The Mark of Athena

Also by Rick Riordan

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book One:

The Lightning Th ief Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Two:

The Sea of Monsters Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Three: The Titan’s Curse Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Four: The Battle of the Labyrinth Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Five: The Last Olympian The Kane Chronicles, Book One:

The Red Pyramid The Kane Chronicles, Book Two:

The Th rone of Fire The Kane Chronicles, Book Three:

The Serpent’s Shadow The Heroes of Olympus, Book One:

The Lost Hero The Heroes of Olympus, Book Two:

The Son of Neptune

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Seán Hemingway, curator of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for helping me follow the Mark of Athena to its source.

Copyright © 2012 by Rick Riordan All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

ISBN 978-1-4231-5516-4

Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com

Contents

Also by Rick Riordan

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

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XVII

XVIII

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XXI

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XXVII

XXVIII

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XXX

XXXI

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XXXVII

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XL

XLI

XLII

XLIII

XLIV

XLV

XLVI

XLVII

XLVIII

XLIX

L

LI

LII

Glossary

About the Author

To Speedy

Strays and wanderers are often sent by the gods.

UNTIL SHE MET THE EXPLODING STATUE, Annabeth thought she was prepared for anything.

She’d paced the deck of their flying warship, the Argo II, checking and double-checking the ballistae to make sure they were locked down. She confirmed that the white “We come in peace” flag was flying from the mast. She reviewed the plan with the rest of the crew—and the backup plan, and the backup plan for the backup plan.

Most important, she pulled aside their war-crazed chaperone, Coach Gleeson Hedge, and encouraged him to take the morning off in his cabin and watch reruns of mixed martial arts championships. The last thing they needed as they flew a magical Greek trireme into a potentially hostile Roman camp was a middle-aged satyr in gym clothes waving a club and yelling “Die!”

Everything seemed to be in order. Even that mysterious chill she’d been feeling since the ship launched had dissipated, at least for now.

The warship descended through the clouds, but Annabeth couldn’t stop second-guessing herself. What if this was a bad idea? What if the Romans panicked and attacked them on sight?

The Argo II definitely did not look friendly. Two hundred feet long, with a bronze-plated hull, mounted repeating crossbows fore and aft, a flaming metal dragon for a figurehead, and two rotating ballistae amidships that could fire explosive bolts powerful enough to blast through concrete…well, it wasn’t the most appropriate ride for a meet-and-greet with the neighbors.

Annabeth had tried to give the Romans a heads-up. She’d asked Leo to send one of his special inventions—a holographic scroll—to alert their friends inside the camp. Hopefully the message had gotten through. Leo had wanted to paint a giant message on the bottom of the hull—WASSUP? with a smiley face—but Annabeth vetoed the idea. She wasn’t sure the Romans had a sense of humor.

Too late to turn back now.

The clouds broke around their hull, revealing the gold-and-green carpet of the Oakland Hills below them. Annabeth gripped one of the bronze shields that lined the starboard rail.

Her three crewmates took their places.

On the stern quarterdeck, Leo rushed around like a madman, checking his gauges and wrestling levers. Most helmsmen would’ve been satisfied with a pilot’s wheel or a tiller. Leo had also installed a keyboard, monitor, aviation controls from a Learjet, a dubstep soundboard, and motion-control sensors from a Nintendo Wii. He could turn the ship by pulling on the throttle, fire weapons by sampling an album, or raise sails by shaking his Wii controllers really fast. Even by demigod standards, Leo was seriously ADHD.

Piper paced back and forth between the mainmast and the ballistae, practicing her lines.

“Lower your weapons,” she murmured. “We just want to talk.”

Her charmspeak was so powerful, the words flowed over Annabeth, filling her with the desire to drop her dagger and have a nice long chat.

For a child of Aphrodite, Piper tried hard to play down her beauty. Today she was dressed in tattered jeans, worn-out sneakers, and a white tank top with pink Hello Kitty designs. (Maybe as a joke, though Annabeth could never be sure with Piper.) Her choppy brown hair was braided down the right side with an eagle’s feather.

Then there was Piper’s boyfriend—Jason. He stood at the bow on the raised crossbow platform, where the Romans could easily spot him. His knuckles were white on the hilt of his golden sword. Otherwise he looked calm for a guy who was making himself a target. Over his jeans and orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, he’d donned a toga and a purple cloak—symbols of his old rank as praetor. With his wind-ruffled blond hair and his icy blue eyes, he looked ruggedly handsome and in control—just like a son of Jupiter should. He’d grown up at Camp Jupiter, so hopefully his familiar face would make the Romans hesitant to blow the ship out of the sky.

Annabeth tried to hide it, but she still didn’t completely trust the guy. He acted too perfect—always following the rules, always doing the honorable thing. He even looked too perfect. In the back of her mind, she had a nagging thought: What if this is a trick and he betrays us? What if we sail into Camp Jupiter, and he says, Hey, Romans! Check out these prisoners and this cool ship I brought you!

Annabeth doubted that would happen. Still, she couldn’t look at him without getting a bitter taste in her mouth. He’d been part of Hera’s forced “exchange program” to introduce the two camps. Her Most Annoying Majesty, Queen of Olympus, had convinced the other gods that their two sets of children—Roman and Greek—had to combine forces to save the world from the evil goddess Gaea, who was awakening from the earth, and her horrible children the giants.

Without warning, Hera had plucked up Percy Jackson, Annabeth’s boyfriend, wiped his memory, and sent him to the Roman camp. In exchange, the Greeks had gotten Jason. None of that was Jason’s fault; but every time Annabeth saw him, she remembered how much she missed Percy.

Percy…who was somewhere below them right now.

Oh, gods. Panic welled up inside her. She forced it down. She couldn’t afford to get overwhelmed.

I’m a child of Athena, she told herself. I have to stick to my plan and not get distracted.

She felt it again—that familiar shiver, as if a psychotic snowman had crept up behind her and was breathing down her neck. She turned, but no one was there.

Must be her nerves. Even in a world of gods and monsters, Annabeth couldn’t believe a new warship would be haunted. The Argo II was well protected. The Celestial bronze shields along the rail were enchanted to ward off monsters, and their onboard satyr, Coach Hedge, would have sniffed out any intruders.

Annabeth wished she could pray to her mother for guidance, but that wasn’t possible now. Not after last month, when she’d had that horrible encounter with her mom and gotten the worst present of her life.…

The cold pressed closer. She thought she heard a faint voice in the wind, laughing. Every muscle in her body tensed. Something was about to go terribly wrong.

She almost ordered Leo to reverse course. Then, in the valley below, horns sounded. The Romans had spotted them.

Annabeth thought she knew what to expect. Jason had described Camp Jupiter to her in great detail. Still, she had trouble believing her eyes. Ringed by the Oakland Hills, the valley was at least twice the size of Camp Half-Blood. A small river snaked around one side and curled toward the center like a capital letter G, emptying into a sparkling blue lake.

Directly below the ship, nestled at the edge of the lake, the city of New Rome gleamed in the sunlight. She recognized landmarks Jason had told her about—the hippodrome, the coliseum, the temples and parks, the neighborhood of Seven Hills with its winding streets, colorful villas, and flowering gardens.

She saw evidence of the Romans’ recent battle with an army of monsters. The dome was cracked open on a building she guessed was the Senate House. The forum’s broad plaza was pitted with craters. Some fountains and statues were in ruins.

Dozens of kids in togas were streaming out of the Senate House to get a better view of the Argo II. More Romans emerged from the shops and cafés, gawking and pointing as the ship descended.

About half a mile to the west, where the horns were blowing, a Roman fort stood on a hill. It looked just like the illustrations Annabeth had seen in military history books—with a defensive trench lined with spikes, high walls, and watchtowers armed with scorpion ballistae. Inside, perfect rows of white barracks lined the main road—the Via Principalis.

A column of demigods emerged from the gates, their armor and spears glinting as they hurried toward the city. In the midst of their ranks was an actual war elephant.

Annabeth wanted to land the Argo II before those troops arrived, but the ground was still several hundred feet below. She scanned the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of Percy.

Then something behind her went BOOM!

The explosion almost knocked her overboard. She whirled and found herself eye to eye with an angry statue.

“Unacceptable!” he shrieked.

Apparently he had exploded into existence, right there on the deck. Sulfurous yellow smoke rolled off his shoulders. Cinders popped around his curly hair. From the waist down, he was nothing but a square marble pedestal. From the waist up, he was a muscular human figure in a carved toga.

“I will not have weapons inside the Pomerian Line!” he announced in a fussy teacher voice. “I certainly will not have Greeks!”

Jason shot Annabeth a look that said, I’ve got this.

“Terminus,” he said. “It’s me. Jason Grace.”

“Oh, I remember you, Jason!” Terminus grumbled. “I thought you had better sense than to consort with the enemies of Rome!”

“But they’re not enemies—”

“That’s right,” Piper jumped in. “We just want to talk. If we could—”

“Ha!” snapped the statue. “Don’t try that charmspeak on me, young lady. And put down that dagger before I slap it out of your hands!”

Piper glanced at her bronze dagger, which she’d apparently forgotten she was holding. “Um…okay. But how would you slap it? You don’t have any arms.”

“Impertinence!” There was a sharp POP and a flash of yellow. Piper yelped and dropped the dagger, which was now smoking and sparking.

“Lucky for you I’ve just been through a battle,” Terminus announced. “If I were at full strength, I would’ve blasted this flying monstrosity out of the sky already!”

“Hold up.” Leo stepped forward, wagging his Wii controller. “Did you just call my ship a monstrosity? I know you didn’t do that.”

The idea that Leo might attack the statue with his gaming device was enough to snap Annabeth out of her shock.

“Let’s all calm down.” She raised her hands to show she had no weapons. “I take it you’re Terminus, the god of boundaries. Jason told me you protect the city of New Rome, right? I’m Annabeth Chase, daughter of—”

“Oh, I know who you are!” The statue glared at her with its blank white eyes. “A child of Athena, Minerva’s Greek form. Scandalous! You Greeks have no sense of decency. We Romans know the proper place for that goddess.”

Annabeth clenched her jaw. This statue wasn’t making it easy to be diplomatic. “What exactly do you mean, that goddess? And what’s so scandalous about—”

“Right!” Jason interrupted. “Anyway, Terminus, we’re here on a mission of peace. We’d love permission to land so we can—”

“Impossible!” the god squeaked. “Lay down your weapons and surrender! Leave my city immediately!”

“Which is it?” Leo asked. “Surrender, or leave?”

“Both!” Terminus said. “Surrender, then leave. I am slapping your face for asking such a stupid question, you ridiculous boy! Do you feel that?”

“Wow.” Leo studied Terminus with professional interest. “You’re wound up pretty tight. You got any gears in there that need loosening? I could take a look.”

He exchanged the Wii controller for a screwdriver from his magic tool belt and tapped the statue’s pedestal.

“Stop that!” Terminus insisted. Another small explosion made Leo drop his screwdriver. “Weapons are not allowed on Roman soil inside the Pomerian Line.”

“The what?” Piper asked.

“City limits,” Jason translated.

“And this entire ship is a weapon!” Terminus said. “You cannot land!”

Down in the valley, the legion reinforcements were halfway to the city. The crowd in the forum was over a hundred strong now. Annabeth scanned the faces and…oh, gods. She saw him. He was walking toward the ship with his arms around two other kids like they were best buddies—a stout boy with a black buzz cut, and a girl wearing a Roman cavalry helmet. Percy looked so at ease, so happy. He wore a purple cape just like Jason’s—the mark of a praetor.

Annabeth’s heart did a gymnastics routine.

“Leo, stop the ship,” she ordered.

“What?”

“You heard me. Keep us right where we are.”

Leo pulled out his controller and yanked it upward. All ninety oars froze in place. The ship stopped sinking.

“Terminus,” Annabeth said, “there’s no rule against hovering over New Rome, is there?”

The statue frowned. “Well, no…”

“We can keep the ship aloft,” Annabeth said. “We’ll use a rope ladder to reach the forum. That way, the ship won’t be on Roman soil. Not technically.”

The statue seemed to ponder this. Annabeth wondered if he was scratching his chin with imaginary hands.

“I like technicalities,” he admitted. “Still…”

“All our weapons will stay aboard the ship,” Annabeth promised. “I assume the Romans—even those reinforcements marching toward us—will also have to honor your rules inside the Pomerian Line if you tell them to?”

“Of course!” Terminus said. “Do I look like I tolerate rule breakers?”

“Uh, Annabeth…” Leo said. “You sure this is a good idea?”

She closed her fists to keep them from shaking. That cold feeling was still there. It floated just behind her, and now that Terminus was no longer shouting and causing explosions, she thought she could hear the presence laughing, as if it was delighted by the bad choices she was making.

But Percy was down there…he was so close. She had to reach him.

“It’ll be fine,” she said. “No one will be armed. We can talk in peace. Terminus will make sure each side obeys the rules.” She looked at the marble statue. “Do we have an agreement?”

Terminus sniffed. “I suppose. For now. You may climb down your ladder to New Rome, daughter of Athena. Please try not to destroy my town.”

A SEA OF HASTILY ASSEMBLED demigods parted for Annabeth as she walked through the forum. Some looked tense, some nervous. Some were bandaged from their recent battle with the giants, but no one was armed. No one attacked.

Entire families had gathered to see the newcomers. Annabeth saw couples with babies, toddlers clinging to their parents’ legs, even some elderly folks in a combination of Roman robes and modern clothes. Were all of them demigods? Annabeth suspected so, though she’d never seen a place like this. At Camp Half-Blood, most demigods were teens. If they survived long enough to graduate from high school, they either stayed on as counselors or left to start lives as best they could in the mortal world. Here, it was an entire multigenerational community.

At the far end of the crowd, Annabeth spotted Tyson the Cyclops and Percy’s hellhound, Mrs. O’Leary—who had been the first scouting party from Camp Half-Blood to reach Camp Jupiter. They looked to be in good spirits. Tyson waved and grinned. He was wearing an SPQR banner like a giant bib.

Some part of Annabeth’s mind registered how beautiful the city was—the smells from the bakeries, the gurgling fountains, the flowers blooming in the gardens. And the architecture…gods, the architecture—gilded marble columns, dazzling mosaics, monumental arches, and terraced villas.

In front of her, the demigods made way for a girl in full Roman armor and a purple cape. Dark hair tumbled across her shoulders. Her eyes were as black as obsidian.

Reyna.

Jason had described her well. Even without that, Annabeth would have singled her out as the leader. Medals decorated her armor. She carried herself with such confidence the other demigods backed away and averted their gaze.

Annabeth recognized something else in her face, too—in the hard set of her mouth and the deliberate way she raised her chin like she was ready to accept any challenge. Reyna was forcing a look of courage, while holding back a mixture of hopefulness and worry and fear that she couldn’t show in public.

Annabeth knew that expression. She saw it every time she looked in a mirror.

The two girls considered each other. Annabeth’s friends fanned out on either side. The Romans murmured Jason’s name, staring at him in awe.

Then someone else appeared from the crowd, and Annabeth’s vision tunneled.

Percy smiled at her—that sarcastic, troublemaker smile that had annoyed her for years but eventually had become endearing. His sea-green eyes were as gorgeous as she remembered. His dark hair was swept to one side, like he’d just come from a walk on the beach. He looked even better than he had six months ago—tanner and taller, leaner and more muscular.

Annabeth was too stunned to move. She felt that if she got any closer to him, all the molecules in her body might combust. She’d secretly had a crush on him since they were twelve years old. Last summer, she’d fallen for him hard. They’d been a happy couple for four months—and then he’d disappeared.

During their separation, something had happened to Annabeth’s feelings. They’d grown painfully intense—like she’d been forced to withdraw from a life-saving medication. Now she wasn’t sure which was more excruciating—living with that horrible absence, or being with him again.

The praetor Reyna straightened. With apparent reluctance, she turned toward Jason.

“Jason Grace, my former colleague…” She spoke the word colleague like it was a dangerous thing. “I welcome you home. And these, your friends—”

Annabeth didn’t mean to, but she surged forward. Percy rushed toward her at the same time. The crowd tensed. Some reached for swords that weren’t there.

Percy threw his arms around her. They kissed, and for a moment nothing else mattered. An asteroid could have hit the planet and wiped out all life, and Annabeth wouldn’t have cared.

Percy smelled of ocean air. His lips were salty.

Seaweed Brain, she thought giddily.

Percy pulled away and studied her face. “Gods, I never thought—”

Annabeth grabbed his wrist and flipped him over her shoulder. He slammed into the stone pavement. Romans cried out. Some surged forward, but Reyna shouted, “Hold! Stand down!”

Annabeth put her knee on Percy’s chest. She pushed her forearm against his throat. She didn’t care what the Romans thought. A white-hot lump of anger expanded in her chest—a tumor of worry and bitterness that she’d been carrying around since last autumn.

“If you ever leave me again,” she said, her eyes stinging, “I swear to all the gods—”

Percy had the nerve to laugh. Suddenly the lump of heated emotions melted inside Annabeth.

“Consider me warned,” Percy said. “I missed you, too.”

Annabeth rose and helped him to his feet. She wanted to kiss him again so badly, but she managed to restrain herself.

Jason cleared his throat. “So, yeah.…It’s good to be back.”

He introduced Reyna to Piper, who looked a little miffed that she hadn’t gotten to say the lines she’d been practicing, then to Leo, who grinned and flashed a peace sign.

“And this is Annabeth,” Jason said. “Uh, normally she doesn’t judo-flip people.”

Reyna’s eyes sparkled. “You sure you’re not a Roman, Annabeth? Or an Amazon?”

Annabeth didn’t know if that was a compliment, but she held out her hand. “I only attack my boyfriend like that,” she promised. “Pleased to meet you.”

Reyna clasped her hand firmly. “It seems we have a lot to discuss. Centurions!”

A few of the Roman campers hustled forward—apparently the senior officers. Two kids appeared at Percy’s side, the same ones Annabeth had seen him chumming around with earlier. The burly Asian guy with the buzz cut was about fifteen. He was cute in a sort of oversized-cuddly-panda-bear way. The girl was younger, maybe thirteen, with amber eyes and chocolate skin and long curly hair. Her cavalry helmet was tucked under her arm.

Annabeth could tell from their body language that they felt close to Percy. They stood next to him protectively, like they’d already shared many adventures. She fought down a twinge of jealousy. Was it possible Percy and this girl…no. The chemistry between the three of them wasn’t like that. Annabeth had spent her whole life learning to read people. It was a survival skill. If she had to guess, she’d say the big Asian guy was the girl’s boyfriend, though she suspected they hadn’t been together long.

There was one thing she didn’t understand: what was the girl staring at? She kept frowning in Piper and Leo’s direction, like she recognized one of them and the memory was painful.

Meanwhile, Reyna was giving orders to her officers. “…tell the legion to stand down. Dakota, alert the spirits in the kitchen. Tell them to prepare a welcome feast. And, Octavian—”

“You’re letting these intruders into the camp?” A tall guy with stringy blond hair elbowed his way forward. “Reyna, the security risks—”

“We’re not taking them to the camp, Octavian.” Reyna flashed him a stern look. “We’ll eat here, in the forum.”

“Oh, much better,” Octavian grumbled. He seemed to be the only one who didn’t defer to Reyna as his superior, despite the fact that he was scrawny and pale and for some reason had three teddy bears hanging from his belt. “You want us to relax in the shadow of their warship.”

“These are our guests.” Reyna clipped off every word. “We will welcome them, and we will talk to them. As augur, you should burn an offering to thank the gods for bringing Jason back to us safely.”

“Good idea,” Percy put in. “Go burn your bears, Octavian.”

Reyna looked like she was trying not to smile. “You have my orders. Go.”

The officers dispersed. Octavian shot Percy a look of absolute loathing. Then he gave Annabeth a suspicious once-over and stalked away.

Percy slipped his hand into Annabeth’s. “Don’t worry about Octavian,” he said. “Most of the Romans are good people—like Frank and Hazel here, and Reyna. We’ll be fine.”

Annabeth felt as if someone had draped a cold washcloth across her neck. She heard that whispering laughter again, as if the presence had followed her from the ship.

She looked up at the Argo II. Its massive bronze hull glittered in the sunlight. Part of her wanted to kidnap Percy right now, climb on board, and get out of here while they still could.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong. And there was no way she would ever risk losing Percy again.

