes when the fate of the world was on the line.
    My body drooped in listless sorrow thinking about how I’d kill to be getting ready for bed check with Hannah and not running back like a scared puppy after I’d experienced a crazy, scalding vision of the end of the world.
    Nothing I could do about it. It was what it was. And I was grateful to Festos for taking me in. He was loyal as they came, once you proved yourself. I had, back on a mission to stop Hermes, now a multi-media mogul, from making Bethany famous. Being the best friend of the god he’d been in love with for ages hadn’t hurt either.
    I saw just how much Festos loved Theo as I slipped through the apartment door and found Fee washing windows. Festos had a lot of areas of expertise as a god. Housekeeping was not one of them. He’d actually had a cleaning service until about a month ago, when Theo had turned the living room into our war council. Since humans couldn’t be made aware