فصل 05

Tell you a story?

Or I could just, like, pass out

And twitch on the couch

THIS WAS LEO’S CUE to sit at my feet and listen, enraptured, as I told him the story.

Instead, he waved vaguely toward the workshop. “Yeah, okay. I’m gonna check out the forges.”

He left me by myself.

Demigods today. I blame social media for their short attention spans. When you can’t even take the time to listen to a god hold forth, that’s just sad.

Unfortunately, the story insisted on being remembered. Voices, faces, and emotions from three thousand years ago flooded my mind, taking control of my senses with such force that I almost crumpled.

Over the past few weeks, during our travels west, these waking visions had been happening with alarming frequency. Perhaps they were the result of my faulty human neurons trying to process godly memories. Perhaps Zeus was punishing me with vivid flashbacks of my most spectacular failures. Or perhaps my time as a mortal was simply driving me crazy.

Whatever the case, I barely managed to reach the nearest couch before collapsing.

I was dimly aware of Leo and Josephine standing at the welding station, Josephine in her welder’s gear and Leo in his boxer shorts, chatting about whatever project Josephine was working on. They didn’t seem to notice my distress.

Then the memories swallowed me.

I found myself hovering above the ancient Mediterranean. Sparkling blue water stretched to the horizon. A warm, salty wind buoyed me up. Directly below, the white cliffs of Naxos rose from the surf like the baleen ridge of a whale’s mouth.

From a town about three hundred yards inland, two teenage girls ran for their lives—making their way toward the edge of the cliff with an armed mob close behind them. The girls’ white dresses billowed, and their long dark hair whipped in the wind. Despite their bare feet, the rocky terrain did not slow them down. Bronzed and lithe, they were clearly used to racing outdoors, but they were running toward a dead end.

At the head of the mob, a portly man in red robes screamed and waved the handle of a broken ceramic jar. A gold crown glinted on his brow. Streaks of wine had crusted in his gray beard.

His name came to me: Staphylus, king of Naxos. A demigod son of Dionysus, Staphylus had inherited all of his father’s worst traits and none of his party-dude chill. Now in a drunken rage, he was yelling something about his daughters breaking his finest amphora of wine, and so, naturally, they had to die.

“I’ll kill you both!” he screamed. “I will tear you apart!”

I mean…if the girls had broken a Stradivarius violin or gold-plated harmonica, I might have understood his rage. But a jar of wine?

The girls ran on, crying to the gods for help.

Normally, this sort of thing would not have been my problem. People cried to the gods for help all the time. They almost never offered anything interesting in return. I probably would have just hovered over the scene, thinking Oh, dear, what a shame. Ouch. That must have hurt! and then gone about my normal business.

This particular day, however, I was not flying over Naxos merely by chance. I was on my way to see the drop-dead gorgeous Rhoeo—the king’s eldest daughter—with whom I happened to be in love.

Neither of the girls below was Rhoeo. I recognized them as her younger sisters Parthenos and Hemithea. Nevertheless, I doubted Rhoeo would appreciate it if I failed to help her sisters on my way to our big date. Hey, babe. I just saw your sisters get chased off a cliff and plummet to their deaths. You want to catch a movie or something?

But if I helped her sisters, against the wishes of their homicidal father and in front of a crowd of witnesses—that would require divine intervention. There would be forms to fill out, and the Three Fates would demand everything in triplicate.

While I was deliberating, Parthenos and Hemithea charged toward the precipice. They must have realized they had nowhere to go, but they didn’t even slow down.

“Help us, Apollo!” Hemithea cried. “Our fate rests with you!”

Then, holding hands, the two sisters leaped into the void.

Such a show of faith—it took my breath away!

I couldn’t very well let them go SPLAT after they’d entrusted me with their lives. Now Hermes? Sure, he might have let them die. He would’ve found that hilarious. Hermes is a twisted little scamp. But Apollo? No. I had to honor such courage and panache!