“We’ll be fine,” she repeated, trying to believe it.

“Excellent,” Reyna said. She turned to Jason, and Annabeth thought there was a hungry sort of gleam in her eyes. “Let’s talk, and we can have a proper reunion.”

ANNABETH WISHED SHE HAD AN APPETITE, because the Romans knew how to eat.

Sets of couches and low tables were carted into the forum until it resembled a furniture showroom. Romans lounged in groups of ten or twenty, talking and laughing while wind spirits—aurae—swirled overhead, bringing an endless assortment of pizzas, sandwiches, chips, cold drinks, and fresh-baked cookies. Drifting through the crowd were purple ghosts—Lares—in togas and legionnaire armor. Around the edges of the feast, satyrs (no, fauns, Annabeth thought) trotted from table to table, panhandling for food and spare change. In the nearby fields, the war elephant frolicked with Mrs. O’Leary, and children played tag around the statues of Terminus that lined the city limits.

The whole scene was so familiar yet so completely alien that it gave Annabeth vertigo.

All she wanted to do was be with Percy—preferably alone. She knew she would have to wait. If their quest was going to succeed, they needed these Romans, which meant getting to know them and building some goodwill.

Reyna and a few of her officers (including the blond kid Octavian, freshly back from burning a teddy bear for the gods) sat with Annabeth and her crew. Percy joined them with his two new friends, Frank and Hazel.

As a tornado of food platters settled onto the table, Percy leaned over and whispered, “I want to show you around New Rome. Just you and me. The place is incredible.”

Annabeth should’ve felt thrilled. Just you and me was exactly what she wanted. Instead, resentment swelled in her throat. How could Percy talk so enthusiastically about this place? What about Camp Half-Blood—their camp, their home?

She tried not to stare at the new marks on Percy’s forearm—an SPQR tattoo like Jason’s. At Camp Half-Blood, demigods got bead necklaces to commemorate years of training. Here, the Romans burned a tattoo into your flesh, as if to say: You belong to us. Permanently.

She swallowed back some biting comments. “Okay. Sure.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he said nervously. “I had this idea—”

He stopped as Reyna called a toast to friendship.

After introductions all around, the Romans and Annabeth’s crew began exchanging stories. Jason explained how he’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood without his memory, and how he’d gone on a quest with Piper and Leo to rescue the goddess Hera (or Juno, take your pick—she was equally annoying in Greek or Roman) from imprisonment at the Wolf House in northern California.

“Impossible!” Octavian broke in. “That’s our most sacred place. If the giants had imprisoned a goddess there—”

“They would’ve destroyed her,” Piper said. “And blamed it on the Greeks, and started a war between the camps. Now, be quiet and let Jason finish.”

Octavian opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Annabeth really loved Piper’s charmspeak. She noticed Reyna looking back and forth between Jason and Piper, her brow creased, as if just beginning to realize the two of them were a couple.

“So,” Jason continued, “that’s how we found out about the earth goddess Gaea. She’s still half asleep, but she’s the one freeing the monsters from Tartarus and raising the giants. Porphyrion, the big leader dude we fought at the Wolf House: he said he was retreating to the ancient lands—Greece itself. He plans on awakening Gaea and destroying the gods by…what did he call it? Pulling up their roots.”

Percy nodded thoughtfully. “Gaea’s been busy over here, too. We had our own encounter with Queen Dirt Face.”

Percy recounted his side of the story. He talked about waking up at the Wolf House with no memories except for one name—Annabeth.

When she heard that, Annabeth had to try hard not to cry. Percy told them how he’d traveled to Alaska with Frank and Hazel—how they’d defeated the giant Alcyoneus, freed the death god Thanatos, and returned with the lost golden eagle standard of the Roman camp to repel an attack by the giants’ army.

When Percy had finished, Jason whistled appreciatively. “No wonder they made you praetor.”

Octavian snorted. “Which means we now have three praetors! The rules clearly state we can only have two!”

“On the bright side,” Percy said, “both Jason and I outrank you, Octavian. So we can both tell you to shut up.”

Octavian turned as purple as a Roman T-shirt. Jason gave Percy a fist bump.

Even Reyna managed a smile, though her eyes were stormy.

“We’ll have to figure out the extra praetor problem later,” she said. “Right now we have more serious issues to deal with.”

“I’ll step aside for Jason,” Percy said easily. “It’s no biggie.”

“No biggie?” Octavian choked. “The praetorship of Rome is no biggie?”

Percy ignored him and turned to Jason. “You’re Thalia Grace’s brother, huh? Wow. You guys look nothing alike.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Jason said. “Anyway, thanks for helping my camp while I was gone. You did an awesome job.”

“Back at you,” Percy said.

Annabeth kicked his shin. She hated to interrupt a budding bromance, but Reyna was right: they had serious things to discuss. “We should talk about the Great Prophecy. It sounds like the Romans are aware of it too?”

Reyna nodded. “We call it the Prophecy of Seven. Octavian, you have it committed to memory?”

“Of course,” he said. “But, Reyna—”

“Recite it, please. In English, not Latin.”

Octavian sighed. “Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. To storm or fire the world must fall—”

“An oath to keep with a final breath,” Annabeth continued. “And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.”

Everyone stared at her—except for Leo, who had constructed a pinwheel out of aluminum foil taco wrappers and was sticking it into passing wind spirits.

Annabeth wasn’t sure why she had blurted out the lines of the prophecy. She’d just felt compelled.

The big kid, Frank, sat forward, staring at her in fascination, as if she’d grown a third eye. “Is it true you’re a child of Min—I mean, Athena?”

“Yes,” she said, suddenly feeling defensive. “Why is that such a surprise?”

Octavian scoffed. “If you’re truly a child of the wisdom goddess—”

“Enough,” Reyna snapped. “Annabeth is what she says. She’s here in peace. Besides…” She gave Annabeth a look of grudging respect. “Percy has spoken highly of you.”

The undertones in Reyna’s voice took Annabeth a moment to decipher. Percy looked down, suddenly interested in his cheeseburger.

Annabeth’s face felt hot. Oh, gods…Reyna had tried to make a move on Percy. That explained the tinge of bitterness, maybe even envy, in her words. Percy had turned her down for Annabeth.

At that moment, Annabeth forgave her ridiculous boyfriend for everything he’d ever done wrong. She wanted to throw her arms around him, but she commanded herself to stay cool.

“Uh, thanks,” she told Reyna. “At any rate, some of the prophecy is becoming clear. Foes bearing arms to the Doors of Death…that means Romans and Greeks. We have to combine forces to find those doors.”

Hazel, the girl with the cavalry helmet and the long curly hair, picked up something next to her plate. It looked like a large ruby; but before Annabeth could be sure, Hazel slipped it into the pocket of her denim shirt.

“My brother, Nico, went looking for the doors,” she said.

“Wait,” Annabeth said. “Nico di Angelo? He’s your brother?”

Hazel nodded as if this were obvious. A dozen more questions crowded into Annabeth’s head, but it was already spinning like Leo’s pinwheel. She decided to let the matter go. “Okay. You were saying?”

“He disappeared.” Hazel moistened her lips. “I’m afraid…I’m not sure, but I think something’s happened to him.”

“We’ll look for him,” Percy promised. “We have to find the Doors of Death anyway. Thanatos told us we’d find both answers in Rome—like, the original Rome. That’s on the way to Greece, right?”

“Thanatos told you this?” Annabeth tried to wrap her mind around that idea. “The death god?”

She’d met many gods. She’d even been to the Underworld; but Percy’s story about freeing the incarnation of death itself really creeped her out.

Percy took a bite of his burger. “Now that Death is free, monsters will disintegrate and return to Tartarus again like they used to. But as long as the Doors of Death are open, they’ll just keep coming back.”

Piper twisted the feather in her hair. “Like water leaking through a dam,” she suggested.

“Yeah.” Percy smiled. “We’ve got a dam hole.”

“What?” Piper asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Inside joke. The point is we’ll have to find the doors and close them before we can head to Greece. It’s the only way we’ll stand a chance of defeating the giants and making sure they stay defeated.”

Reyna plucked an apple from a passing fruit tray. She turned it in her fingers, studying the dark red surface. “You propose an expedition to Greece in your warship. You do realize that the ancient lands—and the Mare Nostrum—are dangerous?”

“Mary who?” Leo asked.

“Mare Nostrum,” Jason explained. “Our Sea. It’s what the Ancient Romans called the Mediterranean.”

Reyna nodded. “The territory that was once the Roman Empire is not only the birthplace of the gods. It’s also the ancestral home of the monsters, Titans and giants…and worse things. As dangerous as travel is for demigods here in America, there it would be ten times worse.”

“You said Alaska would be bad,” Percy reminded her. “We survived that.”

Reyna shook her head. Her fingernails cut little crescents into the apple as she turned it. “Percy, traveling in the Mediterranean is a different level of danger altogether. It’s been off limits to Roman demigods for centuries. No hero in his right mind would go there.”

“Then we’re good!” Leo grinned over the top of his pinwheel. “Because we’re all crazy, right? Besides, the Argo II is a top-of-the-line warship. She’ll get us through.”

“We’ll have to hurry,” Jason added. “I don’t know exactly what the giants are planning, but Gaea is growing more conscious all the time. She’s invading dreams, appearing in weird places, summoning more and more powerful monsters. We have to stop the giants before they can wake her up fully.”

Annabeth shuddered. She’d had her own share of nightmares lately.

“Seven half-bloods must answer the call,” she said. “It needs to be a mix from both our camps. Jason, Piper, Leo, and me. That’s four.”

“And me,” Percy said. “Along with Hazel and Frank. That’s seven.”

“What?” Octavian shot to his feet. “We’re just supposed to accept that? Without a vote in the senate? Without a proper debate? Without—”

“Percy!” Tyson the Cyclops bounded toward them with Mrs. O’Leary at his heels. On the hellhound’s back sat the skinniest harpy Annabeth had ever seen—a sickly-looking girl with stringy red hair, a sackcloth dress, and red-feathered wings.

Annabeth didn’t know where the harpy had come from, but her heart warmed to see Tyson in his tattered flannel and denim with the backward SPQR banner across his chest. She’d had some pretty bad experiences with Cyclopes, but Tyson was a sweetheart. He was also Percy’s half brother (long story), which made him almost like family.

Tyson stopped by their couch and wrung his meaty hands. His big brown eye was full of concern. “Ella is scared,” he said.

“N-n-no more boats,” the harpy muttered to herself, picking furiously at her feathers. “Titanic, Lusitania, Pax…boats are not for harpies.”

Leo squinted. He looked at Hazel, who was seated next to him. “Did that chicken girl just compare my ship to the Titanic?”

“She’s not a chicken.” Hazel averted her eyes, as if Leo made her nervous. “Ella’s a harpy. She’s just a little…high-strung.”

“Ella is pretty,” Tyson said. “And scared. We need to take her away, but she will not go on the ship.”

“No ships,” Ella repeated. She looked straight at Annabeth. “Bad luck. There she is. Wisdom’s daughter walks alone—”

“Ella!” Frank stood suddenly. “Maybe it’s not the best time—”

“The Mark of Athena burns through Rome,” Ella continued, cupping her hands over her ears and raising her voice. “Twins snuff out the angel’s breath, Who holds the key to endless death. Giants’ bane stands gold and pale, Won through pain from a woven jail.”

The effect was like someone dropping a flash grenade on the table. Everyone stared at the harpy. No one spoke. Annabeth’s heart was pounding. The Mark of Athena…She resisted the urge to check her pocket, but she could feel the silver coin growing warmer—the cursed gift from her mother. Follow the Mark of Athena. Avenge me.

Around them, the sounds of the feast continued, but muted and distant, as if their little cluster of couches had slipped into a quieter dimension.

Percy was the first to recover. He stood and took Tyson’s arm.

“I know!” he said with feigned enthusiasm. “How about you take Ella to get some fresh air? You and Mrs. O’Leary—”

“Hold on.” Octavian gripped one of his teddy bears, strangling it with shaking hands. His eyes fixed on Ella. “What was that she said? It sounded like—”

“Ella reads a lot,” Frank blurted out. “We found her at a library.”

“Yes!” Hazel said. “Probably just something she read in a book.”

“Books,” Ella muttered helpfully. “Ella likes books.”

Now that she’d said her piece, the harpy seemed more relaxed. She sat cross-legged on Mrs. O’Leary’s back, preening her wings.

Annabeth gave Percy a curious glance. Obviously, he and Frank and Hazel were hiding something. Just as obviously, Ella had recited a prophecy—a prophecy that concerned her.

Percy’s expression said, Help.

“That was a prophecy,” Octavian insisted. “It sounded like a prophecy.”

No one answered.

Annabeth wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but she understood that Percy was on the verge of big trouble.

She forced a laugh. “Really, Octavian? Maybe harpies are different here, on the Roman side. Ours have just enough intelligence to clean cabins and cook lunches. Do yours usually foretell the future? Do you consult them for your auguries?”

Her words had the intended effect. The Roman officers laughed nervously. Some sized up Ella, then looked at Octavian and snorted. The idea of a chicken lady issuing prophecies was apparently just as ridiculous to Romans as it was to Greeks.

“I, uh…” Octavian dropped his teddy bear. “No, but—”

“She’s just spouting lines from some book,” Annabeth said, “like Hazel suggested. Besides, we already have a real prophecy to worry about.”

She turned to Tyson. “Percy’s right. Why don’t you take Ella and Mrs. O’Leary and shadow-travel somewhere for a while. Is Ella okay with that?”

“‘Large dogs are good,’” Ella said. “Old Yeller, 1957, screenplay by Fred Gipson and William Tunberg.”

Annabeth wasn’t sure how to take that answer, but Percy smiled like the problem was solved.

“Great!” Percy said. “We’ll Iris-message you guys when we’re done and catch up with you later.”

The Romans looked at Reyna, waiting for her ruling. Annabeth held her breath.

Reyna had an excellent poker face. She studied Ella, but Annabeth couldn’t guess what she was thinking.

“Fine,” the praetor said at last. “Go.”

“Yay!” Tyson went around the couches and gave everyone a big hug—even Octavian, who didn’t look happy about it. Then he climbed on Mrs. O’Leary’s back with Ella, and the hellhound bounded out of the forum. They dove straight into a shadow on the Senate House wall and disappeared.

“Well.” Reyna set down her uneaten apple. “Octavian is right about one thing. We must gain the senate’s approval before we let any of our legionnaires go on a quest—especially one as dangerous as you’re suggesting.”

“This whole thing smells of treachery,” Octavian grumbled. “That trireme is not a ship of peace!”

“Come aboard, man,” Leo offered. “I’ll give you a tour. You can steer the boat, and if you’re really good I’ll give you a little paper captain’s hat to wear.”

Octavian’s nostrils flared. “How dare you—”

“It’s a good idea,” Reyna said. “Octavian, go with him. See the ship. We’ll convene a senate meeting in one hour.”

“But…” Octavian stopped. Apparently he could tell from Reyna’s expression that further arguing would not be good for his health. “Fine.”

Leo got up. He turned to Annabeth, and his smile changed. It happened so quickly, Annabeth thought she’d imagined it; but just for a moment someone else seemed to be standing in Leo’s place, smiling coldly with a cruel light in his eyes. Then Annabeth blinked, and Leo was just regular old Leo again, with his usual impish grin.

“Back soon,” he promised. “This is gonna be epic.”

A horrible chill settled over her. As Leo and Octavian headed for the rope ladder, she thought about calling them back—but how could she explain that? Tell everyone she was going crazy, seeing things and feeling cold?

The wind spirits began clearing the plates.

“Uh, Reyna,” Jason said, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to show Piper around before the senate meeting. She’s never seen New Rome.”

Reyna’s expression hardened.

Annabeth wondered how Jason could be so dense. Was it possible he really didn’t understand how much Reyna liked him? It was obvious enough to Annabeth. Asking to show his new girlfriend around Reyna’s city was rubbing salt in a wound.

“Of course,” Reyna said coldly.

Percy took Annabeth’s hand. “Yeah, me, too. I’d like to show Annabeth—”

“No,” Reyna snapped.

Percy knit his eyebrows. “Sorry?”

“I’d like a few words with Annabeth,” Reyna said. “Alone. If you don’t mind, my fellow praetor.”

Her tone made it clear she wasn’t really asking permission.

The chill spread down Annabeth’s back. She wondered what Reyna was up to. Maybe the praetor didn’t like the idea of two guys who had rejected her giving their girlfriends tours of her city. Or maybe there was something she wanted to say in private. Either way, Annabeth was reluctant to be alone and unarmed with the Roman leader.

“Come, daughter of Athena.” Reyna rose from her couch. “Walk with me.”

ANNABETH WANTED TO HATE NEW ROME. But as an aspiring architect, she couldn’t help admiring the terraced gardens, the fountains and temples, the winding cobblestone streets and gleaming white villas. After the Titan War last summer, she’d gotten her dream job of redesigning the palaces of Mount Olympus. Now, walking through this miniature city, she kept thinking, I should have made a dome like that. I love the way those columns lead into that courtyard. Whoever designed New Rome had clearly poured a lot of time and love into the project.

“We have the best architects and builders in the world,” Reyna said, as if reading her thoughts. “Rome always did, in the ancient times. Many demigods stay on to live here after their time in the legion. They go to our university. They settle down to raise families. Percy seemed interested in this fact.”

Annabeth wondered what that meant. She must have scowled more fiercely than she realized, because Reyna laughed.

“You’re a warrior, all right,” the praetor said. “You’ve got fire in your eyes.”

“Sorry.” Annabeth tried to tone down the glare.

“Don’t be. I’m the daughter of Bellona.”

“Roman goddess of war?”

Reyna nodded. She turned and whistled like she was hailing a cab. A moment later, two metal dogs raced toward them—automaton greyhounds, one silver and one gold. They brushed against Reyna’s legs and regarded Annabeth with glistening ruby eyes.

“My pets,” Reyna explained. “Aurum and Argentum. You don’t mind if they walk with us?”

Again, Annabeth got the feeling it wasn’t really a request. She noted that the greyhounds had teeth like steel arrowheads. Maybe weapons weren’t allowed inside the city, but Reyna’s pets could still tear her to pieces if they chose.

Reyna led her to an outdoor café, where the waiter clearly knew her. He smiled and handed her a to-go cup, then offered one to Annabeth.

“Would you like some?” Reyna asked. “They make wonderful hot chocolate. Not really a Roman drink—”

“But chocolate is universal,” Annabeth said.

“Exactly.”

It was a warm June afternoon, but Annabeth accepted the cup with thanks. The two of them walked on, Reyna’s gold and silver dogs roaming nearby.

“In our camp,” Reyna said, “Athena is Minerva. Are you familiar with how her Roman form is different?”

Annabeth hadn’t really considered it before. She remembered the way Terminus had called Athena that goddess, as if she were scandalous. Octavian had acted like Annabeth’s very existence was an insult.

“I take it Minerva isn’t…uh, quite as respected here?”

Reyna blew steam from her cup. “We respect Minerva. She’s the goddess of crafts and wisdom…but she isn’t really a goddess of war. Not for Romans. She’s also a maiden goddess, like Diana…the one you call Artemis. You won’t find any children of Minerva here. The idea that Minerva would have children—frankly, it’s a little shocking to us.”

“Oh.” Annabeth felt her face flush. She didn’t want to get into the details of Athena’s children—how they were born straight from the mind of the goddess, just as Athena herself had sprung from the head of Zeus. Talking about that always made Annabeth feel self-conscious, like she was some sort of freak. People usually asked her whether or not she had a belly button, since she had been born magically. Of course she had a belly button. She couldn’t explain how. She didn’t really want to know.

“I understand that you Greeks don’t see things the same way,” Reyna continued. “But Romans take vows of maidenhood very seriously. The Vestal Virgins, for instance…if they broke their vows and fell in love with anyone, they would be buried alive. So the idea that a maiden goddess would have children—”

“Got it.” Annabeth’s hot chocolate suddenly tasted like dust. No wonder the Romans had been giving her strange looks. “I’m not supposed to exist. And even if your camp had children of Minerva—”

“They wouldn’t be like you,” Reyna said. “They might be craftsmen, artists, maybe advisers, but not warriors. Not leaders of dangerous quests.”

Annabeth started to object that she wasn’t the leader of the quest. Not officially. But she wondered if her friends on the Argo II would agree. The past few days, they had been looking to her for orders—even Jason, who could have pulled rank as the son of Jupiter, and Coach Hedge, who didn’t take orders from anyone.

