Nico didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t want to know.
‘My son.’ Hades’s tone was almost gentle. ‘Whatever happens, you have earned my respect. You brought honour to our house when we stood together against Kronos in Manhattan. You risked my wrath to help the Jackson boy – guiding him to the River Styx, freeing him from my prison, pleading with me to raise the armies of Erebos to assist him. Never before have I been so harassed by one of my sons. Percy this and Percy that. I nearly blasted you to cinders.’
Nico took a shallow breath. The walls of the room began to tremble, dust trickling from the cracks between the bones. ‘I didn’t do all that just for him. I did it because the whole world was in danger.’
Hades allowed himself the faintest smile, but there was nothing cruel in his eyes. ‘I can entertain the possibility that you acted for multiple reasons. My point is this: you and I rose to the aid of Olympus because you convinced me to let go of my anger. I would encourage you to do likewise. My children are so rarely happy. I … I would like to see you be an exception.’
Nico stared at his father. He didn’t know what to do with that statement. He could accept many unreal things – hordes of ghosts, magical labyrinths, travel through shadows, chapels made of bones. But tender words from the Lord of the Underworld? No. That made no sense.
Over at the altar, the fiery ghost rose. He approached, burning and screaming silently, his eyes conveying some urgent message.
‘Ah,’ Hades said. ‘This is Brother Paloan. He’s one of hundreds who were burned alive in the square near the old Roman temple. The Inquisition had its headquarters there, you know. At any rate, he suggests you leave now. You have very little time before the wolves arrive.’
‘Wolves? You mean Orion’s pack?’
Hades flicked his hand. The ghost of Brother Paloan disappeared. ‘My son, what you are attempting – shadow-travel across the world, carrying the statue of Athena – it may well destroy you.’
‘Thanks for the encouragement.’
Hades placed his hands briefly on Nico’s shoulders.
Nico didn’t like to be touched, but somehow this brief contact with his father felt reassuring – the same way the Chapel of Bones was reassuring. Like death, his father’s presence was cold and often callous, but it was real – brutally honest, inescapably dependable. Nico found a sort of freedom in knowing that eventually, no matter what happened, he would end up at the foot of his father’s throne.
‘I will see you again,’ Hades promised. ‘I will prepare a room for you at the palace in case you do not survive. Perhaps your chambers would look good decorated with the skulls of monks.’
‘Now I can’t tell if you’re joking.’
Hades’s eyes glittered as his form began to fade. ‘Then perhaps we are alike in some important ways.’
The god vanished.
Suddenly the chapel felt oppressive – thousands of hollow eye sockets staring at Nico. We, the bones that are here, await yours.
He hurried out of the church, hoping he remembered the way back to his friends.
XV
Nico
‘WOLVES?’ REYNA ASKED.
They were eating dinner from the nearby pavement café.
Despite Hades’s warning to hurry back, Nico had found nothing much changed at the camp. Reyna had just awoken. The Athena Parthenos still lay sideways across the top of the temple. Coach Hedge was entertaining a few locals with tap dancing and martial arts, occasionally singing into his megaphone, though nobody seemed to understand what he was saying.
Nico wished the coach hadn’t brought the megaphone. Not only was it loud and obnoxious but also, for no reason Nico understood, it occasionally blurted out random Darth Vader lines from Star Wars or yelled, ‘THE COW GOES MOO!’
As the three of them sat on the lawn to eat, Reyna seemed alert and rested. She and Coach Hedge listened as Nico described his dreams, then his meeting with Hades at the Chapel of Bones. Nico held back a few personal details from his talk with his father, though he sensed that Reyna knew plenty about wrestling with one’s feelings.
When he mentioned Orion and the wolves that were supposedly on their way, Reyna frowned.
‘Most wolves are friendly to Romans,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard stories about Orion hunting with a pack.’
