Haunted || Leo Valdez

67 - Leo Wrestles With a Forty-Foot-Tall Statue

"What happened?" Leo asked Hazel and Anne as they climbed aboard the Argo II.

Hazel's still shook from her talk with the goddess. Anne couldn't blame her. Meeting Hecate at a crossroads was something that you never forgot, and that wasn't a good thing. Anne was surprised she was still standing. She glanced over the rail and saw the dust of Arion's wake stretching across the hills of Italy. On the hill, the old ruins stood white and silent – no sign of ancient paths, or goddesses, or farting weasels.

"Hazel?" Rebecca asked, her eyebrows furrowing in concern.

Hazel's knees buckled. Nico and Leo grabbed her arms and helped her to the steps of the foredeck.

"We met Hecate," she managed.

She didn't tell them everything. Anne didn't blame her for that, either. She didn't want to talk about it either. She would forget those haunting images for now; she would have to obsess over them later. Hazel did, however, tell them about the secret northern pass through the mountains, and the detour Hecate had described that could take them to Epirus.

When she was done, Rebecca took her hand. Her eyes were full of concern. "Hazel, you met Hecate at a crossroads. That's ... that's something many demigods don't survive."

"And the ones who do survive are never the same," Nico said. "Are you sure you're –"

"I'm fine," Hazel insisted.

"What if Hecate is tricking us?" Leo asked. "This route could be a trap."

Anne shook her head. "If it was a trap, I think Hecate would've made the northern route sound tempting. Believe me, she didn't."

Leo pulled a calculator out of his tool belt and punched in some numbers. "That's ... something like three hundred miles out of our way to get to Venice. Then we'd have to backtrack down the Adriatic. And you said something about baloney dwarfs?"

"Dwarfs in Bologna," Hazel said. "I guess Bologna is a city. But why we have to find dwarfs there ... I have no idea. Some sort of treasure to help us with the quest."

"Huh," Leo said. "I mean, I'm all about treasure, but –"

"It's our best option." Nico helped Hazel to her feet.

"He's right," Rebecca agreed. "We have to make up for lost time, travel as fast as we can. Percy's and Annabeth's lives might depend on it."

"Fast?" Leo grinned. "I can do fast." He hurried to the console and started flipping switches.

"Oh, no," Rebecca said, a small hint of amusement in her voice. "We've woken up the madman."

Anne cracked a smile. The glint in Leo's eyes definitely looked mad. "We'd better go keep him company."

Leo spent the night wrestling with a forty-foot-tall Athena.

Ever since they'd brought the statue aboard, Leo had been obsessed with figuring out how it worked. He was sure it had primo powers. There had to be a secret switch or a pressure plate or something.

He was supposed to be sleeping, but he just couldn't. He spent hours crawling over the statue, which took up most of the lower deck. Athena's feet stuck into sick bay, so you had to squeeze past her ivory toes if you wanted some painkillers. Her body ran the length of the port corridor, her outstretched hand jutting into the engine room, offering the life-sized figure of Nike that stood in her palm, like, Here, have some Victory! Athena's serene face took up most of the aft pegasus stables, which were fortunately unoccupied. If Leo were a magic horse, he wouldn't have wanted to live in a stall with an oversized goddess of wisdom staring at him.