“There’s more.” Reyna snapped her fingers, and her golden dog, Aurum, trotted over. The praetor stroked his ears. “The harpy Ella…it was a prophecy she spoke. We both know that, don’t we?”

Annabeth swallowed. Something about Aurum’s ruby eyes made her uneasy. She had heard that dogs could smell fear, even detect changes in a human’s breathing and heartbeat. She didn’t know if that applied to magical metal dogs, but she decided it would be better to tell the truth.

“It sounded like a prophecy,” she admitted. “But I’ve never met Ella before today, and I’ve never heard those lines exactly.”

“I have,” Reyna murmured. “At least some of them—”

A few yards away, the silver dog barked. A group of children spilled out of a nearby alleyway and gathered around Argentum, petting the dog and laughing, unfazed by its razor-sharp teeth.

“We should move on,” Reyna said.

They wound their way up the hill. The greyhounds followed, leaving the children behind. Annabeth kept glancing at Reyna’s face. A vague memory started tugging at her—the way Reyna brushed her hair behind her ear, the silver ring she wore with the torch and sword design.

“We’ve met before,” Annabeth ventured. “You were younger, I think.”

Reyna gave her a dry smile. “Very good. Percy didn’t remember me. Of course you spoke mostly with my older sister Hylla, who is now queen of the Amazons. She left just this morning, before you arrived. At any rate, when we last met, I was a mere handmaiden in the house of Circe.”

“Circe…” Annabeth remembered her trip to the island of the sorceress. She’d been thirteen. Percy and she had washed ashore from the Sea of Monsters. Hylla had welcomed them. She had helped Annabeth get cleaned up and given her a beautiful new dress and a complete makeover. Then Circe had made her sales pitch: if Annabeth stayed on the island, she could have magical training and incredible power. Annabeth had been tempted, maybe just a little, until she realized the place was a trap, and Percy had been turned into a rodent. (That last part seemed funny afterward; but at the time, it had been terrifying.) As for Reyna…she’d been one of the servants who had combed Annabeth’s hair.

“You…” Annabeth said in amazement. “And Hylla is queen of the Amazons? How did you two—?”

“Long story,” Reyna said. “But I remember you well. You were brave. I’d never seen anyone refuse Circe’s hospitality, much less outwit her. It’s no wonder Percy cares for you.”

Her voice was wistful. Annabeth thought it might be safer not to respond.

They reached the top of the hill, where a terrace overlooked the entire valley.

“This is my favorite spot,” Reyna said. “The Garden of Bacchus.”

Grapevine trellises made a canopy overhead. Bees buzzed through honeysuckle and jasmine, which filled the afternoon air with a dizzying mix of perfumes. In the middle of the terrace stood a statue of Bacchus in a sort of ballet position, wearing nothing but a loincloth, his cheeks puffed out and lips pursed, spouting water into a fountain.

Despite her worries, Annabeth almost laughed. She knew the god in his Greek form, Dionysus—or Mr. D, as they called him back at Camp Half-Blood. Seeing their cranky old camp director immortalized in stone, wearing a diaper and spewing water from his mouth, made her feel a little better.

Reyna stopped at the edge of the terrace. The view was worth the climb. The whole city spread out below them like a 3-D mosaic. To the south, beyond the lake, a cluster of temples perched on a hill. To the north, an aqueduct marched toward the Berkeley Hills. Work crews were repairing a broken section, probably damaged in the recent battle.

“I wanted to hear it from you,” Reyna said.

Annabeth turned. “Hear what from me?”

“The truth,” Reyna said. “Convince me that I’m not making a mistake by trusting you. Tell me about yourself. Tell me about Camp Half-Blood. Your friend Piper has sorcery in her words. I spent enough time with Circe to know charmspeak when I hear it. I can’t trust what she says. And Jason…well, he has changed. He seems distant, no longer quite Roman.”

The hurt in her voice was as sharp as broken glass. Annabeth wondered if she had sounded that way, all the months she’d spent searching for Percy. At least she’d found her boyfriend. Reyna had no one. She was responsible for running an entire camp all by herself. Annabeth could sense that Reyna wanted Jason to love her. But he had disappeared, only to come back with a new girlfriend. Meanwhile, Percy had risen to praetor, but he had rebuffed Reyna too. Now Annabeth had come to take him away. Reyna would be left alone again, shouldering a job meant for two people.

When Annabeth had arrived at Camp Jupiter, she’d been prepared to negotiate with Reyna or even fight her if needed. She hadn’t been prepared to feel sorry for her.

She kept that feeling hidden. Reyna didn’t strike her as someone who would appreciate pity.

Instead, she told Reyna about her own life. She talked about her dad and stepmom and her two stepbrothers in San Francisco, and how she had felt like an outsider in her own family. She talked about how she had run away when she was only seven, finding her friends Luke and Thalia and making her way to Camp Half-Blood on Long Island. She described the camp and her years growing up there. She talked about meeting Percy and the adventures they’d had together.

Reyna was a good listener.

Annabeth was tempted to tell her about more recent problems: her fight with her mom, the gift of the silver coin, and the nightmares she’d been having—about an old fear so paralyzing, she’d almost decided that she couldn’t go on this quest. But she couldn’t bring herself to open up quite that much.

When Annabeth was done talking, Reyna gazed over New Rome. Her metal greyhounds sniffed around the garden, snapping at bees in the honeysuckle. Finally Reyna pointed to the cluster of temples on the distant hill.

“The small red building,” she said, “there on the northern side? That’s the temple of my mother, Bellona.” Reyna turned toward Annabeth. “Unlike your mother, Bellona has no Greek equivalent. She is fully, truly Roman. She’s the goddess of protecting the homeland.”

Annabeth said nothing. She knew very little about the Roman goddess. She wished she had studied up, but Latin never came as easily to her as Greek. Down below, the hull of the Argo II gleamed as it floated over the forum, like some massive bronze party balloon.

“When the Romans go to war,” Reyna continued, “we first visit the Temple of Bellona. Inside is a symbolic patch of ground that represents enemy soil. We throw a spear into that ground, indicating that we are now at war. You see, Romans have always believed that offense is the best defense. In ancient times, whenever our ancestors felt threatened by their neighbors, they would invade to protect themselves.”

“They conquered everyone around them,” Annabeth said. “Carthage, the Gauls—”

“And the Greeks.” Reyna let that comment hang. “My point, Annabeth, is that it isn’t Rome’s nature to cooperate with other powers. Every time Greek and Roman demigods have met, we’ve fought. Conflicts between our two sides have started some of the most horrible wars in human history—especially civil wars.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Annabeth said. “We’ve got to work together, or Gaea will destroy us both.”

“I agree,” Reyna said. “But is cooperation possible? What if Juno’s plan is flawed? Even goddesses can make mistakes.”

Annabeth waited for Reyna to get struck by lightning or turned into a peacock. Nothing happened.

Unfortunately, Annabeth shared Reyna’s doubts. Hera did make mistakes. Annabeth had had nothing but trouble from that overbearing goddess, and she’d never forgive Hera for taking Percy away, even if it was for a noble cause.

“I don’t trust the goddess,” Annabeth admitted. “But I do trust my friends. This isn’t a trick, Reyna. We can work together.”

Reyna finished her cup of chocolate. She set the cup on the terrace railing and gazed over the valley as if imagining battle lines.

“I believe you mean it,” she said. “But if you go to the ancient lands, especially Rome itself, there is something you should know about your mother.”

Annabeth’s shoulders tensed. “My—my mother?”

“When I lived on Circe’s island,” Reyna said, “we had many visitors. Once, perhaps a year before you and Percy arrived, a young man washed ashore. He was half mad from thirst and heat. He’d been drifting at sea for days. His words didn’t make much sense, but he said he was a son of Athena.”

Reyna paused as if waiting for a reaction. Annabeth had no idea who the boy might have been. She wasn’t aware of any other Athena kids who’d gone on a quest in the Sea of Monsters, but still she felt a sense of dread. The light filtering through the grapevines made shadows writhe across the ground like a swarm of bugs.

“What happened to this demigod?” she asked.

Reyna waved her hand as if the question was trivial. “Circe turned him into a guinea pig, of course. He made quite a crazy little rodent. But before that, he kept raving about his failed quest. He claimed that he’d gone to Rome, following the Mark of Athena.”

Annabeth grabbed the railing to keep her balance.

“Yes,” Reyna said, seeing her discomfort. “He kept muttering about wisdom’s child, the Mark of Athena, and the giants’ bane standing pale and gold. The same lines Ella was just reciting. But you say that you’ve never heard them before today?”

“Not—not the way Ella said them.” Annabeth’s voice was weak. She wasn’t lying. She’d never heard that prophecy, but her mother had charged her with following the Mark of Athena; and as she thought about the coin in her pocket, a horrible suspicion began taking root in her mind. She remembered her mother’s scathing words. She thought about the strange nightmares she’d been having lately. “Did this demigod—did he explain his quest?”

Reyna shook her head. “At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about. Much later, when I became praetor of Camp Jupiter, I began to suspect.”

“Suspect…what?”

“There is an old legend that the praetors of Camp Jupiter have passed down through the centuries. If it’s true, it may explain why our two groups of demigods have never been able to work together. It may be the cause of our animosity. Until this old score is finally settled, so the legend goes, Romans and Greeks will never be at peace. And the legend centers on Athena—”

A shrill sound pierced the air. Light flashed in the corner of Annabeth’s eye.

She turned in time to see an explosion blast a new crater in the forum. A burning couch tumbled through the air. Demigods scattered in panic.

“Giants?” Annabeth reached for her dagger, which of course wasn’t there. “I thought their army was defeated!”

“It isn’t the giants.” Reyna’s eyes seethed with rage. “You’ve betrayed our trust.”

“What? No!”

As soon as she said it, the Argo II launched a second volley. Its port ballista fired a massive spear wreathed in Greek fire, which sailed straight through the broken dome of the Senate House and exploded inside, lighting up the building like a jack-o’-lantern. If anyone had been in there…

“Gods, no.” A wave of nausea almost made Annabeth’s knees buckle. “Reyna, it isn’t possible. We’d never do this!”

The metal dogs ran to their mistress’s side. They snarled at Annabeth but paced uncertainly, as if reluctant to attack.

“You’re telling the truth,” Reyna judged. “Perhaps you were not aware of this treachery, but someone must pay.”

Down in the forum, chaos was spreading. Crowds were pushing and shoving. Fistfights were breaking out.

“Bloodshed,” Reyna said.

“We have to stop it!”

Annabeth had a horrible feeling this might be the last time Reyna and she ever acted in agreement, but together they ran down the hill.

If weapons had been allowed in the city, Annabeth’s friends would have already been dead. The Roman demigods in the forum had coalesced into an angry mob. Some threw plates, food, and rocks at the Argo II, which was pointless, as most of the stuff fell back into the crowd.

Several dozen Romans had surrounded Piper and Jason, who were trying to calm them without much luck. Piper’s charmspeak was useless against so many screaming, angry demigods. Jason’s forehead was bleeding. His purple cloak had been ripped to shreds. He kept pleading, “I’m on your side!” but his orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt didn’t help matters—nor did the warship overhead, firing flaming spears into New Rome. One landed nearby and blasted a toga shop to rubble.

“Pluto’s pauldrons,” Reyna cursed. “Look.”

Armed legionnaires were hurrying toward the forum. Two artillery crews had set up catapults just outside the Pomerian Line and were preparing to fire at the Argo II.

“That’ll just make things worse,” Annabeth said.

“I hate my job,” Reyna growled. She rushed off toward the legionnaires, her dogs at her side.

Percy, Annabeth thought, scanning the forum desperately. Where are you?

Two Romans tried to grab her. She ducked past them, plunging into the crowd. As if the angry Romans, burning couches, and exploding buildings weren’t confusing enough, hundreds of purple ghosts drifted through the forum, passing straight through the demigods’ bodies and wailing incoherently. The fauns had also taken advantage of the chaos. They swarmed the dining tables, grabbing food, plates, and cups. One trotted by Annabeth with his arms full of tacos and an entire pineapple between his teeth.

A statue of Terminus exploded into being, right in front of Annabeth. He yelled at her in Latin, no doubt calling her a liar and a rule breaker; but she pushed the statue over and kept running.

Finally she spotted Percy. He and his friends, Hazel and Frank, were standing in the middle of a fountain as Percy repelled the angry Romans with blasts of water. Percy’s toga was in tatters, but he looked unhurt.

Annabeth called to him as another explosion rocked the forum. This time the flash of light was directly overhead. One of the Roman catapults had fired, and the Argo II groaned and tilted sideways, flames bubbling over its bronze-plated hull.

Annabeth noticed a figure clinging desperately to the rope ladder, trying to climb down. It was Octavian, his robes steaming and his face black with soot.

Over by the fountain, Percy blasted the Roman mob with more water. Annabeth ran toward him, ducking a Roman fist and a flying plate of sandwiches.

“Annabeth!” Percy called. “What—?”

“I don’t know!” she yelled.

“I’ll tell you what!” cried a voice from above. Octavian had reached the bottom of the ladder. “The Greeks have fired on us! Your boy Leo has trained his weapons on Rome!”

Annabeth’s chest filled with liquid hydrogen. She felt like she might shatter into a million frozen pieces.

“You’re lying,” she said. “Leo would never—”

“I was just there!” Octavian shrieked. “I saw it with my own eyes!”

The Argo II returned fire. Legionnaires in the field scattered as one of their catapults was blasted to splinters.

“You see?” Octavian screamed. “Romans, kill the invaders!”

Annabeth growled in frustration. There was no time for anyone to figure out the truth. The crew from Camp Half-Blood was outnumbered a hundred to one, and even if Octavian had managed to stage some sort of trick (which she thought likely), they’d never be able to convince the Romans before they were overrun and killed.

“We have to leave,” she told Percy. “Now.”

He nodded grimly. “Hazel, Frank, you’ve got to make a choice. Are you coming?”

Hazel looked terrified, but she donned her cavalry helmet. “Of course we are. But you’ll never make it to the ship unless we buy you some time.”

“How?” Annabeth asked.

Hazel whistled. Instantly a blur of beige shot across the forum. A majestic horse materialized next to the fountain. He reared, whinnying and scattering the mob. Hazel climbed on his back like she’d been born to ride. Strapped to the horse’s saddle was a Roman cavalry sword.

Hazel unsheathed her golden blade. “Send me an Iris-message when you’re safely away, and we’ll rendezvous,” she said. “Arion, ride!”

The horse zipped through the crowd with incredible speed, pushing back Romans and causing mass panic.

Annabeth felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe they could make it out of here alive. Then, from halfway across the forum, she heard Jason shouting.

“Romans!” he cried. “Please!”

He and Piper were being pelted with plates and stones. Jason tried to shield Piper, but a brick caught him above the eye. He crumpled, and the crowd surged forward.

“Get back!” Piper screamed. Her charmspeak rolled over the mob, making them hesitate, but Annabeth knew the effect wouldn’t last. Percy and she couldn’t possibly reach them in time to help.

“Frank,” Percy said, “it’s up to you. Can you help them?”

Annabeth didn’t understand how Frank could do that all by himself, but he swallowed nervously.

“Oh, gods,” he murmured. “Okay, sure. Just get up the ropes. Now.”

Percy and Annabeth lunged for the ladder. Octavian was still clinging to the bottom, but Percy yanked him off and threw him into the mob.

They began to climb as armed legionnaires flooded into the forum. Arrows whistled past Annabeth’s head. An explosion almost knocked her off the ladder. Halfway up, she heard a roar below and glanced down.

Romans screamed and scattered as a full-sized dragon charged through the forum—a beast even scarier than the bronze dragon figurehead on the Argo II. It had rough gray skin like a Komodo lizard’s and leathery bat wings. Arrows and rocks bounced harmlessly off its hide as it lumbered toward Piper and Jason, grabbed them with its front claws, and vaulted into the air.

“Is that… ?” Annabeth couldn’t even put the thought into words.

“Frank,” Percy confirmed, a few feet above her. “He has a few special talents.”

“Understatement,” Annabeth muttered. “Keep climbing!”

Without the dragon and Hazel’s horse to distract the archers, they never would have made it up the ladder; but finally they climbed past a row of broken aerial oars and onto the deck. The rigging was on fire. The foresail was ripped down the middle, and the ship listed badly to starboard.

There was no sign of Coach Hedge, but Leo stood amidships, calmly reloading the ballista. Annabeth’s gut twisted with horror.

“Leo!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

“Destroy them…” He faced Annabeth. His eyes were glazed. His movements were like a robot’s. “Destroy them all.”

He turned back to the ballista, but Percy tackled him. Leo’s head hit the deck hard, and his eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed.

The gray dragon soared into view. It circled the ship once and landed at the bow, depositing Jason and Piper, who both collapsed.

“Go!” Percy yelled. “Get us out of here!”

With a shock, Annabeth realized he was talking to her.

She ran for the helm. She made the mistake of glancing over the rail and saw armed legionnaires closing ranks in the forum, preparing flaming arrows. Hazel spurred Arion, and they raced out of the city with a mob chasing after them. More catapults were being wheeled into range. All along the Pomerian Line, the statues of Terminus were glowing purple, as if building up energy for some kind of attack.

Annabeth looked over the controls. She cursed Leo for making them so complicated. No time for fancy maneuvers, but she did know one basic command: Up.

She grabbed the aviation throttle and yanked it straight back. The ship groaned. The bow tilted up at a horrifying angle. The mooring lines snapped, and the Argo II shot into the clouds.

LEO WISHED HE COULD INVENT a time machine. He’d go back two hours and undo what had happened. Either that, or he could invent a Slap-Leo-in-the-Face machine to punish himself, though he doubted it would hurt as badly as the look Annabeth was giving him.

“One more time,” she said. “Exactly what happened?”

Leo slumped against the mast. His head still throbbed from hitting the deck. All around him, his beautiful new ship was in shambles. The aft crossbows were piles of kindling. The foresail was tattered. The satellite array that powered the onboard Internet and TV was blown to bits, which had really made Coach Hedge mad. Their bronze dragon figurehead, Festus, was coughing up smoke like he had a hairball, and Leo could tell from the groaning sounds on the port side that some of the aerial oars had been knocked out of alignment or broken off completely, which explained why the ship was listing and shuddering as it flew, the engine wheezing like an asthmatic steam train.

He choked back a sob. “I don’t know. It’s fuzzy.”

Too many people were looking at him: Annabeth (Leo hated to make her angry; that girl scared him), Coach Hedge with his furry goat legs, his orange polo shirt, and his baseball bat (did he have to carry that everywhere?), and the newcomer, Frank.

Leo wasn’t sure what to make of Frank. He looked like a baby sumo wrestler, though Leo wasn’t stupid enough to say that aloud. Leo’s memory was hazy, but while he’d been half conscious, he was pretty sure he’d seen a dragon land on the ship—a dragon that had turned into Frank.

Annabeth crossed her arms. “You mean you don’t remember?”

“I…” Leo felt like he was trying to swallow a marble. “I remember, but it’s like I was watching myself do things. I couldn’t control it.”

Coach Hedge tapped his bat against the deck. In his gym clothes, with his cap pulled over his horns, he looked just like he used to at the Wilderness School, where he’d spent a year undercover as Jason, Piper, and Leo’s P.E. teacher. The way the old satyr was glowering, Leo almost wondered if the coach was going to order him to do push-ups.

“Look, kid,” Hedge said, “you blew up some stuff. You attacked some Romans. Awesome! Excellent! But did you have to knock out the satellite channels? I was right in the middle of watching a cage match.”

“Coach,” Annabeth said, “why don’t you make sure all the fires are out?”

“But I already did that.”

“Do it again.”

The satyr trudged off, muttering under his breath. Even Hedge wasn’t crazy enough to defy Annabeth.

She knelt next to Leo. Her gray eyes were as steely as ball bearings. Her blond hair fell loose around her shoulders, but Leo didn’t find that attractive. He had no idea where the stereotype of dumb giggly blondes came from. Ever since he’d met Annabeth at the Grand Canyon last winter, when she’d marched toward him with that Give me Percy Jackson or I’ll kill you expression, Leo thought of blondes as much too smart and much too dangerous.

