The Gryphon Project Read Online Free Page B

all.”
    Tariq glanced at her and shrugged, settling himself in one of the big easy chairs and surfing the music channels. Phee watched him. There’d been a small smile, hadn’t there? When he shrugged?
    PHOENIX REMEMBERED the time before Gryph was famous. Back then he changed with everyone else, in the sweat-stinkdampness of the shared locker rooms. Now, his agent wouldn’t sign him to a race or competition or commercial unless he was guaranteed his own private dressing room, stocked just so, with bowls of chocolate-covered almonds and a fridge full of mango juice and vitamin water. Gryph used to say that he felt weird about it at first, but really, who would turn down the warm, well-stocked comfort of this in favour of the cold, clammy stench of a communal change room? And besides, this way he could have his friends with him, whereas before they’d had to wait for him outside with everyone else.
    The whisky episode over, Phoenix flopped down on the white leather couch beside Saul. Nadia was perched on his knee, leaning forward, her hands gripping a mug of hot chocolate.
    “Saul?” Phoenix raised her eyebrows.
    Saul was staring at the band of skin above Nadia’s pants and below her top, or more specifically at the thin stretch of pink thong pulling against her dark, olive skin. He placed a finger on her spine and started tracing down.
    “Saul!” Phoenix punched his shoulder.
    Saul let his hand drop. “What?”
    “Get a room, or get a grip. God.”
    “I almost spilled this all over my jacket!” Nadia licked a splash of hot chocolate off the back of her hand and twisted to glare at Phoenix. “Do you even know what this jacket cost? It’s real fur around the collar, you know.”
    Gryph emerged from the bedroom, fresh from the shower, dressed in a pair of track pants, barefoot and bare-chested. He pulled his hair, dark and past his shoulders—much to Chrysalis’s dismay—into a ponytail. He looked like a muscular rock star, with his gryphon tattoo along one forearm (their mother had been livid) and his nipple ring (even more livid) and his chiselled six-pack that had a legion of teenage girls wishing they could cop a feel. Phoenix looked at him and then quickly away, grimacing at the thought of how many girls wished they were in this room rightnow, within arm’s reach of that famous six-pack. Never mind his fans, Phoenix could probably name a hundred girls just from school who would die to be in his company. But Gryph wasn’t one for girlfriends. He went through girls as fast as he could down a meal, and bugged Saul for being with Nadia for almost two years. He called them Mr. and Mrs., while the girls lined up to hang off Gryph’s arm, even if only for five minutes.
    Gryph pulled on a T-shirt just as the door flung open and his and Phoenix’s little sister hurled herself onto his back.
    “Some kids from my class want to meet you. They’re outside waiting. Come on!”
    “Your wish is my command, Princess Fawn.” Gryph slid his feet into a pair of flip-flops and piggybacked her to the door, where their parents stood just inside the room, looking as if they were just about to leave.
    “You were amazing, hon.” Eva tiptoed to kiss her tall son on the cheek. “Even if it looked as if you gave that other kid first place like some kind of present.”
    “There’s my boy!” Oscar grabbed Gryph’s hand and pulled him into a hug. “We’re so proud of you, son. Good race. Good race. What happened at the end there? Looked as though you got distracted.”
    “He was just faster than me today, I guess.” Gryph shrugged. “I’ll get him next time.”
    “Not a doubt in my mind, son.”
    “Thanks, Dad.”
    Oscar nodded at the rest of them in the room. “How about a—”
    “No!” they all said in unison, except the agent’s assistant, who was newly back at work after being reconned from a fall while on vacation in Mexico. There was some talk about just how she’d fallen from a six-storey hotel balcony,