PIPER WOKE UP COLD AND SHIVERING.Aimee was sitting next to her and Piper wondered how the girl wasn't cold.
She'd had the worst dream about an old guy with donkey ears chasing her around and shouting, You're it!
"Oh, god." Her teeth chattered. "He turned me to gold!"
"You're okay now." Jason leaned over and tucked a warm blanket around her, but she still felt as cold as a Boread.
She blinked, trying to figure out where they were. Next to her, a campfire blazed, turning the air sharp with smoke. Firelight flickered against rock walls. They were in a shallow cave, but it didn't offer much protection. Outside, the wind howled. Snow blew sideways. It might've been day or night. The storm made it too dark to tell.
"L-L-Leo?" Piper managed.
"Present and un-gold-ified." Leo was also wrapped in blankets,Aimee got up from where she was and walked over to him. He didn't look great, but better than Piper felt. "I got the precious metal treatment too," he said. "But I came out of it faster. Dunno why. We had to dunk you in the river to get you back completely. Tried to dry you off, but ... it's really, really cold."
"You've got hypothermia," Aimee said. "We risked as much nectar as we could. Coach Hedge did a little nature magic—"
"Sports medicine." The coach's ugly face loomed over her. "Kind of a hobby of mine. Your breath might smell like wild mushrooms and Gatorade for a few days, but it'll pass. You probably won't die. Probably."
"Thanks," Piper said weakly. "How did you beat Midas?Did Aimee get turned to gold?"
Aimee shook her head."No gold on me,he did grab me though."
"How?"
"Child of Hades,well I think it is more Pluto.Power over precious metals."
Jason then told Piper the story, putting most of it down to luck.
The coach snorted. "Kid's being modest. You should've seen him. Hi-yah! Slice! Boom with the lightning!"
"Coach, you didn't even see it," Aimee said flicking the satyr. "You were outside eating the lawn."
But the satyr was just warming up. "Then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. Afterward, I told him, 'Kid, I'm proud of you! If you could just work on your upper body strength—'"
"Coach," said Aimee rubbing her wrist were Midas had grabbed shaking slightly.
"Yeah?"
"Shut up, please."
"Sure." The coach sat down at the fire and started chewing his cudgel.
Jason put his hand on Piper's forehead and checked her temperature. "Leo, can you stoke the fire?"
"On it." Leo summoned a baseball-sized clump of flames and lobbed it into the campfire.
"Do I look that bad?" Piper shivered.
"Nah," Jason said.
"You're a terrible liar," she said. "Where are we?"
"Pikes Peak," Aimee said pulling her knees to her chest. "Colorado."
"But that's, what—five hundred miles from Omaha?"
"Something like that," Jason agreed. "I harnessed the storm spirits to bring us this far. They didn't like it—went a little faster than I wanted, almost crashed us into the mountainside before I could get them back in the bag. I'm not going to be trying that again."
"Why are we here?"
Leo sniffed. "That's what I asked him."
Jason gazed into the storm as if watching for something. "That glittery wind trail we saw yesterday? It was still in the sky, though it had faded a lot. I followed it until I couldn't see it anymore. Then—honestly I'm not sure. I just felt like this was the right place to stop."
"'Course it is." Coach Hedge spit out some cudgel splinters. "Aeolus's floating palace should be anchored above us, right at the peak. This is one of his favorite spots to dock."
"Maybe that was it." Jason knit his eyebrows. "I don't know. Something else, too ..."
"The Hunters were heading west," Piper remembered. "Do you think they're around here?"
Aimee rubbed her forearm as if the tattoos were bothering her. "I don't see how anyone could survive on the mountain right now. The storm's pretty bad. It's already the evening before the solstice, but we didn't have much choice except to wait out the storm here. We had to give you some time to rest before we tried moving."
She didn't need to convince her. The wind howling outside the cave scared her, and she couldn't stop shivering.
"We have to get you warm." Jason sat next to her and held out his arms a little awkwardly. "Uh, you mind if I ..."
"I suppose." She tried to sound nonchalant.
Jason put his arms around her and held her. They scooted closer to the fire. Coach Hedge chewed on his club and spit splinters into the fire.
Leo broke out some cooking supplies and started frying burger patties on an iron skillet. "So, guys, long as you're cuddled up for story time ... something I've been meaning to tell you. On the way to Omaha, I had this dream. Kinda hard to understand with the static and the Wheel of Fortune breaking in—"
"Wheel of Fortune?" Aimee assumed Leo was kidding, but when he looked up from his burgers, his expression was deadly serious.
"The thing is," he said, "my dad Hephaestus talked to me."
Leo told them about his dream. In the firelight, with the wind howling, the story was even creepier. Aimee could imagine the static-filled voice of the god warning about giants who were the sons of Tartarus, and about Leo losing some friends along the way.
She tried to concentrate on something good: the warmth slowly spreading into her body as she sat near the fire,but she was terrified.