“Leo,” she said calmly, “did Octavian trick you somehow? Did he frame you, or—”

“No.” Leo could have lied and blamed that stupid Roman, but he didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. “The guy was a jerk, but he didn’t fire on the camp. I did.”

The new kid, Frank, scowled. “On purpose?”

“No!” Leo squeezed his eyes shut. “Well, yes…I mean, I didn’t want to. But at the same time, I felt like I wanted to. Something was making me do it. There was this cold feeling inside me—”

“A cold feeling.” Annabeth’s tone changed. She sounded almost…scared.

“Yeah,” Leo said. “Why?”

From belowdecks, Percy called up, “Annabeth, we need you.”

Oh, gods, Leo thought. Please let Jason be okay.

As soon as they’d gotten on board, Piper had taken Jason below. The cut on his head had looked pretty bad. Leo had known Jason longer than anyone at Camp Half-Blood. They were best friends. If Jason didn’t make it…

“He’ll be fine.” Annabeth’s expression softened. “Frank, I’ll be back. Just…watch Leo. Please.”

Frank nodded.

If it was possible for Leo to feel worse, he did. Annabeth now trusted a Roman demigod she’d known for like, three seconds, more than she trusted Leo.

Once she was gone, Leo and Frank stared at each other. The big dude looked pretty odd in his bedsheet toga, with his gray pullover hoodie and jeans, and a bow and quiver from the ship’s armory slung over his shoulder. Leo remembered the time he had met the Hunters of Artemis—a bunch of cute lithe girls in silvery clothes, all armed with bows. He imagined Frank frolicking along with them. The idea was so ridiculous, it almost made him feel better.

“So,” Frank said. “Your name isn’t Sammy?”

Leo scowled. “What kind of question is that?”

“Nothing,” Frank said quickly. “I just— Nothing. About the firing on the camp…Octavian could be behind it, like magically or something. He didn’t want the Romans getting along with you guys.”

Leo wanted to believe that. He was grateful to this kid for not hating him. But he knew it hadn’t been Octavian. Leo had walked to a ballista and started firing. Part of him had known it was wrong. He’d asked himself: What the heck am I doing? But he’d done it anyway.

Maybe he was going crazy. The stress of all those months working on the Argo II might’ve finally made him crack.

But he couldn’t think about that. He needed to do something productive. His hands needed to be busy.

“Look,” he said, “I should talk to Festus and get a damage report. You mind… ?”

Frank helped him up. “Who is Festus?”

“My friend,” Leo said. “His name isn’t Sammy either, in case you’re wondering. Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

Fortunately the bronze dragon wasn’t damaged. Well, aside from the fact that last winter he’d lost everything except his head—but Leo didn’t count that.

When they reached the bow of the ship, the figurehead turned a hundred and eighty degrees to look at them. Frank yelped and backed away.

“It’s alive!” he said.

Leo would have laughed if he hadn’t felt so bad. “Yeah. Frank, this is Festus. He used to be a full bronze dragon, but we had an accident.”

“You have a lot of accidents,” Frank noted.

“Well, some of us can’t turn into dragons, so we have to build our own.” Leo arched his eyebrows at Frank. “Anyway, I revived him as a figurehead. He’s kind of the ship’s main interface now. How are things looking, Festus?”

Festus snorted smoke and made a series of squeaking, whirring sounds. Over the last few months, Leo had learned to interpret this machine language. Other demigods could understand Latin and Greek. Leo could speak Creak and Squeak.

“Ugh,” Leo said. “Could be worse, but the hull is compromised in several places. The port aerial oars have to be fixed before we can go full speed again. We’ll need some repair materials: Celestial bronze, tar, lime—”

“What do you need limes for?”

“Dude, lime. Calcium carbonate, used in cement and a bunch of other— Ah, never mind. The point is, this ship isn’t going far unless we can fix it.”

Festus made another click-creak noise that Leo didn’t recognize. It sounded like AY-zuhl.

“Oh…Hazel,” he deciphered. “That’s the girl with the curly hair, right?”

Frank gulped. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine,” Leo said. “According to Festus, her horse is racing along below. She’s following us.”

“We’ve got to land, then,” Frank said.

Leo studied him. “She’s your girlfriend?”

Frank chewed his lip. “Yes.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“Yes. Yes, definitely. I’m sure.”

Leo raised his hands. “Okay, fine. The problem is we can only manage one landing. The way the hull and the oars are, we won’t be able to lift off again until we repair, so we’ll have to make sure we land somewhere with all the right supplies.”

Frank scratched his head. “Where do you get Celestial bronze? You can’t just stock up at Home Depot.”

“Festus, do a scan.”

“He can scan for magic bronze?” Frank marveled. “Is there anything he can’t do?”

Leo thought: You should’ve seen him when he had a body. But he didn’t say that. It was too painful, remembering the way Festus used to be.

Leo peered over the ship’s bow. The Central California valley was passing below. Leo didn’t hold out much hope that they could find what they needed all in one place, but they had to try. Leo also wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and New Rome. The Argo II could cover vast distances pretty quickly, thanks to its magical engine, but Leo figured the Romans had magic travel methods of their own.

Behind him, the stairs creaked. Percy and Annabeth climbed up, their faces grim.

Leo’s heart stumbled. “Is Jason—?”

“He’s resting,” Annabeth said. “Piper’s keeping an eye on him, but he should be fine.”

Percy gave him a hard look. “Annabeth says you did fire the ballista?”

“Man, I—I don’t understand how it happened. I’m so sorry—”

“Sorry?” Percy growled.

Annabeth put a hand on her boyfriend’s chest. “We’ll figure it out later. Right now, we have to regroup and make a plan. What’s the situation with the ship?”

Leo’s legs trembled. The way Percy had looked at him made him feel the same as when Jason summoned lightning. Leo’s skin tingled, and every instinct in his body screamed, Duck!

He told Annabeth about the damage and the supplies they needed. At least he felt better talking about something fixable.

He was bemoaning the shortage of Celestial bronze when Festus began to whir and squeak.

“Perfect.” Leo sighed with relief.

“What’s perfect?” Annabeth said. “I could use some perfect about now.”

Leo managed a smile. “Everything we need in one place. Frank, why don’t you turn into a bird or something? Fly down and tell your girlfriend to meet us at the Great Salt Lake in Utah.”

Once they got there, it wasn’t a pretty landing. With the oars damaged and the foresail torn, Leo could barely manage a controlled descent. The others strapped themselves in below—except for Coach Hedge, who insisted on clinging to the forward rail, yelling, “YEAH! Bring it on, lake!” Leo stood astern, alone at the helm, and aimed as best he could.

Festus creaked and whirred warning signals, which were relayed through the intercom to the quarterdeck.

“I know, I know,” Leo said, gritting his teeth.

He didn’t have much time to take in the scenery. To the southeast, a city was nestled in the foothills of a mountain range, blue and purple in the afternoon shadows. A flat desert landscape spread to the south. Directly beneath them the Great Salt Lake glittered like aluminum foil, the shoreline etched with white salt marshes that reminded Leo of aerial photos of Mars.

“Hang on, Coach!” he shouted. “This is going to hurt.”

“I was born for hurt!”

WHOOM! A swell of salt water washed over the bow, dousing Coach Hedge. The Argo II listed dangerously to starboard, then righted itself and rocked on the surface of the lake. Machinery hummed as the aerial blades that were still working changed to nautical form.

Three banks of robotic oars dipped into the water and began moving them forward.

“Good job, Festus,” Leo said. “Take us toward the south shore.”

“Yeah!” Coach Hedge pumped his fists in the air. He was drenched from his horns to hooves, but grinning like a crazy goat. “Do it again!”

“Uh…maybe later,” Leo said. “Just stay above deck, okay? You can keep watch, in case—you know, the lake decides to attack us or something.”

“On it,” Hedge promised.

Leo rang the All clear bell and headed for the stairs. Before he got there, a loud clump-clump-clump shook the hull. A tan stallion appeared on deck with Hazel Levesque on his back.

“How—?” Leo’s question died in his throat. “We’re in the middle of a lake! Can that thing fly?”

The horse whinnied angrily.

“Arion can’t fly,” Hazel said. “But he can run across just about anything. Water, vertical surfaces, small mountains—none of that bothers him.”

“Oh.”

Hazel was looking at him strangely, the way she had during the feast in the forum—like she was searching for something in his face. He was tempted to ask if they had met before, but he was sure they hadn’t. He would remember a pretty girl paying such close attention to him. That didn’t happen a lot.

She’s Frank’s girlfriend, he reminded himself.

Frank was still below, but Leo almost wished the big guy would come up the stairs. The way Hazel was studying Leo made him feel uneasy and self-conscious.

Coach Hedge crept forward with his baseball bat, eyeing the magic horse suspiciously. “Valdez, does this count as an invasion?”

“No!” Leo said. “Um, Hazel, you’d better come with me. I built a stable belowdecks, if Arion wants to—”

“He’s more of a free spirit.” Hazel slipped out of the saddle. “He’ll graze around the lake until I call him. But I want to see the ship. Lead the way.”

The Argo II was designed like an ancient trireme, only twice as big. The first deck had one central corridor with crew cabins on either side. On a normal trireme, most of the space would’ve been taken up with three rows of benches for a few hundred sweaty guys to do the manual labor, but Leo’s oars were automated and retractable, so they took up very little room inside the hull. The ship’s power came from the engine room on the second and lowest deck, which also housed sickbay, storage, and the stables.

Leo led the way down the hall. He’d built the ship with eight cabins—seven for the demigods of the prophecy, and a room for Coach Hedge (Seriously—Chiron considered him a responsible adult chaperone?). At the stern was a large mess hall/lounge, which was where Leo headed.

On the way, they passed Jason’s room. The door was open. Piper sat at the side of his berth, holding Jason’s hand while he snored with an ice pack on his head.

Piper glanced at Leo. She held a finger to her lips for quiet, but she didn’t look angry. That was something. Leo tried to force down his guilt, and they kept walking. When they reached the mess hall, they found the others—Percy, Annabeth, and Frank—sitting dejectedly around the dining table.

Leo had made the lounge as nice as possible, since he figured they’d be spending a lot of time there. The cupboard was lined with magic cups and plates from Camp Half-Blood, which would fill up with whatever food or drink you wanted on command. There was also a magical ice chest with canned drinks, perfect for picnics ashore. The chairs were cushy recliners with thousand-finger massage, built-in headphones, and sword and drink holders for all your demigod kicking-back needs. There were no windows, but the walls were enchanted to show real-time footage from Camp Half-Blood—the beach, the forest, the strawberry fields—although now Leo was wondering if this made people homesick rather than happy.

Percy was staring longingly at a sunset view of Half-Blood Hill, where the Golden Fleece glittered in the branches of the tall pine tree.

“So we’ve landed,” Percy said. “What now?”

Frank plucked on his bowstring. “Figure out the prophecy? I mean…that was a prophecy Ella spoke, right? From the Sibylline Books?”

“The what?” Leo asked.

Frank explained how their harpy friend was freakishly good at memorizing books. At some point in the past, she’d inhaled a collection of ancient prophecies that had supposedly been destroyed around the fall of Rome.

“That’s why you didn’t tell the Romans,” Leo guessed. “You didn’t want them to get hold of her.”

Percy kept staring at the image of Half-Blood Hill. “Ella’s sensitive. She was a captive when we found her. I just didn’t want…” He made a fist. “It doesn’t matter now. I sent Tyson an Iris-message, told him to take Ella to Camp Half-Blood. They’ll be safe there.”

Leo doubted that any of them would be safe, now that he had stirred up a camp of angry Romans on top of the problems they already had with Gaea and the giants; but he kept quiet.

Annabeth laced her fingers. “Let me think about the prophecy—but right now we have more immediate problems. We have to get this ship fixed. Leo, what do we need?”

“The easiest thing is tar.” Leo was glad to change the subject. “We can get that in the city, at a roofing-supply store or someplace like that. Also, Celestial bronze and lime. According to Festus, we can find both of those on an island in the lake, just west of here.”

“We’ll have to hurry,” Hazel warned. “If I know Octavian, he’s searching for us with his auguries. The Romans will send a strike force after us. It’s a matter of honor.”

Leo felt everyone’s eyes on him. “Guys…I don’t know what happened. Honestly, I—”

Annabeth raised her hand. “We’ve been talking. We agree it couldn’t have been you, Leo. That cold feeling you mentioned…I felt it too. It must have been some sort of magic, either Octavian or Gaea or one of her minions. But until we understand what happened—”

Frank grunted. “How can we be sure it won’t happen again?”

Leo’s fingers heated up like they were about to catch fire. One of his powers as a son of Hephaestus was that he could summon flames at will; but he had to be careful not to do so by accident, especially on a ship filled with explosives and flammable supplies.

“I’m fine now,” he insisted, though he wished he could be sure. “Maybe we should use the buddy system. Nobody goes anywhere alone. We can leave Piper and Coach Hedge on board with Jason. Send one team into town to get tar. Another team can go after the bronze and the lime.”

“Split up?” Percy said. “That sounds like a really bad idea.”

“It’ll be quicker,” Hazel put in. “Besides, there’s a reason a quest is usually limited to three demigods, right?”

Annabeth raised her eyebrows, as if reappraising Hazel’s merits. “You’re right. The same reason we needed the Argo II…outside camp, seven demigods in one place will attract way too much monstrous attention. The ship is designed to conceal and protect us. We should be safe enough on board; but if we go on expeditions, we shouldn’t travel in groups larger than three. No sense alerting more of Gaea’s minions than we have to.”

Percy still didn’t look happy about it, but he took Annabeth’s hand. “As long as you’re my buddy, I’m good.”

Hazel smiled. “Oh, that’s easy. Frank, you were amazing, turning into a dragon! Could you do it again to fly Annabeth and Percy into town for the tar?”

Frank opened his mouth like he wanted to protest. “I…I suppose. But what about you?”

“I’ll ride Arion with Sa—with Leo, here.” She fidgeted with her sword hilt, which made Leo uneasy. She had even more nervous energy than he did. “We’ll get the bronze and the lime. We can all meet back here by dark.”

Frank scowled. Obviously, he didn’t like the idea of Leo going off with Hazel. For some reason, Frank’s disapproval made Leo want to go. He had to prove he was trustworthy. He wasn’t going to fire any random ballistae again.

“Leo,” said Annabeth, “if we get the supplies, how long to fix the ship?”

“With luck, just a few hours.”

“Fine,” she decided. “We’ll meet you back here as soon as possible, but stay safe. We could use some good luck. That doesn’t mean we’ll get it.”

RIDING ARION WAS THE BEST THING that had happened to Leo all day—which wasn’t saying much, since his day had sucked. The horse’s hooves turned the surface of the lake to salty mist. Leo put his hand against the horse’s side and felt the muscles working like a well-oiled machine. For the first time, he understood why car engines were measured in horsepower. Arion was a four-legged Maserati.

Ahead of them lay an island—a line of sand so white, it might have been pure table salt. Behind that rose an expanse of grassy dunes and weathered boulders.

Leo sat behind Hazel, one arm around her waist. The close contact made him a little uncomfortable, but it was the only way he could stay on board (or whatever you called it with a horse).

Before they left, Percy had pulled him aside to tell him Hazel’s story. Percy made it sound like he was just doing Leo a favor, but there’d been an undertone like If you mess with my friend, I will personally feed you to a great white shark.

According to Percy, Hazel was a daughter of Pluto. She’d died in the 1940s and been brought back to life only a few months ago.

Leo found that hard to believe. Hazel seemed warm and very alive, not like the ghosts or the other reborn mortals Leo had tangled with.

She seemed good with people, too, unlike Leo, who was much more comfortable with machines. Living stuff, like horses and girls? He had no idea what made them work.

Hazel was also Frank’s girlfriend, so Leo knew he should keep his distance. Still, her hair smelled good, and riding with her made his heart race almost against his will. It must’ve been the speed of the horse.

Arion thundered onto the beach. He stomped his hooves and whinnied triumphantly, like Coach Hedge yelling a battle cry.

Hazel and Leo dismounted. Arion pawed the sand.

“He needs to eat,” Hazel explained. “He likes gold, but—”

“Gold?” Leo asked.

“He’ll settle for grass. Go on, Arion. Thanks for the ride. I’ll call you.”

Just like that, the horse was gone—nothing left but a steaming trail across the lake.

“Fast horse,” Leo said, “and expensive to feed.”

“Not really,” Hazel said. “Gold is easy for me.”

Leo raised his eyebrows. “How is gold easy? Please tell me you’re not related to King Midas. I don’t like that guy.”

Hazel pursed her lips, as if she regretted raising the subject. “Never mind.”

That made Leo even more curious, but he decided it might be better not to press her. He knelt and cupped a handful of white sand. “Well…one problem solved, anyway. This is lime.”

Hazel frowned. “The whole beach?”

“Yeah. See? The granules are perfectly round. It’s not really sand. It’s calcium carbonate.” Leo pulled a Ziploc bag from his tool belt and dug his hand into the lime.

Suddenly he froze. He remembered all the times the earth goddess Gaea had appeared to him in the ground—her sleeping face made of dust or sand or dirt. She loved to taunt him. He imagined her closed eyes and her dreaming smile swirling in the white calcium.

Walk away, little hero, Gaea said. Without you, the ship cannot be fixed.

“Leo?” Hazel asked. “You okay?”

He took a shaky breath. Gaea wasn’t here. He was just freaking himself out.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, fine.”

He started to fill the bag.

Hazel knelt next to him and helped. “We should’ve brought a pail and shovels.”

The idea cheered Leo up. He even smiled. “We could’ve made a sand castle.”

“A lime castle.”

Their eyes locked for a second too long.

Hazel looked away. “You are so much like—”

“Sammy?” Leo guessed.

She fell backward. “You know?”

“I have no idea who Sammy is. But Frank asked me if I was sure that wasn’t my name.”

“And…it isn’t?”

“No! Jeez.”

“You don’t have a twin brother or…” Hazel stopped. “Is your family from New Orleans?”

“Nah. Houston. Why? Is Sammy a guy you used to know?”

“I…It’s nothing. You just look like him.”

Leo could tell she was too embarrassed to say more. But if Hazel was a kid from the past, did that mean Sammy was from the 1940s? If so, how could Frank know the guy? And why would Hazel think Leo was Sammy, all these decades later?

They finished filling the bag in silence. Leo stuffed it in his tool belt and the bag vanished—no weight, no mass, no volume—though Leo knew it would be there as soon as he reached for it. Anything that could fit into the pockets, Leo could tote around. He loved his tool belt. He just wished the pockets were large enough for a chain saw, or maybe a bazooka.

He stood and scanned the island—bleach-white dunes, blankets of grass, and boulders encrusted with salt like frosting. “Festus said there was Celestial bronze close by, but I’m not sure where—”

“That way.” Hazel pointed up the beach. “About five hundred yards.”

“How do you—?”

“Precious metals,” Hazel said. “It’s a Pluto thing.”

Leo remembered what she’d said about gold being easy. “Handy talent. Lead the way, Miss Metal Detector.”

The sun began to set. The sky turned a bizarre mix of purple and yellow. In another reality, Leo might’ve enjoyed a walk on the beach with a pretty girl, but the farther they went, the edgier he felt. Finally Hazel turned inland.

“You sure this is a good idea?” he asked.

“We’re close,” she promised. “Come on.”

Just over the dunes, they saw the woman.

She sat on a boulder in the middle of a grassy field. A black-and-chrome motorcycle was parked nearby, but each of the wheels had a big pie slice removed from the spokes and rim, so that they resembled Pac-Men. No way was the bike drivable in that condition.

The woman had curly black hair and a bony frame. She wore black leather biker’s pants, tall leather boots, and a bloodred leather jacket—sort of a Michael Jackson joins the Hell’s Angels look. Around her feet, the ground was littered with what looked like broken shells. She was hunched over, pulling new ones out of a sack and cracking them open. Shucking oysters? Leo wasn’t sure if there were oysters in the Great Salt Lake. He didn’t think so.

He wasn’t anxious to approach. He’d had bad experiences with strange ladies. His old babysitter, Tía Callida, had turned out to be Hera and had a nasty habit of putting him down for naps in a blazing fireplace. The earth goddess Gaea had killed his mother in a workshop fire when Leo was eight. The snow goddess Khione had tried to turn him into a frozen dairy treat in Sonoma.

But Hazel forged ahead, so he didn’t have much choice except to follow.

