Hey guys! Welcome back to storytime with Sweet.

Ok, so if you haven't read pat 1 to this, which is Heroes of Voltron, I recommend that you do, because otherwise this could get confusing.

Also, if you found any of the story with Teresa confusing, I am so sorry! I literally just realized that I kinda suck at explaining things, so just let me know you're confused and I will try to clarify things (or, at the very least, make things less confusing.)

Alright, enough chit-chat. I ended HoV with a cliffhanger, might as well fix that, right?

This stakeout mission had lasted-what? 3 days now? Nico was getting bored and restless, which is really NOT a good thing if you're a demigod.

What's worse is that he was stuck here with Leo Valdez, Keith Kogane, and a dude named Shiro.

Yep, he was hiding his full name.

Nico still couldn't bring himself to tell Leo. If he knew, who knew what would happen? How many fires would they have to put out?

But, as much as he wanted to, he couldn't keep it a secret forever. Leo was already starting to get on his nerves about being here.

"Hey, Leo," he found himself calling. Instead of getting just Leo's attention, however, he got the other's attention as well.

Go figure.

"What is it, Nico?" Leo asked.

Nico would kill anyone and everyone who found out he thought this, but Nico did find Leo kind of hot. No pun intended, but he had Will, and Leo had Calypso.

"It-it's about Teresa..."

Leo was instantly on guard. Nico could see Keith stiffen up slightly as well.

"Leo... Teresa... she..."

Why was it so hard to talk all of the sudden?

Now or never idiot, a tiny voice inside of him said. Nico steeled himself.

"LeoTeresaconvincedyouraunttogiveyouuptochildservices," said Nico. His face turned red when he realized that he had sputtered it all out in one large breath. How did he relaize this? Everyone's confused faces.

"Nico, calm down," said Leo in a placating voice. "Now, repeat what you said."

Why, oh WHY did everyone have to be watching? Not just for Nico's sake-gods, this was embarrassing-but for Leo's as well. This was personal.

"Leo, Teresa... well, she was the one to convince your aunt to give you to child services," said Nico. He thought he had messed that up again, since everyone was still giving him funny looks, but one glance at Leo, and Nico figured it out.

In his nervousness, he had said it all in ancient Greek. Oh, well. At least Nico had kept it personal for Leo.

"How?" Leo asked, still in ancient Greek. Nico was surprised at how calmly Leo was handling this information and plowed through with the explanation.

"She's actually a demigod. A Roman one," Nico explained, consciously keeping the conversation in ancient Greek. What? Leo could tell everyone his own secrets!

"During the second Titan War, Teresa allied herself with Kronos. Apparently, she never made it to Camp Jupiter, and maybe she might just be a descendant of some Roman god. Whatever that is, she was on team Kronos, and she spent years collecting demigods.

"She must have found out about you, somehow, and used the Mist to convince your aunt to give you away. Once she got her hands on you, it was only a matter of time before she killed you."

Most of Teresa's plan still didn't even make sense to Nico himself. How did she find out about Leo? Why did she never make it to either camp? How exactly did she control Leo's aunt? There were a lot more questions that Nico wanted the answers to, but he didn't have any of them.

"My aunt was never the nicest person, though," said Leo. Nico wanted to comfort him, but thanks to his dad's own social skills, Nico had no idea what to do.

Before he could say anything, Keith's communicator went off, signaling 12:00.

Nico cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Right, so..."

Nico turned his attention back to the house where, the same as every day they've been here, Teresa left the house to go buy some mystery groceries. Leo and Keith refused to tell them what she bought, but they did mention that she was always gone for exactly 15 minutes.

"Alright team, let's go," Shiro said. They all followed him inside the house, which was incredibly easy to break into, by the way. It was almost like she didn't lock the doors or something.

"When she's gone, she keeps all the kids locked in the basement," Leo said.

"So kind of you to stop by," said a voice from behind them. They all jumped in surprise to see Teresa standing there in the doorway, a guilty-looking child by her feet.

"Dismissed," she hissed. The terrified child bolted up the steps, taking them two at a time. Nico turned his attention back to Teresa, who actually (without the ice in her eyes, that is) looked like a very pleasant woman. She was a brunette (um... she has brown hair) and she had green eyes. Really, she could pass off as more of a Gaea than Gaea could. In fact, this woman looked like a goddess.

"Leo, Keith, so lovely to see you again!" she said, her eyes still cold as ice.

Leo and Keith both looked like deer caught in headlights. Leo was trembling, as if he wanted to run for it.

"Hello Teresa," he said, once again surprising Nico with how calm his voice was. Teresa's smile grew, and Nico could feel goosebumps crawling around on his skin.

"Won't you sit?" she asked, voice dripping with false kindness. She sat on a recliner and gestured towards the couch.

"I would rather stand," Leo answered. His voice was as cold as her eyes.

"Now, now. That's no way to speak to your mother," she said. Leo tensed.

"You aren't my mother," said Leo, voice hard as a rock.

"That was hurtful, dear," said Teresa, unfazed by Leo's tone. "Whatever makes you say that?"

"The fact that mothers aren't stuck up bitches," Leo said. Nico resisted the urge to laugh and yell burn!

Teresa's smile faded, and Nico could hear soft laughter coming from upstairs. Nico allowed himself to smirk.

This just ticked Teresa off more. Nico smiled, and he allowed himself to laugh. Shiro and Keith must have noticed Teresa's reaction to Nico's good mood, because then they started laughing too.

"Silence!" Teresa barked, and Nico found himself obeying. Wow, ok. This woman could be mean when she wanted to.

