Sea Green Eyes

Chapter 79

Annabeth re-adjusted her golden belt. "I hope our disguises hold up. The suitors were nasty customers when they were alive. If they find out we're demigods –"

"Hazel's magic will work," Piper said.

"Positive thinking," Cressida breathed slowly as if she was trying to keep a handle on her emotions, which she was. She honestly couldn't remember the last time she'd had to use Castor's breathing techniques.

The suitors: a hundred of the greediest, evilest cut-throats who'd ever lived. When Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, went missing after the Trojan War, this mob of B-list princes had invaded his palace and refused to leave, each one hoping to marry Queen Penelope and take over the kingdom. Odysseus managed to return in secret and slaughter them all – your basic happy homecoming. But, if Piper's visions were right, the suitors were now back, haunting the place where they'd died.

Jason couldn't believe he was about to visit the actual palace of Odysseus – one of the most famous Greek heroes of all time. Then again, this whole quest had been one mind-blowing event after another. Cressida herself had just come back from the eternal abyss of Tartarus, not to mention the intense separation anxiety and PTSD she was going through because of it. Given that, Jason decided maybe he shouldn't complain about being an old man. Not to mention the fact that Cressida was still giving him her strength after he kept complaining.

"Well ..." He steadied himself with his walking stick. "If I look as old as I feel, my disguise must be perfect. Let's get going."

And they continued climbing.

"Almost there," Annabeth said after a time. "Let's –"

BOOM! The hillside rumbled. Somewhere over the ridge, a crowd roared in approval, like spectators in a coliseum. He nervously met Cressida's eyes knowing that she was thinking about their fight in the actual Roman Colosseum just as he was. Neither of them were anxious to repeat that experience.

"What was that explosion?" he wondered.

"I don't know if I want to know," Cressida muttered.

"Don't know," Piper said. "But it sounds like they're having fun. Let's go make some dead friends."

"Oh joy," Cressida huffed.

And naturally, it was worse than they could've expected.

The ruins themselves weren't that impressive: a few stone walls, a weed-choked central courtyard, a dead-end stairwell chiselled into the rock. Some plywood sheets covered a pit and a metal scaffold supported a cracked archway. But superimposed over the ruins was another layer of reality – a spectral mirage of the palace as it must have appeared in its heyday. Whitewashed stucco walls lined with balconies rose three storeys high. Columned porticoes faced the central atrium, which had a huge fountain and bronze braziers. At a dozen banquet tables, ghouls laughed and ate and pushed one another around.

There were at least 200 spirits milling about, chasing spectral serving girls, smashing plates and cups, and basically making a nuisance of themselves.

They were also sacrificing statues of the gods to Gaia through a fountain that was spewing sand and that had been what the explosion was before.

"Any more statues?" the ghoul shouted to the crowd. "No? Then I guess we'll have to wait for some real gods to sacrifice!"

His comrades laughed and applauded as the ghoul plopped himself down at the nearest feast table.

Jason clenched his walking stick. "That guy just disintegrated my dad. Who does he think he is?"

"I'm guessing that's Antinous," said Annabeth, "one of the suitors' leaders."

"Oh, he was the one Odysseus killed with an arrow through the neck, right?" Cressida said and Annabeth nodded.

Piper winced. "You'd think that would keep a guy down. What about all the others? Why are there so many?"

"I don't know," Annabeth said. "Newer recruits for Gaia, I guess. Some must've come back to life before we closed the Doors of Death. Some are just spirits."

"Worst comes to worst, I might be able to get the spirits off their side," Cressida said.

"And onto ours?" Piper asked hopefully.

"Not exactly," Cressida said and they knew that it was wishful thinking.

"I thought you could only you're your powers on living things?" Annabeth said and Cressida took a deep breath.

"That was before Tartarus," she said. "There are manias here. Spirits of insanity. I'm the daughter of insanity. Even in their states, they should answer to me."

"Crazy spirits? Like what happened to Reyna's father," Jason asked and she nodded. "Is that safe?"

"Safer than having them on Gaia's side trying to kill us."

"She has a point," Annabeth said.

Piper tugged at her blue harpy feather. "Can they be killed?"

Jason remembered a quest he'd taken for Camp Jupiter years ago in San Bernardino. "Not easily. The ones with gaping wounds and the grey skin like Antinous, they're strong and fast and intelligent. Also, they eat human flesh."

"Fantastic," Annabeth muttered. "I don't see any option except to stick to the plan. Split up, infiltrate, find out why they're here. If things go bad –"

"We use the backup plan," Piper said.

Before they left the ship, Leo had given each of them an emergency flare the size of a birthday candle. Supposedly, if they tossed one in the air, it would shoot upward in a streak of white phosphorus, alerting the Argo II that the team was in trouble. At that point, Jason and the girls would have a few seconds to take cover before the ship's catapults fired on their position, engulfing the palace in Greek fire and bursts of Celestial bronze shrapnel. Not the safest plan but at least they had a backup plan to get them out of here should things go bad.

"And remember what I told you," Cressida said. "You are not yourselves. You are a character. Bottle up any fear, disgust, anything you feel because we can't afford to feel any of that now. And if you falter or can't come up with a response -"

"The safest option is always to laugh and go in with a thinly veiled threat. Anger is your friend," Jason finished.

"And it's always better to play a bluff and act more powerful than you are than to give them a real idea of your abilities," Piper added.

"And if Piper and I falter with the suitors, just smile and look down to their lips and back up to their eyes, and move on to the next suitor. Make them think you're playing hard to get so they don't focus on catching us in a lie," Annabeth added and Cressida nodded.

"Good. Very good."

"Be careful down there," Jason told the girls and they nodded.

Piper crept around the left side of the ridge and Cressida and Annabeth went to the right. Jason pulled himself up with his walking stick and hobbled towards the ruins.