As they got closer, Leo noticed disturbing details. Attached to the woman’s belt was a curled whip. Her red-leather jacket had a subtle design to it—twisted branches of an apple tree populated with skeletal birds. The oysters she was shucking were actually fortune cookies.

A pile of broken cookies lay ankle-deep all around her. She kept pulling new ones from her sack, cracking them open, and reading the fortunes. Most she tossed aside. A few made her mutter unhappily. She would swipe her finger over the slip of paper like she was smudging it, then magically reseal the cookie and toss it into a nearby basket.

“What are you doing?” Leo asked before he could stop himself.

The woman looked up. Leo’s lungs filled so fast, he thought they might burst.

“Aunt Rosa?” he asked.

It didn’t make sense, but this woman looked exactly like his aunt. She had the same broad nose with a mole on one side, the same sour mouth and hard eyes. But it couldn’t be Rosa. She would never wear clothes like that, and she was still down in Houston, as far as Leo knew. She wouldn’t be cracking open fortune cookies in the middle of the Great Salt Lake.

“Is that what you see?” the woman asked. “Interesting. And you, Hazel, dear?”

“How did you—?” Hazel stepped back in alarm. “You—you look like Mrs. Leer. My third grade teacher. I hated you.”

The woman cackled. “Excellent. You resented her, eh? She judged you unfairly?”

“You—she taped my hands to the desk for misbehaving,” Hazel said. “She called my mother a witch. She blamed me for everything I didn’t do and— No. She has to be dead. Who are you?”

“Oh, Leo knows,” the woman said. “How do you feel about Aunt Rosa, mijo?”

Mijo. That’s what Leo’s mom had always called him. After his mom died, Rosa had rejected Leo. She’d called him a devil child. She’d blamed him for the fire that had killed her sister. Rosa had turned his family against him and left him—a scrawny orphaned eight-year-old—at the mercy of social services. Leo had bounced around from foster home to foster home until he’d finally found a home at Camp Half-Blood. Leo didn’t hate many people, but after all these years, Aunt Rosa’s face made him boil with resentment.

How did he feel? He wanted to get even. He wanted revenge.

His eyes drifted to the motorcycle with the Pac-Man wheels. Where had he seen something like that before? Cabin 16, back at Camp Half-Blood—the symbol above their door was a broken wheel.

“Nemesis,” he said. “You’re the goddess of revenge.”

“You see?” The goddess smiled at Hazel. “He recognizes me.”

Nemesis cracked another cookie and wrinkled her nose. “You will have great fortune when you least expect it,” she read. “That’s exactly the sort of nonsense I hate. Someone opens a cookie, and suddenly they have a prophecy that they’ll be rich! I blame that tramp Tyche. Always dispensing good luck to people who don’t deserve it!”

Leo looked at the mound of broken cookies. “Uh…you know those aren’t real prophecies, right? They’re just stuffed in the cookies at some factory—”

“Don’t try to excuse it!” Nemesis snapped. “It’s just like Tyche to get people’s hopes up. No, no. I must counter her.” Nemesis flicked a finger over the slip of paper, and the letters changed to red. “You will die painfully when you most expect it. There! Much better.”

“That’s horrible!” Hazel said. “You’d let someone read that in their fortune cookie, and it would come true?”

Nemesis sneered. It really was creepy, seeing that expression on Aunt Rosa’s face. “My dear Hazel, haven’t you ever wished horrible things on Mrs. Leer for the way she treated you?”

“That doesn’t mean I’d want them to come true!”

“Bah.” The goddess resealed the cookie and tossed it in her basket. “Tyche would be Fortuna for you, I suppose, being Roman. Like the others, she’s in a horrible way right now. Me? I’m not affected. I am called Nemesis in both Greek and Roman. I do not change, because revenge is universal.”

“What are you talking about?” Leo asked. “What are you doing here?”

Nemesis opened another cookie. “Lucky numbers. Ridiculous! That’s not even a proper fortune!” She crushed the cookie and scattered the pieces around her feet.

“To answer your question, Leo Valdez, the gods are in terrible shape. It always happens when a civil war is brewing between you Romans and Greeks. The Olympians are torn between their two natures, called on by both sides. They become quite schizophrenic, I’m afraid. Splitting headaches. Disorientation.”

“But we’re not at war,” Leo insisted.

“Um, Leo…” Hazel winced. “Except for the fact that you recently blew up large sections of New Rome.”

Leo stared at her, wondering whose side she was on. “Not on purpose!”

“I know…” Hazel said, “but the Romans don’t realize that. And they’ll be pursuing us in retaliation.”

Nemesis cackled. “Leo, listen to the girl. War is coming. Gaea has seen to it, with your help. And can you guess whom the gods blame for their predicament?”

Leo’s mouth tasted like calcium carbonate. “Me.”

The goddess snorted. “Well, don’t you have a high opinion of yourself. You’re just a pawn on the chessboard, Leo Valdez. I was referring to the player who set this ridiculous quest in motion, bringing the Greeks and Romans together. The gods blame Hera—or Juno, if you prefer! The queen of the heavens has fled Olympus to escape the wrath of her family. Don’t expect any more help from your patron!”

Leo’s head throbbed. He had mixed feelings about Hera. She’d meddled in his life since he was a baby, molding him to serve her purpose in this big prophecy, but at least she had been on their side, more or less. If she was out of the picture now…

“So why are you here?” he asked.

“Why, to offer my help!” Nemesis smiled wickedly.

Leo glanced at Hazel. She looked like she’d just been offered a free snake.

“Your help,” Leo said.

“Of course!” said the goddess. “I enjoy tearing down the proud and powerful, and there are none who deserve tearing down like Gaea and her giants. Still, I must warn you that I will not suffer undeserved success. Good luck is a sham. The wheel of fortune is a Ponzi scheme. True success requires sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?” Hazel’s voice was tight. “I lost my mother. I died and came back. Now my brother is missing. Isn’t that enough sacrifice for you?”

Leo could totally relate. He wanted to scream that he’d lost his mom too. His whole life had been one misery after another. He’d lost his dragon, Festus. He’d nearly killed himself trying to finish the Argo II. Now he’d fired on the Roman camp, most likely started a war, and maybe lost the trust of his friends.

“Right now,” he said, trying to control his anger, “all I want is some Celestial bronze.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Nemesis said. “It’s just over the rise. You’ll find it with the sweethearts.”

“Wait,” Hazel said. “What sweethearts?”

Nemesis popped a cookie in her mouth and swallowed it, fortune and all. “You’ll see. Perhaps they will teach you a lesson, Hazel Levesque. Most heroes cannot escape their nature, even when given a second chance at life.” She smiled. “And speaking of your brother Nico, you don’t have much time. Let’s see…it’s June twenty-fifth? Yes, after today, six more days. Then he dies, along with the entire city of Rome.”

Hazel’s eyes widened. “How…what—?”

“And as for you, child of fire.” She turned to Leo. “Your worst hardships are yet to come. You will always be the outsider, the seventh wheel. You will not find a place among your brethren. Soon you will face a problem you cannot solve, though I could help you…for a price.”

Leo smelled smoke. He realized fingers on his left hand were ablaze, and Hazel was staring at him in terror.

He shoved his hand in his pocket to extinguish the flames. “I like to solve my own problems.”

“Very well.” Nemesis brushed cookie dust off her jacket.

“But, um, what sort of price are we talking about?”

The goddess shrugged. “One of my children recently traded an eye for the ability to make a real difference in the world.”

Leo’s stomach churned. “You…want an eye?”

“In your case, perhaps another sacrifice would do. But something just as painful. Here.” She handed him an unbroken fortune cookie. “If you need an answer, break this. It will solve your problem.”

Leo’s hand trembled as he held the fortune cookie. “What problem?”

“You’ll know when the time comes.”

“No, thanks,” Leo said firmly. But his hand, as though it had a will of its own, slipped the cookie into his tool belt.

Nemesis picked another cookie from her bag and cracked it open. “You will have cause to reconsider your choices soon. Oh, I like that one. No changes needed here.”

She resealed the cookie and tossed it into the basket. “Very few gods will be able to help you on the quest. Most are already incapacitated, and their confusion will only grow worse. One thing might bring unity to Olympus again—an old wrong finally avenged. Ah, that would be sweet indeed, the scales finally balanced! But it will not happen unless you accept my help.”

“I suppose you won’t tell us what you’re talking about,” Hazel muttered. “Or why my brother Nico has only six days to live. Or why Rome is going to be destroyed.”

Nemesis chuckled. She rose and slung her sack of cookies over her shoulder. “Oh, it’s all tied together, Hazel Levesque. As for my offer, Leo Valdez, give it some thought. You’re a good child. A hard worker. We could do business. But I have detained you too long. You should visit the reflecting pool before the light fades. My poor cursed boy gets quite…agitated when the darkness comes.”

Leo didn’t like the sound of that, but the goddess climbed on her motorcycle. Apparently, it was drivable, despite those Pac-Man–shaped wheels, because Nemesis revved her engine and disappeared in a mushroom cloud of black smoke.

Hazel bent down. All the broken cookies and fortunes had disappeared except for one crumpled slip of paper. She picked it up and read, “You will see yourself reflected, and you will have reason to despair.”

“Fantastic,” Leo grumbled. “Let’s go see what that means.”

“WHO IS AUNT ROSA?” HAZEL ASKED.

Leo didn’t want to talk about her. Nemesis’s words were still buzzing in his ears. His tool belt seemed heavier since he’d put the cookie in there—which was impossible. Its pockets could carry anything without adding extra weight. Even the most fragile things would never break. Still, Leo imagined he could feel it in there, dragging him down, waiting to be cracked open.

“Long story,” he said. “She abandoned me after my mom died, gave me to foster care.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well…” Leo was anxious to change the subject. “What about you? What Nemesis said about your brother?”

Hazel blinked like she’d gotten salt in her eyes. “Nico…he found me in the Underworld. He brought me back to the mortal world and convinced the Romans at Camp Jupiter to accept me. I owe him for my second chance at life. If Nemesis is right, and Nico’s in danger…I have to help him.”

“Sure,” Leo said, though the idea made him uneasy. He doubted the revenge goddess ever gave advice out of the goodness of her heart. “And what Nemesis said about your brother having six days to live, and Rome getting destroyed…any idea what she meant?”

“None,” Hazel admitted. “But I’m afraid…”

Whatever she was thinking, she decided not to share it. She climbed one of the largest boulders to get a better view. Leo tried to follow and lost his balance. Hazel caught his hand. She pulled him up and they found themselves atop the rock, holding hands, face-to-face.

Hazel’s eyes glittered like gold.

Gold is easy, she’d said. It didn’t seem that way to Leo—not when he looked at her. He wondered who Sammy was. Leo had a nagging suspicion that he should know, but he just couldn’t place the name. Whoever he was, he was lucky if Hazel cared for him.

“Um, thanks.” He let go of her hand, but they were still standing so close, he could feel the warmth of her breath. She definitely didn’t seem like a dead person.

“When we were talking to Nemesis,” Hazel said uneasily, “your hands…I saw flames.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a Hephaestus power. Usually I can keep it under control.”

“Oh.” She put one hand protectively on her denim shirt, like she was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Leo got the feeling she wanted to back away from him, but the boulder was too small.

Great, he thought. Another person who thinks I’m a scary freak.

He gazed across the island. The opposite shore was only a few hundred yards away. Between here and there were dunes and clumps of boulders, but nothing that looked like a reflecting pool.

You will always be the outsider, Nemesis had told him, the seventh wheel. You will not find a place among your brethren.

She might as well have poured acid in his ears. Leo didn’t need anybody to tell him he was odd man out. He’d spent months alone in Bunker 9 at Camp Half-Blood, working on his ship while his friends trained together and shared meals and played capture-the-flag for fun and prizes. Even his two best friends, Piper and Jason, often treated him like an outsider. Since they’d started dating, their idea of “quality time” didn’t include Leo. His only other friend, Festus the dragon, had been reduced to a figurehead when his control disk had gotten destroyed on their last adventure. Leo didn’t have the technical skill to repair it.

The seventh wheel. Leo had heard of a fifth wheel—an extra, useless piece of equipment. He figured a seventh wheel was worse.

He’d thought maybe this quest would be a fresh start for him. All his hard work on the Argo II would pay off. He’d have six good friends who would admire and appreciate him, and they’d go sailing off into the sunrise to fight giants. Maybe, Leo secretly hoped, he’d even find a girlfriend.

Do the math, he chided himself.

Nemesis was right. He might be part of a group of seven, but he was still isolated. He had fired on the Romans and brought his friends nothing but trouble. You will not find a place among your brethren.

“Leo?” Hazel asked gently. “You can’t take what Nemesis said to heart.”

He frowned. “What if it’s true?”

“She’s the goddess of revenge,” Hazel reminded him. “Maybe she’s on our side, maybe not; but she exists to stir up resentment.”

Leo wished he could dismiss his feelings that easily. He couldn’t. Still, it wasn’t Hazel’s fault.

“We should keep going,” he said. “I wonder what Nemesis meant about finishing before dark.”

Hazel glanced at the sun, which was just touching the horizon. “And who is the cursed boy she mentioned?”

Below them, a voice said, “Cursed boy she mentioned.”

At first, Leo saw no one. Then his eyes adjusted. He realized a young woman was standing only ten feet from the base of the boulder. Her dress was a Greek-style tunic the same color as the rocks. Her wispy hair was somewhere between brown and blond and gray, so it blended with the dry grass. She wasn’t invisible, exactly, but she was almost perfectly camouflaged until she moved. Even then, Leo had trouble focusing on her. Her face was pretty but not memorable. In fact, each time Leo blinked, he couldn’t remember what she looked like, and he had to concentrate to find her again.

“Hello,” Hazel said. “Who are you?”

“Who are you?” the girl answered. Her voice sounded weary, like she was tired of answering that question.

Hazel and Leo exchanged looks. With this demigod gig, you never knew what you’d run into. Nine times out of ten, it wasn’t good. A ninja girl camouflaged in earth tones didn’t strike Leo as something he wanted to deal with just then.

“Are you the cursed kid Nemesis mentioned?” Leo asked. “But you’re a girl.”

“You’re a girl,” said the girl.

“Excuse me?” Leo said.

“Excuse me,” the girl said miserably.

“You’re repeating…” Leo stopped. “Oh. Hold it. Hazel, wasn’t there some myth about a girl who repeated everything—?”

“Echo,” Hazel said.

“Echo,” the girl agreed. She shifted, her dress changing with the landscape. Her eyes were the color of the salt water. Leo tried to home in on her features, but he couldn’t.

“I don’t remember the myth,” he admitted. “You were cursed to repeat the last thing you heard?”

“You heard,” Echo said.

“Poor thing,” Hazel said. “If I remember right, a goddess did this?”

“A goddess did this,” Echo confirmed.

Leo scratched his head. “But wasn’t that thousands of years…oh. You’re one of the mortals who came back through the Doors of Death. I really wish we could stop running into dead people.”

“Dead people,” Echo said, like she was chastising him.

He realized Hazel was staring at her feet.

“Uh…sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“That way.” Echo pointed toward the far shore of the island.

“You want to show us something?” Hazel asked. She climbed down the boulder, and Leo followed.

Even up close, Echo was hard to see. In fact, she seemed to get more invisible the longer he looked at her.

“You sure you’re real?” he asked. “I mean…flesh and blood?”

“Flesh and blood.” She touched Leo’s face and made him flinch. Her fingers were warm.

“So…you have to repeat everything?” he asked.

“Everything.”

Leo couldn’t help smiling. “That could be fun.”

“Fun,” she said unhappily.

“Blue elephants.”

“Blue elephants.”

“Kiss me, you fool.”

“You fool.”

“Hey!”

“Hey!”

“Leo,” Hazel pleaded, “don’t tease her.”

“Don’t tease her,” Echo agreed.

“Okay, okay,” Leo said, though he had to resist the urge. It wasn’t every day he met somebody with a built-in talkback feature. “So what were you pointing at? Do you need our help?”

“Help,” Echo agreed emphatically. She gestured for them to follow and sprinted down the slope. Leo could only follow her progress by the movement of the grass and the shimmer of her dress as it changed to match the rocks.

“We’d better hurry,” Hazel said. “Or we’ll lose her.”

They found the problem—if you can call a mob of good-looking girls a problem. Echo led them down into a grassy meadow shaped like a blast crater, with a small pond in the middle. Gathered at the water’s edge were several dozen nymphs. At least, Leo guessed they were nymphs. Like the ones at Camp Half-Blood, these wore gossamer dresses. Their feet were bare. They had elfish features, and their skin had a slightly greenish tinge.

Leo didn’t understand what they were doing, but they were all crowded together in one spot, facing the pond and jostling for a better view. Several held up phone cameras, trying to get a shot over the heads of the others. Leo had never seen nymphs with phones. He wondered if they were looking at a dead body. If so, why were they bouncing up and down and giggling so excitedly?

“What are they looking at?” Leo wondered.

“Looking at,” Echo sighed.

“One way to find out.” Hazel marched forward and began nudging her way through the crowd. “Excuse us. Pardon me.”

“Hey!” one nymph complained. “We were here first!”

“Yeah,” another sniffed. “He won’t be interested in you.”

The second nymph had large red hearts painted on her cheeks. Over her dress, she wore a T-shirt that read: OMG, I <3 N!!!!

“Uh, demigod business,” Leo said, trying to sound official. “Make room. Thanks.”

The nymphs grumbled, but they parted to reveal a young man kneeling at the edge of the pond, gazing intently at the water.

Leo usually didn’t pay much attention to how other guys looked. He supposed that came from hanging around Jason—tall, blond, rugged, and basically everything Leo could never be. Leo was used to not being noticed by girls. At least, he knew he’d never get a girl by his looks. He hoped his personality and sense of humor would do that someday, though it definitely hadn’t worked yet.

At any rate, Leo couldn’t miss the fact that the guy at the pond was one super good-looking dude. He had a chiseled face with lips and eyes that were somewhere between feminine beautiful and masculine handsome. Dark hair swept over his brow. He might’ve been seventeen or twenty, it was hard to say, but he was built like a dancer—with long graceful arms and muscular legs, perfect posture and an air of regal calm. He wore a simple white T-shirt and jeans, with a bow and quiver strapped to his back. The weapons obviously hadn’t been used in a while. The arrows were covered in dust. A spider had woven a web in the top of the bow.

As Leo edged closer, he realized the guy’s face was unusually golden. In the sunset, the light was bouncing off a large flat sheet of Celestial bronze that lay at the bottom of the pond, washing Mr. Handsome’s features in a warm glow.

The guy seemed fascinated with his reflection in the metal.

Hazel inhaled sharply. “He’s gorgeous.”

Around her, the nymphs squealed and clapped in agreement.

“I am,” the young man murmured dreamily, his gaze still fixed on the water. “I am so gorgeous.”

One of the nymphs showed her iPhone screen. “His latest YouTube video got a million hits in like, an hour. I think I was half of those!”

The other nymphs giggled.

“YouTube video?” Leo asked. “What does he do in the video, sing?”

“No, silly!” the nymph chided. “He used to be a prince, and a wonderful hunter and stuff. But that doesn’t matter. Now he just…well, look!” She showed Leo the video. It was exactly what they were seeing in real life—the guy staring at himself in the pond.

“He is sooooo hot!” said another girl. Her T-shirt read: MRS. NARCISSUS.

“Narcissus?” Leo asked.

“Narcissus,” Echo agreed sadly.

Leo had forgotten Echo was there. Apparently none of the nymphs had noticed her either.

“Oh, not you again!” Mrs. Narcissus tried to push Echo away, but she misjudged where the camouflaged girl was and ended up shoving several other nymphs.

“You had your chance, Echo!” said the nymph with the iPhone. “He dumped you four thousand years ago! You are so not good enough for him.”

“For him,” Echo said bitterly.

“Wait.” Hazel clearly had trouble tearing her eyes away from the handsome guy, but she managed it. “What’s going on here? Why did Echo bring us here?”

One nymph rolled her eyes. She was holding an autograph pen and a crumpled poster of Narcissus. “Echo was a nymph like us, a long time ago, but she was a total chatterbox! Gossiping, blah, blah, blah, all the time.”

“I know!” another nymph shrieked. “Like, who could stand that? Just the other day, I told Cleopeia—you know she lives in the boulder next to me?—I said: Stop gossiping or you’ll end up like Echo. Cleopeia is such a big mouth! Did you hear what she said about that cloud nymph and the satyr?”

