“Get your strength back!” Gunther said cheerfully. “Don’t die before the party!”

“Party?” I asked, feeling the tiniest spark of hope.

Not because parties were fun, or because I liked cake (both were true), but because if Nero had postponed his big celebration, then perhaps he hadn’t yet pressed his doomsday button.

“Oh, yes!” Gunther said. “Tonight! Torture for you both. And then we burn down the city!”

With that happy thought, Gunther strolled back down the hall, chuckling to himself, leaving us with our tray of barbarian sandwiches.

GODS AREN’T GREAT WITH DEADLINES.

The concept of having a limited time to do something just doesn’t make much sense to an immortal. Since turning into Lester Papadopoulos, I’d gotten used to the idea: Go here by this date or the world ends. Get this item by next week or everyone you know will die.

Still, I was shocked to realize that Nero was planning to burn down New York that very evening—with cake, festivities, and a good deal of torture—and there was nothing I could do about it.

I stared through the bars after Gunther left. I waited for him to skip back into view and yell, Just kidding!, but the hallway remained empty. I could see very little of it except for blank white walls and a single security camera mounted on the ceiling, staring at me with its glossy black eye.

I turned to Lu. “I have determined that our situation sucks.”

“Thanks.” She crossed her stumps over her chest like a pharaoh. “I needed that perspective.”

“There’s a security camera out there.”

“Sure.”

“Then how were you planning on breaking us out? You would’ve been seen.”

Lu grunted. “That’s only one camera. Easy to evade. The residential areas? They’re completely covered with surveillance from every angle, miked for sound, with motion detectors on all the entrances—”

“I get the idea.”

It infuriated me, but did not surprise me, that Nero’s family would be under heavier surveillance than his prisoners. After all, this was a man who’d killed his own mother. Now he was raising his own brood of junior despots. I had to get to Meg.

I shook the bars, just to say I’d tried. They didn’t budge. I needed a burst of godly strength to Apollo-smash my way out, but I couldn’t rely on my powers to pay heed to what I wanted.

Trudging back to my sofa, I glared at the offensive sandwiches and sodas.

I tried to imagine what Meg was going through right now.

I pictured her in an opulent room much like this one—minus the bars, perhaps, but a cell nonetheless. Her every move would be recorded, her every conversation overheard. No wonder, back in the old days, she preferred to roam the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen, accosting thugs with bags of rotten vegetables and adopting former gods to be her servants. She wouldn’t have that outlet now. She wouldn’t have me or Luguselwa by her side. She would be utterly surrounded and utterly alone.

I had a sense of how Nero’s mind games worked. As a god of healing, I knew something about psychology and mental health, though I’ll admit I did not always apply best practices to myself.

Having unleashed the Beast, Nero would now feign kindness. He would try to convince Meg that she was home. If she just let him “help” her, she would be forgiven. Nero was his own good cop/bad cop—the consummate manipulator.

The thought of him trying to comfort a young girl he had just traumatized made me sick to my core.

Meg had gotten away from Nero once before. Defying his will must have taken more strength and courage than most gods I knew would ever possess. But now…thrust back into her old abusive environment, which Nero had passed off as normal for most of her childhood, she would need to be even stronger not to crumble. It would be so easy for her to forget how far she’d gone.

Remember what’s important. Jason’s voice echoed in my head, but Nero’s words were knocking around in there, too. We can’t change thousands of years of our nature so quickly, can we?

I knew my anxiety about my own weakness was getting mixed up with my anxiety about Meg. Even if I somehow made my way back to Mount Olympus, I didn’t trust myself to hold on to the important things I’d learned as a mortal. That made me doubt Meg’s ability to stay strong in her old toxic home.

The similarities between Nero’s household and my family on Mount Olympus made me increasingly uneasy. The idea that we gods were just as manipulative, just as abusive as the worst Roman emperor…Surely that couldn’t be true.

Oh, wait. Yes, it could. Ugh. I hated clarity. I preferred a softer Instagram filter on my life—Amaro, maybe, or Perpetua.

“We will get out of here.” Lu’s voice shook me from my miserable thoughts. “Then we’ll help Meg.”

Given her condition, this was a bold statement. I realized she was trying to lift my spirits. It felt unfair that she had to…and even more unfair that I needed it so much.

The only response I could think of was “Do you want a sandwich?”

She glanced down at the platter. “Yeah. Cucumber and cream cheese, if there is one. The chef does a good cucumber and cream cheese.”

I found the appropriate flavor. I wondered if, back in ancient times, roving bands of Celtic warriors had ridden into battle with their packs full of cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches. Perhaps that had been the secret to their success.

I fed her a few bites, but she became impatient. “Just set it on my chest. I’ll figure it out. I have to start sometime.”

She used her stumps to maneuver the food toward her mouth. How she could do this without passing out from pain, I didn’t know, but I respected her wishes. My son Asclepius, god of medicine, used to chide me about helping those with disabilities. You can help them if they ask. But wait for them to ask. It’s their choice to make, not yours.

For a god, this was a hard thing to understand, much like deadlines, but I left Lu to her meal. I picked out a couple sandwiches for myself: ham and cheese, egg salad. It had been a long time since I’d eaten. I had no appetite, but I would need energy if we were going to get out of here.

Energy…and information.

I looked at Lu. “You mentioned microphones.”

Her sandwich slipped from between her stumps and landed in her lap. With the slightest of frowns, she began the slow process of corralling it again. “Surveillance mikes, you mean. What about them?”

“Are there any in this cell?”

Lu looked confused. “You want to know if the guards are listening to us? I don’t think so. Unless they’ve installed mikes in the last twenty-four hours. Nero doesn’t care what prisoners chat about. He doesn’t like it when people whine and complain. He’s the only one allowed to do that.”

That made perfect Nero-ish sense.

I wanted to discuss plans with Lu—if for no other reason than to raise her spirits, to let her know that my terrific troglodyte tunneling team might be on their way to scuttle Nero’s Greek-fire Sewer Super Soakers, which would mean that Lu’s sacrifice had not been completely in vain. Still, I would have to be careful what I said. I didn’t want to assume we had privacy. We’d underestimated Nero too many times already.