chapter three; "Don't Look Down"
JINX WAS tired of the dwarfs and their 'jokes'.
This was an embarrassingly long fight.
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 Jason, who was still hanging upside down, thoroughly hog-tied except for his sword arm. He was trying to cut the cords with his gold blade but having no luck.
"Hold on," Leo said. "If I can find a release switch—"
"Just go!" Jason growled. "I'll follow you when I get out of this."
"But—" He glanced at Jinx, who was still in a daze.
"Don't lose them!"
Leo left Jason hanging and Jinx in confusion, and ran after them.
"Are you okay?" Jason asked her when they were left alone.
She frowned, scratching her cheek. "Yeah. I just had a funny feeling, that's all."
He nodded his head, "good, good..."
Awkward silence filled the room when Jason asked, "so can you help me down?"
"Oh! Yeah, sure."
Jinx stood, wiping dust off of her hands and swiping her sword at the rope. It took a couple of hacks, but he fell down on his feet, giving her a thanks.
He awkwardly held out his hand, "Come on."
Confused, she asked, "what- are we going to hold hands the entire way there?" Jinx was hesitant to grab hold of his hand, but Jason was frustrated and tired of wasting time.
Jason pulled her to his chest, careful not to get hit by her sword, and said, "hold on."
"Hold on for what?"
Without saying anything else he lifted the two of them up from the ground and started searching for Leo.
"Don't look down."
Jinx instinctively looked down.
"Too late." She took a shaky breath, wrapping her arms around Jason's neck tighter.
When Jason spotted them, because Jinx was too scared to look back down, his anger rose again. Just seeing the two dwarfs were enough to make sparks fly off of him.
Thunder boomed. 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, gently dropping Jinx down and locking his eyes on the targets.
But said targets were taken down and nicely tied up.
Leo whistled appreciatively. "Man, you just wasted an awesome entrance."
Jason frowned. "What the—"
"All by myself," Leo said.Jinx gave him a thumbs up. "I'm special that way. How did you guys find me?"
"Uh, the smoke," Jason managed. "And I heard popping noises. Were you having a gunfight in here?"
"- I didn't hear any popping noises." Jinx muttered, "the only things popping were my ears."
"Something like that." Leo tossed him Piper's dagger, then kept rummaging through the bags of dwarf shinies.
Jinx glared at the dwarfs, debating between giving them a wedgie or throwing them off of the building. Or both.
"Take it!" Passalos offered. "Odysseus made it, you know! Take it and let us go."
"Take what?" Jinx turned around to see Leo hold up an old bronze navigation device.
"Odysseus?" Jason 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 slipped it into one of his tool belt's magic pockets.
"Odysseus, huh." Her mind ran with random information she had learned about the war he was involved in. She never took him as a demigod.
Leo 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.
"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." Jason 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.
"This is all so confusing."
"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.
Jinx liked the idea of doing that. It was always better to live in the now.
"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.
Jinx felt like she'd rather be anywhere else but there. She never knew what to do when people- or dwarfs- cried in front of her. It was too awkward for her. It made her cringe.
Jason lowered his sword. "What do you want to do with them? 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."
"Nothing can slow them down," Leo mused. "I wonder..."
"What?" Jinx and Jason asked in unison.
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.
"We will?"
Akmon squealed with delight. "I knew you were as smart as Hercules! I will call you Black Bottom, the Sequel!"
A small laugh came out of Jinx's mouth, "the sequel, psshh."
"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."
"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?"
Jinx turned to Leo, understanding his train of thought. "Oh my gods, you are a genius!"