During the third attack, Livana almost ate a boulder. She was peering into the fog, wondering how it could be so difficult to fly across one stupid mountain range, when the ship's alarm bells sounded.
"Hard to port!" Nico yelled from the foremast of the flying ship.
Back at the helm, Leo yanked the wheel. The Argo II veered left, its aerial oars slashing through the clouds like rows of knives.
Livana made the mistake of looking over the rail. A dark spherical shape hurtled toward her. She thought: Why is the moon coming at us? Then she yelped and hit the deck. The huge rock passed so close overhead it blew her hair out of her face.
CRACK!
The foremast collapsed—sail, spars, and Nico all crashing to the deck. The boulder, roughly the size of a pickup truck, tumbled off into the fog like it had important business elsewhere.
"Nico!" Hazel scrambled over to him as Leo brought the ship level.
"I'm fine," Nico muttered, kicking folds of canvas off his legs.
She helped him up, and they stumbled to the bow. Livana peeked over more carefully this time. The clouds parted just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below them: a spearhead of black rock jutting from mossy green slopes. Standing at the summit was a mountain god—one of the numina montanum, Jason had called them. Or ourae, in Greek. Whatever you called them, they were nasty.
Like the others they had faced, this one wore a simple white tunic over skin as rough and dark as basalt. He was about twenty feet tall and extremely muscular, with a flowing white beard, scraggly hair, and a wild look in his eyes, like a crazy hermit. He bellowed something Livana didn't understand, but it obviously wasn't welcoming. With his bare hands, he pried another chunk of rock from his mountain and began shaping it into a ball.
The scene disappeared in the fog, but when the mountain god bellowed again, other numina answered in the distance, their voices echoing through the valleys.
"Stupid rock gods!" Leo yelled from the helm. "That's the third time I've had to replace that mast! You think they grow on trees?"
Nico frowned. "Masts are from trees."
"That's not the point!" Leo snatched up one of his controls, rigged from a Nintendo Wii stick, and spun it in a circle. A few feet away, a trapdoor opened in the deck. A Celestial bronze cannon rose. Livana just had time to cover her ears before it discharged into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trailed green fire. The spheres grew spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and hurtled away into the fog.
A moment later, a series of explosions crackled across the mountains, followed by the outraged roars of mountain gods.
"Ha!" Leo yelled.
Unfortunately, Livana guessed, judging from their last two encounters, Leo's newest weapon had only annoyed the numina.
Another boulder whistled through the air off to their starboard side.
Nico yelled, "Get us out of here!"
Leo muttered some unflattering comments about numina, but he turned the wheel. The engines hummed. Magical rigging lashed itself tight, and the ship tacked to port. The Argo II picked up speed, retreating northwest, as they'd been doing for the past two days.
Livana didn't relax until they were out of the mountains. The fog cleared. Below them, morning sunlight illuminated the Italian countryside—rolling green hills and golden fields not too different from those in Northern California. Livana could almost imagine she was sailing to Camp Jupiter.
The thought weighed on her chest. She thought back to her own camp in New York. There was no doubt they were under siege already, and if not then they were about to be. Livana worried for her siblings. Did they still think she was dead? There was no way to contact them.
Livana stood on the quarterdeck as Nico picked mast splinters out of his arms and Leo punched buttons on the ship's console.
"Well, that was sucktastic," Leo said. "Should I wake the others?"
Livana was tempted to say yes, but the other crew members had taken the night shift and had earned their rest. They were exhausted from defending the ship. Every few hours, it seemed, some Roman monster had decided the Argo II looked like a tasty treat.
A few weeks ago, Livana wouldn't have believed that anyone could sleep through a numina attack, but now she imagined her friends were still snoring away below decks. Whenever she got a chance to crash, she slept like a coma patient.
"They need rest," she said. "We'll have to figure out another way on our own."
"Huh." Leo scowled at his monitor. In his tattered work shirt and grease-splattered jeans, he looked like he'd just lost a wrestling match with a locomotive.
Ever since their friends Percy and Annabeth had fallen into Tartarus, Leo had been working almost nonstop. He'd been acting angrier and even more driven than usual.
The change was scary. Livana had never seen him that way, not even when they were in trouble on quests. Leo was always the happy jokester who dumbed himself down despite being arguably the smartest of the eight.
The sad thing was that Livana didn't have any time to talk him better. She had been busy with training and keeping the ship safe. Leo never slept and was always working. The two were slipping away so fast.
"Another way," Leo muttered. "Do you see one?"
On his monitor glowed a map of Italy. The Apennine Mountains ran down the middle of the boot-shaped country. A green dot for the Argo II blinked on the western side of the range, a few hundred miles north of Rome. Their path should have been simple. They needed to get to a place called Epirus in Greece and find an old temple called the House of Hades (or Pluto, as the Romans called him; or as Hazel liked to think of him: the World's Worst Absent Father).
To reach Epirus, all they had to do was go straight east—over the Apennines and across the Adriatic Sea. But it hadn't worked out that way. Each time they tried to cross the spine of Italy, the mountain gods attacked.
For the past two days they'd skirted north, hoping to find a safe pass, with no luck. The numina montanum were sons of Gaea, Livana's least favorite goddess. That made them very determined enemies. The Argo II couldn't fly high enough to avoid their attacks; and even with all its defenses, the ship couldn't make it across the range without being smashed to pieces.
"It's our fault," Hazel said. "Nico's and mine. The numina can sense us."
She glanced at her half brother. Since they'd rescued him from the giants, he'd started to regain his strength, but he was still painfully thin. His black shirt and jeans hung off his skeletal frame. Long dark hair framed his sunken eyes. His olive complexion had turned a sickly greenish white, like the color of tree sap.
In human years, he was barely fourteen, just four years younger than Livana, but that didn't tell the whole story. Like Hazel, Nico di Angelo was a demigod from another era. He radiated a kind of old energy—a melancholy that came from knowing he didn't belong in the modern world.
Hazel hadn't known him very long, but the way the two of them talked and hung around each other... It pained Livana. She'd known him since he was ten and she was fourteen. He'd known all of her trauma and helped her those restless nights when she fought off PTSD attacks. And yet, he acted like Hazel was more important. Was it because they were actually related? Was it because he brought her back from the dead? Hazel had her own trauma- did Nico think it was worse than Livana's? Was she just overreacting? Was her pain just not good enough? Livana's heart was pained every time they were together. Nico just didn't care anymore, and Livana had to accept it.
Nico gripped the hilt of his Stygian iron sword. "Earth spirits don't like children of the Underworld. That's true. We get under their skin—literally. But I think the numina could sense this ship anyway. We're carrying the Athena Parthenos. That thing is like a magical beacon."
Livana shivered, thinking of the massive statue that took up most of the hold. They'd sacrificed so much saving it from the cavern under Rome; but they had no idea what to do with it. So far the only thing it seemed to be good for was alerting more monsters to their presence.
Leo traced his finger down the map of Italy. "So crossing the mountains is out. Thing is, they go a long way in either direction."
"We could go by sea," Hazel suggested. "Sail around the southern tip of Italy."
"That's a long way," Nico said. "Plus, we don't have..." His voice cracked. "You know...our sea expert, Percy."
The name hung in the air like an impending storm.
Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon...probably the demigod Livana admired most. She'd looked up to him ever since she arrived at camp. He was the hero at Camp Half-Blood. He was strong, handsome, took care of everyone, and was one of the first people to see Livana in such a bright light. He greeted her when Annabeth introduced them, and said something like, "You've got a bright future. One day, you'll be as strong as me." Maybe he was just being nice, but Livana held the words in her heart. Sure, at the time she had no idea what he said but once she learned, it was her driving force. Annabeth and Percy were her biggest role models, like an older sibling or a parent. Losing them took a heavy toll on her.
Livana took a deep breath. Percy and Annabeth were still alive. She knew that in her heart. She could still help them if she could get to the House of Hades.
"What about continuing north?" she asked. "There has to be a break in the mountains, or something."
Leo fiddled with the bronze Archimedes sphere that he'd installed on the console—his newest and most dangerous toy. Every time Livana looked at the thing, her mouth went dry. She worried that Leo would turn the wrong combination on the sphere and accidentally eject them all from the deck, or blow up the ship, or turn the Argo II into a giant toaster.
