Across the green, I spotted two of my own children—Austin and Kayla—but as much as I wanted to talk with them, they were embroiled in some sort of conflict resolution between a group of security harpies and a new kid who had apparently done something the harpies didn’t like. I caught Austin’s words: “No, you can’t just eat a new camper. They get two warnings first!”
Even Dionysus didn’t want to get involved in that conversation. We kept walking.
The damage from our wintertime battle against Nero’s Colossus had been mostly repaired, though some of the dining hall’s columns were still broken. Nestled between two hills was a new pond in the shape of a giant’s footprint. We passed the volleyball court, the sword-fighting arena, and the strawberry fields until finally Dionysus took pity on me and led us to camp headquarters.
Compared to the camp’s Greek temples and amphitheaters, the four-story sky-blue Victorian known as the Big House looked quaint and homey. Its white trim gleamed like cake frosting. Its bronze eagle weathervane drifted lazily in the breeze. On its wraparound front porch, enjoying lemonade at the card table, sat Nico di Angelo and Will Solace.
“Dad!” Will shot to his feet. He ran down the steps and tackled me in a hug.
That’s when I lost it. I wept openly.
My beautiful son, with his kind eyes, his healer’s hands, his sun-warm demeanor. Somehow, he had inherited all my best qualities and none of the worst. He guided me up the steps and insisted I take his seat. He pressed a cold glass of lemonade into my hands then started fussing over my wounded head.
“I’m fine,” I murmured, though clearly I wasn’t.
His boyfriend, Nico di Angelo, hovered at the edge of our reunion—observing, keeping to the shadows, as children of Hades tend to do. His dark hair had grown longer. He was barefoot, in tattered jeans and a black version of the camp’s standard T-shirt, with a skeletal pegasus on the front above the words CABIN 13.
“Meg,” Nico said, “take my chair. Your leg looks bad.” He scowled at Dionysus, as if the god should have arranged a golf cart for us.
“Yes, fine, sit.” Dionysus gestured listlessly at the card table. “I was attempting to teach Will and Nico the rules of pinochle, but they’re hopeless.”
“Ooh, pinochle,” Meg said. “I like pinochle!”
Dionysus narrowed his eyes as if Meg were a small dog who had suddenly begun to spout Emily Dickinson. “Is that so? Wonders never cease.”
Nico met my gaze, his eyes pools of ink. “So, is it true? Is Jason…?”
“Nico,” Will chided. “Don’t pressure him.”
The ice cubes shook in my glass. I couldn’t make myself speak, but my expression must have told Nico everything he needed to know. Meg offered Nico her hand. He took it in both of his.
He didn’t look angry, exactly. He looked as if he’d been hit in the gut not just once but so many times over the course of so many years that he was beginning to lose perspective on what it meant to be in pain. He swayed on his feet. He blinked. Then he flinched, jerking his hands away from Meg’s as if he’d just remembered his own touch was poison.
“I…” he faltered. “Scusatemi.”
He hurried down the steps and across the lawn, his bare feet leaving a trail of dead grass.
Will shook his head. “He only slips into Italian when he’s really upset.”
“The boy has had too much bad news already,” Dionysus said with a tone of grudging sympathy.
I wanted to ask what he meant about bad news. I wanted to apologize for bringing more trouble. I wanted to explain all the tremendous and spectacular ways I had failed since the last time I had seen Camp Half-Blood.
Instead, the lemonade glass slipped from my fingers. It shattered on the floor. I tipped sideways in my chair as Will’s voice receded down a long dark tunnel. “Dad! Guys, help me!”
Then I spiraled into unconsciousness.
BAD DREAMS?
Sure, why not!
I suffered a series of Instagram-boomerang nightmares—the same short scenes looped over and over: Luguselwa hurtling over a rooftop. The amphisbaena staring at me in bewilderment as two crossbow bolts pinned his necks to the wall. The Gray Sisters’ eyeball flying into my lap and sticking there like it was coated in glue.
I tried to channel my dreams in a more peaceful direction—my favorite beach in Fiji, my old festival day in Athens, the gig I played with Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club in 1930. Nothing worked.
Instead, I found myself in Nero’s throne room.
The loft space took up one whole floor of his tower. In every direction, glass walls looked out over the spires of Manhattan. In the center of the room, on a marble dais, the emperor sprawled across a gaudy velvet couch throne. His purple satin pajamas and tiger-striped bathrobe would’ve made Dionysus jealous. His crown of golden laurels sat askew on his head, which made me want to adjust the neck beard that wrapped around his chin like a strap.
To his left stood a line of young people; demigods, I assumed—adopted members of the imperial family like Meg had been. I counted eleven in all, arranged from tallest to shortest, their ages ranging from about eighteen to eight. They wore purple-trimmed togas over their motley assortment of street clothes, to indicate their royal status. Their expressions were a case study in the results of Nero’s abusive parenting style. The youngest seemed struck with wonder, fear, and hero worship. The slightly older ones looked broken and traumatized, their eyes hollow. The adolescents showed a range of anger, resentment, and self-loathing, all bottled up and carefully not directed at Nero. The oldest teens looked like mini-Neros: cynical, hard, cruel junior sociopaths.
I could not imagine Meg McCaffrey in that assembly. And yet, I couldn’t stop wondering where she would fall in the line of horrific expressions.
Two Germani lumbered into the throne room carrying a stretcher. On it lay the large, battered form of Luguselwa. They set her down at Nero’s feet, and she let out a miserable groan. At least she was still alive.
“The hunter returns empty-handed,” Nero sneered. “Plan B it is, then. A forty-eight-hour ultimatum seems reasonable.” He turned to his adopted children. “Lucius, double security at the storage vats. Aemillia, send out invitations. And order a cake. Something nice. It’s not every day we get to destroy a city the size of New York.”
My dream-self plummeted through the tower into the depths of the earth.
I stood in a vast cavern. I knew I must be somewhere beneath Delphi, the seat of my most sacred Oracle, because the soup of volcanic fumes swirling around me smelled like nothing else in the world. I could hear my archnemesis, Python, somewhere in the darkness, dragging his immense body over the stone floor.
“You still do not see it.” His voice was a low rumble. “Oh, Apollo, bless your tiny, inadequate brain. You charge around, knocking over pieces, but you never look at the whole board. A few hours, at most. That is all it will take once the last pawn falls. And you will do the hard work for me!”
His laughter was like an explosion sunk deep into stone, designed to bring down a hillside. Fear rolled over me until I could no longer breathe.
I woke feeling like I’d spent hours trying to squirm out of a stone cocoon. Every muscle in my body ached.