TERRIFIED . . . annabeth chase

sixty three.

"DEAREST." BERYL GRACE held out her arms.

She had on a flowery green-and-red wraparound, like the skirt of a Christmas tree. There were colorful plastic bangles on her wrists. Her hair was an over-teased corona of dyed blonde curls and she smelled of lemons and aerosol.

  Her eyes were blue like Jason's, but they gleamed with fractured light, like she'd just come out of a bunker after a nuclear war – hungrily searching for familiar details in a changed world.

  Jason's Mist disguise burned off. His posture straightened. His walking stick turned back into an Imperial gold gladius.

  "Mom?" he managed.

  "Yes, dearest." Her image flickered. "Come, embrace me."

  "You're – you're not real."

  "Of course she is real." Michael Varus's voice sounded far away. "Did you think Gaia would let such an important spirit languish in the Underworld? She is your mother, Beryl Grace, star of television, sweetheart to the king of Olympus, who rejected her not once but twice, in both his Greek and Roman aspects. She deserves justice as much as any of us."

  The suitors crowded around Jason, watching.

Val frowned as she tried to figure out what Beryl Grace was. Then she realized that her Mist disguise wore off. Whoops.

  Piper charmspoke. "Jason, look at me."

  She stood close to where Val was, holding her ceramic amphora. Her smile was gone. Her gaze was fierce and commanding – as impossible to ignore as the blue harpy feather in her hair. "That isn't your mother. Her voice is working some kind of magic on you – like charmspeak, but more dangerous. Can't you sense it?"

  "She's right." Annabeth climbed onto the nearest table. She kicked aside a platter, startling a dozen suitors. "Jason, that's only a remnant of your mother, like an ara, maybe, or –"

  "A remnant!" His mother's ghost sobbed. "Yes, look what I have been reduced to. It's Jupiter's fault. He abandoned us. He wouldn't help me! I didn't want to leave you in Sonoma, my dear, but Juno and Jupiter gave me no choice. They wouldn't allow us to stay together. Why fight for them now? Join these suitors. Lead them. We can be a family again!"

  "You left me," Jason told his mother. "That wasn't Jupiter or Juno. That was you."

  Beryl Grace stepped forward. The worry lines around her eyes, the pained tightness in her mouth reminded Val of Thalia.

  "Dearest, I told you I would come back. Those were my last words to you. Don't you remember?".

  Across the table, Antinous raised his goblet. "So pleased to meet you, son of Jupiter. Listen to your mother. You have many grievances against the gods. Why not join us? I gather these three serving girls are your friends? We will spare them. You wish to have your mother remain in the world? We can do that. You wish to be a king –"

  "No." Jason said firmly. "No, I don't belong with you."

  Michael Varus regarded him with cold eyes. "Are you so sure, my fellow praetor? Even if you defeat the giants and Gaia, would you return home like Odysseus did? Where is your home now? With the Greeks? With the Romans? No one will accept you. And, if you get back, who's to say you won't find ruins like this?"

Val scanned the palace courtyard. Without the illusory balconies and colonnades, there was nothing but a heap of rubble on a barren hilltop. Only the fountain seemed real, spewing forth sand like a reminder of Gaia's limitless power.

  "You were a legion officer," Jason told Varus. "A leader of Rome."

  "So were you," Varus said. "Loyalties change."