Fortunately, they got lucky. The sphere grew a camera lens and projected a 3-D image of the Apennine Mountains above the console.
"I dunno." Leo examined the hologram. "I don't see any good passes to the north. But I like that idea better than backtracking south. I'm done with Rome."
No one argued with that. Rome had not been a good experience.
"Whatever we do," Nico said, "we have to hurry. Every day that Annabeth and Percy are in Tartarus..."
He didn't need to finish. They had to hope Percy and Annabeth could survive long enough to find the Tartarus side of the Doors of Death. Then, assuming the Argo II could reach the House of Hades, they might be able to open the Doors on the mortal side, save their friends, and seal the entrance, stopping Gaea's forces from being reincarnated in the mortal world over and over.
Yes...nothing could go wrong with that plan.
Nico scowled at the Italian countryside below them. "Maybe we should wake the others. This decision affects us all."
"No," Livana said. "We can find a solution."
She wasn't sure why she felt so strongly about it, but since leaving Rome, the crew had started to lose its cohesion. They'd been learning to work as a team. Then bam...their two most important members fell into Tartarus. Percy had been their backbone. He'd given them confidence as they sailed across the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean. As for Annabeth—she'd been the de facto leader of the quest. She'd recovered the Athena Parthenos single-handedly. She was the wisest of the eight, the one with the answers.
If Livana woke up the rest of the crew every time they had a problem, they'd just start arguing again, feeling more and more hopeless.
She had to make Percy and Annabeth proud of her. She had to take the initiative.
"We need some creative thinking," she said. "Another way to cross those mountains, or a way to hide ourselves from the numina."
Nico sighed. "If we were on our own, we could shadow-travel. But that won't work for an entire ship. And honestly, I'm not sure I have the strength to even transport myself anymore."
"I could maybe rig some kind of camouflage," Leo said, "like a smoke screen to hide us in the clouds." He didn't sound very enthusiastic.
Livana stared down at the rolling farmland, thinking about what lay beneath it.
At the edge of the horizon, a flicker of movement caught her eye—something small and beige racing across the fields at incredible speed, leaving a vapor trail like a plane's.
Livana couldn't believe it. She tapped Hazel on the shoulder and pointed. Hazel gasped. "Arion."
"What?" Nico asked.
Leo let out a happy whoop as the dust cloud got closer. "It's her horse, man! You missed that whole part. We haven't seen him since Kansas!"
Hazel laughed—the first time she'd laughed in days. It felt so good to see her old friend.
About a mile to the north, the small beige dot circled a hill and stopped at the summit. He was difficult to make out, but when the horse reared and whinnied, the sound carried all the way to the Argo II. Livana had no doubt—it was Arion.
"We have to meet him," she said. "He's here to help."
"Yeah, okay." Leo scratched his head. "But, uh, we talked about not landing the ship on the ground anymore, remember? You know, with Gaea wanting to destroy us and all."
"Just get me close, and I'll use the rope ladder." Hazel's voice was excited. "I think Arion wants to tell me something."
Hazel had never looked so happy.
As soon as she reached the ground, she ran to Arion and threw her arms around him. "I missed you!" She pressed her face into the horse's neck. "Where have you been?"
Arion nickered. Livana wished she could speak Horse like Percy could, but she got the general idea. Arion sounded impatient, as if saying, No time for sentiment, girl! Come on!
"You want me to go with you?" Hazel guessed.
Arion bobbed his head, trotting in place. His dark brown eyes gleamed with urgency.
Livana still couldn't believe he was actually here. He could run across any surface, even the sea; but she'd thought he wouldn't follow them into the ancient lands. The Mediterranean was too dangerous for demigods and their allies.
He wouldn't have come unless Hazel was in dire need. And he seemed so agitated.... Anything that could make a fearless horse skittish should have terrified Hazel.
"Hazel!" Nico called down from the ship. "What's going on?"
"It's fine!" She crouched down and summoned a gold nugget from the earth. She was getting better at controlling her power. Precious stones hardly ever popped up around her by accident anymore, and pulling gold from the ground was easy.
She fed Arion the nugget...his favorite snack. Then she smiled up at Leo, Livana and Nico, who were watching her from the top of the ladder a hundred feet above. "Arion wants to take me somewhere."
The teens exchanged nervous looks.
"Uh..." Leo pointed north. "Please tell me he's not taking you into that?"
Livana had been so focused on Hazel, she hadn't noticed the disturbance. A mile away, on the crest of the next hill, a storm had gathered over some old stone ruins—maybe the remains of a Roman temple or a fortress. A funnel cloud snaked its way down toward the hill like an inky black finger.
Livana's mouth tasted like blood. Hazel looked at Arion. "You want to go there?"
She tightened the straps of her Imperial gold cavalry sword and climbed onto Arion's back.
"I'll be okay!" She called up to the teens. "Stay put and wait for me."
"Wait for how long?" Nico asked. "What if you don't come back?"
"Don't worry, I will," she promised, hoping it was true.
She spurred Arion, and they shot across the countryside, heading straight for the growing tornado.
-
"What happened?" Leo asked as Hazel climbed aboard the Argo II.
Hazel's hands still shook. She glanced over the rail and saw the dust of Arion's wake stretching across the hills of Italy.
The countryside sparkled as the summer sun hit the morning dew. On the hill, the old ruins stood white and silent.
"Hazel?" Nico asked.
Her knees buckled. Nico and Leo grabbed her arms and helped her to the steps of the foredeck.
"I met Hecate," she managed.
Hazel told them about the secret northern pass through the mountains, and the detour Hecate described that could take them to Epirus.
When she was done, Nico took her hand. His 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. Are you sure you're—"
"I'm fine," she insisted.
Livana suppressed her anger and sadness. Nico never treated her like that anymore. Did he think she just suddenly grew up and was fine?
"What if Hecate is tricking us?" Leo asked. "This route could be a trap."
Hazel 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. "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.
Nico took Hazel's arm and guided her out of earshot. "What else did Hecate say? Anything about—"
Livana clenched her fists and turned away. Clearly, Nico cared for Hazel more. That was just a fact Livana would have to accept.
Leo turned and looked at Livana. He immediately picked up her body language and cocked his head, silently asking 'are you okay?'
Livana couldn't meet her boyfriend's eyes.
"I'll tell you later," she promised, trying to keep her voice from trembling. "Right now, we should rest while we can. Tonight, we cross the Apennines."
-
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 Advil. 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.
The statue was wedged tight in the corridor, so Leo had to climb over the top and wriggle under her limbs, searching for levers and buttons.
As usual, he found nothing.
He'd done some research on the statue. He knew it was made from a hollow wooden frame covered in ivory and gold, which explained why it was so light. It was in pretty good shape, considering it was more than two thousand years old, had been pillaged from Athens, toted to Rome, and secretly stored in a spider's cavern for most of the past two millennia. Magic must've kept it intact, Leo figured, combined with really good craftsmanship.
Annabeth had said...well, he tried not to think about Annabeth. He still felt guilty about her and Percy falling into Tartarus. Leo knew it was his fault. He should have gotten everyone safely on board the Argo II before he started securing the statue. He should have realized the cavern floor was unstable.
Still, moping around wasn't going to get Percy and Annabeth back. He had to concentrate on fixing the problems he could fix.
Anyway, Annabeth had said the statue was the key to defeating Gaea. It could heal the rift between Greek and Roman demigods. Leo figured there had to be more to it than just symbolism. Maybe Athena's eyes shot lasers, or the snake behind her shield could spit poison. Or maybe the smaller figure of Nike came to life and busted out some ninja moves.
Leo could think of all kinds of fun things the statue might do if he had designed it, but the more he examined it, the more frustrated he got. The Athena Parthenos radiated magic. Even he could feel that. But it didn't seem to do anything except look impressive.
The ship careened to one side, taking evasive maneuvers. Leo resisted the urge to run to the helm. Jason, Piper, and Frank were on duty with Hazel now. They could handle whatever was going on. Besides, Hazel had insisted on taking the wheel to guide them through the secret pass that the magic goddess had told her about.
