The brown-furred dwarf jumped onto the projectile like it was a skateboard, and his friend shot him into the sky.
Red Fur pranced over to Coach Hedge. He gave the satyr a big smack on the cheek, then skipped to the rail. He bowed to Leo, doffing his zebra cowboy hat, and did a backflip over the side.
Leo managed to get up. Jason was already on his feet, stumbling and running into things. Frank had turned into a silverback gorilla (why, Leo wasn’t sure; maybe to commune with the monkey dwarfs?) but the flash grenade had hit him hard. He was sprawled on the deck with his tongue hanging out and his gorilla eyes rolled up in his head.
“Piper!” Jason staggered to the helm and carefully pulled the gag out of her mouth.
“Don’t waste your time on me!” she said. “Go after them!”
At the mast, Coach Hedge mumbled, “HHHmmmmm-hmmm!”
Leo figured that meant: “KILL THEM!” Easy translation, since most of the coach’s sentences involved the word kill.
Leo glanced at the control console. His Archimedes sphere was gone. He put his hand to his waist, where his tool belt should have been. His head started to clear, and his sense of outrage came to a boil. Those dwarfs had attacked his ship. They’d stolen his most precious possessions.
Below him spread the city of Bologna—a jigsaw puzzle of red-tiled buildings in a valley hemmed by green hills. Unless Leo could find the dwarfs somewhere in that maze of streets…Nope. Failure wasn’t an option. Neither was waiting for his friends to recover.
He turned to Jason. “You feeling good enough to control the winds? I need a lift. ”
Jason frowned. “Sure, but—”
“Good,” Leo said. “We’ve got some monkey dudes to catch. ”
Jason and Leo touched down in a big piazza lined with white marble government buildings and outdoor cafés. Bikes and Vespas clogged the surrounding streets, but the square itself was empty except for pigeons and a few old men drinking espresso.
None of the locals seemed to notice the huge Greek warship hovering over the piazza, or the fact that Jason and Leo had just flown down, Jason wielding a gold sword, and Leo…well, Leo pretty much empty-handed.
“Where to?” Jason asked.
Leo stared at him. “Well, I dunno. Let me pull my dwarf-tracking GPS out of my tool belt. … Oh, wait! I don’t have a dwarf-tracking GPS—or my tool belt!”
“Fine,” Jason grumbled. He glanced up at the ship as if to get his bearings, then pointed across the piazza. “The ballista fired the first dwarf in that direction, I think. Come on. ”
They waded through a lake of pigeons, then maneuvered down a side street of clothing stores and gelato shops. The sidewalks were lined with white columns covered in graffiti. A few panhandlers asked for change (Leo didn’t know Italian, but he got the message loud and clear).
He kept patting his waist, hoping his tool belt would magically reappear. It didn’t. He tried not to freak, but he’d come to depend on that belt for almost everything. He felt like somebody had stolen one of his hands.
“We’ll find it,” Jason promised.
Usually, Leo would have felt reassured. Jason had a talent for staying levelheaded in a crisis, and he’d gotten Leo out of plenty of bad scrapes. Today, though, all Leo could think about was the stupid fortune cookie he had opened in Rome. The goddess Nemesis had promised him help, and he’d gotten it: the code to activate the Archimedes sphere. At the time, Leo had had no choice but to use it if he wanted to save his friends—but Nemesis had warned that her help came with a price.
Leo wondered if that price would ever be paid. Percy and Annabeth were gone. The ship was hundreds of miles off course, heading toward an impossible challenge. Leo’s friends were counting on him to beat a terrifying giant. And now he didn’t even have his tool belt or his Archimedes sphere.
He was so absorbed with feeling sorry for himself that he didn’t notice where they were until Jason grabbed his arm. “Check it out. ”
Leo looked up. They’d arrived in a smaller piazza. Looming over them was a huge bronze statue of a buck-naked Neptune.
“Ah, jeez. ” Leo averted his eyes. He really didn’t need to see a godly groin this early in the morning.
The sea god stood on a big marble column in the middle of a fountain that wasn’t working (which seemed kind of ironic). On either side of Neptune, little winged Cupid dudes were sitting, kind of chillin’, like, What’s up? Neptune himself (avoid the groin) was throwing his hip to one side in an Elvis Presley move. He gripped his trident loosely in his right hand and stretched his left hand out like he was blessing Leo, or possibly attempting to levitate him.
“Some kind of clue?” Leo wondered.
Jason frowned. “Maybe, maybe not. There are statues of the gods all over the place in Italy. I’d just feel better if we ran across Jupiter. Or Minerva. Anybody but Neptune, really. ”
Leo climbed into the dry fountain. He put his hand on the statue’s pedestal, and a rush of impressions surged through his fingertips. He sensed Celestial bronze gears, magical levers, springs, and pistons.
“It’s mechanical,” he said. “Maybe a doorway to the dwarfs’ secret lair?”
“Ooooo!” shrieked a nearby voice. “Secret lair?”
“I want a secret lair!” yelled another voice from above.
Jason stepped back, his sword ready. Leo almost got whiplash trying to look in two places at once. The red-furred dwarf in the cowboy hat was sitting about thirty feet away at the nearest café table, sipping an espresso held by his monkey-like foot. The brown-furred dwarf in the green bowler was perched on the marble pedestal at Neptune’s feet, just above Leo’s head.
“If we had a secret lair,” said Red Fur, “I would want a firehouse pole. ”
“And a waterslide!” said Brown Fur, who was pulling random tools out of Leo’s belt, tossing aside wrenches, hammers, and staple guns.
“Stop that!” Leo tried to grab the dwarf’s feet, but he couldn’t reach the top of the pedestal.
“Too short?” Brown Fur sympathized.
“You’re calling me short?” Leo looked around for something to throw, but there was nothing but pigeons, and he doubted he could catch one. “Give me my belt, you stupid—”
“Now, now!” said Brown Fur. “We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I’m Akmon. And my brother over there—”