I regarded Emmie. “If you knew Zoë, then you must be one of my sister’s Hunters. But you can’t be. You’re…”
I stopped myself before I could say old and dying. Hunters neither aged nor died, unless they were killed in combat. This woman was quite obviously mortal. I could sense her fading life energy…so depressingly like mine; not at all like an immortal being’s. It’s hard to explain how I could tell, but it was perfectly clear to me—like hearing the difference between a perfect fifth and a diminished fifth.
In the distance, emergency sirens wailed. I realized we were having this conversation in the middle of a small disaster zone. Mortals, or more blemmyae, would soon be arriving.
Emmie snapped her fingers. All around the plaza, the crossbow turrets retracted. The portals closed as if they’d never existed.
“We need to get off the street,” Emmie said. “Come, I’ll take you into the Waystation.”
No building should be
A secret from Apollo
Or drop bricks on him
WE DIDN’T HAVE TO GO FAR.
Carrying Calypso between us, Leo and I followed Emmie to the big ornate building at the plaza’s south end. As I suspected, it was a railroad depot at some point. Carved in granite under the rose window were the words UNION STATION.
Emmie ignored the main entrance. She veered right and stopped in front of a wall. She ran her finger between the bricks, tracing the shape of a doorway. Mortar cracked and dissolved. A newly cut door swung inward, revealing a narrow chute like a chimney with metal rungs leading up.
“Nice trick,” Leo said, “but Calypso’s not exactly in wall-climbing condition.”
Emmie knit her brow. “You’re right.” She faced the doorway. “Waystation, can we have a ramp, please?”
The metal rungs vanished. With a soft rumble, the chute’s interior wall slanted backward, the bricks rearranging themselves into a gentle upward slope.
“Whoa,” said Leo. “Did you just talk to the building?”
A smile tugged at the corner of Emmie’s mouth. “The Waystation is more than a building.”
Suddenly, I did not fancy the look of that ramp. “This is a living structure? Like the Labyrinth? And you expect us to go inside?”
Emmie’s glance was definitely the look of a Hunter. Only my sister’s followers would dare to give me such a malodorous stink-eye. “The Waystation is no work of Daedalus, Lord Apollo. It’s perfectly safe…as long as you remain our guests.”
Her tone suggested that my welcome was probationary. Behind us, the emergency sirens grew louder. Calypso inhaled raggedly. I decided we didn’t have much choice. We followed Emmie into the building.
Lighting appeared along the walls—warm yellow candles flickering in bronze sconces. About twenty feet up the ramp, a door opened on our left. Inside, I glimpsed an infirmary that would’ve made my son Asclepius jealous: A fully stocked supply cabinet with medicine, surgical tools, and potion ingredients; a hospital bed with built-in monitors, GCI interface, and levitating bariatric slings. Racks of healing herbs dried against the wall next to the portable MRI machine. And in the back corner, a glassed-in habitat seethed with poisonous snakes.
“Oh, my,” I said. “Your med bay is cutting-edge.”
“Yes,” Emmie agreed. “And Waystation is telling me I should treat your friend immediately.”
Leo poked his head into the infirmary. “You mean this room just appeared here?”
“No,” Emmie said. “Well, yes. It’s always here, but…it’s easier to find when we need it.”
Leo nodded thoughtfully. “You think the Waystation could organize my sock drawer?”
A brick fell from the ceiling and clunked at Leo’s feet.
“That’s a no,” Emmie interpreted. “Now, if I can have your friend, please.”
“Uh…” Leo pointed to the glass habitat. “You got snakes in there. Just saying.”
“I’ll take good care of Calypso,” Emmie promised.
She took Calypso from us, lifting the sorceress in her arms with no apparent difficulty. “You two go ahead. You’ll find Jo at the top of the ramp.”
“Jo?” I asked.
“You can’t miss her,” Emmie replied. “She’ll explain the Waystation better than I could.”
She carried the sorceress into the infirmary. The door shut behind her.
Leo frowned at me. “Snakes?”
“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “There’s a reason a snake on a rod symbolizes medicine. Venom was one of the earliest cures.”
“Huh.” Leo glanced at his feet. “You think I can keep this brick, at least?”
The corridor rumbled.
“I would leave it there,” I suggested.
“Yeah, think I’ll leave it there.”
After a few more feet, another door opened on our right.
Inside, sunlight filtered through pink lace curtains onto the hardwood floor of a child’s room. A cozy bed was piled with fluffy comforters, pillows, and stuffed animals. The eggshell-colored walls had been used as a canvas for crayon art—stick-figure people, trees, houses, frolicking animals that might have been dogs or horses or llamas. On the left-hand wall, opposite the bed, a crayon sun smiled down on a field of happy crayon flowers. In the center, a stick-figure girl stood between two larger parental stick figures—all three of them holding hands.
The wall art reminded me of Rachel Elizabeth Dare’s cavern of prophecy at Camp Half-Blood. My Delphic Oracle had delighted in painting her cave with things she’d seen in her visions…before her oracular power ceased to work, that is. (Totally not my fault. You can blame that overgrown rat snake, Python.)
Most of the drawings in this bedroom seemed typical for a child of about seven or eight. But in the farthest corner of the back wall, the young artist had decided to inflict a nightmarish plague upon her crayon world. A scribbly black storm was brewing. Frowning stick figures threatened the llamas with triangular knives. Dark curlicues blotted out a primary-colored rainbow. Scratched over the field of green grass was a huge inky sphere like a black pond…or the entrance of a cave.
Leo stepped back. “I dunno, man. Don’t think we should go in.”
I wondered why the Waystation had decided to show us this room. Who lived here? Or more accurately…who had lived here? Despite the cheerful pink curtains and the pile of stuffed animals on the carefully made bed, the bedroom felt abandoned, preserved like a museum exhibit.
“Let’s keep going,” I agreed.
Finally, at the top of the ramp, we emerged into a cathedral-like hall. Overhead curved a barreled ceiling of wood carvings, with glowing stained-glass panels in the center creating green and gold geometric designs. At the far end of the room, the rose window I’d seen outside cast dartboard-line shadows across the painted cement floor. To our left and right, there were raised walkways with wrought-iron railings, and elegant Victorian lampposts lined the walls. Behind the railings, rows of doorways led into other rooms. Half a dozen ladders stretched up to the ornate molding at the base of the ceiling, where the ledges were stuffed with hay-like roosts for very large chickens. The whole place had a faint animal scent…though it reminded me more of a dog kennel than a henhouse.