Leo hoped Hazel was right about the long detour north. He didn't trust this Hecate lady. He didn't see why such a creepy goddess would suddenly decide to be helpful.
Of course, he didn't trust magic in general. That's why he was having so much trouble with the Athena Parthenos. It had no moving parts. Whatever it did, it apparently operated on pure sorcery...and Leo didn't appreciate that. He wanted it to make sense, like a machine.
Finally he got too exhausted to think straight. He curled up with a blanket in the engine room and listened to the soothing hum of the generators. Buford the mechanical table sat in the corner on sleep mode, making little steamy snores: Shhh, pfft, shh, pfft.
Leo liked his quarters okay, but he felt safest here in the heart of the ship—in a room filled with mechanisms he knew how to control. Besides, maybe if he spent more time close to the Athena Parthenos, he would eventually soak in its secrets.
"It's you or me, Big Lady," he murmured as he pulled the blanket up to his chin. "You're gonna cooperate eventually."
He closed his eyes and slept. Unfortunately, that meant dreams.
He was running for his life through his mother's old workshop, where she'd died in a fire when Leo was eight.
He wasn't sure what was chasing him, but he sensed it closing fast—something large and dark and full of hate.
He stumbled into workbenches, knocked over toolboxes, and tripped on electrical cords. He spotted the exit and sprinted toward it, but a figure loomed in front of him—a woman in robes of dry swirling earth, her face covered in a veil of dust.
Where are you going, little hero? Gaea asked. Stay, and meet my favorite son.
Leo darted to the left, but the Earth Goddess's laughter followed him.
The night your mother died, I warned you. I said the Fates would not allow me to kill you then. But now you have chosen your path. Your death is near, Leo Valdez.
He ran into a drafting table—his mother's old workstation. The wall behind it was decorated with Leo's crayon drawings. He sobbed in desperation and turned, but the thing pursuing him now stood in his path—a colossal being wrapped in shadows, its shape vaguely humanoid, its head almost scraping the ceiling twenty feet above.
Leo's hands burst into flame. He blasted the giant, but the darkness consumed his fire. Leo reached for his tool belt. The pockets were sewn shut. He tried to speak—to say anything that would save his life—but he couldn't make a sound, as if the air had been stolen from his lungs.
My son will not allow any fires tonight, Gaea said from the depths of the warehouse. He is the void that consumes all magic, the cold that consumes all fire, the silence that consumes all speech.
Leo wanted to shout: And I'm the dude that's all out of here!
His voice didn't work, so he used his feet. He dashed to the right, ducking under the shadowy giant's grasping hands, and burst through the nearest doorway.
Suddenly, he found himself at Camp Half-Blood, except the camp was in ruins. The cabins were charred husks. Burned fields smoldered in the moonlight. The dining pavilion had collapsed into a pile of white rubble, and the Big House was on fire, its windows glowing like demon eyes.
Leo kept running, sure the shadow giant was still behind him.
He wove around the bodies of Greek and Roman demigods. He wanted to check if they were alive. He wanted to help them. But somehow he knew he was running out of time.
He jogged toward the only living people he saw—a group of Romans standing at the volleyball pit. Two centurions leaned casually on their javelins, chatting with a tall skinny blond guy in a purple toga. Leo stumbled. It was that freak Octavian, the augur from Camp Jupiter, who was always screaming for war.
Octavian turned to face him, but he seemed to be in a trance. His features were slack, his eyes closed. When he spoke, it was in Gaea's voice: This cannot be prevented. The Romans move east from New York. They advance on your camp, and nothing can slow them down.
Leo was tempted to punch Octavian in the face. Instead he kept running.
He climbed Half-Blood Hill. At the summit, lightning had splintered the giant pine tree.
He faltered to a stop. The back of the hill was shorn away. Beyond it, the entire world was gone. Leo saw nothing but clouds far below—a rolling silver carpet under the dark sky.
A sharp voice said, "Well?"
Leo flinched.
At the shattered pine tree, a woman knelt at a cave entrance that had cracked open between the tree's roots.
The woman wasn't Gaea. She looked more like a living Athena Parthenos, with the same golden robes and bare ivory arms. When she rose, Leo almost stumbled off the edge of the world.
Her face was regally beautiful, with high cheekbones, large dark eyes, and braided licorice-colored hair piled in a fancy Greek hairdo, set with a spiral of emeralds and diamonds so that it reminded Leo of a Christmas tree. Her expression radiated pure hatred. Her lip curled. Her nose wrinkled.
"The tinkerer god's child," she sneered. "You are no threat, but I suppose my vengeance must start somewhere. Make your choice."
Leo tried to speak, but he was about to crawl out of his skin with panic. Between this hate queen and the giant chasing him, he had no idea what to do.
"He'll be here soon," the woman warned. "My dark friend will not give you the luxury of a choice. It's the cliff or the cave, boy!"
Suddenly Leo understood what she meant. He was cornered. He could jump off the cliff, but that was suicide. Even if there was land under those clouds, he would die in the fall, or maybe he would just keep falling forever.
But the cave... He stared at the dark opening between the tree roots. It smelled of rot and death. He heard bodies shuffling inside, voices whispering in the shadows.
The cave was the home of the dead. If he went down there, he would never come back.
"Yes," the woman said. Around her neck hung a strange bronze-and-emerald pendant, like a circular labyrinth. Her eyes were so angry, Leo finally understood why mad was a word for crazy. This lady had been driven nuts by hatred. "The House of Hades awaits. You will be the first puny rodent to die in my maze. You have only one chance to escape, Leo Valdez. Take it."
She gestured toward the cliff.
"You're bonkers," he managed.
That was the wrong thing to say. She seized his wrist. "Perhaps I should kill you now, before my dark friend arrives?"
Steps shook the hillside. The giant was coming, wrapped in shadows, huge and heavy and bent on murder.
"Have you heard of dying in a dream, boy?" the woman asked. "It is possible, at the hands of a sorceress!"
Leo's arm started to smoke. The woman's touch was acid. He tried to free himself, but her grip was like steel.
He opened his mouth to scream. The massive shape of the giant loomed over him, obscured by layers of black smoke.
The giant raised his fist, and a voice cut through the dream.
"Leo."
His eyes shot open. He was still in the engine room, but he was covered in a cold sweat. Next to him was his girlfriend, Livana. She was lying on her side, facing him. Her hand was on his chest.
"Leo," she said again. Her voice was soothing, and instantly calmed Leo.
"Livana," Leo said. Looking at her was weird. She'd changed so fast. Ever since Rome, she had a tougher expression on her face, her eyes were sadder, and Leo often caught her furrowing her brow and gritting her teeth- an expression Leo realized was one of deep anger. Something about her energy had changed, too, but Leo couldn't figure out why. All he knew was she had a huge secret, and Leo wasn't sure how to confront her about it.
The night Percy and Annabeth fell, she had been out on the deck. Festus always reported her breakdowns to Leo, and he would scold himself for not being there for her. However, during one of her destructive break downs, Festus reported she had a conversation with someone. They had made a deal- Livana gets strength from the person (Festus said she called herself a goddess and her name was Apate) and in return she gets fame or something. Leo had no clue who Apate was, but everytime he thought about the information Festus gave him, he felt sick to his stomach.
Something in Leo knew that the goddess Nemesis warned him about, and that Livana couldn't be saved anymore. That nasty green lady from his dream had made Livana make the deal to help her.
Leo knew all of this, and Livana hadn't told him yet. She told him everything that was troubling her, but because she wasn't now, Leo knew it was a secret. He had to warn her, but had no idea how to do it.
"Leo, what were you dreaming about?" Livana asked. "You were thrashing. I did my best to wake you."
Leo gulped. He felt compelled to spill everything. He told her the whole dream, the weird sorceress lady, Octavian at Camp Half-Blood, and Gaea's words.
Livana bit her lip. "That...is not a very good dream. I'm glad I woke you."
"What were you doing here, anyway?" Leo asked. He rolled over and gently put a hand on Livana's cheek. "You should be in your own cabin."
"I like sleeping with you more." Now Leo felt guilty. He preferred his work room, and Livana preferred him. Sleeping on the floor probably wasn't very comfortable to her.