Piper wasn't shivering anymore."I don't understand. If demigods and gods have to work together to kill the giants, why would the gods stay silent? If they need us—"
"Ha," said Coach Hedge. "The gods hate needing humans. They like to be needed by humans, but not the other way around. Things will have to get a whole lot worse before Zeus admits he made a mistake closing Olympus."
"Coach," Piper said, "that was almost an intelligent comment."
Hedge huffed. "What? I'm intelligent! I'm not surprised you cupcakes haven't heard of the Giant War. The gods don't like to talk about it. Bad PR to admit you needed mortals to help beat an enemy. That's just embarrassing."
"There's more, though," Jason said. "When me and Aimee dreamed about Hera in her cage, she said Zeus was acting unusually paranoid. And Hera—she said she went to those ruins because a voice had been speaking in her head. What if someone's influencing the gods, like Medea influenced us?"
Aimee shuddered. She'd had a similar thought—that some force they couldn't see was manipulating things behind the scenes, helping the giants. Maybe the same force was keeping Enceladus informed about their movements, and had even knocked their dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Perhaps it was her's and Leo's sleeping Dirt Woman, or another servant of hers ...
Leo set hamburger buns on the skillet to toast. "Yeah, Hephaestus said something similar, like Zeus was acting weirder than usual. But what bothered me was the stuff my dad didn't say. Like a couple of times he was talking about the demigods, and how he had so many kids and all. I don't know. He acted like getting the greatest demigods together was going to be almost impossible—like Hera was trying, but it was a really stupid thing to do, and there was some secret Hephaestus wasn't supposed to tell me."
Aimee shifted. Piper could see how tense she was.
"Chiron was the same way back at camp," she said. "He mentioned a sacred oath not to discuss—something. Coach, you know anything about that?"
"Nah. I'm just a satyr. They don't tell us the juicy stuff. Especially an old—" He stopped himself.
"An old guy like you?" Piper asked. "But you're not that old, are you?"
"Hundred and six," the coach muttered.
Leo coughed. "Say what?"
"Don't catch your panties on fire, Valdez. That's just fifty-three in human years. Still, yeah, I made some enemies on the Council of Cloven Elders. I've been a protector a long time. But they started saying I was getting unpredictable. Too violent. Can you imagine?"
"Wow." Aimee tried not to look at her friends. "That's hard to believe."
Coach scowled. "Yeah, then finally we get a good war going with the Titans, and do they put me on the front lines? No! They send me as far away as possible—the Canadian frontier, can you believe it? Then after the war, they put me out to pasture. The Wilderness School. Bah! Like I'm too old to be helpful just because I like playing offense. All those flower-pickers on the Council—talking about nature."
"I thought satyrs liked nature," Piper ventured.
"Shoot, I love nature," Hedge said. "Nature means big things killing and eating little things! And when you're a —you know—vertically challenged satyr like me, you get in good shape, you carry a big stick, and you don't take nothing from no one! That's nature." Hedge snorted indignantly. "Flower-pickers. Anyway, I hope you got something vegetarian cooking, Valdez. I don't do flesh."
"Yeah, Coach. Don't eat your cudgel. I got some tofu patties here. Piper's a vegetarian too. I'll throw them on in a second."
The smell of frying burgers filled the air. Aimee tried to shut out the smell and the thought of being hungry , but her stomach was thinking other things and rumbled.
I'm losing it, she thought. Think about anything but food
Her stomach wasn't the only thing rebelling. Lying by the fire,all the guilt Piper had been holding in for the last week, since the giant Enceladus had first sent her a dream, was hitting Aimee in waves.Aimee didn't know why she could always feel things from others but she didn't like it.
Aimee and her friends wanted to help Piper. Jason even said he'd walk into a trap to save Piper's dad. And Aimee knew that Piper would try to shut them out.
For all Aimee knew, Piper could have already doomed her father when she attacked Medea.
Piper may have done the right thing in Chicago by saving her friends, but she'd only delayed her problem.
Leo put tofu patties on the skillet. The wind kept raging. Aimee leaned back against the wall,she soon found herself slipping into a memory.
She was sitting in a large dining room,poking at her food with her fork.
"Aimee please stop playing with your food and eat,"a lady with long red hair said to her.
Aimee pushed the plate of food away from her."I'm not hungry Persephone,it looks really good but I am just not hungry."
"Is this because of your father taking you away from Nico and Bianca?"
Aimee crossed her arms and sat back not answering the goddess.
Persephone walked over to her and kneeled down next to her chair."Aimee he is only doing this to protect you,someday you will understand."
The memory switched to another one.This time Aimee was sitting around a campfire with a boy with dark brown hair and a boy with black hair.
"Man...a son of Poseidon just randomly shows up,is there any other signs that something bad is going to happen?"
Aimee laughed quietly at the black-haired boy."Poseidon,huh? Met him once,he is very sassy."
The dark brown-haired boy rolled his eyes."Really Aimee? That's all you learned about Poseidon?"
"Shut up,_________.I didn't really care to learn much else about my uncle."
"Anyways,Sungjin _________________ with Jason and ____________."