Parthenos and Hemithea never hit the surface of the water. I stretched out my hands and zapped the girls with a mighty zap—imparting some of my own divine life force into them. Oh, how you should envy those girls! Shimmering and disappearing with a golden flash, filled with tingly warmth and newfound power, they floated upward in a cloud of Tinker Bell–quality glitter.

It is no small thing to make someone a god. The general rule is that power trickles down, so any god can theoretically make a new god of lesser power than him or herself. But this requires sacrificing some of one’s own divinity, a small amount of what makes you you—so gods don’t grant such a favor often. When we do, we usually create only the most minor of gods, as I did with Parthenos and Hemithea: just the basic immortality package with few bells and whistles. (Although I threw in the extended warranty, because I’m a nice guy.)

Beaming with gratitude, Parthenos and Hemithea flew up to meet me.

“Thank you, Lord Apollo!” Parthenos said. “Did Artemis send you?”

My smile faltered. “Artemis?”

“She must have!” Hemithea said. “As we fell, I prayed, ‘Help us, Artemis!’”

“No,” I said. “You cried out, ‘Help us, Apollo!’”

The girls looked at each other.

“Er…no, my lord,” said Hemithea.

I was sure she had said my name. In retrospect, however, I wondered if I had been assuming rather than listening. The three of us stared at one another. That moment when you turn two girls immortal and then find out they didn’t call on you to do so…Awkward.

“Well, it doesn’t matter!” Hemithea said cheerfully. “We owe you a great debt, and now we are free to follow our hearts’ desires!”

I was hoping she would say To serve Apollo for all eternity and bring him a warm lemon-scented towel before every meal!

Instead, Parthenos said, “Yes, we will join the Hunters of Artemis! Thank you, Apollo!”

They used their new powers to vaporize, leaving me alone with an angry mob of Naxoans screaming and shaking their fists at the sea.

The worst thing? The girls’ sister Rhoeo broke up with me like a week later.

Over the centuries, I saw Hemithea and Parthenos from time to time in Artemis’s retinue. Mostly we avoided each other. Making them minor gods was one of those benevolent mistakes I didn’t want to write any songs about.

My vision changed, shifting as subtly as the light through the Waystation’s rose window.

I found myself in a vast apartment of gold and white marble. Beyond the glass walls and the wraparound terrace, afternoon shadows flooded the skyscraper canyons of Manhattan.

I had been here before. No matter where my visions took me, I always seemed to end up back in this nightmarish scene.

Reclining on a gilded chaise lounge, the emperor Nero looked horrifically resplendent in a purple suit, a blue pastel shirt, and pointy alligator-leather shoes. On his sizable paunch he balanced a plate of strawberries, popping them one at a time into his mouth with his little finger raised to show off the hundred-karat diamond on his pinky ring.

“Meg…” He shook his head sadly. “Dear Meg. You should be more excited! This is your chance for redemption, my dear. You won’t disappoint me, will you?”

His voice was soft and gentle, like a heavy snowfall—the sort that builds up and brings down power lines, collapses roofs, kills entire families.

Standing before the emperor, Meg McCaffrey looked like a wilting plant. Her dark pageboy hair hung listlessly around her face. She slumped in her green T-shirt dress, her knees bent in her yellow leggings, one red high-top kicking listlessly at the marble floor. Her face was lowered, but I could see that her cat-eye glasses had been broken since our last encounter. Scotch tape covered the rhinestone tips at either joint.

Under the weight of Nero’s gaze, she seemed so small and vulnerable. I wanted to rush to her side. I wanted to smash that plate of strawberries into Nero’s chinless, neck-bearded excuse for a face. Alas, I could only watch, knowing that this scene had already happened. I had seen it unfold several times in my visions over the last few weeks.

Meg didn’t speak, but Nero nodded as if she’d answered his question.

“Go west,” he told her. “Capture Apollo before he can find the next Oracle. If you cannot bring him to me alive, kill him.”