"I'm sorry, I'll try and get to bed sooner," Leo said. "Gotta stop falling asleep while doing work."
"I know you like to sleep in here," Livana giggled.
"Busted," Leo said. "Sorry, Liv."
Livana shrugged. "Well..."
"Well, what?" Leo sat up and rubbed her shoulder.
"I just wanted to say...'' she looked embarrassed. "Happy birthday."
Leo tilted his head. "What?"
"It's July seventh, right?" Livana sat up and hugged her knees. "That's your birthday."
Leo swept a hand through his hair. "Yeah. Wow... It's been a hot minute since someone said that to me. I stopped celebrating when my mom died. Thank you, Liv." He leaned forward and kissed her nose.
Livana smiled- though she looked pained in her eyes- and leaned into Leo. "In the mess hall, make sure to will the plates to give you a cake cup."
Leo laughed. "I will, but only if you have one, too."
"I've never had one. I used to celebrate by eating longevity noodles," Livana said.
"Never heard of that," Leo wrapped an arm around her and lied back, pulling her down, too.
"One really long noodle that is supposed to be eaten without it breaking, and it fills up the whole bowl. Very yummy." Livana repositioned herself so she was lying on his chest.
"Sounds interesting." Leo could feel his warm body temperature cooling down with Livana on top of him. It felt nice to be 98.6 instead of 101. Leo was sure his girlfriend felt the same, she was always cold. Suddenly, Leo was drifting off again. Sleeping with Livana always felt better. He was sure there was maybe another hour until dawn. Who couldn't use a nice nap?
Of course, his peace was immediately interrupted.
"Leo!" Jason called, walking into the room. "Yo- whoa, why are you and Livana on the floor?"
Leo disentangled himself and sat up, rubbing his face.
"Nothing," he muttered. "We were just cuddling. Um, what's going on?"
Jason didn't tease him. That's one thing Leo appreciated about his friend. Jason's ice-blue eyes were level and serious. The little scar on his mouth twitched like it always did when he had bad news to share.
"We made it through the mountains," he said. "We're almost to Bologna. You should join us in the mess hall. Nico has new information."
Leo had designed the mess hall's walls to show real-time scenes from Camp Half-Blood. At first he had thought that was a pretty awesome idea. Now he wasn't so sure.
The scenes from back home—the campfire sing-alongs, dinners at the pavilion, volleyball games outside the Big House—just seemed to make his friends sad. The farther they got from Long Island, the worse it got. The time zones kept changing, making Leo feel the distance every time he looked at the walls. Here in Italy the sun had just come up. Back at Camp Half-Blood it was the middle of the night. Torches sputtered at the cabin doorways. Moonlight glittered on the waves of Long Island Sound.
Leo remembered the images he'd seen in his dream—the camp in ruins, littered with bodies; Octavian standing at the volleyball pit, casually talking in Gaea's voice.
He stared down at his eggs, bacon and mini cupcake. He wished he could turn off the wall videos.
"So," Jason said, "now that we're here..."
He sat at the head of the table, kind of by default. Since they'd lost Annabeth, Jason had done his best to act as the group's leader. Having been praetor back at Camp Jupiter, he was probably used to that; but Leo could tell his friend was stressed. His eyes were more sunken than usual. His blond hair was uncharacteristically messy, like he'd forgotten to comb it.
Leo glanced at the others around the table. Hazel was bleary-eyed, too, but of course she'd been up all night guiding the ship through the mountains. Her curly cinnamon-colored hair was tied back in a bandana, which gave her a commando look that Leo found kind of cute—and then immediately felt guilty about.
Next to her sat her boyfriend Frank Zhang, dressed in black workout pants and a Roman tourist T-shirt that said CIAO! (was that even a word?). Frank's old centurion badge was pinned to his shirt, despite the fact that the demigods of the Argo II were now Public Enemies Numbers 1 through 8 back at Camp Jupiter. His grim expression just reinforced his unfortunate resemblance to a sumo wrestler. Then there was Hazel's half brother, Nico di Angelo. Dang, that kid gave Leo the freaky-deakies. He sat back in his leather aviator jacket, his black T-shirt and jeans, that wicked silver skull ring on his finger, and the Stygian sword at his side. His tufts of black hair stuck up in curls like baby bat wings. His eyes were sad and kind of empty, as if he'd stared into the depths of Tartarus—which he had.
The only absent demigod was Piper, who was taking her turn at the helm with Coach Hedge, their satyr chaperone.
Leo wished Piper were here. She had a way of calming things down with that Aphrodite charm of hers. After his dreams last night, Leo could use some calm. But he wanted Livana to comfort him more. He slid his hand over to hers and poked her with his pinky.
Livana looked at him and gave him a small smile, grabbing his hand gently. Leo relaxed into his chair.
He had zoned out so totally he didn't realize Jason was still talking.
"—the House of Hades," he was saying. "Nico?"
Nico sat forward. "I communed with the dead last night."
He just tossed that line out there, like he was saying he got a text from a buddy.
"I was able to learn more about what we'll face," Nico continued. "In ancient times, the House of Hades was a major site for Greek pilgrims. They would come to speak with the dead and honor their ancestors."
Leo frowned. "Sounds like Día de los Muertos. My Aunt Rosa took that stuff seriously."
He remembered being dragged by her to the local cemetery in Houston, where they'd clean up their relatives' gravesites and put out offerings of lemonade, cookies, and fresh marigolds. Aunt Rosa would force Leo to stay for a picnic, as if hanging out with dead people were good for his appetite.
Frank grunted. "Chinese have that, too—ancestor worship, sweeping the graves in the springtime." He glanced at Leo. "Your Aunt Rosa would've gotten along with my grandmother."
Leo had a terrifying image of his Aunt Rosa and some old Chinese woman in wrestlers' outfits, whaling on each other with spiked clubs.
"Yeah," Leo said. "I'm sure they would've been best buds."
Nico cleared his throat. "A lot of cultures have seasonal traditions to honor the dead, but the House of Hades was open year-round. Pilgrims could actually speak to the ghosts. In Greek, the place was called the Necromanteion, the Oracle of Death. You'd work your way through different levels of tunnels, leaving offerings and drinking special potions—"
"Special potions," Leo muttered. "Yum."
Jason flashed him a look like, Dude, enough. "Nico, go on."
"The pilgrims believed that each level of the temple brought you closer to the Underworld, until the dead would appear before you. If they were pleased with your offerings, they would answer your questions, maybe even tell you the future."
Frank tapped his mug of hot chocolate. "And if the spirits weren't pleased?"
"Some pilgrims found nothing," Nico said. "Some went insane, or died after leaving the temple. Others lost their way in the tunnels and were never seen again."
"The point is," Jason said quickly, "Nico found some information that might help us."
"Yeah." Nico didn't sound very enthusiastic. "The ghost I spoke to last night...he was a former priest of Hecate. He confirmed what the goddess told Hazel yesterday at the crossroads. In the first war with the giants, Hecate fought for the gods. She slew one of the giants—one who'd been designed as the anti-Hecate. A guy named Clytius."
"Dark dude," Leo guessed. "Wrapped in shadows."
Hazel turned toward him, her gold eyes narrowing. "Leo, how did you know that?"
"Kind of had a dream."
No one looked surprised. Most demigods had vivid nightmares about what was going on in the world.
His friends paid close attention as Leo explained. He tried not to look at the wall images of Camp Half-Blood as he described the place in ruins. He told them about the dark giant, and the strange woman on Half-Blood Hill, offering him a multiple-choice death.
Jason pushed away his plate of pancakes. "So the giant is Clytius. I suppose he'll be waiting for us, guarding the Doors of Death."
Frank rolled up one of the pancakes and started munching—not a guy to let impending death stand in the way of a hearty breakfast. "And the woman in Leo's dream?"
"She's my problem." Hazel passed a diamond between her fingers in a sleight of hand. "Hecate mentioned a formidable enemy in the House of Hades—a witch who couldn't be defeated except by me, using magic."
"Do you know magic?" Leo asked.
"Not yet."
"Ah." He tried to think of something hopeful to say, but he recalled the angry woman's eyes, the way her steely grip made his skin smoke. "Any idea who she is?"