Aimee shook her head as the memory faded to black.Who were those people? Why did all of that seem like it was part of something important? Aimee wanted to know more.Aimee wanted to run from everyone and go find everything on her own.
But still ... she'd made a promise to help on this quest. Her friends were counting on her.She couldn't back out just because she was starting to regain some memories.
Gradually, she started to relax. She stopped and settled against the wall. Leo handed out the food. Aimee didn't want to move, talk, or do anything. But Piper decided that she wanted to ruin the comfortable moment..
"We need to talk." Piper sat up so she could face Jason. "I don't want to hide anything from you guys anymore."
The boys looked at her with their mouths full of burger,Aimee opened one of her eyes to show that she was listening. Too late for Piper to change her mind now.
"Three nights before the Grand Canyon trip," Piper said, "I had a dream vision—a giant, telling me my father had been taken hostage. He told me I had to cooperate, or my dad would be killed."
The flames crackled.
Finally Jason said, "Enceladus? You mentioned that name before."
Coach Hedge whistled. "Big giant. Breathes fire. Not somebody I'd want barbecuing my daddy goat."
Aimee gave him a shut up look. "Piper, go on. What happened next?"
"I—I tried to reach my dad, but all I got was his personal assistant, and she told me not to worry."
"Jane?" Leo remembered. "Didn't Medea say something about controlling her?"
Piper nodded. "To get my dad back, I had to sabotage this quest. I didn't realize it would be the three of us. Then after we started the quest, Enceladus sent me another warning: He told me he wanted you three dead. He wants me to lead you to a mountain. I don't know exactly which one, but it's in the Bay Area—I could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the summit. I have to be there by noon on the solstice, tomorrow. An exchange."
She couldn't meet her friends' eyes. She waited for them to yell at her, or turn their backs, or kick her out into the snowstorm.
Instead, Jason scooted next to her and put his arm around her again. "God, Piper. I'm so sorry."
Leo nodded. "No kidding. You've been carrying this around for a week? Piper, we could help you."
She glared at them. "Why don't you yell at me or something? I was ordered to kill you!"
"Aw, come on," Jason said. "You've saved the three of us on this quest. I'd put my life in your hands any day."
"Same," Leo said. "Can I have a hug too?"
"You don't get it!" Piper said. "I've probably just killed my dad, telling you this."
"I doubt it." Coach Hedge belched. He was eating his tofu burger folded inside the paper plate, chewing it all like a taco. "Giant hasn't gotten what he wants yet, so he still needs your dad for leverage. He'll wait until the deadline passes, see if you show up. He wants you to divert the quest to this mountain, right?"
Piper nodded uncertainly.
"So that means Hera is being kept somewhere else," Hedge reasoned. "And she has to be saved by the same day. So you have to choose—rescue your dad, or rescue Hera. If you go after Hera, then Enceladus takes care of your dad. Besides, Enceladus would never let you go even if you cooperated. You're obviously one of the demigods in the Great Prophecy."
One of the demigods. Piper had talked about this before with Jason,Aimee and Leo, and she supposed it must be true, but she still had trouble believing it. She didn't feel that important. She was just a stupid child of Aphrodite. How could she be worth deceiving and killing?
"So we have no choice," she said miserably. "We have to save Hera, or the giant king gets unleashed. That's our quest. The world depends on it. And Enceladus seems to have ways of watching me. He isn't stupid. He'll know if we change course and go the wrong way. He'll kill my dad."
"He's not going to kill your dad," Leo said. "We'll save him."
"We don't have time!" Piper cried. "Besides, it's a trap."
"We're your friends, beauty queen," Leo said. "We're not going to let your dad die. We just gotta figure out a plan."
Coach Hedge grumbled. "Would help if we knew where this mountain was. Maybe Aeolus can tell you that. The Bay Area has a bad reputation for demigods. Old home of the Titans, Mount Othrys, sits over Mount Tam, where Atlas holds up the sky. I hope that's not the mountain you saw."
Piper tried to remember the vista in her dreams. "I don't think so. This was inland."
Aimee frowned at the fire, like she was trying to remember something.
"Bad reputation ... that doesn't seem right. The Bay Area ..."
"You think you've been there?" Piper asked.
"I ..." She looked like she was almost on the edge of a breakthrough. Then the anguish came back into her eyes. "I don't know. Hedge, what happened to Mount Othrys?"
Hedge took another bite of paper and burger. "Well, Kronos built a new palace there last summer. Big nasty place, was going to be the headquarters for his new kingdom and all. Weren't any battles there, though. Kronos marched on Manhattan, tried to take Olympus. If I remember right, he left some other Titans in charge of his palace, but after Kronos got defeated in Manhattan, the whole palace just crumbled on its own."
"No," Jason said.
Everyone looked at him.
"What do you mean, 'No'?" Leo asked.
"That's not what happened. I—" He tensed, looking toward the cave entrance. "Did you hear that?"
For a second, nothing. Then Aimee heard it: howls piercing the night.