“Totally!” said the nymph with the poster. “So anyway, as punishment for blabbing, Hera cursed Echo so she could only repeat things, which was fine with us. But then Echo fell in love with our gorgeous guy, Narcissus—as if he would ever notice her.”

“As if!” said half a dozen others.

“Now she’s got some weird idea he needs saving,” said Mrs. Narcissus. “She should just go away.”

“Go away,” Echo growled back.

“I’m so glad Narcissus is alive again,” said another nymph in a gray dress. She had the words NARCISSUS + LAIEA written up and down her arms in black marker. “He’s like the best! And he’s in my territory.”

“Oh, stop it, Laiea,” her friend said. “I’m the pond nymph. You’re just the rock nymph.”

“Well, I’m the grass nymph,” another protested.

“No, he obviously came here because he likes the wildflowers!” another said. “Those are mine!”

The whole mob began arguing while Narcissus stared at the lake, ignoring them.

“Hold it!” Leo yelled. “Ladies, hold it! I need to ask Narcissus something.”

Slowly the nymphs settled down and went back to taking pictures.

Leo knelt next to the handsome dude. “So, Narcissus. What’s up?”

“Could you move?” Narcissus asked distractedly. “You’re ruining the view.”

Leo looked in the water. His own reflection rippled next to Narcissus’s on the surface of the submerged bronze. Leo didn’t have any desire to stare at himself. Compared to Narcissus, he looked like an undergrown troll. But there was no doubt the metal was a sheet of hammered Celestial bronze, roughly circular, about five feet in diameter.

What it was doing in this pond, Leo wasn’t sure. Celestial bronze fell to earth in odd places. He’d heard that most pieces were cast off from his dad’s various workshops. Hephaestus would lose his temper when projects didn’t work out, and he’d toss his scraps into the mortal world. This piece looked like it might have been meant as a shield for a god, but it hadn’t turned out properly. If Leo could get it back to the ship, it would be just enough bronze for his repairs.

“Right, great view,” Leo said. “Happy to move, but if you’re not using it, could I just take that sheet of bronze?”

“No,” Narcissus said. “I love him. He’s so gorgeous.”

Leo looked around to see if the nymphs were laughing. This had to be a huge joke. But they were swooning and nodding in agreement. Only Hazel seemed appalled. She wrinkled her nose as if she’d come to the conclusion that Narcissus smelled worse than he looked.

“Man,” Leo said to Narcissus. “You do realize that you’re looking at yourself in the water, right?”

“I am so great,” Narcissus sighed. He stretched out a hand longingly to touch the water, but held back. “No, I can’t make ripples. That ruins the image. Wow…I am so great.”

“Yeah,” Leo muttered. “But if I took the bronze, you could still see yourself in the water. Or here…” He reached in his tool belt and pulled out a simple mirror the size of a monocle. “I’ll trade you.”

Narcissus took the mirror, reluctantly, and admired himself. “Even you carry a picture of me? I don’t blame you. I am gorgeous. Thank you.” He set the mirror down and returned his attention to the pond. “But I already have a much better image. The color flatters me, don’t you think?”

“Oh, gods, yes!” a nymph screamed. “Marry me, Narcissus!”

“No, me!” another cried. “Would you sign my poster?”

“No, sign my shirt!”

“No, sign my forehead!”

“No, sign my—”

“Stop it!” Hazel snapped.

“Stop it,” Echo agreed.

Leo had lost sight of Echo again, but now he realized she was kneeling on the other side of Narcissus, waving her hand in front of his face as if trying to break his concentration. Narcissus didn’t even blink.

The nymph fan club tried to shove Hazel out of the way, but she drew her cavalry sword and forced them back. “Snap out of it!” she yelled.

“He won’t sign your sword,” the poster nymph complained.

“He won’t marry you,” said the iPhone girl. “And you can’t take his bronze mirror! That’s what keeps him here!”

“You’re all ridiculous,” Hazel said. “He’s so full of himself! How can you possibly like him?”

“Like him,” Echo sighed, still waving her hand in front of his face.

The others sighed along with her.

“I am so hot,” Narcissus said sympathetically.

“Narcissus, listen.” Hazel kept her sword at the ready. “Echo brought us here to help you. Didn’t you, Echo?”

“Echo,” said Echo.

“Who?” Narcissus said.

“The only girl who cares what happens to you, apparently,” Hazel said. “Do you remember dying?”

Narcissus frowned. “I…no. That can’t be right. I am much too important to die.”

“You died staring at yourself,” Hazel insisted. “I remember the story now. Nemesis was the goddess who cursed you, because you broke so many hearts. Your punishment was to fall in love with your own reflection.”

“I love me so, so much,” Narcissus agreed.

“You finally died,” Hazel continued. “I don’t know which version of the story is true. You either drowned yourself or turned into a flower hanging over the water or—Echo, which is it?”

“Which is it?” she said hopelessly.

Leo stood. “It doesn’t matter. The point is you’re alive again, man. You have a second chance. That’s what Nemesis was telling us. You can get up, and get on with your life. Echo is trying to save you. Or you can stay here and stare at yourself until you die again.”

“Stay here!” all the nymphs screamed.

“Marry me before you die!” another squeaked.

Narcissus shook his head. “You just want my reflection. I don’t blame you, but you can’t have it. I belong to me.”

Hazel sighed in exasperation. She glanced at the sun, which was sinking fast. Then she gestured with her sword toward the edge of the crater. “Leo, could we talk for a minute?”

“Excuse us,” Leo told Narcissus. “Echo, want to come with?”

“Come with,” Echo confirmed.

The nymphs clustered around Narcissus again and began recording new videos and taking more photos.

Hazel led the way until they were out of earshot. “Nemesis was right,” she said. “Some demigods can’t change their nature. Narcissus is going to stay there until he dies again.”

“No,” Leo said.

“No,” Echo agreed.

“We need that bronze,” Leo said. “If we take it away, it might give Narcissus a reason to snap out of it. Echo could have a chance to save him.”

“A chance to save him,” Echo said gratefully.

Hazel stabbed her sword in the sand. “It could also make several dozen nymphs very angry with us,” she said. “And Narcissus might still know how to shoot his bow.”

Leo pondered that. The sun was just about down. Nemesis had mentioned that Narcissus got agitated after dark, probably because he couldn’t see his reflection anymore. Leo didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out what the goddess meant by agitated. He’d also had experience with mobs of crazed nymphs. He wasn’t anxious to repeat that.

“Hazel,” he said, “your power with precious metal— Can you just detect it, or can you actually summon it to you?”

She frowned. “Sometimes I can summon it. I’ve never tried with a piece of Celestial bronze that big before. I might be able to draw it to me through the earth, but I’d have to be fairly close. It would take a lot of concentration, and it wouldn’t be fast.”

“Be fast,” Echo warned.

Leo cursed. He had hoped they could just go back to the ship, and Hazel could teleport the Celestial bronze from a safe distance.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll have to try something risky. Hazel, how about you try to summon the bronze from right here? Make it sink through the sand and tunnel over to you, then grab it and run for the ship.”

“But Narcissus is looking at it all the time,” she said.

“All the time,” Echo echoed.

“That’ll be my job,” Leo said, hating his own plan already. “Echo and I will cause a distraction.”

“Distraction?” Echo asked.

“I’ll explain,” Leo promised. “Are you willing?”

“Willing,” Echo said.

“Great,” Leo said. “Now, let’s hope we don’t die.”

LEO PSYCHED HIMSELF UP for an extreme makeover. He summoned some breath mints and a pair of welding goggles from his tool belt. The goggles weren’t exactly sunglasses, but they’d have to do. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He used some machine oil to grease back his hair. He stuck a wrench in his back pocket (why exactly, he wasn’t sure) and he had Hazel draw a tattoo on his biceps with a marker: HOT STUFF, with a skull and crossbones.

“What in the world are you thinking?” She sounded pretty flustered.

“I try not to think,” Leo admitted. “It interferes with being nuts. Just concentrate on moving that Celestial bronze. Echo, you ready?”

“Ready,” she said.

Leo took a deep breath. He strutted back toward the pond, hoping he looked awesome and not like he had some sort of nervous affliction. “Leo is the coolest!” he shouted.

“Leo is the coolest!” Echo shouted back.

“Yeah, baby, check me out!”

“Check me out!” Echo said.

“Make way for the king!”

“The king!”

“Narcissus is weak!”

“Weak!”

The crowd of nymphs scattered in surprise. Leo shooed them away as if they were bothering him. “No autographs, girls. I know you want some Leo time, but I’m way too cool. You better just hang around that ugly dweeb Narcissus. He’s lame!”

“Lame!” Echo said with enthusiasm.

The nymphs muttered angrily.

“What are you talking about?” one demanded.

“You’re lame,” said another.

Leo adjusted his goggles and smiled. He flexed his biceps, though he didn’t have much to flex, and showed off his HOT STUFF tattoo. He had the nymphs’ attention, if only because they were stunned; but Narcissus was still fixed on his own reflection.

“You know how ugly Narcissus is?” Leo asked the crowd. “He’s so ugly, when he was born his mama thought he was a backward centaur—with a horse butt for a face.”

Some of the nymphs gasped. Narcissus frowned, as though he was vaguely aware of a gnat buzzing around his head.

“You know why his bow has cobwebs?” Leo continued. “He uses it to hunt for dates, but he can’t find one!”

One of the nymphs laughed. The others quickly elbowed her into silence.

Narcissus turned and scowled at Leo. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Super-sized McShizzle, man!” Leo said. “I’m Leo Valdez, bad boy supreme. And the ladies love a bad boy.”

“Love a bad boy!” Echo said, with a convincing squeal.

Leo took out a pen and autographed the arm of one of the nymphs. “Narcissus is a loser! He’s so weak, he can’t bench-press a Kleenex. He’s so lame, when you look up lame on Wikipedia, it’s got a picture of Narcissus—only the picture’s so ugly, no one ever checks it out.”

Narcissus knit his handsome eyebrows. His face was turning from bronze to salmon pink. For the moment, he’d totally forgotten about the pond, and Leo could see the sheet of bronze sinking into the sand.

“What are you talking about?” Narcissus demanded. “I am amazing. Everyone knows this.”

“Amazing at pure suck,” Leo said. “If I was as suck as you, I’d drown myself. Oh wait, you already did that.”

Another nymph giggled. Then another. Narcissus growled, which did make him look a little less handsome. Meanwhile Leo beamed and wiggled his eyebrows over his goggles and spread his hands, gesturing for applause.

“That’s right!” he said. “Team Leo for the win!”

“Team Leo for the win!” Echo shouted. She’d wriggled into the mob of nymphs, and because she was so hard to see, the nymphs apparently thought the voice came from one of their own.

“Oh my god, I am so awesome!” Leo bellowed.

“So awesome!” Echo yelled back.

“He is funny,” a nymph ventured.

“And cute, in a scrawny way,” another said.

“Scrawny?” Leo asked. “Baby, I invented scrawny. Scrawny is the new sizzling hot. And I GOT the scrawny. Narcissus? He’s such a loser even the Underworld didn’t want him. He couldn’t get the ghost girls to date him.”

“Eww,” said a nymph.

“Eww!” Echo agreed.

“Stop!” Narcissus got to his feet. “This is not right! This person is obviously not awesome, so he must be…” He struggled for the right words. It had probably been a long time since he’d talked about anything other than himself. “He must be tricking us.”

Apparently Narcissus wasn’t completely stupid. Realization dawned on his face. He turned back to the pond. “The bronze mirror is gone! My reflection! Give me back to me!”

“Team Leo!” one of the nymphs squeaked. But the others returned their attention to Narcissus.

“I’m the beautiful one!” Narcissus insisted. “He’s stolen my mirror, and I’m going to leave unless we get it back!”

The girls gasped. One pointed. “There!”

Hazel was at the top of the crater, running away as fast as she could while lugging a large sheet of bronze.

“Get it back!” cried a nymph.

Probably against her will, Echo muttered, “Get it back.”

“Yes!” Narcissus unslung his bow and grabbed an arrow from his dusty quiver. “The first one who gets that bronze, I will like you almost as much as I like me. I might even kiss you, right after I kiss my reflection!”

“Oh my gods!” the nymphs screamed.

“And kill those demigods!” Narcissus added, glaring very handsomely at Leo. “They are not as cool as me!”

Leo could run pretty fast when someone was trying to kill him. Sadly, he’d had a lot of practice.

He overtook Hazel, which was easy, since she was struggling with fifty pounds of Celestial bronze. He took one side of the metal plate and glanced back. Narcissus was nocking an arrow, but it was so old and brittle, it broke into splinters.

“Ow!” he yelled very attractively. “My manicure!”

Normally nymphs were quick—at least the ones at Camp Half-Blood were—but these were burdened with posters, T-shirts, and other Narcissus™ merchandise. The nymphs also weren’t great at working as a team. They kept stumbling over one another, pushing and shoving. Echo made things worse by running among them, tripping and tackling as many as she could.

Still, they were closing rapidly.

“Call Arion!” Leo gasped.

“Already did!” Hazel said.

They ran for the beach. They made it to the edge of the water and could see the Argo II, but there was no way to get there. It was much too far to swim, even if they hadn’t been toting bronze.

Leo turned. The mob was coming over the dunes, Narcissus in the lead, holding his bow like a band major’s baton. The nymphs had conjured assorted weapons. Some held rocks. Some had wooden clubs wreathed in flowers. A few of the water nymphs had squirt guns—which seemed not quite as terrifying—but the look in their eyes was still murderous.

“Oh, man,” Leo muttered, summoning fire in his free hand. “Straight-up fighting isn’t my thing.”

“Hold the Celestial bronze.” Hazel drew her sword. “Get behind me!”

“Get behind me!” Echo repeated. The camouflaged girl was racing ahead of the mob now. She stopped in front of Leo and turned, spreading her arms as if she meant to personally shield him.

“Echo?” Leo could hardly talk with the lump in his throat. “You’re one brave nymph.”

“Brave nymph?” Her tone made it a question.

“I’m proud to have you on Team Leo,” he said. “If we survive this, you should forget Narcissus.”

“Forget Narcissus?” she said uncertainly.

“You’re way too good for him.”

The nymphs surrounded them in a semicircle.

“Trickery!” Narcissus said. “They don’t love me, girls! We all love me, don’t we?”

“Yes!” the girls screamed, except for one confused nymph in a yellow dress who squeaked, “Team Leo!”

“Kill them!” Narcissus ordered.

The nymphs surged forward, but the sand in front of them exploded. Arion raced out of nowhere, circling the mob so quickly he created a sandstorm, showering the nymphs in white lime, spraying their eyes.

“I love this horse!” Leo said.

The nymphs collapsed, coughing and gagging. Narcissus stumbled around blindly, swinging his bow like he was trying to hit a piñata.

Hazel climbed into the saddle, hoisted up the bronze, and offered Leo a hand.

“We can’t leave Echo!” Leo said.

“Leave Echo,” the nymph repeated.

She smiled, and for the first time Leo could clearly see her face. She really was pretty. Her eyes were bluer than he’d realized. How had he missed that?

“Why?” Leo asked. “You don’t think you can still save Narcissus…”

“Save Narcissus,” she said confidently. And even though it was only an echo, Leo could tell that she meant it. She’d been given a second chance at life, and she was determined to use it to save the guy she loved—even if he was a completely hopeless (though very handsome) moron.

Leo wanted to protest, but Echo leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then pushed him gently away.

“Leo, come on!” Hazel called.

The other nymphs were starting to recover. They wiped the lime out of their eyes, which were now glowing green with anger. Leo looked for Echo again, but she had dissolved into the scenery.

“Yeah,” he said, his throat dry. “Yeah, okay.”

He climbed up behind Hazel. Arion took off across the water, the nymphs screaming behind them, and Narcissus shouting, “Bring me back! Bring me back!”

As Arion raced toward the Argo II, Leo remembered what Nemesis had said about Echo and Narcissus: Perhaps they’ll teach you a lesson.

Leo had thought she’d meant Narcissus, but now he wondered if the real lesson for him was Echo—invisible to her brethren, cursed to love someone who didn’t care for her. A seventh wheel. He tried to shake that thought. He clung to the sheet of bronze like a shield.

He was determined never to forget Echo’s face. She deserved at least one person who saw her and knew how good she was. Leo closed his eyes, but the memory of her smile was already fading.

PIPER DIDN’T WANT TO USE THE KNIFE.

But sitting in Jason’s cabin, waiting for him to wake up, she felt alone and helpless.

Jason’s face was so pale, he might’ve been dead. She remembered the awful sound of that brick hitting his forehead—an injury that had happened only because he’d tried to shield her from the Romans.

Even with the nectar and ambrosia they’d managed to force-feed him, Piper couldn’t be sure he would be okay when he woke up. What if he’d lost his memories again—but this time, his memories of her?

That would be the cruelest trick the gods had played on her yet, and they’d played some pretty cruel tricks.

She heard Gleeson Hedge in his room next door, humming a military song—“Stars and Stripes Forever,” maybe? Since the satellite TV was out, the satyr was probably sitting on his bunk reading back issues of Guns & Ammo magazine. He wasn’t a bad chaperone, but he was definitely the most warlike old goat Piper had ever met.

Of course she was grateful to the satyr. He had helped her dad, movie actor Tristan McLean, get back on his feet after being kidnapped by giants the past winter. A few weeks ago, Hedge had asked his girlfriend, Mellie, to take charge of the McLean household so he could come along to help with this quest.

Coach Hedge had tried to make it sound like returning to Camp Half-Blood had been all his idea, but Piper suspected there was more to it. The last few weeks, whenever Piper called home, her dad and Mellie had asked her what was wrong. Maybe something in her voice had tipped them off.

Piper couldn’t share the visions she’d seen. They were too disturbing. Besides, her dad had taken a potion that had erased all of Piper’s demigod secrets from his memory. But he could still tell when she was upset, and she was pretty sure her dad had encouraged Coach to look out for her.

She shouldn’t draw her blade. It would only make her feel worse.

Finally the temptation was too great. She unsheathed Katoptris. It didn’t look very special, just a triangular blade with an unadorned hilt, but it had once been owned by Helen of Troy. The dagger’s name meant “looking glass.”

Piper gazed at the bronze blade. At first, she saw only her reflection. Then light rippled across the metal. She saw a crowd of Roman demigods gathered in the forum. The blond scarecrow-looking kid, Octavian, was speaking to the mob, shaking his fist. Piper couldn’t hear him, but the gist was obvious: We need to kill those Greeks!

Reyna, the praetor, stood to one side, her face tight with suppressed emotion. Bitterness? Anger? Piper wasn’t sure.

She’d been prepared to hate Reyna, but she couldn’t. During the feast in the forum, Piper had admired the way Reyna kept her feelings in check.

Reyna had sized up Piper and Jason’s relationship right away. As a daughter of Aphrodite, Piper could tell stuff like that. Yet Reyna had stayed polite and in control. She’d put her camp’s needs ahead of her emotions. She’d given the Greeks a fair chance…right up until the Argo II had started destroying her city.

She’d almost made Piper feel guilty about being Jason’s girlfriend, though that was silly. Jason hadn’t ever been Reyna’s boyfriend, not really.

Maybe Reyna wasn’t so bad, but it didn’t matter now. They’d messed up the chance for peace. Piper’s power of persuasion had, for once, done absolutely no good.

Her secret fear? Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough. Piper had never wanted to make friends with the Romans. She was too worried about losing Jason to his old life. Maybe unconsciously she hadn’t put her best effort into the charmspeak.

Now Jason was hurt. The ship had been almost destroyed. And according to her dagger, that crazy teddy-bear-strangling kid, Octavian, was whipping the Romans into a war frenzy.

The scene in her blade shifted. There was a rapid series of images she’d seen before, but she still didn’t understand them: Jason riding into battle on horseback, his eyes gold instead of blue; a woman in an old-fashioned Southern belle dress, standing in an oceanside park with palm trees; a bull with the face of a bearded man, rising out of a river; and two giants in matching yellow togas, hoisting a rope on a pulley system, lifting a large bronze vase out of a pit.

Then came the worst vision: she saw herself with Jason and Percy, standing waist-deep in water at the bottom of a dark circular chamber, like a giant well. Ghostly shapes moved through the water as it rose rapidly. Piper clawed at the walls, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to go. The water reached their chests. Jason was pulled under. Percy stumbled and disappeared.