Hazel shook her head. "Only that..." She glanced at Nico, and some sort of silent argument happened between them. Leo got the feeling that the two of them had had private conversations about the House of Hades, and they weren't sharing all the details. "Only that she won't be easy to defeat."
"But there is some good news," Nico said. "The ghost I talked to explained how Hecate defeated Clytius in the first war. She used her torches to set his hair on fire. He burned to death. In other words, fire is his weakness."
Everybody looked at Leo.
"Oh," he said. "Okay."
Jason nodded encouragingly, like this was great news—like he expected Leo to walk up to a towering mass of darkness, shoot a few fireballs, and solve all their problems. Leo didn't want to bring him down, but he could still hear Gaea's voice: He is the void that consumes all magic, the cold that consumes all fire, the silence that consumes all speech.
Leo was pretty sure it would take more than a few matches to set that giant ablaze.
"It's a good lead," Livana insisted. "At least we know how to kill the giant. And this sorceress...well, if Hecate believes Hazel can defeat her, then so do I."
Hazel dropped her eyes. "Now we just have to reach the House of Hades, battle our way through Gaea's forces—"
"Plus a bunch of ghosts," Nico added grimly. "The spirits in that temple may not be friendly."
"—and find the Doors of Death," Hazel continued. "Assuming we can somehow arrive at the same time as Percy and Annabeth and rescue them."
Frank swallowed a bite of pancake. "We can do it. We have to."
Leo admired the big guy's optimism. He wished he shared it.
"So, with this detour," Leo said, "I'm estimating four or five days to arrive at Epirus, assuming no delays for, you know, monster attacks and stuff."
Jason smiled sourly. "Yeah. Those never happen."
Leo looked at Hazel. "Hecate told you that Gaea was planning her big Wake Up party on August first, right? The Feast of Whatever?"
"Spes," Hazel said. "The goddess of hope."
Jason turned his fork. "Theoretically, that leaves us enough time. It's only July seventh. We should be able to close the Doors of Death, then find the giants' HQ and stop them from waking Gaea before August first."
"Theoretically," Hazel agreed. "But I'd still like to know how we make our way through the House of Hades without going insane or dying."
Nobody volunteered any ideas.
Frank set down his pancake roll like it suddenly didn't taste so good. "It's July seventh. Oh, jeez, I hadn't even thought of that...."
"Hey, man, it's cool," Leo said. "I didn't expect you to get me a present or anything...unless you wanted to."
"What? No, It's not that. My grandmother...she always told me that seven was an unlucky number. It was a ghost number. July is the seventh month."
"Yeah, but..." Leo tapped his fingers nervously on the table. He realized he was doing the Morse code for I love you, the way he used to do with his mom, which would have been pretty embarrassing if his friends understood Morse code. "But that's just coincidence, right?"
Frank's expression didn't reassure him.
"Back in China," Frank said, "in the old days, people called the seventh month the ghost month. That's when the spirit world and the human world were closest. The living and the dead could go back and forth. Tell me it's a coincidence we're searching for the Doors of Death during the ghost month."
No one spoke.
Leo wanted to think that an old Chinese belief couldn't have anything to do with the Romans and the Greeks. Totally different, right? But Frank's existence was proof that the cultures were tied together. The Zhang family went all the way back to Ancient Greece. They'd found their way through Rome and China and finally to Canada.
Also, Leo kept thinking about his meeting with the revenge goddess Nemesis at the Great Salt Lake. Nemesis had called him an extra wheel, the odd man out on the quest. But now that Percy and Annabeth were gone and Nico had joined them, he was the seventh wheel. The group truly was uneven now. Nemesis had meant he would be the seventh wheel. She didn't mean seventh as in ghost, did she?
Jason pressed his hands against the arms of his chair. "Let's focus on the things we can deal with. We're getting close to Bologna. Maybe we'll get more answers once we find these dwarfs that Hecate—"
The ship lurched as if it had hit an iceberg. Leo's breakfast plate slid across the table. Nico fell backward out of his chair and banged his head against the sideboard. He collapsed on the floor, with a dozen magic goblets and platters crashing down on top of him.
"Nico!" Hazel ran to help him.
"What—?" Frank tried to stand, but the ship pitched in the other direction. He stumbled into the table and went face-first into Leo's plate of scrambled eggs.
"Look!" Jason pointed at the walls. The images of Camp Half-Blood were flickering and changing.
"Not possible," Leo murmured.
No way those enchantments could show anything other than scenes from camp, but suddenly a huge, distorted face filled the entire port-side wall: crooked yellow teeth, a scraggly red beard, a warty nose, and two mismatched eyes—one much larger and higher than the other. The face seemed to be trying to eat its way into the room.
The other walls flickered, showing scenes from above deck. Piper stood at the helm, but something was wrong. From the shoulders down she was wrapped in duct tape, her mouth gagged and her legs bound to the control console.
At the mainmast, Coach Hedge was similarly bound and gagged, while a bizarre-looking creature—a sort of gnome/chimpanzee combo with poor fashion sense—danced around him, doing the coach's hair in tiny pigtails with pink rubber bands.
On the port-side wall, the huge ugly face receded so that Leo could see the entire creature—another gnome chimp, in even crazier clothes. This one began leaping around the deck, stuffing things in a burlap bag—Piper's dagger, Leo's Wii controllers. Then he pried the Archimedes sphere out of the command console.
"No!" Leo yelled.
"Uhhh," Nico groaned from the floor.
"Piper!" Jason cried.
"Monkey!" Frank yelled.
"Not monkeys," Hazel grumbled. "I think those are dwarfs."
"Stealing my stuff!" Leo yelled, and he ran for the stairs.
Leo was vaguely aware of Hazel shouting, "Go! I'll take care of Nico!"
As if Leo was going to turn back. Sure, he hoped di Angelo was okay, but he had headaches of his own.
Leo bounded up the steps, with Jason, Livana and Frank behind him.
The situation on deck was even worse than he'd feared.
Coach Hedge and Piper were struggling against their duct tape bonds while one of the demon monkey dwarfs danced around the deck, picking up whatever wasn't tied down and sticking it in his bag. He was maybe four feet tall, even shorter than Coach Hedge, with bowed legs and chimp-like feet, his clothes so loud they gave Leo vertigo. His green-plaid pants were pinned at the cuffs, and held up with bright-red suspenders over a striped pink-and-black woman's blouse. He wore half a dozen gold watches on each arm, and a zebra-patterned cowboy hat with a price tag dangling from the brim. His skin was covered with patches of scraggly red fur, though ninety percent of his body hair seemed to be concentrated in his magnificent eyebrows.
Leo was just forming the thought Where's the other dwarf? when he heard a click behind him and realized he'd led his friends into a trap.
"Duck!" He hit the deck as the explosion blasted his eardrums.
Note to self, Leo thought groggily. Do not leave boxes of magic grenades where dwarfs can reach them.
At least he was alive. Leo had been experimenting with all sorts of weapons based on the Archimedes sphere that he'd recovered in Rome. He'd built grenades that could spray acid, fire, shrapnel, or freshly buttered popcorn. (Hey, you never knew when you'd get hungry in battle.) Judging from the ringing in Leo's ears, the dwarf had detonated the flash-bang grenade, which Leo had filled with a rare vial of Apollo's music, pure liquid extract. It didn't kill, but it left Leo feeling like he'd just done a belly flop off the deep end.
He tried to get up. His limbs were useless. Someone was tugging at his waist, maybe a friend trying to help him up? No. His friends didn't smell like heavily perfumed monkey cages.
He managed to turn over. His vision was out of focus and tinted pink, like the world had been submerged in strawberry jelly. A grinning, grotesque face loomed over him. The brown-furred dwarf was dressed even worse than his friend, in a green bowler hat like a leprechaun's, dangly diamond earrings, and a white-and-black referee's shirt. He showed off the prize he'd just stolen—Leo's tool belt—then danced away.
Leo tried to grab him, but his fingers were numb. The dwarf frolicked over to the nearest ballista, which his red-furred friend was priming to launch.
The brown-furred dwarf jumped onto the projectile like it was a skateboard, and his friend shot him into the sky.
Red Fur pranced over to Coach Hedge. He gave the satyr a big smack on the cheek, then skipped to the rail. He bowed to Leo, doffing his zebra cowboy hat, and did a backflip over the side.