He crooked his diamond-weighted pinky finger. From the line of imperial bodyguards behind him, one stepped forward. Like all Germani, the man was enormous. His muscular arms bulged against his leather cuirass. His brown hair grew wild and long. His rugged face would have been scary even without the serpent tattoo that coiled around his neck and up his right cheek.

“This is Vortigern,” said Nero. “He will keep you…safe.”

The emperor tasted the word safe as if it had many possible meanings, none of them good. “You will also travel with another member of the Imperial Household just in case, ah, difficulties arise.”

Nero curled his pinky again. From the shadows near the stairs appeared a teenage boy who looked very much like the sort of boy who enjoyed appearing from shadows. His dark hair hung over his eyes. He wore baggy black pants, a black muscle shirt (despite his lack of muscles), and enough gold jewelry around his neck to make him a proper festival idol. At his belt hung three sheathed daggers, two on the right and one on the left. The predatory gleam in his eyes made me suspect those blades were not just for show.

In all, the boy reminded me somewhat of Nico di Angelo, the son of Hades, if Nico were slightly older, more vicious, and had been raised by jackals.

“Ah, good, Marcus,” Nero said. “Show Meg your destination, will you?”

Marcus smiled thinly. He held up his palm, and a glowing image appeared above his fingertips: a bird’s-eye view of a city I now recognized as Indianapolis.

Nero popped another strawberry in his mouth. He chewed it slowly, letting the juice dribble down his weak chin. I decided that if I ever returned to Camp Half-Blood, I would have to convince Chiron to change their cash crop to blueberries.

“Meg, my dear,” Nero said, “I want you to succeed. Please don’t fail. If the Beast becomes cross with you again…” He shrugged helplessly. His voice ached with sincerity and concern. “I just don’t know how I could protect you. Find Apollo. Subject him to your will. I know you can do this. And, my dear, do be careful in the court of our friend the New Hercules. He is not as much a gentleman as I. Don’t get caught up in his obsession with destroying the House of Nets. That’s a mere sideshow. Succeed quickly and come back to me.” Nero spread his arms. “Then we can be one happy family again.”

The boy Marcus opened his mouth, perhaps to make a snide comment, but when he spoke it was Leo Valdez’s voice, shattering the vision. “Apollo!”

I gasped. I was back in the Waystation, sprawled across the couch. Standing over me, frowning with concern, were our hosts, Josephine and Emmie, along with Leo and Calypso.

“I—I had a dream.” I pointed weakly at Emmie. “And you were there. And…the rest of you, not so much, but—”

“A dream?” Leo shook his head. He was now dressed in a pair of grimy overalls. “Man, your eyes were wide open. You were lying there all twitching and stuff. I’ve seen you have some visions before, but not like that.”

I realized my arms were shaking. I grabbed my right hand with my left, but that only made it worse. “I—I heard some new details, or things I didn’t remember from before. About Meg. And the emperors. And—”

Josephine patted my head as if I were a cocker spaniel. “You sure you’re okay there, Sunny? You don’t look so hot.”

There was a time when I would have deep-fried anyone who called me Sunny. After I took over the reins of the sun chariot from the old Titan god Helios, Ares had called me Sunny for centuries. It was one of the few jokes he understood (at least one of the few clean jokes).

“I’m fine,” I snapped. “Wh-what’s going on? Calypso, you’re already healed?”

“You’ve been out for hours, actually.” She raised her recently broken hand, which now looked as good as new, and wriggled her fingers. “But yes. Emmie is a healer to rival Apollo.”

“You had to say that,” I grumbled. “You mean I’ve been lying here for hours and nobody noticed?”

Leo shrugged. “We were kinda busy talking shop. We probably wouldn’t have noticed you as soon as we did except, uh, somebody here wants to talk to you.”

“Mmm,” Calypso agreed, a worried look in her eyes. “He’s been very insistent about it.”

She pointed toward the rose window.

At first, I thought I was seeing orange spots. Then I realized an apparition was floating toward me. Our friend Agamethus, the headless ghost, had returned.