How could a child of the sea god drown? Piper didn’t know, but she watched herself in the vision, alone and thrashing in the dark, until the water rose over her head.

Piper shut her eyes. Don’t show me that again, she pleaded. Show me something helpful.

She forced herself to look at the blade again.

This time, she saw an empty highway cutting between fields of wheat and sunflowers. A mileage marker read: TOPEKA 32. On the shoulder of the road stood a man in khaki shorts and a purple camp shirt. His face was lost in the shadow of a broad hat, the brim wreathed in leafy vines. He held up a silver goblet and beckoned to Piper. Somehow she knew he was offering her some sort of gift—a cure, or an antidote.

“Hey,” Jason croaked.

Piper was so startled she dropped the knife. “You’re awake!”

“Don’t sound so surprised.” Jason touched his bandaged head and frowned. “What…what happened? I remember the explosions, and—”

“You remember who I am?”

Jason tried to laugh, but it turned into a painful wince. “Last I checked, you were my awesome girlfriend Piper. Unless something has changed since I was out?”

Piper was so relieved she almost sobbed. She helped him sit up and gave him some nectar to sip while she brought him up to speed. She was just explaining Leo’s plan to fix the ship when she heard horse hooves clomping across the deck over their heads.

Moments later, Leo and Hazel stumbled to a stop in the doorway, carrying a large sheet of hammered bronze between them.

“Gods of Olympus.” Piper stared at Leo. “What happened to you?”

His hair was greased back. He had welding goggles on his forehead, a lipstick mark on his cheek, tattoos all over his arms, and a T-shirt that read HOT STUFF, BAD BOY, and TEAM LEO.

“Long story,” he said. “Others back?”

“Not yet,” Piper said.

Leo cursed. Then he noticed Jason sitting up, and his face brightened. “Hey, man! Glad you’re better. I’ll be in the engine room.”

He ran off with the sheet of bronze, leaving Hazel in the doorway.

Piper raised an eyebrow at her. “Team Leo?”

“We met Narcissus,” Hazel said, which didn’t really explain much. “Also Nemesis, the revenge goddess.”

Jason sighed. “I miss all the fun.”

On the deck above, something went THUMP, as if a heavy creature had landed. Annabeth and Percy came running down the hall. Percy was toting a steaming five-gallon plastic bucket that smelled horrible. Annabeth had a patch of black sticky stuff in her hair. Percy’s shirt was covered in it.

“Roofing tar?” Piper guessed.

Frank stumbled up behind them, which made the hallway pretty jam-packed with demigods. Frank had a big smear of the black sludge down his face.

“Ran into some tar monsters,” Annabeth said. “Hey, Jason, glad you’re awake. Hazel, where’s Leo?”

She pointed down. “Engine room.”

Suddenly the entire ship listed to port. The demigods stumbled. Percy almost spilled his bucket of tar.

“Uh, what was that?” he demanded.

“Oh…” Hazel looked embarrassed. “We may have angered the nymphs who live in this lake. Like…all of them.”

“Great.” Percy handed the bucket of tar to Frank and Annabeth. “You guys help Leo. I’ll hold off the water spirits as long as I can.”

“On it!” Frank promised.

The three of them ran off, leaving Hazel at the cabin door. The ship listed again, and Hazel hugged her stomach like she was going to be sick.

“I’ll just…” She swallowed, pointed weakly down the passageway, and ran off.

Jason and Piper stayed below as the ship rocked back and forth. For a hero, Piper felt pretty useless. Waves crashed against the hull as angry voices came from above deck—Percy shouting, Coach Hedge yelling at the lake. Festus the figurehead breathed fire several times. Down the hall, Hazel moaned miserably in her cabin. In the engine room below, it sounded like Leo and the others were doing an Irish line dance with anvils tied to their feet. After what seemed like hours, the engine began to hum. The oars creaked and groaned, and Piper felt the ship lift into the air.

The rocking and shaking stopped. The ship became quiet except for the drone of machinery. Finally Leo emerged from the engine room. He was caked in sweat, lime dust, and tar. His T-shirt looked like it had been caught in an escalator and chewed to shreds. The TEAM LEO on his chest now read: AM LEO. But he grinned like a madman and announced that they were safely under way.

“Meeting in the mess hall, one hour,” he said. “Crazy day, huh?”

After everyone had cleaned up, Coach Hedge took the helm and the demigods gathered below for dinner. It was the first time they’d all sat down together—just the seven of them. Maybe their presence should’ve reassured Piper, but seeing all of them in one place only reminded her that the Prophecy of Seven was unfolding at last. No more waiting for Leo to finish the ship. No more easy days at Camp Half-Blood, pretending the future was still a long way off. They were under way, with a bunch of angry Romans behind them and the ancient lands ahead. The giants would be waiting. Gaea was rising. And unless they succeeded in this quest, the world would be destroyed.

The others must’ve felt it too. The tension in the mess hall was like an electrical storm brewing, which was totally possible, considering Percy’s and Jason’s powers. In an awkward moment, the two boys tried to sit in the same chair at the head of the table. Sparks literally flew from Jason’s hands. After a brief silent standoff, like they were both thinking, Seriously, dude?, they ceded the chair to Annabeth and sat at opposite sides of the table.

The crew compared notes on what had happened in Salt Lake City, but even Leo’s ridiculous story about how he tricked Narcissus wasn’t enough to cheer up the group.

“So where to now?” Leo asked with a mouthful of pizza. “I did a quick repair job to get us out of the lake, but there’s still a lot of damage. We should really put down again and fix things right before we head across the Atlantic.”

Percy was eating a piece of pie, which for some reason was completely blue—filling, crust, even the whipped cream. “We need to put some distance between us and Camp Jupiter,” he said. “Frank spotted some eagles over Salt Lake City. We figure the Romans aren’t far behind us.”

That didn’t improve the mood around the table. Piper didn’t want to say anything, but she felt obliged…and a little guilty. “I don’t suppose we should go back and try to reason with the Romans? Maybe—maybe I didn’t try hard enough with the charmspeak.”

Jason took her hand. “It wasn’t your fault, Pipes. Or Leo’s,” he added quickly. “Whatever happened, it was Gaea’s doing, to drive the two camps apart.”

Piper was grateful for his support, but she still felt uneasy. “Maybe if we could explain that, though—”

“With no proof?” Annabeth asked. “And no idea what really happened? I appreciate what you’re saying, Piper. I don’t want the Romans on our bad side, but until we understand what Gaea’s up to, going back is suicide.”

“She’s right,” Hazel said. She still looked a little queasy from seasickness, but she was trying to eat a few saltine crackers. The rim of her plate was embedded with rubies, and Piper was pretty sure they hadn’t been there at the beginning of the meal. “Reyna might listen, but Octavian won’t. The Romans have honor to think about. They’ve been attacked. They’ll shoot first and ask questions post hac.”

Piper stared at her own dinner. The magical plates could conjure up a great selection of vegetarian stuff. She especially liked the avocado and grilled pepper quesadilla, but tonight she didn’t have much of an appetite.

She thought about the visions she’d seen in her knife: Jason with golden eyes; the bull with the human head; the two giants in yellow togas hoisting a bronze jar from a pit. Worst of all, she remembered herself drowning in black water.

Piper had always liked the water. She had good memories of surfing with her dad. But since she’d started seeing that vision in Katoptris, she’d been thinking more and more of an old Cherokee story her granddad used to tell to keep her away from the river near his cabin. He told her the Cherokees believed in good water spirits, like the naiads of the Greeks; but they also believed in evil water spirits, the water cannibals, who hunted mortals with invisible arrows and were especially fond of drowning small children.

“You’re right,” she decided. “We have to keep going. Not just because of the Romans. We have to hurry.”

Hazel nodded. “Nemesis said we have only six days until Nico dies and Rome is destroyed.”

Jason frowned. “You mean Rome Rome, not New Rome?”

“I think,” Hazel said. “But if so, that’s not much time.”

“Why six days?” Percy wondered. “And how are they going to destroy Rome?”

No one answered. Piper didn’t want to add further bad news, but she felt she had to.

“There’s more,” she said. “I’ve been seeing some things in my knife.”

The big kid, Frank, froze with a forkful of spaghetti halfway to his mouth. “Things such as… ?”

“They don’t really make sense,” Piper said, “just garbled images, but I saw two giants, dressed alike. Maybe twins.”

Annabeth stared at the magical video feed from Camp Half-Blood on the wall. Right now it showed the living room in the Big House: a cozy fire on the hearth and Seymour, the stuffed leopard head, snoring contentedly above the mantel.

“Twins, like in Ella’s prophecy,” Annabeth said. “If we could figure out those lines, it might help.”

“Wisdom’s daughter walks alone,” Percy said. “The Mark of Athena burns through Rome. Annabeth, that’s got to mean you. Juno told me…well, she said you had a hard task ahead of you in Rome. She said she doubted you could do it. But I know she’s wrong.”

Annabeth took a long breath. “Reyna was about to tell me something right before the ship fired on us. She said there was an old legend among the Roman praetors—something that had to do with Athena. She said it might be the reason Greeks and Romans could never get along.”

Leo and Hazel exchanged nervous looks.

“Nemesis mentioned something similar,” Leo said. “She talked about an old score that had to be settled—”

“The one thing that might bring the gods’ two natures into harmony,” Hazel recalled. “‘An old wrong finally avenged.’”

Percy drew a frowny face in his blue whipped cream. “I was only a praetor for about two hours. Jason, you ever hear a legend like that?”

Jason was still holding Piper’s hand. His fingers had turned clammy.

“I…uh, I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ll give it some thought.”

Percy narrowed his eyes. “You’re not sure?”

Jason didn’t respond. Piper wanted to ask him what was wrong. She could tell he didn’t want to discuss this old legend. She caught his eye, and he pleaded silently, Later.

Hazel broke the silence. “What about the other lines?” She turned her ruby-encrusted plate. “Twins snuff out the angel’s breath, Who holds the key to endless death.”

“Giants’ bane stands gold and pale,” Frank added, “Won through pain from a woven jail.”

“Giants’ bane,” Leo said. “Anything that’s a giants’ bane is good for us, right? That’s probably what we need to find. If it can help the gods get their schizophrenic act together, that’s good.”

Percy nodded. “We can’t kill the giants without the help of the gods.”

Jason turned to Frank and Hazel. “I thought you guys killed that one giant in Alaska without a god’s help, just the two of you.”

“Alcyoneus was a special case,” Frank said. “He was only immortal in the territory where he was reborn—Alaska. But not in Canada. I wish I could kill all the giants by dragging them across the border from Alaska into Canada, but…” He shrugged. “Percy’s right, we’ll need the gods.”

Piper gazed at the walls. She really wished Leo hadn’t enchanted them with images of Camp Half-Blood. It was like a doorway to home that she could never go through. She watched the hearth of Hestia burning in the middle of the green as the cabins turned off their lights for curfew.

She wondered how the Roman demigods, Frank and Hazel, felt about those images. They’d never even been to Camp Half-Blood. Did it seem alien to them, or unfair that Camp Jupiter wasn’t represented? Did it make them miss their own home?

The other lines of the prophecy turned in Piper’s mind. What was a woven jail? How could twins snuff out an angel’s breath? The key to endless death didn’t sound very cheerful, either.

“So…” Leo pushed his chair away from the table. “First things first, I guess. We’ll have to put down in the morning to finish repairs.”

“Someplace close to a city,” Annabeth suggested, “in case we need supplies. But somewhere out of the way, so the Romans will have trouble finding us. Any ideas?”

No one spoke. Piper remembered her vision in the knife: the strange man in purple, holding out a goblet and beckoning to her. He’d been standing in front of a sign that read TOPEKA 32.

“Well,” she ventured, “how do you guys feel about Kansas?”

PIPER HAD TROUBLE FALLING ASLEEP.

Coach Hedge spent the first hour after curfew doing his nightly duty, walking up and down the passageway yelling, “Lights out! Settle down! Try to sneak out, and I’ll smack you back to Long Island!”

He banged his baseball bat against a cabin door whenever he heard a noise, shouting at everyone to go to sleep, which made it impossible for anyone to go to sleep. Piper figured this was the most fun the satyr had had since he’d pretended to be a gym teacher at the Wilderness School.

She stared at the bronze beams on the ceiling. Her cabin was pretty cozy. Leo had programmed their quarters to adjust automatically to the occupant’s preferred temperature, so it was never too cold or too hot. The mattress and the pillows were stuffed with pegasus down (no pegasi were harmed in the making of these products, Leo had assured her), so they were über-comfortable. A bronze lantern hung from the ceiling, glowing at whatever brightness Piper wished. The lantern’s sides were perforated with pinholes, so at night glimmering constellations drifted across her walls.

Piper had so many things on her mind, she thought she’d never sleep. But there was something peaceful about the rocking of the boat and the drone of the aerial oars as they scooped through the sky.

Finally her eyelids got heavy, and she drifted off.

It seemed like only a few seconds had passed before she woke to the breakfast bell.

“Yo, Piper!” Leo knocked on her door. “We’re landing!”

“Landing?” She sat up groggily.

Leo opened her door and poked his head in. He had his hand over his eyes, which would’ve been a nice gesture if he hadn’t been peeking through his fingers. “You decent?”

“Leo!”

“Sorry.” He grinned. “Hey, nice Power Ranger jammies.”

“They are not Power Rangers! They’re Cherokee eagles!”

“Yeah, sure. Anyway, we’re setting down a few miles outside Topeka, as requested. And, um…” He glanced out in the passageway, then leaned inside again. “Thanks for not hating me, about blowing up the Romans yesterday.”

Piper rubbed her eyes. The feast in New Rome had been only yesterday? “That’s okay, Leo. You weren’t in control of yourself.”

“Yeah, but still…you didn’t have to stick up for me.”

“Are you kidding? You’re like the annoying little brother I never had. Of course I’ll stick up for you.”

“Uh…thanks?”

From above, Coach Hedge yelled, “Thar she blows! Kansas, ahoy!”

“Holy Hephaestus,” Leo muttered. “He really needs to work on his shipspeak. I’d better get above deck.”

By the time Piper had showered, changed, and grabbed a bagel from the mess hall, she could hear the ship’s landing gear extending. She climbed on deck and joined the others as the Argo II settled in the middle of a field of sunflowers. The oars retracted. The gangplank lowered itself.

The morning air smelled of irrigation, warm plants, and fertilized earth. Not a bad smell. It reminded Piper of Grandpa Tom’s place in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, back on the reservation.

Percy was the first to notice her. He smiled in greeting, which for some reason surprised Piper. He was wearing faded jeans and a fresh orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, as if he’d never been away from the Greek side. The new clothes had probably helped his mood—and of course the fact that he was standing at the rail with his arm around Annabeth.

Piper was happy to see Annabeth with a sparkle in her eyes, because Piper had never had a better friend. For months, Annabeth had been tormenting herself, her every waking moment consumed with the search for Percy. Now, despite the dangerous quest they were facing, at least she had her boyfriend back.

“So!” Annabeth plucked the bagel out of Piper’s hand and took a bite, but that didn’t bother Piper. Back at camp, they’d had a running joke about stealing each other’s breakfast. “Here we are. What’s the plan?”

“I want to check out the highway,” Piper said. “Find the sign that says Topeka 32.”

Leo spun his Wii controller in a circle, and the sails lowered themselves. “We shouldn’t be far,” he said. “Festus and I calculated the landing as best we could. What do you expect to find at the mile marker?”

Piper explained what she’d seen in the knife—the man in purple with a goblet. She kept quiet about the other images, though, like the vision of Percy, Jason, and herself drowning. She wasn’t sure what it meant, anyway; and everyone seemed in such better spirits this morning, she didn’t want to ruin the mood.

“Purple shirt?” Jason asked. “Vines on his hat? Sounds like Bacchus.”

“Dionysus,” Percy muttered. “If we came all the way to Kansas to see Mr. D—”

“Bacchus isn’t so bad,” Jason said. “I don’t like his followers much.…”

Piper shuddered. Jason, Leo, and she had had an encounter with the maenads a few months ago and almost gotten torn to pieces.

“But the god himself is okay,” Jason continued. “I did him a favor once up in the wine country.”

Percy looked appalled. “Whatever, man. Maybe he’s better on the Roman side. But why would he be hanging around in Kansas? Didn’t Zeus order the gods to cease all contact with mortals?”

Frank grunted. The big guy was wearing a blue tracksuit this morning, like he was ready to go for a jog in the sunflowers.

“The gods haven’t been very good at following that order,” he noted. “Besides, if the gods have gone schizophrenic like Hazel said—”

“And Leo said,” added Leo.

Frank scowled at him. “Then who knows what’s going on with the Olympians? Could be some pretty bad stuff out there.”

“Sounds dangerous!” Leo agreed cheerfully. “Well…you guys have fun. I’ve got to finish repairs on the hull. Coach Hedge is gonna work on the broken crossbows. And, uh, Annabeth—I could really use your help. You’re the only other person who even sort of understands engineering.”

Annabeth looked apologetically at Percy. “He’s right. I should stay and help.”

“I’ll come back to you.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Promise.”

They were so easy together, it made Piper’s heart ache.

Jason was great, of course. But sometimes he acted so distant, like last night, when he’d been reluctant to talk about that old Roman legend. So often he seemed to be thinking of his old life at Camp Jupiter. Piper wondered if she would ever be able to break through that barrier.

The trip to Camp Jupiter, seeing Reyna in person, hadn’t helped. Neither did the fact that Jason had chosen to wear a purple shirt today—the color of the Romans.

Frank slid his bow off his shoulder and propped it against the rail. “I think I should turn into a crow or something and fly around, keep an eye out for Roman eagles.”

“Why a crow?” Leo asked. “Man, if you can turn into a dragon, why don’t you just turn into a dragon every time? That’s the coolest.”

Frank’s face looked like it was being infused with cranberry juice. “That’s like asking why you don’t bench-press your maximum weight every time you lift. Because it’s hard, and you’d hurt yourself. Turning into a dragon isn’t easy.”

“Oh.” Leo nodded. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t lift weights.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe you should consider it, Mr.—”

Hazel stepped between them.

“I’ll help you, Frank,” she said, shooting Leo an evil look. “I can summon Arion and scout around below.”

“Sure,” Frank said, still glaring at Leo. “Yeah, thanks.”

Piper wondered what was going on with those three. The boys showing off for Hazel and razzing each other—that she understood. But it almost seemed like Hazel and Leo had a history. So far as she knew, they’d met for the first time just yesterday. She wondered if something else had happened on their trip to the Great Salt Lake—something they hadn’t mentioned.

Hazel turned to Percy. “Just be careful when you go out there. Lots of fields, lots of crops. Could be karpoi on the loose.”

“Karpoi?” Piper asked.

“Grain spirits,” Hazel said. “You don’t want to meet them.”

Piper didn’t see how a grain spirit could be so bad, but Hazel’s tone convinced her not to ask.

“That leaves three of us to check on the mile marker,” Percy said. “Me, Jason, Piper. I’m not psyched about seeing Mr. D again. That guy is a pain. But, Jason, if you’re on better terms with him—”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “If we find him, I’ll talk to him. Piper, it’s your vision. You should take the lead.”

Piper shivered. She’d seen the three of them drowning in that dark well. Was Kansas where it would happen? That didn’t seem right, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Of course,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. “Let’s find the highway.”

Leo had said they were close. His idea of “close” needed some work.

After trudging half a mile through hot fields, getting bitten by mosquitoes and whacked in the face with scratchy sunflowers, they finally reached the road. An old billboard for Bubba’s Gas ’n’ Grub indicated they were still forty miles from the first Topeka exit.

“Correct my math,” Percy said, “but doesn’t that mean we have eight miles to walk?”

Jason peered both ways down the deserted road. He looked better today, thanks to the magical healing of ambrosia and nectar. His color was back to normal, and the scar on his forehead had almost vanished. The new gladius that Hera had given him last winter hung at his belt. Most guys would look pretty awkward walking around with a scabbard strapped to their jeans, but on Jason it seemed perfectly natural.

“No cars…” he said. “But I guess we wouldn’t want to hitchhike.”

“No,” Piper agreed, gazing nervously down the highway. “We’ve already spent too much time going overland. The earth is Gaea’s territory.”

“Hmm…” Jason snapped his fingers. “I can call a friend for a ride.”