Leo managed to get up. Livana looked on the verge of passing out as she stood up. Jason was already on his feet, stumbling and running into things. Frank had turned into a silverback gorilla (why, Leo wasn't sure; maybe to commune with the monkey dwarfs?) but the flash grenade had hit him hard. He was sprawled on the deck with his tongue hanging out and his gorilla eyes rolled up in his head.
"Piper!" Jason staggered to the helm and carefully pulled the gag out of her mouth.
"Don't waste your time on me!" she said. "Go after them!"
At the mast, Coach Hedge mumbled, "HHHmmmmm-hmmm!"
Leo figured that meant: "KILL THEM!" Easy translation, since most of the coach's sentences involved the word kill.
Leo glanced at the control console. His Archimedes sphere was gone. He put his hand to his waist, where his tool belt should have been. His head started to clear, and his sense of outrage came to a boil. Those dwarfs had attacked his ship. They'd stolen his most precious possessions.
Below him spread the city of Bologna—a jigsaw puzzle of red-tiled buildings in a valley hemmed by green hills. Unless Leo could find the dwarfs somewhere in that maze of streets...Nope. Failure wasn't an option. Neither was waiting for his friends to recover.
He turned to his control board in frustration. "Dammit! I need a lift to the city."
Livana regained herself and looked at Leo. "I can get you there. There's a trick I've been wanting to try out."
"Shadow travel?" Leo asked.
Livana shook her head. "That would be too draining. I've got a better idea."
"Good," Leo said. "We've got some monkey dudes to catch."
Livana smiled and went to the rail. Leo had no idea what she had planned, but Livana was fast and that was all he needed.
She grabbed onto him and threw him overboard.
Well, that certainly wasn't what Leo was thinking. Before he could hit the water, Livana caught him. Her whole body was a shadow except for her arms so she could hold him. With supersonic speed, she pushed herself off the side of the ship and shot for the city.
Livana and Leo landed in a big piazza lined with white marble government buildings and outdoor cafés. Bikes and Vespas clogged the surrounding streets, but the square itself was empty except for pigeons and a few old men drinking espresso.
None of the locals seemed to notice the huge Greek warship hovering over the piazza, or the fact that Livana and Leo had just arrived in a torpedo of darkness, Livana wielding a black sword, and Leo...well, Leo pretty much empty-handed.
"Where to?" Livana asked.
Leo stared at her. "Well, I dunno. Let me pull my dwarf-tracking GPS out of my tool belt.... Oh, wait! I don't have a dwarf-tracking GPS—or my tool belt!"
Livana looked at him distastefully, and Leo regretted getting angry with her. "Fine," she grumbled. She glanced up at the ship as if to get her bearings, then pointed across the piazza. "The ballista fired the first dwarf in that direction, I think. Come on."
They waded through a lake of pigeons, then maneuvered down a side street of clothing stores and gelato shops. The sidewalks were lined with white columns covered in graffiti. A few panhandlers asked for change (Leo didn't know Italian, but he got the message loud and clear).
He kept patting his waist, hoping his tool belt would magically reappear. It didn't. He tried not to freak, but he'd come to depend on that belt for almost everything. He felt like somebody had stolen one of his hands.
"We'll find it," Livana promised.
Usually, Leo would have felt reassured. Livana had a talent for staying levelheaded in a crisis, and she'd gotten Leo out of plenty of bad scrapes. Today, though, all Leo could think about was the stupid fortune cookie he had opened in Rome. The goddess Nemesis had promised him help, and he'd gotten it: the code to activate the Archimedes sphere. At the time, Leo had had no choice but to use it if he wanted to save his friends—but Nemesis had warned that her help came with a price.
Leo wondered if that price would ever be paid. Percy and Annabeth were gone. The ship was hundreds of miles off course, heading toward an impossible challenge. Leo's friends were counting on him to beat a terrifying giant. And now he didn't even have his tool belt or his Archimedes sphere.
He was so absorbed with feeling sorry for himself that he didn't notice where they were until Livana grabbed his arm. "Check it out."
Leo looked up. They'd arrived in a smaller piazza. Looming over them was a huge bronze statue of a buck-naked Neptune.
"Ah, jeez." Leo averted his eyes. He really didn't need to see a godly groin this early in the morning.
The sea god stood on a big marble column in the middle of a fountain that wasn't working (which seemed kind of ironic). On either side of Neptune, little winged Cupid dudes were sitting, kind of chillin', like, What's up? Neptune himself (avoid the groin) was throwing his hip to one side in an Elvis Presley move. He gripped his trident loosely in his right hand and stretched his left hand out like he was blessing Leo, or possibly attempting to levitate him.
"Some kind of clue?" Leo wondered.
Livana frowned. "Maybe, maybe not. There are statues of the gods all over the place in Italy."
Leo climbed into the dry fountain. He put his hand on the statue's pedestal, and a rush of impressions surged through his fingertips. He sensed Celestial bronze gears, magical levers, springs, and pistons.
"It's mechanical," he said. "Maybe a doorway to the dwarfs' secret lair?"
"Ooooo!" shrieked a nearby voice. "Secret lair?"
"I want a secret lair!" yelled another voice from above.
Livana stepped back, her sword ready. Leo almost got whiplash trying to look in two places at once. The red-furred dwarf in the cowboy hat was sitting about thirty feet away at the nearest café table, sipping an espresso held by his monkey-like foot. The brown-furred dwarf in the green bowler was perched on the marble pedestal at Neptune's feet, just above Leo's head.
"If we had a secret lair," said Red Fur, "I would want a firehouse pole."
"And a waterslide!" said Brown Fur, who was pulling random tools out of Leo's belt, tossing aside wrenches, hammers, and staple guns.
"Stop that!" Leo tried to grab the dwarf's feet, but he couldn't reach the top of the pedestal.
"Too short?" Brown Fur sympathized.
"You're calling me short?" Leo looked around for something to throw, but there was nothing but pigeons, and he doubted he could catch one. "Give me my belt, you stupid—"
"Now, now!" said Brown Fur. "We haven't even introduced ourselves. I'm Akmon. And my brother over there—"
"—is the handsome one!" The red-furred dwarf lifted his espresso. Judging from his dilated eyes and his maniacal grin, he didn't need any more caffeine. "Passalos! Singer of songs! Drinker of coffee! Stealer of shiny stuff!"
"Please!" shrieked his brother, Akmon. "I steal much better than you."
Passalos snorted. "Stealing naps, maybe!" He took out a knife—Piper's knife—and started picking his teeth with it.
Livana lunged at Passalos, but the red-furred dwarf was too quick. He sprang from his chair, bounced off her head, did a flip, and landed next to Leo, his hairy arms around Leo's waist.
"Save me?" the dwarf pleaded.
"Get off!" Leo tried to shove him away, but Passalos did a backward somersault and landed out of reach. Leo's pants promptly fell around his knees.
He stared at Passalos, who was now grinning and holding a small zigzaggy strip of metal. Somehow, the dwarf had stolen the zipper right off Leo's pants.
"Give—stupid—zipper!" Leo stuttered, trying to shake his fist and hoist up his pants at the same time. Livana quickly made him a belt of shadows and threw it at him, her face flushed.
"Eh, not shiny enough." Passalos tossed it away.
Livana lunged with her sword. Passalos launched himself straight up and was suddenly sitting on the statue's pedestal next to his brother.
"Tell me I don't have moves," Passalos boasted.
"Okay," Akmon said. "You don't have moves."
"Bah!" Passalos said. "Give me the tool belt. I want to see."
"No!" Akmon elbowed him away. "You got the knife and the shiny ball."
"Yes, the shiny ball is nice." Passalos took off his cowboy hat. Like a magician producing a rabbit, he pulled out the Archimedes sphere and began tinkering with the ancient bronze dials.
"Stop!" Leo yelled. "That's a delicate machine."
Livana came to his side and glared up at the dwarfs. "Who are you two, anyway?"
"The Kerkopes!" Akmon narrowed his eyes at Livana. "I bet you're a daughter of Nyx, eh? I can always tell."
"Just like Black Bottom," Passalos agreed.
