‘For Rome!’ Reyna cried hoarsely. She slashed her gladius through one earthen ghost and stabbed her dagger in another’s chest. ‘Twelfth Legion Fulminata!’
All around her, zombies fell. Some were crushed in battle. Others disintegrated on their own as the residual power of Diocletian’s sceptre finally failed.
The earthen ghosts closed in – a sea of misshapen faces with hollow eyes.
‘Reyna, now!’ Nico yelled. ‘We’re leaving!’
She glanced back. Nico had harnessed himself to the Athena Parthenos. He held the unconscious Gleeson Hedge in his arms like a damsel in distress. Aurum and Argentum had disappeared – perhaps too badly damaged to continue fighting.
Reyna stumbled.
A rock fist gave her a glancing blow to the ribcage, and her side erupted in pain. Her head swam. She tried to breathe, but it was like inhaling knives.
‘Reyna!’ Nico shouted again.
The Athena Parthenos flickered, about to disappear.
An earthen ghost swung at Reyna’s head. She managed to dodge, but the pain in her ribs almost made her black out.
Give up, said the voices in her head. The legacy of Rome is dead and buried, just like Pompeii.
‘No,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Not while I’m still alive.’
Nico stretched out his hand as he slipped into the shadows. With the last of her strength, Reyna leaped towards him.
IX
Leo
LEO DIDN’T WANT TO COME OUT OF THE WALL.
He had three more braces to attach, and nobody else was skinny enough to fit in the crawl space. (One of the many advantages of being scrawny.)
Wedged between the layers of the hull with the plumbing and wiring, Leo could be alone with his thoughts. When he got frustrated, which happened about every five seconds, he could hit stuff with his mallet and the other crew members would figure he was working, not throwing a tantrum.
One problem with his sanctuary: he only fitted up to his waist. His butt and legs were still on view to the general public, which made it hard for him to hide.
‘Leo!’ Piper’s voice came from somewhere behind him. ‘We need you.’
The Celestial bronze O-ring slipped out of Leo’s pliers and slid into the depths of the crawl space.
Leo sighed. ‘Talk to the pants, Piper! ’Cause the hands are busy!’
‘I am not talking to the pants. Meeting in the mess hall. We’re almost at Olympia.’
‘Yeah, fine. I’ll be there in a sec.’
‘What are you doing, anyway? You’ve been poking around inside the hull for days.’
Leo swept his flashlight across the Celestial bronze plates and pistons he’d been installing slowly but surely. ‘Routine maintenance.’
Silence. Piper was a little too good at knowing when he was lying. ‘Leo –’
‘Hey, while you’re out there, do me a favour. I got this itch right below my –’
‘Fine, I’m leaving!’
Leo allowed himself a couple more minutes to fasten the brace. His work wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. But he was making progress.
Of course, he’d laid the groundwork for his secret project when he first built the Argo II, but he hadn’t told anyone about it. He had barely been honest with himself about what he was doing.
Nothing lasts forever, his dad once told him. Not even the best machines.
Yeah, okay, maybe that was true. But Hephaestus had also said, Everything can be reused. Leo intended to test that theory.
It was a dangerous risk. If he failed, it would crush him. Not just emotionally. It would physically crush him.
The thought made him claustrophobic.
He wriggled out of the crawl space and went back into his cabin.
Well … technically it was his cabin, but he didn’t sleep there. The mattress was littered with wires, nails and the guts of several disassembled bronze machines. His three massive rolling tool cabinets – Chico, Harpo and Groucho – took up most of the room. Dozens of power tools hung on the walls. The worktable was piled with photocopied blueprints from On Spheres, the forgotten Archimedes text Leo had liberated from an underground workshop in Rome.
Even if he wanted to sleep in his cabin, it would’ve been too cramped and dangerous. He preferred to bed down in the engine room, where the constant hum of machinery helped him fall asleep. Besides, ever since his time on the island of Ogygia, he had become fond of camping out. A bedroll on the floor was all he needed.
His cabin was only for storage … and for working on his most difficult projects.
He pulled his keys from his tool belt. He didn’t really have time, but he unlocked Groucho’s middle drawer and stared at the two precious objects inside: a bronze astrolabe he’d picked up in Bologna, and a fist-sized chunk of crystal from Ogygia. Leo hadn’t figured out how to put the two things together yet, and it was driving him crazy.
He’d been hoping to get some answers when they visited Ithaca. After all, it was the home of Odysseus, the dude who had constructed the astrolabe. But, judging from what Jason had said, those ruins hadn’t held any answers for him – just a bunch of ill-tempered ghouls and ghosts.
