A god in disguise

13

'Well, you know,' she said. 'Hephaestus. The blacksmith. He was crippled when he was a baby, thrown off Mount Olympus by Zeus. So he isn't exactly handsome. Clever with his hands and all, but Aphrodite isn't into brains and talent, you know?'

'She likes bikers.'

'Whatever.'

'Hephaestus knows?'

'Oh sure,' Annabeth said. 'He caught them together once. I mean, literally caught them, in a golden net, and invited all the gods to come and laugh at them. Hephaestus is always trying to embarrass them. That's why they meet in out-of-the-way places, like...'

She stopped, looking straight ahead. 'Like that.'

In front of us was an empty pool that would've been awesome for skateboarding. It was at least fifty meters across and shaped like a bowl.

Around the rim, a dozen bronze statues of Cupid stood guard with wings spread and bows ready to fire. On the opposite side from us, a tunnel opened up, probably where the water flowed into when the pool was full. The sign above it read: THRILL RIDE O' LOVE: THIS IS NOT YOUR PARENTS' TUNNEL OF LOVE!

Grover crept towards the edge. 'Guys, look.'

Marooned at the bottom of the pool was a pink-and-white two-seater boat with a canopy over the top and little hearts painted all over it. In the left seat, glinting in the fading light, was Ares's shield, a polished circle of bronze.

'This is too easy,' I said. 'So we just walk down there and get it?'

Annabeth ran her fingers along the base of the nearest Cupid statue.

'There's a Greek letter carved here,' she said. 'Eta. I wonder...'

'Grover,' I said, 'you smell any monsters?'

He sniffed the wind. 'Nothing.'

I took a deep breath. 'I'm going down there.'

'I'll go with you.' Grover didn't sound too enthusiastic, but I got the feeling he was trying to make up for what had happened in St Louis.

'No,' I told him. 'I want you to stay up top with the flying shoes. You're the Red Baron, remember? I'll be counting on you for backup, in case something goes wrong.'

Grover puffed up his chest a little. 'Sure. But what could go wrong?'

'I don't know. Just a feeling. Annabeth, come with me –'

'Are you kidding?' She looked at me as if I'd just dropped from the moon. Her cheeks were bright red.

'What's the problem now?' I demanded.

'Me, go with you to the... the "Thrill Ride of Love"? How embarrassing is that? What if somebody saw me?'

'Who's going to see you?' But my face was burning now, too. Leave it to a girl to make everything complicated. 'Fine,' I told her. 'I'll do it myself.' But when I started down the side of the pool, she followed me, muttering about how boys always messed things up.

Grover just looked on in amusement.

We reached the boat. The shield was propped on one seat, and next to it was a lady's silk scarf. I tried to imagine Ares and Aphrodite here, a couple of gods meeting in a junked-out amusement-park ride. Why? Then I noticed something I hadn't seen from up top: mirrors all the way around the rim of the pool, facing this spot. We could see ourselves no matter which direction we looked. That must be it. While Ares and Aphrodite were smooching with each other they could look at their favorite people: themselves.

I picked up the scarf. It shimmered pink, and the perfume was indescribable – rose, or mountain laurel. Something good. I smiled, a little dreamy, and was about to rub the scarf against my cheek when Annabeth ripped it out of my hand and stuffed it in her pocket. 'Oh, no you don't. Stay away from that love magic.'

'What?'

'Just get the shield, Seaweed Brain, and let's get out of here.'

The moment I touched the shield, I knew we were in trouble. My hand broke through something that had been connecting it to the dashboard. A cobweb, I thought, but then I looked at a strand of it on my palm and saw it was some kind of metal filament, so fine it was almost invisible. A tripwire.

'Wait,' Annabeth said.

'Too late.'

'There's another Greek letter on the side of the boat, another Eta. This is a trap.'

Noise erupted all around us, of a million gears grinding, as if the whole pool were turning into one giant machine.

Grover yelled, 'Guys!'

Up on the rim, the Cupid statues were drawing their bows into firing position. Before I could suggest taking cover, they shot, but not at us. They fired at each other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk. Then smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the main strands, making a net.

'We have to get out,' I said.

'Duh!' Annabeth said.

Think, Percy, think. How can we get out of here without capsizing our boat, getting rid of the mechanical spiders so that Annabeth won't freak out, get us out of the tunnel ride, and avoiding the Hephaestus TV that was installed in murderous cupid babies with arrows aiming at us?

Aha. I tightened my grip. Annabeth screamed at the spiders that scuttled out and buried her head into my sleeve, shaking badly.

Water exploded out of the pipes. It roared into the pool, sweeping away the spiders. I pulled Annabeth into the seat next to me and fastened her seatbelt just as the tidal wave slammed into our boat, over the top, whisking the spiders away and dousing us completely, but not capsizing us. The boat turned, lifted in the flood, and spun in circles around the whirlpool.

The water was full of short-circuiting spiders, some of them smashing against the pool's concrete wall with such force they burst.

Spotlights glared down at us. The Cupid-cams were rolling, live to Olympus. Okay, the gods were seeing this. Time to be the weak, scared demigod son of Poseidon.

But I could only concentrate on controlling the boat. I willed it to ride the current, to keep away from the wall. Trying to look like I'm using all my effort to control the boat, we spun around one last time, the water level now almost high enough to shred us against the metal net. Then the boat's nose turned towards the tunnel and we rocketed through into the darkness.

Annabeth and I held tight, both of us screaming our heads off as the boat shot curls and hugged corners and took forty-five-degree plunges past pictures of Romeo and Juliet and a bunch of other Valentine's Day stuff.

Then we were out of the tunnel, the night air whistling through our hair as the boat barreled straight towards the exit.