"Black Bottom?" Leo resisted the urge to jump at the dwarfs' feet again. He was sure Passalos was going to ruin the Archimedes sphere any second now.
"Yes, you know." Akmon grinned. "He was a hero. We called him Black Bottom because he used to go around without clothes. He got so tan that his backside, well—"
"At least he had a sense of humor!" Passalos said. "He was going to kill us when we stole from him, but he let us go because he liked our jokes. Not like you two. Grumpy, grumpy!"
"Hey, I've got a sense of humor," Leo snarled. "Give me back our stuff, and I'll tell you a joke with a good punch line."
"Nice try!" Akmon scrambled around the teens again and jumped back when Leo tried to reach for him. Unfortunately, Akmon had managed to grab something for their pockets- something Leo didn't recognize. It looked like a large oval stone, the one that Livana kept to heal herself. "Oh, very nice! I'm definitely keeping this! Thanks, Blue Bottom!"
Blue Bottom?
Leo glanced at Livana. Her black jeans had slipped around her ankles, revealing her blue underwear. She must've gotten the zipper treatment, too. Livana was mortified.
"That's it!" Leo shouted. "My stuff. Now. Or I'll show you how funny a flaming dwarf is."
His hands caught fire.
"Oh, scary!" Akmon shrieked.
"Yes," Passalos agreed. "If only we had a secret lair to hide in."
"Alas, this statue isn't the doorway to a secret lair," Akmon said. "It has a different purpose."
Leo's gut twisted. The fires died in his hands, and he realized something was very wrong. He yelled, "Trap!" and dove out of the fountain. Unfortunately, Livana was too busy pulling up her pants.
Leo rolled on his back as five golden cords shot from the Neptune statue's fingers. One barely missed Leo's feet. The rest homed in on Livana, wrapping her like a rodeo calf and yanking her upside down.
A giant vine of snapdragons shot up Neptune's trident, but they had the actual mouths of dragons and were growing up and down the statue, but the Kerkopes had already disappeared.
"Bravo!" Akmon applauded from a nearby café table. "You make a wonderful piñata, daughter of Nyx!"
"Yes!" Passalos agreed. "Black Bottom hung us upside down once, you know. Oh, revenge is sweet!"
Leo summoned a fireball. He lobbed it at Passalos, who was trying to juggle two pigeons and the Archimedes sphere.
"Eek!" The dwarf jumped free of the explosion, dropping the sphere and letting the pigeons fly.
"Time to leave!" Akmon decided.
He tipped his bowler and sprang away, jumping from table to table. Passalos glanced at the Archimedes sphere, which had rolled between Leo's feet.
Leo summoned another fireball. "Try me," he snarled.
"Bye!" Passalos did a backflip and ran after his brother.
Leo scooped up the Archimedes sphere and ran over to Livana, who was still hanging upside down, thoroughly hog-tied except for her sword arm. She was trying to cut the cords with her stygian iron blade but having no luck.
"Hold on," Leo said. "If I can find a release switch—"
"No need." Livana concentrated and turned into a shadow, immediately slipping through the wires. She landed outside of the fountain and stood up, still trying to get her pants to stay up.
Leo held up her jeans for her while she created herself a belt and looped it through her pants.
"Okay," Livana said, clearly embarrassed. "Let's go find those assholes."
"That's the strongest thing I've ever heard you say," Leo said.
"In English." Livana summoned her sword again. "Let's go."
The dwarfs didn't try very hard to lose them, which made Leo suspicious. They stayed just at the edge of his vision, scampering over red-tiled rooftops, knocking over window boxes, whooping and hollering and leaving a trail of screws and nails from Leo's tool belt—almost as if they wanted Leo to follow.
They jogged after them. They turned a corner and saw two ancient stone towers jutting into the sky, side by side, much taller than anything else in the neighborhood—maybe medieval watchtowers? They leaned in different directions like gearshifts on a race car.
The Kerkopes scaled the tower on the right. When they reached the top, they climbed around the back and disappeared.
Had they gone inside? Leo could see some tiny windows at the top, covered with metal grates; but he doubted those would stop the dwarfs. He watched for a minute, but the Kerkopes didn't reappear. Which meant Leo had to get up there and look for them.
"Great," he muttered. Livana couldn't get him up that high. The ship was too far away to call for help. He could jury-rig the Archimedes sphere into some sort of flying device, maybe, but only if he had his tool belt—which he didn't. He scanned the neighborhood, trying to think. Half a block down, a set of double glass doors opened and an old lady hobbled out, carrying plastic shopping bags.
A grocery store? Hmm...
Leo patted his pockets. To his amazement, he still had some euro notes from his time in Rome. Those stupid dwarfs had taken everything except his money.
He told Livana his idea and they ran for the store as fast as they could.
Leo scoured the aisles, looking for things he could use. He didn't know the Italian for Hello, where are your dangerous chemicals, please? But that was probably just as well. He didn't want to end up in an Italian jail.
Fortunately, he didn't need to read labels. He could tell just from picking up a toothpaste tube whether it contained potassium nitrate. He found charcoal. He found sugar and baking soda. The store sold matches, and bug spray, and aluminum foil. Pretty much everything he needed, plus a laundry cord he could use as a belt, since Livana's had turned back into a shadow. Livana looked at his questionable items and added some Italian junk food to the basket, just to sort of disguise his more suspicious purchases, then they dumped the stuff at the register. A wide-eyed checkout lady asked them some questions neither understood, but they managed to pay, get a bag, and race out.
They ducked into the nearest doorway where they could keep an eye on the towers. Leo started to work, summoning fire to dry out materials and do a little cooking that otherwise would have taken days to complete.
Every once in a while he sneaked a look at the tower, but there was no sign of the dwarfs. Leo could only hope they were still up there. Making his arsenal took just a few minutes—he was that good—but it felt like hours.
No one else from the ship came to help. Probably it was taking them a long time to get all those pink rubber bands out of Coach Hedge's hair.
That meant Leo had only himself and his girlfriend, his bag of junk food, and a few highly improvised weapons made from sugar and toothpaste. Oh, and the Archimedes sphere. That was kind of important. He hoped he hadn't ruined it by filling it with chemical powder.
Leo and Livana ran to the tower and found the entrance. They started up the winding stairs inside, only to be stopped at a ticket booth by some caretaker who yelled at them in Italian.
"Seriously?" Leo asked. "Look, man, you've got dwarfs in your belfry. I'm the exterminator." He held up his can of bug spray. "See? Exterminator Molto Buono. Squirt, squirt. Ahhh!" He pantomimed a dwarf melting in terror, which for some reason the Italian didn't seem to understand.
The guy just held out his palm for money.
"Dang, man," Leo grumbled, "I just spent all my cash on homemade explosives and whatnot."
Livana dug around in the grocery bag. "Don't suppose you'd accept...uh...whatever these are?"
She held up a yellow-and-red bag of junk food called Fonzies. Leo assumed they were some kind of chips. To his surprise, the caretaker shrugged and took the bag. "Avanti!"
The two kept climbing, but Leo made a mental note to stock up on Fonzies. Apparently they were better than cash in Italy.
The stairs went on, and on, and on. The whole tower seemed to be nothing but an excuse to build a staircase.
They stopped on a landing and slumped against a narrow barred window, trying to catch their breath. Leo was sweating like crazy, and his heart thumped against his ribs. Stupid Kerkopes. He figured that as soon as he reached the top, they would jump away before he could use his weapons; but he had to try.
They kept climbing.
Finally, his legs feeling like overcooked noodles, he reached the summit.
The room was about the size of a broom closet, with barred windows on all four walls. Shoved in the corners were sacks of treasure, shiny goodies spilling all over the floor. Leo spotted Piper's knife, an old leather-bound book, a few interesting-looking mechanical devices, and enough gold to give Hazel's horse a stomachache.
At first, he thought the dwarfs had left. Then he looked up. Akmon and Passalos were hanging upside down from the rafters by their chimp feet, playing antigravity poker. When they saw Leo, they threw their cards like confetti and broke out in applause.
"I told you he'd do it!" Akmon shrieked in delight.
Passalos shrugged and took off one of his gold watches and handed it to his brother. "You win. I didn't think he was that dumb. But hey, the girl escaped!"
