“I think—” I choked on my words. I dabbed my face and found my cheeks were wet. “I think they’re gone. Permanently. Harpocrates’s last breath is all that remains in the jar now.”

Reyna peered through the glass. “But the Sibyl…?” She turned to face me and almost dropped the jar. “My gods, Apollo. You look terrible.”

“A horror show. Yes, I remember.”

“No. I mean it’s worse now. The infection. When did that happen?”

Meg squinted at my face. “Oh, yuck. We gotta get you healed, quick.”

I was glad I didn’t have a mirror or a phone camera to see how I looked. I could only assume the lines of purple infection had made their way up my neck and were now drawing fun new patterns on my cheeks. I didn’t feel any more zombie-ish. My stomach wound didn’t throb any worse than before. But that could’ve simply meant my nervous system was shutting down.

“Help me up, please,” I said.

It took both of them to do so. In the process, I put one hand on the floor to brace myself, amid the shattered fasces rods, and got a splinter in my palm. Of course I did.

I wobbled on spongy legs, leaning on Reyna, then on Meg, trying to remember how to stand. I didn’t want to look at the glass jar, but I couldn’t help it. There was no sign of Harpocrates’s silvery life force inside. I had to have faith that his last breath was still there. Either that, or when we tried to do our summoning, I would discover that he had played a terrible final joke on me.

As for the Sibyl, I couldn’t sense her presence. I was sure her final grain of sand had slipped away. She had chosen to exit the universe with Harpocrates—one last shared experience between two unlikely lovers.

On the outside of the jar, the gluey remains of a paper label clung to the glass. I could just make out the faded words SMUCKER’S GRAPE. Tarquin and the emperors had much to answer for.

“How could they…?” Reyna shivered. “Can a god do that? Just…choose to stop existing?”

I wanted to say Gods can do anything, but the truth was, I didn’t know. The bigger question was, why would a god even want to try?

When Harpocrates had given me that last dry smile, had he been hinting that someday I might understand? Someday, would even the Olympians be forgotten relics, yearning for nonexistence?

I used my nails to pull the splinter from my palm. Blood pooled—regular red human blood. It ran down the groove of my lifeline, which was not a great omen. Good thing I didn’t believe in such things….

“We need to get back,” Reyna said. “Can you move—?”

“Shh,” Meg interrupted, putting a finger to her lips.

I feared she was doing the most inappropriate Harpocrates impersonation ever. Then I realized she was quite serious. My newly sensitive ears picked up on what she was hearing—the faint, distant cries of angry birds. The ravens were returning.

O, blood moon rising

Take a rain check on doomsday

I’m stuck in traffic

WE EMERGED FROM THE shipping container just in time to get dive-bombed.

A raven swooped past Reyna and bit a chunk out of her hair.

“OW!” she yelled. “All right, that’s it. Hold this.”

She shoved the glass jar into my hands, then readied her sword.

A second raven came within range and she slashed it out of the sky. Meg’s twin blades whirled, Vitamixing another bird into a black cloud. That left only thirty or forty more bloodthirsty hang gliders of doom swarming the tower.

Anger swelled in me. I decided I was done with the ravens’ bitterness. Plenty of folks had valid reasons to hate me: Harpocrates, the Sibyl, Koronis, Daphne…maybe a few dozen others. Okay, maybe a few hundred others. But the ravens? They were thriving! They’d grown gigantic! They loved their new jobs as flesh-eating killers. Enough with the blame.

I secured the glass jar in my backpack. Then I unslung the bow from my shoulder.

“Scram or die!” I yelled at the birds. “You get one warning!”

The ravens cawed and croaked with derision. One dove at me and got an arrow between the eyes. It spiraled downward, shedding a funnel cloud of feathers.

I picked another target and shot it down. Then a third. And a fourth.

The ravens’ caws became cries of alarm. They widened their circle, probably thinking they could get out of range. I proved them wrong. I kept shooting until ten were dead. Then a dozen.

“I brought extra arrows today!” I shouted. “Who wants the next one?”

At last, the birds got the message. With a few parting screeches—probably unprintable comments about my parentage—they broke off their assault and flew north toward Marin County.

“Nice work,” Meg told me, retracting her blades.

The best I could manage was a nod and some wheezing. Beads of sweat froze on my forehead. My legs felt like soggy french fries. I didn’t see how I could climb back down the ladder, much less race off for a fun-filled evening of god-summoning, combat to the death, and possibly turning into a zombie.

“Oh, gods.” Reyna stared in the direction the flock had gone, her fingers absently exploring her scalp where the raven had snapped off a hunk of her hair.

“It’ll grow back,” I said.

“What? No, not my hair. Look!”

She pointed to the Golden Gate Bridge.

We must have been inside the shipping container much longer than I’d realized. The sun sat low in the western sky. The daytime full moon had risen above Mount Tamalpais. The afternoon heat had burned away all the fog, giving us a perfect view of the white fleet—fifty beautiful yachts in V formation—gliding leisurely past Point Bonita Lighthouse at the edge of the Marin Headlands, making their way toward the bridge. Once past it, they would have smooth sailing into the San Francisco Bay.

My mouth tasted like god dust. “How long do we have?”

Reyna checked her watch. “The vappae are taking their time, but even at the rate they’re sailing, they’ll be in position to fire on the camp by sunset. Maybe two hours?”

Under different circumstances, I might have enjoyed her use of the term vappae. It had been a long time since I’d heard someone call their enemies spoiled wines. In modern parlance, the closest meaning would’ve been scumbags.

“How long will it take for us to reach camp?” I asked.

“In Friday afternoon traffic?” Reyna calculated. “A little more than two hours.”

From one of her gardening-belt pouches, Meg pulled a fistful of seeds. “I guess we’d better hurry, then.”

I was not familiar with Jack and the Beanstalk.

It didn’t sound like a proper Greek myth.

When Meg said we’d have to use a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk exit, I didn’t have a clue what she meant, even as she scattered handfuls of seeds down the nearest pylon, causing them to explode into bloom until she’d formed a latticework of plant matter all the way to the ground.

“Over you go,” she ordered.

“But—”

“You’re in no shape to climb the ladder,” she said. “This’ll be faster. Like falling. Only with plants.”

I hated that description.

Reyna just shrugged. “What the heck.”