“I understand.” I had to force the words out. “Josephine and Emmie are good people. They can offer you a home. And I won’t be alone. I have Meg now. I don’t intend to lose her again.”
Leo nodded. “Yeah, Meg’s a fireball. Takes one to know one.”
“Besides,” Calypso said, “we won’t…what’s the expression…skip off the radar completely.”
“Drop,” I suggested. “Though skipping sounds more fun.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “We’ve still got a lot of demigodly stuff to do. At some point, I gotta reconnect with my other peeps: Jason, Piper, Hazel, Frank. Lotta people out there still want to punch me.”
“And we have to survive tomorrow,” Calypso added.
“Right, babe. Good call.” Leo tapped the table in front of me. “Point is, ese, we’re not going to abandon you. If you need us, holler. We’ll be there.”
I blinked back tears. I was not sad. I was not overwhelmed by their friendship. No, it had just been a very long day and my nerves were frayed.
“I appreciate it,” I said. “You are both good friends.”
Calypso wiped her eyes. No doubt she was just tired as well. “Let’s not get carried away. You are still hugely annoying.”
“And you are still a pain in the gloutos, Calypso.”
“Okay, then.” She smirked. “Now we all really should get some rest. Busy morning ahead.”
“Ugh.” I clawed at my hair. “I don’t suppose you could summon a wind spirit for me? I have to drive to the Cave of Trophonius tomorrow, and I have neither a chariot nor a car.”
“A car?” Leo grinned evilly. “Oh, I can hook you up with one of those!”
Start with a C chord
Not all the keys, Meg. C does
Not stand for Chaos
AT 5:00 A.M. the next morning, in the roundabout outside the Waystation, Meg and I found Leo standing in front of a gleaming red Mercedes XLS. I did not ask him how he had procured the vehicle. He did not volunteer the information. He did say that we should return it within twenty-four hours (assuming we lived that long) and try not to get pulled over by the police.
The bad news: just outside the city limits, I got pulled over by the police.
Oh, the miserable luck! The officer stopped us for no good reason that I could see. At first I feared he might be a blemmyae, but he was not nearly polite enough.
He frowned at my license. “This is a junior driver’s license from New York, kid. What are you doing driving a car like this? Where are your parents, and where’re you taking this little girl?”
I was tempted to explain that I was a four-thousand-year-old deity with plenty of experience driving the sun, my parents were in the celestial realm, and the little girl was my demigod master.
“She is my—”
“Little sister,” Meg chimed in. “He’s taking me to piano lessons.”
“Uh, yes,” I agreed.
“And we’re late!” Meg waggled her fingers in a way that did not at all resemble playing the piano. “Because my brother is stooo-pid.”
The officer frowned. “Wait here.”
He walked to his patrol car, perhaps to run my license through his computer or to call for SWAT backup.
“Your brother?” I asked Meg. “Piano lessons?”
“The stupid part was true.”
The officer came back with a confused look on his face. “Sorry.” He handed me my license. “My mistake. Drive safely.”
And that was that.
I wondered what had changed the officer’s mind. Perhaps, when Zeus created my license, he had put some sort of spell on the ID that allowed me to pass simple scrutiny such as highway stops. No doubt Zeus had heard that driving while mortal could be dangerous.
We continued on, though the incident left me shaken. On Highway 37, I glanced at every car heading the opposite direction, wondering which were driven by blemmyae, demigods, or mercenaries commuting in to work at Commode Palace, anxious to destroy my friends in time for the naming ceremony.
In the east, the sky lightened from onyx to charcoal. Along the roadside, sodium vapor streetlamps tinted the landscape Agamethus orange—fences and pastures, stands of trees, dry gullies. Occasionally we spotted a gas station or a Starbucks oasis. Every few miles, we passed billboards declaring GOLD: BEST PRICES! with a smiling man who looked suspiciously like King Midas in a cheap suit.
I wondered how Lityerses was doing back at the Waystation. When we’d left, the whole place had been abuzz—everyone pitching in to fix armor, sharpen weapons, and ready traps. Lityerses had stood at Josephine’s side, offering advice about Commodus and his various troops, but he’d seemed only half-present, like a man with a terminal disease, explaining to other patients how best they could prolong the inevitable.
Strangely, I trusted him. I believed he would not betray Josephine and Emmie, little Georgina, and the rest of the ragtag impromptu family I cared about. Lit’s commitment seemed genuine. He now hated Commodus more than any of us.
Then again, six weeks ago, I never would have suspected Meg McCaffrey of working for Nero….
I glanced over at my small master. She slumped in her seat, her red high-tops on the dashboard above the glove compartment. This scrunched-up position didn’t look comfortable to me. It struck me as the sort of habit a child learns, then is reluctant to abandon when they grow too big.
She wriggled her fingers over her knees, still playing air piano.
“You might try putting a few rests in your composition,” I told her. “Just for variety.”
“I want lessons.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “Piano lessons? Now?”
“Not now, dummy. But sometime. Can you teach me?”
What a horrifying idea! I wanted to think I was far enough along in my career as a music god not to give piano lessons to beginners. Then again, I noticed that Meg had asked me, not ordered me. I detected something tentative and hopeful in her voice, a fresh green chia shoot emerging. I was reminded of Leo and Calypso last night in the library, talking wistfully of the normal life they might build in Indiana. Strange, how often humans dream about the future. We immortals don’t bother. For us, dreaming of the future is like staring at the hour hand of a clock.
“Very well,” I said. “Assuming we survive this morning’s adventures.”
“Deal.” Meg banged out a final chord that Beethoven would have loved. Then, from her backpack of supplies, she produced a baggie of carrots (peeled by me, thank you very much) and began munching them loudly while knocking the tips of her shoes together.
Because Meg.
“We should talk strategy,” I suggested. “When we get to the caverns, we’ll need to find the secret entrance. I doubt it will be as obvious as the regular mortal entrance.”
“Mm-kay.”
“Once you’ve dispatched whatever guards we find—”
“Once we have dispatched them,” she corrected.
“Same difference. We’ll need to look for two nearby streams. We’ll have to drink from both of them before—”
“Don’t tell me.” Meg held up a carrot like a baton. “No spoilers.”
“Spoilers? This information might save our lives!”