They both dropped to the floor. Akmon was wearing Leo's tool belt—he was so close that Leo had to resist the urge to lunge for it.
Passalos straightened his cowboy hat and kicked open the grate on the nearest window. "What should we make him climb next, brother? The dome of San Luca?"
Leo wanted to throttle the dwarfs, but he forced a smile. "Oh, that sounds fun! But before you guys go, you forgot something shiny."
"Impossible!" Akmon scowled. "We were very thorough."
"You sure?" Livana held up the grocery bag.
The dwarfs inched closer. As Leo had hoped, their curiosity was so strong that they couldn't resist.
"Look." Leo brought out his first weapon—a lump of dried chemicals wrapped in aluminum foil—and lit it with his hand.
He and Livana knew enough to turn away when it popped, but the dwarfs were staring right at it. Toothpaste, sugar, and bug spray weren't as good as Apollo's music, but they made for a pretty decent flash-bang.
The Kerkopes wailed, clawing at their eyes. They stumbled toward the window, but Leo set off his homemade firecrackers—snapping them around the dwarfs' bare feet to keep them off balance. Then, for good measure, Leo turned the dial on his Archimedes sphere, which unleashed a plume of foul white fog that filled the room.
Leo wasn't bothered by smoke. Being immune to fire, he'd stood in smoky bonfires, endured dragon breath, and cleaned out blazing forges plenty of times. However, he made sure Livana was covering her face, because she wasn't immune to smoke. While the dwarfs were hacking and wheezing, he grabbed his tool belt from Akmon, calmly summoned some bungee cords, and tied up the dwarfs.
"My eyes!" Akmon coughed. "My tool belt!"
"My feet are on fire!" Passalos wailed. "Not shiny! Not shiny at all!"
After making sure they were securely bound, Leo dragged the Kerkopes into one corner and began rifling through their treasures. He retrieved Piper's dagger, a few of his prototype grenades, and a dozen other odds and ends the dwarfs had taken from the Argo II.
"Please!" Akmon wailed. "Don't take our shinies!"
"We'll make you a deal!" Passalos suggested. "We'll cut you in for ten percent if you let us go!"
"Afraid not," Leo muttered. "It's all mine now."
"Twenty percent!"
Just then, thunder boomed overhead. Lightning flashed, and the bars on the nearest window burst into sizzling, melted stubs of iron.
Jason flew in like Peter Pan, electricity sparking around him and his gold sword steaming.
Leo whistled appreciatively. "Man, you just wasted an awesome entrance."
Jason frowned. He noticed the hog-tied Kerkopes. "What the—"
"All by myself, but Livana came along," Leo said. "I'm special that way. How did you find us?"
"Uh, the smoke," Jason managed. "And I heard popping noises. Were you having a gunfight in here?"
"Something like that." Livana tossed him Piper's dagger, then kept rummaging through the bags of dwarf shinies with Leo. Leo remembered what Hazel had said about finding a treasure that would help them with the quest, but he wasn't sure what he was looking for. There were coins, gold nuggets, jewelry, paper clips, foil wrappers, cuff links.
He kept coming back to a couple of things that didn't seem to belong. One was an old bronze navigation device, like an astrolabe from a ship. It was badly damaged and seemed to be missing some pieces, but Leo still found it fascinating.
"Take it!" Passalos offered. "Odysseus made it, you know! Take it and let us go."
"Odysseus?" Livana asked. "Like, the Odysseus?"
"Yes!" Passalos squeaked. "Made it when he was an old man in Ithaca. One of his last inventions, and we stole it!"
"How does it work?" Leo asked.
"Oh, it doesn't," Akmon said. "Something about a missing crystal?" He glanced at his brother for help.
"'My biggest what-if,'" Passalos said. "'Should've taken a crystal.' That's what he kept muttering in his sleep, the night we stole it." Passalos shrugged. "No idea what he meant. But the shiny is yours! Can we go now?"
Leo wasn't sure why he wanted the astrolabe. It was obviously broken, and he didn't get the sense that this was what Hecate meant for them to find. Still, he slipped it into one of his tool belt's magic pockets.
He turned his attention to the other strange piece of loot—the leather-bound book. Its title was in gold leaf, in a language Leo couldn't understand, but nothing else about the book seemed shiny. He didn't figure the Kerkopes for big readers.
"What's this?" He wagged it at the dwarfs, who were still teary-eyed from the smoke.
"Nothing!" Akmon said. "Just a book. It had a pretty gold cover, so we took it from him."
"Him?" Leo asked.
Akmon and Passalos exchanged a nervous look.
"Minor god," Passalos said. "In Venice. Really, it's nothing."
"Venice." Livana frowned at Leo. "Isn't that where we're supposed to go next?"
"Yeah." Leo examined the book. He couldn't read the text, but it had lots of illustrations: scythes, different plants, a picture of the sun, a team of oxen pulling a cart. He didn't see how any of that was important, but if the book had been stolen from a minor god in Venice—the next place Hecate had told them to visit—then this had to be what they were looking for.
"Where exactly can we find this minor god?" Leo asked.
"No!" Akmon shrieked. "You can't take it back to him! If he finds out we stole it—"
"He'll destroy you," Jason guessed. "Which is what we'll do if you don't tell us, and we're a lot closer." He pressed the point of his sword against Akmon's furry throat.
"Okay, okay!" the dwarf shrieked. "La Casa Nera! Calle Frezzeria!"
"Is that an address?" Leo asked.
The dwarfs both nodded vigorously.
"Please don't tell him we stole it," Passalos begged. "He isn't nice at all!"
"Who is he?" Jason asked. "What god?"
"I—I can't say," Passalos stammered.
"You'd better," Leo warned.
"No," Passalos said miserably. "I mean, I really can't say. I can't pronounce it! Tr—tri—It's too hard!"
"Truh," Akmon said. "Tru-toh—Too many syllables!"
They both burst into tears.
Leo didn't know if the Kerkopes were telling them the truth, but it was hard to stay mad at weeping dwarfs, no matter how annoying and badly dressed they were.
Jason lowered his sword. "What do you want to do with them, Leo? Send them to Tartarus?"
"Please, no!" Akmon wailed. "It might take us weeks to come back."
"Assuming Gaea even lets us!" Passalos sniffled. "She controls the Doors of Death now. She'll be very cross with us."
Leo looked at the dwarfs. He'd fought lots of monsters before and never felt bad about dissolving them, but this was different. He had to admit he sort of admired these little guys. They played cool pranks and liked shiny things. Leo could relate. Besides, Percy and Annabeth were in Tartarus right now, hopefully still alive, trudging toward the Doors of Death. The idea of sending these twin monkey boys there to face the same nightmarish problem...well, it didn't seem right.
He imagined Gaea laughing at his weakness—a demigod too softhearted to kill monsters. He remembered his dream about Camp Half-Blood in ruins, Greek and Roman bodies littering the fields. He remembered Octavian speaking with the Earth Goddess's voice: The Romans move east from New York. They advance on your camp, and nothing can slow them down.
"Nothing can slow them down," Leo mused. "I wonder..."
"What?" Jason asked.
Leo looked at the dwarfs. "I'll make you a deal."
Akmon's eyes lit up. "Thirty percent?"
"We'll leave you all your treasure," Leo said, "except the stuff that belongs to us, and the astrolabe, and this book, which we'll take back to the dude in Venice."
"But he'll destroy us!" Passalos wailed.
"We won't say where we got it," Leo promised. "And we won't kill you. We'll let you go free."
"Uh, Leo...?" Jason asked nervously.
Akmon squealed with delight. "I knew you were as smart as Black Bottom! I will call you Black Bottom, the Sequel!"
"Yeah, no thanks," Leo said. "But in return for us sparing your lives, you have to do something for us. I'm going to send you somewhere to steal from some people, harass them, make life hard for them any way you can. You have to follow my directions exactly. You have to swear on the River Styx."
Livana looked at Leo like he was crazy, but he simply winked at her, and suddenly Livana understood what he was doing.
"We swear!" Passalos said. "Stealing from people is our specialty!"
"I love harassment!" Akmon agreed. "Where are we going?"
Leo grinned. "Ever heard of New York?"