They’re right. I know they’re right, but I don’t want them to be. I don’t have a hero complex or anything. I don’t want to be the savior who single-handedly fixes everything. Okay, I do, but that’s not all of it. Other people—other people’s emotions—complicate things. I don’t want them risking everything for my mistake. This is my make good.

Still, as much as I want to argue, I know they make a valid point. My parents only got banished from the mythological world. I can still talk to them on the phone, video chat with them on Skype. As soon as I graduate, I’ll be able to see them in real life.

Griffin’s parents got smoted. As in vanished off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again.

He definitely has the greater stake in the time-travel quest. Just because I want to save the day, single-handedly fix everything with no risk to anyone else I care about, doesn’t mean that’s the right way to approach this. Considering how impossible task two is being, I clearly need the help.

I run my hands through my short hair, trying to smooth out my emotions.

“Okay,” I say. “What’s your idea? How do I get to Poseidon’s palace?”

Everyone in the room relaxes.

Griffin smiles. “It just so happens, I know a sea nymph who owes me a favor.”

Great. A sea nymph. They have a history of being . . . temperamental. This is going to be a treat.

The next morning at dawn we meet on the beach. As the sky in front of us melts from flaming orange into brilliant blue, we wait for Griffin’s sea-nymph friend to arrive.

“I’ve never met a sea nymph,” Phoebe says, her voice full of excitement.

“Me neither,” I reply.

Troy adds, “They’re not exactly common on land.”

“How do you know her?” Phoebe asks her boyfriend.

His cheeks turn bright red. “I, um . . .” He glances nervously at me, as if I can help him out here. When I shrug, he says, “When I was fifteen, she saw me on a yacht off the coast of Italy.”

Phoebe’s brows scrunch up. “And . . . ?”

Griffin huffs out a breath. “And she pulled me overboard.”

“She what?” Phoebe gasps.

“She wasn’t trying to kill me,” he insists. “She . . . wanted to keep me.”

Phoebe fumes.

Troy stifles a laugh.

“Obviously she didn’t,” I say, not hiding my smile. “Why does she owe you a favor?”

“It was a big misunderstanding.” He toes his sneaker into the sand. “Everyone thought I’d drowned. There was a huge search party. In the end I had to say I was hiding, in order to keep the media from finding out the truth.”

“You covered for her,” I say.