He is that person, that type of evil.

And tonight, he had a new name, which would not foretell a better day for Rome.

The praetorian guard lowered his head. “Hail, Caesar!”

I awoke from my dream shivering.

“Good timing,” Grover said.

I sat up. My head throbbed. My mouth tasted like strix dust.

I was lying under a makeshift lean-to—a blue plastic tarp set on a hillside overlooking the desert. The sun was going down. Next to me, Meg was curled up asleep, her hand resting on my wrist. I suppose that was sweet, except I knew where her fingers had been. (Hint: In her nostrils.)

On a nearby slab of rock, Grover sat sipping water from his canteen. Judging from his weary expression, I guessed he had been keeping watch over us while we slept.

“I passed out?” I gathered.

He tossed me the canteen. “I thought I slept hard. You’ve been out for hours.”

I took a drink, then rubbed the gunk from my eyes, wishing I could wipe the dreams from my head as easily: a woman chained in a fiery room, a trap for Apollo, a new Caesar with the pleasant smile of a fine young sociopath.

Don’t think about it, I told myself. Dreams aren’t necessarily true.

No, I answered myself. Only the bad ones. Like those.

I focused on Meg, snoring in the shade of our tarp. Her leg was freshly bandaged. She wore a clean T-shirt over her tattered dress. I tried to extricate my wrist from her grip, but she held on tighter.

“She’s all right,” Grover assured me. “At least physically. Fell asleep after we got you situated.” He frowned. “She didn’t seem happy about being here, though. Said she couldn’t handle this place. Wanted to leave. I was afraid she’d jump back into the Labyrinth, but I convinced her she needed to rest first. I played some music to relax her.”

I scanned our surroundings, wondering what had upset Meg so badly.

Below us stretched a landscape only slightly more hospitable than Mars. (I mean the planet, not the god, though I suppose neither is much of a host.) Sun-blasted ocher mountains ringed a valley patchworked with unnaturally green golf courses, dusty barren flats, and sprawling neighborhoods of white stucco walls, red-tiled roofs, and blue swimming pools. Lining the streets, rows of listless palm trees stuck up like raggedy seams. Asphalt parking lots shimmered in the heat. A brown haze hung in the air, filling the valley like watery gravy.

“Palm Springs,” I said.

I’d known the city well in the 1950s. I was pretty sure I’d hosted a party with Frank Sinatra just down the road there, by that golf course—but it felt like another life. Probably because it had been.

Now the area seemed much less welcoming—the temperature too scorching for an early spring evening, the air too heavy and acrid. Something was wrong, something I couldn’t quite place.

I scanned our immediate surroundings. We were camped at the crest of a hill, the San Jacinto wilderness at our backs to the west, the sprawl of Palm Springs at our feet to the east. A gravel road skirted the base of the hill, winding toward the nearest neighborhood about half a mile below, but I could tell that our hilltop had once boasted a large structure.

Sunk in the rocky slope were a half dozen hollow brickwork cylinders, each perhaps thirty feet in diameter, like the shells of ruined sugar mills. The structures were of varying heights, in varying stages of disintegration, but their tops were all level with one another, so I guessed they must have been massive support columns for a stilt house. Judging from the detritus that littered the hillside—shards of glass, charred planks, blackened clumps of brick—I guessed that the house must have burned down many years before.

Then I realized: we must have climbed out of one of those cylinders to escape the Labyrinth.

I turned to Grover. “The strixes?”

He shook his head. “If any survived, they wouldn’t risk the daylight, even if they could get through the strawberries. The plants have filled the entire shaft.” He pointed to the farthest ring of brickwork, where we must have emerged. “Nobody’s getting in or out that way anymore.”

“But…” I gestured at the ruins. “Surely this isn’t your base?”

I was hoping he would correct me. Oh, no, our base is that nice house down there with the Olympic-size swimming pool, right next to the fifteenth hole!

Instead, he had the nerve to look pleased. “Yeah. This place has powerful natural energy. It’s a perfect sanctuary. Can’t you feel the life force?”

I picked up a charred brick. “Life force?”

“You’ll see.” Grover took off his cap and scratched between his horns. “The way things have been, all the dryads have to stay dormant until sunset. It’s the only way they can survive. But they’ll be waking up soon.”

The way things have been.

I glanced west. The sun had just dropped behind the mountains. The sky was marbled with heavy layers of red and black, more appropriate for Mordor than Southern California.

“What’s going on?” I asked, not sure I wanted the answer.

Grover gazed sadly into the distance. “You haven’t seen the news? Biggest forest fires in state history. On top of the drought, the heat waves, and the earthquakes.” He shuddered. “Thousands of dryads have died. Thousands more have gone into hibernation. If these were just normal natural disasters, that would be bad enough, but—”

Meg yelped in her sleep. She sat up abruptly, blinking in confusion. From the panic in her eyes, I guessed her dreams had been even worse than mine.

“W-we’re really here?” she asked. “I didn’t dream it?”

“It’s all right,” I said. “You’re safe.”

She shook her head, her lips quivering. “No. No, I’m not.”

With fumbling fingers, she removed her glasses, as if she might be able to handle her surroundings better if they were fuzzier. “I can’t be here. Not again.”

“Again?” I asked.

A line from the Indiana prophecy tugged at my memory: Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots. “You mean you lived here?”

Meg scanned the ruins. She shrugged miserably, though whether that meant I don’t know or I don’t want to talk about it, I couldn’t tell.

The desert seemed an unlikely home for Meg—a street kid from Manhattan, raised in Nero’s royal household.

Grover tugged thoughtfully at his goatee. “A child of Demeter…That actually makes a lot of sense.”

I stared at him. “In this place? A child of Vulcan, perhaps. Or Feronia, the wilderness goddess. Or even Mefitis, the goddess of poisonous gas. But Demeter? What is a child of Demeter supposed to grow here? Rocks?”

Grover looked hurt. “You don’t understand. Once you meet everybody—”

Meg crawled out from beneath the tarp. She got unsteadily to her feet. “I have to leave.”

“Hold on!” Grover pleaded. “We need your help. At least talk to the others!”

Meg hesitated. “Others?”

Grover gestured north. I couldn’t see what he was pointing to until I stood up. Then I noticed, half-hidden behind the brick ruins, a row of six boxy white structures like…storage sheds? No. Greenhouses. The one nearest the ruins had melted and collapsed long ago, no doubt a victim of the fire. The second hut’s corrugated polycarbonate walls and roof had fallen apart like a house of cards. But the other four looked intact. Clay flowerpots were stacked outside. The doors stood open. Inside, green plant matter pressed against the translucent walls—palm fronds like giant hands pushing to get out.