Anyway, Odysseus never got the astrolabe to work. He hadn’t had a crystal to use as a homing beacon. Leo did. He would have to succeed where the cleverest demigod of all time had failed.
Just Leo’s luck. A super-hot immortal girl was waiting for him on Ogygia, but he couldn’t figure out how to wire a stupid chunk of rock into the three-thousand-year-old navigation device. Some problems even duct tape couldn’t solve.
Leo closed the drawer and locked it.
His eyes drifted to the bulletin board above his worktable, where two pictures hung side by side. The first was the old crayon drawing he’d made when he was seven years old – a diagram of a flying ship he’d seen in his dreams. The second was a charcoal sketch Hazel had recently made for him.
Hazel Levesque … that girl was something. As soon as Leo rejoined the crew in Malta, she’d known right away that Leo was hurting inside. The first chance she got, after all that mess in the House of Hades, she’d marched into Leo’s cabin and said, ‘Spill.’
Hazel was a good listener. Leo told her the whole story. Later that evening, Hazel came back with her sketch pad and her charcoal pencils. ‘Describe her,’ she insisted. ‘Every detail.’
It felt a little weird helping Hazel make a portrait of Calypso – as if he were talking to a police artist: Yes, officer, that’s the girl who stole my heart! Sounded like a freaking country song.
But describing Calypso had been easy. Leo couldn’t close his eyes without seeing her.
Now her likeness gazed back at him from the bulletin board – her almond-shaped eyes, her pouty lips, her long straight hair swept over one shoulder of her sleeveless d
ress. He could almost smell her cinnamon fragrance. Her knitted brow and the downward turn of her mouth seemed to say, Leo Valdez, you are so full of it.
Dang, he loved that woman!
Leo had pinned her portrait next to the drawing of the Argo II to remind himself that sometimes visions do come true. As a little kid, he’d dreamed about a flying ship. Eventually he built it. Now he would build a way to get back to Calypso.
The hum of the ship’s engines changed to a lower pitch. Over the cabin loudspeaker, Festus’s voice creaked and squeaked.
‘Yeah, thanks, buddy,’ Leo said. ‘On my way.’
The ship was descending, which meant Leo’s projects would have to wait.
‘Sit tight, Sunshine,’ he told Calypso’s picture. ‘I’ll get back to you, just like I promised.’
Leo could imagine her response: I am not waiting for you, Leo Valdez. I am not in love with you. And I certainly don’t believe your foolish promises!
The thought made him smile. He slipped his keys back into his tool belt and headed for the mess hall.
The other six demigods were eating breakfast.
Once upon a time, Leo would have worried about all of them being together belowdecks with nobody at the helm, but ever since Piper had permanently woken up Festus with her charmspeak – a feat Leo still did not understand – the dragon figurehead had been more than capable of running the Argo II by himself. Festus could navigate, check the radar, make a blueberry smoothie and spew white-hot jets of fire at invaders – simultaneously – without even blowing a circuit.
Besides, they had Buford the Wonder Table as backup.
After Coach Hedge left on his shadow-travel expedition, Leo had decided that his three-legged table could do just as good a job as their ‘adult chaperone’. He had laminated Buford’s tabletop with a magic scroll that projected a pint-sized holographic simulation of Coach Hedge. Mini-Hedge would stomp around on Buford’s top, randomly saying things like ‘CUT THAT OUT!’ ‘I’M GONNA KILL YOU!’ and the ever-popular ‘PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!’
Today, Buford was manning the helm. If Festus’s flames didn’t scare away the monsters, Buford’s holographic Hedge definitely would.
Leo stood in the doorway of the mess hall, taking in the scene around the dining table. It wasn’t often he got to see all his friends together.
Percy was eating a huge stack of blue pancakes (what was his deal with blue food?) while Annabeth chided him for pouring on too much syrup.
‘You’re drowning them!’ she complained.
‘Hey, I’m a Poseidon kid,’ he said. ‘I can’t drown. And neither can my pancakes.’
To their left, Frank and Hazel used their cereal bowls to flatten out a map of Greece. They looked over it, their heads close together. Every once in a while Frank’s hand would cover Hazel’s, just sweet and natural like they were an old married couple, and Hazel didn’t even look flustered, which was real progress for a girl from the 1940s. Until recently, if somebody said gosh darn, she would nearly faint.
At the head of the table, Jason sat uncomfortably with his T-shirt rolled up