I stormed through a set of doors into the main hall.
The scene was eerily calm. Smoke flooded out the gaping hole of the roof, billowing from the loft where a smoldering bulldozer chassis was, inexplicably, lodged nose-down. Heloise and Abelard’s nest appeared to be intact, but there were no signs of the male griffin or the egg. In Josephine’s workshop area, sprawled across the floor, lay the severed head and neck of Festus, his ruby eyes dark and lifeless. The rest of his body was nowhere to be seen.
Sofas had been smashed and overturned. Kitchen appliances were riddled with bullet holes. The scope of damage was heartbreaking.
But the most serious problem was the standoff around the dining table.
On the side nearest me stood Josephine, Calypso, Lityerses, and Thalia Grace. Thalia had her bow drawn. Lit brandished his sword. Calypso raised her bare hands, martial arts–style, and Josephine hefted her submachine gun, Little Bertha.
On the far side of the table stood Commodus himself, smiling brilliantly despite a bleeding diagonal cut across his face. Imperial gold armor gleamed over his purple tunic. He held his blade, a gold spatha, casually at his side.
To either side of him stood a Germanus bodyguard. The barbarian on the right had his arm clamped around Emmie’s neck, his other hand pressing a pistol crossbow against Emmie’s head. Georgina stood with her mother, Emmie hugging the little girl tightly to her chest. Alas, the little girl seemed to have fully recovered her wits only to be faced with this fresh horror.
To Commodus’s left, a second Germanus held Leo Valdez in a similar hostage stance.
I clenched my fists. “Villainy! Commodus, let them go!”
“Hello, Lester!” Commodus beamed. “You’re just in time for the fun!”
During this standoff
No flash photography, please
Oops. My bad. Ha-ha
THALIA’S FINGERS clenched her bowstring. A bead of sweat, silvery as moonwater, traced the side of her ear. “Say the word,” she told me, “and I will bore a hole between this moron emperor’s eyes.”
A tempting offer, but I knew it was bravado. Thalia was just as terrified as I was of losing Leo and Emmie…and especially poor Georgie, who’d been through so much. I doubted any of our weapons could kill an immortal like Commodus, much less him and two guards. No matter how quickly we attacked, we would not be able to save our friends.
Josephine shifted her grip on the submachine gun. Her coveralls were splattered with goo, dust, and blood. Her short silver hair glistened with perspiration.
“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” she muttered. “Stay calm.” I wasn’t sure if she was talking to Emmie or Georgie or herself.
Next to her, Calypso’s hands were frozen in midair as if she were standing in front of her loom, considering what to weave. Her eyes were fixed on Leo. She shook her head ever so slightly, perhaps telling him, Don’t be an idiot. (She told him that a lot.)
Lityerses stood next to me. His leg wound had started to bleed again, soaking through the bandages. His hair and clothes were scorched as if he’d run through a gauntlet of flamethrowers, leaving his Cornhuskers shirt looking like the surface of a burnt marshmallow. Only the word CORN was still visible.
Judging from the bloody edge of his sword, I guessed he was responsible for the ghastly new slash across Commodus’s face.
“No good way to do this,” Lit muttered to me. “Somebody’s gonna die.”
“No,” I said. “Thalia, lower your bow.”
“Excuse me?”
“Josephine, the gun, too. Please.”
Commodus chuckled. “Yes, you all should listen to Lester! And Calypso, dear, if you try to summon one of those wind spirits again, I will kill your little friend here.”
I glanced at the sorceress. “You summoned a spirit?”
She nodded, distracted, shaken. “A small one.”
“But the larger issue,” Leo called out, “is that I am not little. We are not going to make say hello to my little friend a thing.” He raised his palms, despite his captor tightening his hold around the demigod’s neck. “Besides, guys, it’s okay. I’ve got everything under control.”
“Leo,” I said evenly, “a seven-foot-tall barbarian is holding a crossbow against the side of your head.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s all part of the plan!”
On the word plan, he winked at me in an exaggerated way. Either Leo really did have a plan (unlikely, since in the weeks I’d known him he mostly relied on bluffs, jokes, and improvisation) or he was expecting me to have a plan. That was depressingly likely. As I may have mentioned, people often made that mistake. Just because I’m a god does not mean you should look to me for answers!
Commodus lifted two fingers. “Albatrix, if the demigod speaks again, you have my permission to shoot him.”
The barbarian grunted assent. Leo clamped his mouth shut. I could see in his eyes that even under pain of death, he was having trouble holding back a witty retort.
“Now!” Commodus said. “As we were discussing before Lester got here, I require the Throne of Mnemosyne. Where is it?”
Thank the gods….The throne was still hidden, which meant Meg could still use it to heal her mind. This knowledge steeled my resolve.
“Are you telling me,” I asked, “that your great army surrounded this place, invaded, and couldn’t even find a chair? Is this all you have left—a couple of witless Germani and some hostages? What sort of emperor are you? Now, your father, Marcus Aurelius, there was an emperor.”
His expression soured. His eyes darkened. I recalled a time in Commodus’s campaign tent when a servant carelessly spilled wine on my friend’s robes. Commodus had that same dark look in his eyes as he beat the boy almost to death with a lead goblet. Back then, as a god, I found the incident only mildly distasteful. Now I knew something about being on the receiving end of Commodus’s cruelty.
“I’m not finished, Lester,” he snarled. “I’ll admit this cursed building was more trouble than I expected. I blame my former prefect Alaric. He was woefully unprepared. I had to kill him.”
“Shocking,” muttered Lityerses.
“But most of my forces are merely lost,” Commodus said. “They’ll be back.”
“Lost?” I looked at Josephine. “Where did they go?”
Her eyes stayed focused on Emmie and Georgie, but she seemed to take pride in answering. “From what the Waystation is telling me,” she said, “about half of his monstrous troops fell into a giant chute marked LAUNDRY. The rest ended up in the furnace room. Nobody ever comes back from the furnace room.”
“No matter!” Commodus snapped.
“And his mercenaries,” Josephine continued, “wound up at the Indiana Convention Center. Right now, they’re trying to navigate their way through the trade-show floor of the Home and Garden Expo.”
“Soldiers are expendable!” Commodus shrieked. Blood dripped down his new facial wound, speckling his armor and robes. “Your friends here cannot be so easily replaced. Neither can the Throne of Memory. So let’s make a deal! I will take the throne. I will kill the girl and Lester, and raze this building to the ground. That’s what the prophecy said for me to do, and I never argue with Oracles! In exchange, the rest of you can go free. I don’t need you.”