Percy raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah? Me too. Let’s see whose friend gets here first.”

Jason whistled. Piper knew what he was doing, but he’d succeeded in summoning Tempest only three times since they’d met the storm spirit at the Wolf House last winter. Today, the sky was so blue, Piper didn’t see how it could work.

Percy simply closed his eyes and concentrated.

Piper hadn’t studied him up close before. After hearing so much at Camp Half-Blood about Percy Jackson this and Percy Jackson that, she thought he looked…well, unimpressive, especially next to Jason. Percy was more slender, about an inch shorter, with slightly longer, much darker hair.

He wasn’t really Piper’s type. If she’d seen him in the mall somewhere, she probably would’ve thought he was a skater—cute in a scruffy way, a little on the wild side, definitely a troublemaker. She would have steered clear. She had enough trouble in her life. But she could see why Annabeth liked him, and she could definitely see why Percy needed Annabeth in his life. If anybody could keep a guy like that under control, it was Annabeth.

Thunder crackled in the clear sky.

Jason smiled. “Soon.”

“Too late.” Percy pointed east, where a black winged shape was spiraling toward them. At first, Piper thought it might be Frank in crow form. Then she realized it was much too big to be a bird.

“A black pegasus?” she said. “Never seen one like that.”

The winged stallion came in for a landing. He trotted over to Percy and nuzzled his face, then turned his head inquisitively toward Piper and Jason.

“Blackjack,” Percy said, “this is Piper and Jason. They’re friends.”

The horse nickered.

“Uh, maybe later,” Percy answered.

Piper had heard that Percy could speak to horses, being the son of the horse lord Poseidon, but she’d never seen it in action.

“What does Blackjack want?” she asked.

“Donuts,” Percy said. “Always donuts. He can carry all three of us if—”

Suddenly the air turned cold. Piper’s ears popped. About fifty yards away, a miniature cyclone three stories tall tore across the tops of the sunflowers like a scene from The Wizard of Oz. It touched down on the road next to Jason and took the form of a horse—a misty steed with lightning flickering through its body.

“Tempest,” Jason said, grinning broadly. “Long time, my friend.”

The storm spirit reared and whinnied. Blackjack backed up skittishly.

“Easy, boy,” Percy said. “He’s a friend too.” He gave Jason an impressed look. “Nice ride, Grace.”

Jason shrugged. “I made friends with him during our fight at the Wolf House. He’s a free spirit, literally, but once in a while he agrees to help me.”

Percy and Jason climbed on their respective horses. Piper had never been comfortable with Tempest. Riding full gallop on a beast that could vaporize at any moment made her a bit nervous. Nevertheless, she accepted Jason’s hand and climbed on.

Tempest raced down the road with Blackjack soaring overhead. Fortunately, they didn’t pass any cars, or they might have caused a wreck. In no time, they arrived at the thirty-two-mile marker, which looked exactly as Piper had seen it in her vision.

Blackjack landed. Both horses pawed the asphalt. Neither looked pleased to have stopped so suddenly, just when they’d found their stride.

Blackjack whinnied.

“You’re right,” Percy said. “No sign of the wine dude.”

“I beg your pardon?” said a voice from the fields.

Tempest turned so quickly, Piper almost fell off.

The wheat parted, and the man from her vision stepped into view. He wore a wide-brimmed hat wreathed in grapevines, a purple short-sleeved shirt, khaki shorts, and Birkenstocks with white socks. He looked maybe thirty, with a slight potbelly, like a frat boy who hadn’t yet realized college was over.

“Did someone just call me the wine dude?” he asked in a lazy drawl. “It’s Bacchus, please. Or Mr. Bacchus. Or Lord Bacchus. Or, sometimes, Oh-My-Gods-Please-Don’t-Kill-Me, Lord Bacchus.”

Percy urged Blackjack forward, though the pegasus didn’t seem happy about it.

“You look different,” Percy told the god. “Skinnier. Your hair is longer. And your shirt isn’t so loud.”

The wine god squinted up at him. “What in blazes are you talking about? Who are you, and where is Ceres?”

“Uh…what series?”

“I think he means Ceres,” Jason said. “The goddess of agriculture. You’d call her Demeter.” He nodded respectfully to the god. “Lord Bacchus, do you remember me? I helped you with that missing leopard in Sonoma.”

Bacchus scratched his stubbly chin. “Ah…yes. John Green.”

“Jason Grace.”

“Whatever,” the god said. “Did Ceres send you, then?”

“No, Lord Bacchus,” Jason said. “Were you expecting to meet her here?”

The god snorted. “Well, I didn’t come to Kansas to party, my boy. Ceres asked me here for a council of war. What with Gaea rising, the crops are withering. Droughts are spreading. The karpoi are in revolt. Even my grapes aren’t safe. Ceres wanted a united front in the plant war.”

“The plant war,” Percy said. “You’re going to arm all the little grapes with tiny assault rifles?”

The god narrowed his eyes. “Have we met?”

“At Camp Half-Blood,” Percy said, “I know you as Mr. D—Dionysus.”

“Agh!” Bacchus winced and pressed his hands to his temples. For a moment, his image flickered. Piper saw a different person—fatter, dumpier, in a much louder, leopard-patterned shirt. Then Bacchus returned to being Bacchus. “Stop that!” he demanded. “Stop thinking about me in Greek!”

Percy blinked. “Uh, but—”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to stay focused? Splitting headaches all the time! I never know what I’m doing or where I’m going! Constantly grumpy!”

“That sounds pretty normal for you,” Percy said.

The god’s nostrils flared. One of the grape leaves on his hat burst into flame. “If we know each other from that other camp, it’s a wonder I haven’t already turned you into a dolphin.”

“It was discussed,” Percy assured him. “I think you were just too lazy to do it.”

Piper had been watching with horrified fascination, the way she might watch a car wreck in progress. Now she realized Percy was not making things better, and Annabeth wasn’t around to rein him in. Piper figured her friend would never forgive her if she brought Percy back transformed into a sea mammal.

“Lord Bacchus!” she interrupted, slipping off Tempest’s back.

“Piper, careful,” Jason said.

She shot him a warning glance: I’ve got this.

“Sorry to trouble you, my lord,” she told the god, “but actually we came here to get your advice. Please, we need your wisdom.”

She used her most agreeable tone, pouring respect into her charmspeak.

The god frowned, but the purple glow faded in his eyes. “You’re well-spoken, girl. Advice, eh? Very well. I would avoid karaoke. Really, theme parties in general are out. In these austere times, people are looking for a simple, low-key affair, with locally produced organic snacks and—”

“Not about parties,” Piper interrupted. “Although that’s incredibly useful advice, Lord Bacchus. We were hoping you’d help us on our quest.”

She explained about the Argo II and their voyage to stop the giants from awakening Gaea. She told him what Nemesis had said: that in six days, Rome would be destroyed. She described the vision reflected in her knife, where Bacchus offered her a silver goblet.

“Silver goblet?” The god didn’t sound very excited. He grabbed a Diet Pepsi from nowhere and popped the top of the can.

“You drink Diet Coke,” Percy said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bacchus snapped. “As to this vision of the goblet, young lady, I have nothing for you to drink unless you want a Pepsi. Jupiter has put me under strict orders to avoid giving wine to minors. Bothersome, but there you have it. As for the giants, I know them well. I fought in the first Giant War, you know.”

“You can fight?” Percy asked.

Piper wished he hadn’t sounded so incredulous.

Dionysus snarled. His Diet Pepsi transformed into a five-foot staff wreathed in ivy, topped with a pinecone.

“A thyrsus!” Piper said, hoping to distract the god before he whacked Percy on the head. She’d seen weapons like that before in the hands of crazy nymphs, and wasn’t thrilled to see one again, but she tried to sound impressed. “Oh, what a mighty weapon!”

“Indeed,” Bacchus agreed. “I’m glad someone in your group is smart. The pinecone is a fearsome tool of destruction! I was a demigod myself in the first Giant War, you know. The son of Jupiter!”

Jason flinched. Probably he wasn’t thrilled to be reminded that the Wine Dude was technically his big brother.

Bacchus swung his staff through the air, though his potbelly almost threw him off balance. “Of course that was long before I invented wine and became an immortal. I fought side by side with the gods and some other demigod…Harry Cleese, I think.”

“Heracles?” Piper suggested politely.

“Whatever,” Bacchus said. “Anyway, I killed the giant Ephialtes and his brother Otis. Horrible boors, those two. Pinecone in the face for both of them!”

Piper held her breath. All at once, several ideas came together in her head—the visions in the knife, the lines of the prophecy they’d been discussing the night before. She felt like she used to when she was scuba diving with her father, and he would wipe her mask for her underwater. Suddenly, everything was clearer.

“Lord Bacchus,” she said, trying to control the nervousness in her voice. “Those two giants, Ephialtes and Otis…would they happen to be twins?”

“Hmm?” The god seemed distracted by his thyrsus-swinging, but he nodded. “Yes, twins. That’s right.”

Piper turned to Jason. She could tell he was following her thoughts: Twins snuff out the angel’s breath.

In the blade of Katoptris, she’d seen two giants in yellow robes, lifting a jar from a deep pit.

“That’s why we’re here,” Piper told the god. “You’re part of our quest!”

Bacchus frowned. “I’m sorry, my girl. I’m not a demigod anymore. I don’t do quests.”

“But giants can only be killed by heroes and gods working together,” she insisted. “You’re a god now, and the two giants we have to fight are Ephialtes and Otis. I think…I think they’re waiting for us in Rome. They’re going to destroy the city somehow. The silver goblet I saw in my vision—maybe it’s meant as a symbol for your help. You have to help us kill the giants!”

Bacchus glared at her, and Piper realized she’d chosen her words poorly.

“My girl,” he said coldly, “I don’t have to do anything. Besides, I only help those who give me proper tribute, which no one has managed to do in many, many centuries.”

Blackjack whinnied uneasily.

Piper couldn’t blame him. She didn’t like the sound of tribute. She remembered the maenads, the crazed followers of Bacchus, who would tear up nonbelievers with their bare hands. And that was when they were in a good mood.

Percy voiced the question that she was too scared to ask. “What kind of tribute?”

Bacchus waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing you could handle, insolent Greek. But I will give you some free advice, since this girl does have some manners. Seek out Gaea’s son, Phorcys. He always hated his mother, not that I can blame him. He didn’t have much use for his siblings the twins, either. You’ll find him in the city they named after that heroine—Atalanta.”

Piper hesitated. “You mean Atlanta?”

“That’s the one.”

“But this Phorcys,” Jason said. “Is he a giant? A Titan?”

Bacchus laughed. “Neither. Seek out the salt water.”

“Salt water…” Percy said. “In Atlanta?”

“Yes,” Bacchus said. “Are you hard of hearing? If anyone can give you insight on Gaea and the twins, it’s Phorcys. Just watch out for him.”

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

The god glanced at the sun, which had climbed almost to high noon. “It’s unlike Ceres to be late, unless she sensed something dangerous in this area. Or…”

The god’s face suddenly went slack. “Or a trap. Well, I must be going! And if I were you, I’d do the same!”

“Lord Bacchus, wait!” Jason protested.

The god shimmered and disappeared with a sound like a soda-can top being popped.

The wind rustled through the sunflowers. The horses paced in agitation. Despite the dry, hot day, Piper shivered. A cold feeling…Annabeth and Leo had both described a cold feeling.…

“Bacchus is right,” she said. “We need to leave—”

Too late, said a sleepy voice, humming through the fields all around them and resonating in the ground at Piper’s feet.

Percy and Jason drew their swords. Piper stood on the road between them, frozen with fear. The power of Gaea was suddenly everywhere. The sunflowers turned to look at them. The wheat bent toward them like a million scythes.

Welcome to my party, Gaea murmured. Her voice reminded Piper of corn growing—a crackling, hissing, hot and persistent noise she used to hear at Grandpa Tom’s on those quiet nights in Oklahoma.

What did Bacchus say? the goddess mocked. A simple, low-key affair with organic snacks? Yes. For my snacks, I need only two: the blood of a female demigod, and the blood of a male. Piper, my dear, choose which hero will die with you.

“Gaea!” Jason yelled. “Stop hiding in the wheat. Show yourself!”

Such bravado, Gaea hissed. But the other one, Percy Jackson, also has appeal. Choose, Piper McLean, or I will.

Piper’s heart raced. Gaea meant to kill her. That was no surprise. But what was this about choosing one of the boys? Why would Gaea let either of them go? It had to be a trap.

“You’re insane!” she shouted. “I’m not choosing anything for you!”

Suddenly Jason gasped. He sat up straight in his saddle.

“Jason!” Piper cried. “What’s wrong—?”

He looked down at her, his expression deadly calm. His eyes were no longer blue. They glowed solid gold.

“Percy, help!” Piper stumbled back from Tempest.

But Percy galloped away from them. He stopped thirty feet down the road and wheeled his pegasus around. He raised his sword and pointed the tip toward Jason.

“One will die,” Percy said, but the voice wasn’t his. It was deep and hollow, like someone whispering from inside the barrel of a cannon.

“I will choose,” Jason answered, in the same hollow voice.

“No!” Piper yelled.

All around her, the fields crackled and hissed, laughing in Gaea’s voice as Percy and Jason charged at each other, their weapons ready.

IF NOT FOR THE HORSES, PIPER WOULD’VE DIED.

Jason and Percy charged each other, but Tempest and Blackjack balked long enough for Piper to leap out of the way.

She rolled to the edge of the road and looked back, dazed and horrified, as the boys crossed swords, gold against bronze. Sparks flew. Their blades blurred—strike and parry—and the pavement trembled. The first exchange took only a second, but Piper couldn’t believe the speed of their sword fighting. The horses pulled away from each other—Tempest thundering in protest, Blackjack flapping his wings.

“Stop it!” Piper yelled.

For a moment, Jason heeded her voice. His golden eyes turned toward her, and Percy charged, slamming his blade into Jason. Thank the gods, Percy turned his sword—maybe on purpose, maybe accidentally—so the flat of it hit Jason’s chest; but the impact was still enough to knock Jason off his mount.

Blackjack cantered away as Tempest reared in confusion. The spirit horse charged into the sunflowers and dissipated into vapor.

Percy struggled to turn his pegasus around.

“Percy!” Piper yelled. “Jason’s your friend. Drop your weapon!”

Percy’s sword arm dipped. Piper might have been able to bring him under control, but unfortunately Jason got to his feet.

Jason roared. A bolt of lightning arced out of the clear blue sky. It ricocheted off his gladius and blasted Percy off his horse.

Blackjack whinnied and fled into the wheat fields. Jason charged at Percy, who was now on his back, his clothes smoking from the lightning blast.

For a horrible moment, Piper couldn’t find her voice. Gaea seemed to be whispering to her: You must choose one. Why not let Jason kill him?

“No!” she screamed. “Jason, stop!”

He froze, his sword six inches from Percy’s face.

Jason turned, the gold light in his eyes flickering uncertainly. “I cannot stop. One must die.”

Something about that voice…it wasn’t Gaea. It wasn’t Jason. Whoever it was spoke haltingly, as if English was its second language.

“Who are you?” Piper demanded.

Jason’s mouth twisted in a gruesome smile. “We are the eidolons. We will live again.”

“Eidolons… ?” Piper’s mind raced. She’d studied all sorts of monsters at Camp Half-Blood, but that term wasn’t familiar. “You’re—you’re some sort of ghost?”

“He must die.” Jason turned his attention back to Percy, but Percy had recovered more than either of them realized. He swept out his leg and knocked Jason off his feet.

Jason’s head hit the asphalt with a nauseating conk.

Percy rose.

“Stop it!” Piper screamed again, but there was no charmspeak in her voice. She was shouting in sheer desperation.

Percy raised Riptide over Jason’s chest.

Panic closed up Piper’s throat. She wanted to attack Percy with her dagger, but she knew that wouldn’t help. Whatever was controlling him had all of Percy’s skill. There was no way she could beat him in combat.

She forced herself to focus. She poured all of her anger into her voice. “Eidolon, stop.”

Percy froze.

“Face me,” Piper ordered.

The son of the sea god turned. His eyes were gold instead of green, his face pale and cruel, not at all like Percy’s.

“You have not chosen,” he said. “So this one will die.”

“You’re a spirit from the Underworld,” Piper guessed. “You’re possessing Percy Jackson. Is that it?”

Percy sneered. “I will live again in this body. The Earth Mother has promised. I will go where I please, control whom I wish.”

A wave of cold washed over Piper. “Leo…that’s what happened to Leo. He was being controlled by an eidolon.”

The thing in Percy’s form laughed without humor. “Too late you realize. You can trust no one.”

Jason still wasn’t moving. Piper had no help, no way to protect him.

Behind Percy, something rustled in the wheat. Piper saw the tip of a black wing, and Percy began to turn toward the sound.

“Ignore it!” she yelped. “Look at me.”

Percy obeyed. “You cannot stop me. I will kill Jason Grace.”

Behind him, Blackjack emerged from the wheat field, moving with surprising stealth for such a large animal.

“You won’t kill him,” Piper ordered. But she wasn’t looking at Percy. She locked eyes with the pegasus, pouring all her power into her words and hoping Blackjack would understand. “You will knock him out.”

The charmspeak washed over Percy. He shifted his weight indecisively. “I…will knock him out?”

“Oh, sorry.” Piper smiled. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Blackjack reared and brought his hoof down on Percy’s head.

Percy crumpled to the pavement next to Jason.

“Oh, gods!” Piper ran to the boys. “Blackjack, you didn’t kill him, did you?”

The pegasus snorted. Piper couldn’t speak Horse, but she thought he might have said: Please. I know my own strength.

Tempest was nowhere to be seen. The lightning steed had apparently returned to wherever storm spirits live on clear days.

Piper checked on Jason. He was breathing steadily, but two knocks on the skull in two days couldn’t have been good for him. Then she examined Percy’s head. She didn’t see any blood, but a large knot was forming where the horse had kicked him. “We have to get them both back to the ship,” she told Blackjack.

The pegasus bobbed his head in agreement. He knelt to the ground, so that Piper could drape Percy and Jason over his back. After a lot of hard work (unconscious boys were heavy), she got them reasonably secured, climbed onto Blackjack’s back herself, and they took off for the ship.

The others were a little surprised when Piper came back on a pegasus with two unconscious demigods. While Frank and Hazel tended to Blackjack, Annabeth and Leo helped get Piper and the boys to the sickbay.

“At this rate, we’re going to run out of ambrosia,” Coach Hedge grumbled as he tended their wounds. “How come I never get invited on these violent trips?”

Piper sat at Jason’s side. She herself felt fine after a swig of nectar and some water, but she was still worried about the boys.

“Leo,” Piper said, “are we ready to sail?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Set course for Atlanta. I’ll explain later.”

“But…okay.” He hurried off.

Annabeth didn’t argue with Piper either. She was too busy examining the horseshoe-shaped dent on the back of Percy’s head.

“What hit him?” she demanded.

“Blackjack,” Piper said.

“What?”

Piper tried to explain while Coach Hedge applied some healing paste to the boys’ heads. She’d never been impressed with Hedge’s nursing abilities before, but he must have done something right. Either that, or the spirits that possessed the boys had also made them extra resilient. They both groaned and opened their eyes.

Within a few minutes, Jason and Percy were sitting up in their berths and able to talk in complete sentences. Both had fuzzy memories of what had happened. When Piper described their duel on the highway, Jason winced.

“Knocked out twice in two days,” he muttered. “Some demigod.” He glanced sheepishly at Percy. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to blast you.”

Percy’s shirt was peppered with burn holes. His hair was even more disheveled than normal. Despite that, he managed a weak laugh. “Not the first time. Your big sister got me good once at camp.”

“Yeah, but…I could have killed you.”

“Or I could have killed you,” Percy said.

Jason shrugged. “If there’d been an ocean in Kansas, maybe.”

“I don’t need an ocean—”

“Boys,” Annabeth interrupted, “I’m sure you both would’ve been wonderful at killing each other. But right now, you need some rest.”

“Food first,” Percy said. “Please? And we really need to talk. Bacchus said some things that don’t—”

“Bacchus?” Annabeth raised her hand. “Okay, fine. We need to talk. Mess hall. Ten minutes. I’ll tell the others. And please, Percy…change your clothes. You smell like you’ve been run over by an electric horse.”