Daimon

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The elderly Hematoi Minister facing me looked like she had just crawled out of the tomb she’d been stored in for a couple hundred years.

Her skin was wrinkled and thin, like old parchment, and each breath she took I swore would be her last. I hadn’t ever seen anyone that old, but of course I’d only been seven and even the pizza guy had seemed ancient to me.

The crowd murmured its disapproval behind me; I’d forgotten that simple half-bloods like me weren’t supposed to look a Minister in the eye. Being the pure-blood spawn of demigods, the Hematoi had huge egos.

I looked at my mother, who stood beside me on the raised dais. She was one of the Hematoi, but she wasn’t anything like them. Her green eyes flashed a pleading look to cooperate, to not be the incorrigible and disobedient little girl she knew I could be.

I didn’t know why she was so frightened; I was the one facing the crypt keeper. And if I survived this poor excuse for tradition without ending up carrying this hag’s bedpan for the rest of my life, it would be a miracle worthy of the gods that supposedly were watching over all of us.

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