Sure, he had heard that Teresa was Leo's abusive foster mother, but Nico had underestimated just how bad she truly was. The smile was back on her face, and Nico could tell she had something sinister planned.

"So," she purred, "That's the game you want to play, eh? Well then, maybe I should give you what you want."

She stood up from the couch and walked over to a door in the stairwell. Teresa pulled a key out of her pocket and unlocked the door, opening it wide enough for Nico to see stairs leading downward; the basement.

Nico vaguely remembered the laughter he heard coming from upstairs.

"They're all right down there," said Teresa, gesturing to the stairs. She started heading down, and Nico figured that if this was some sort of trap, she would be trying to head in last.

Besides, he definitely could sense something down there. He glanced at the others, silently asking them what they wanted to do, and they all followed her down the stairs.

It seemed to go on forever, but finally, they reached the bottom. Nico looked around, but it was too dark to see anything. Leo and Keith were looking around frantically, as if remembering their time in here.

They seemed... very disturbed by what they remembered. Nico turned toward Teresa, but she was nowhere to be seen.

He turned toward the stairs, but they had disappeared as well. Or maybe he was looking in the wrong spot.

It was no use. It was too dark down there to see anything.

"Leo, could you shin some light for us?" Nico asked. He turned to where he had last seen Leo, but it was no use trying to see anything at all. It was so dark down here, that Nico couldn't see his own arm.

Then again, he wore black shirts.

But then again, they were always short-sleeved black shirts.

"Leo?"

He wasn't answering. Great, just what Nico needed. What if he had disappeared, too?

"No worries, I got it," said Shiro, who was on Nico's right. Shiro's arm lit up, and finally Nico could see.

"Thanks," Nico said.

"It was all a trick, wasn't it?" Shiro asked. Nico nodded.

"Yeah. I just can't believe we fell for it," Nico agreed.

"Well, did you hear her voice? Something about it..." Shiro muttered. Nico felt like someone had slapped him.

"That's it!" he exclaimed suddenly. Shiro looked at him, and confused expression on his face.

"What's it?" he asked.

"She can control the Mist. Maybe, just maybe, she can also charmspeak! The only question is, how? You can either be born with that knowledge, or you can learn it through Circe..."

Nico stopped talking by that point. He remembered how Reyna used to work for Circe, who would teach her most devoted followers how to do those things. Reyna and Hylla were able to tell when someone was charmspeaking, at the least. Was it possible that Teresa had worked for Circe once upon a time?

"I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm not hearing Keith and Leo," said Shiro. Nico felt slapped again. He had gotten so caught up in his thoughts, that he completely forgot about the situation they were in.

"This can't be a very big basement," Shiro said.

"We should be able to wander around and hopefully stumble into them," he continued.

"Or," said Nico," I could do this."

He reached out with his senses, trying to find anyone. He started with him and Shiro, then reached out a little further. Finally, he found Keith and Leo, huddled together inside a very tiny room. How they managed to find it, and why they huddled there together, were beyond Nico.

"I found them. They're this-"

Nico felt a sudden sense of cold wash over him, and he fell to his knees. He was so cold, his teeth started chattering.

"Nico? Are you alright?" Shiro asked, bending down to help him up. Nico looked up at his face and yelped, jumping back in surprise.

"What is it?" Shiro asked.

"You-you look-"

You know those really colorful skulls that you see on the Day of the Dead? If you don't, feel free to look it up. That's basically what Shiro looked like.

There was also something else about Shiro-as it he wasn't really there. His skin was tinted purple, his hair white, and his eyes yellow. There were red marks on his face, but Nico didn't think much of it, since it was gone in an instant, replaced once again by the skull.

"N-nothing," Nico stammered once his heart rate was back to normal. He still felt really cold though, as if he was swimming in ice water with no clothes on.

He stood up, teeth chattering, and they made their way over to Keith and Leo.

"Guys, what's going on?" Shiro asked when they approached the two. Keith and Leo looked up, and Nico's heart raced again when he saw that they looked like skulls, too.

Shiro jumped back in surprise this time, but Leo and Keith didn't seem to be shocked by Shiro's appearance.

"Sorry, we just..." Leo broke off.

"Panicked," Keith finished. He looked Nico up and down.

"You don't look like a skull," he noted.

"But you do look like you're freezing," Leo said. Shiro put his arm around Nico, who didn't shy away. Instead, he leaned into the touch, soaking up the warmth.

"You're as cold as ice," said Shiro.

"Hang on, I'll get a fire started," offered Leo. He looked around, and occasionally he would bend down and pick something up. He set fire to his hand, and Nico realized just how ghostly everyone looked. They could have been in the underworld.

"Here," Leo said. He had found a bunch of papers to burn, and Nico sat down by the fire, absorbing the heat.

"Thanks," he croaked. His teeth were still chattering, though.

The other three snuggled against him, Leo right in front of him. Nico felt uncomfortable, but after a while, he noticed just how much he really needed this.

After a while, Nico didn't feel physically cold anymore. It felt like the cold was emanating from his bones, spreading throughout his whole body, and turning his skin blue. Literally.

No, seriously, his skin was turning blue. Nico looked down and saw his fingers had taken on an icy blue color.

"That can't be good," Leo muttered.

And that's a wrap!

Stay posted peeps. And don't ask questions about why Nico got cold, why his skin was blue, etc. I'll explain it later. And again, if you don't know what those Day of the Dead skulls look like, feel free to look it up. I had to, just to make sure I was talking about the right thing.

Yours in demigodishness and all that, vrepit sa my Holy Chalupas!

-Sweet