Nico finished his ham sandwich. He eyed the plate of pastries and was surprised to find he still had an appetite. ‘It could have been a figure of speech: very little time before the wolves arrive. Perhaps Hades didn’t literally mean wolves. At any rate, we should leave as soon as it’s dark enough for shadows.’
Coach Hedge stuffed an issue of Guns & Ammo into his bag. ‘Only problem: the Athena Parthenos is still thirty feet in the air. Gonna be fun hauling you guys and your gear to the top of that temple.’
Nico tried a pastry. The lady at the café had called them farturas. They looked like spiral doughnuts and tasted great – just the right combination of crispy, sugary and buttery – but when Nico first heard fartura he knew Percy would have made a joke out of the name.
America has dough-nuts, Percy would have said. Portugal has fart-nuts.
The older Nico got, the more juvenile Percy seemed to him, though Percy was three years older. Nico found his sense of humour equal parts endearing and annoying. He decided to concentrate on the annoying.
Then there were the times Percy was deadly serious: looking up at Nico from that chasm in Rome – The other side, Nico! Lead them there. Promise me!
And Nico had promised. It didn’t seem to matter how much he resented Percy Jackson; Nico would do anything for him. He hated himself for that.
‘So …’ Reyna’s voice jarred him from his thoughts. ‘Will Camp Half-Blood wait for August first, or will they attack?’
‘We have to hope they wait,’ Nico said. ‘We can’t … I can’t get the statue back any faster.’
Even at this rate, my dad thinks I might die. Nico kept that thought private.
He wished Hazel was with him. Together they had shadow-travelled the entire crew of the Argo II out of the House of Hades. When they shared their power, Nico felt like anything was possible. The trip to Camp Half-Blood could’ve been done in half the time.
Besides, Hades’s words about one of the crew dying had sent a chill through him. He couldn’t lose Hazel. Not another sister. Not again.
Coach Hedge looked up from counting the change in his baseball cap. ‘And you’re sure Clarisse said Mellie was okay?’
‘Yes, Coach. Clarisse is taking good care of her.’
‘That’s a relief. I don’t like what Grover said about Gaia whispering to the nymphs and dryads. If the nature spirits turn evil … that’s not going to be pretty.’
Nico had never heard of such a thing happening. Then again, Gaia hadn’t been awake since the dawn of humanity.
Reyna took a bite of her pastry. Her chain mail glittered in the afternoon sun. ‘I wonder about these wolves … Is it possible we’ve misunderstood the message? The goddess Lupa has been very quiet. Perhaps she is sending us aid. The wolves could be from her – to defend us from Orion and his pack.’
The hopefulness in her voice was as thin as gauze. Nico decided not to rip through it.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But wouldn’t Lupa be busy with the war between the camps? I thought she’d be sending wolves to help your legion.’
Reyna shook her head. ‘Wolves are not front-line fighters. I don’t think she would help Octavian. Her wolves might be patrolling Camp Jupiter, defending it in the legion’s absence, but I just don’t know …’
She crossed her legs at the ankles, and the iron tips of her combat boots glinted. Nico made a mental note not to get into any kicking contests with Roman legionnaires.
‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘I haven’t had any luck contacting my sister, Hylla. It makes me uneasy that both the wolves and the Amazons have gone silent. If something has happened on the West Coast … I fear the only hope for either
camp lies with us. We must return the statue soon. That means the greatest burden is on you, son of Hades.’
Nico tried to swallow his bile. He wasn’t mad at Reyna. He kind of liked Reyna. But so often he’d been called on to do the impossible. Normally, as soon as he accomplished it, he was forgotten.
He remembered how nice the kids at Camp Half-Blood had been to him after the war with Kronos. Great job, Nico! Thanks for bringing the armies of the Underworld to save us!
Everybody smiled. They all invited him to sit at their table.
After about a week, his welcome wore thin. Campers would jump when he walked up behind them. He would emerge from the shadows at the campfire, startle somebody and see the discomfort in their eyes: Are you still here? Why are you here?
It didn’t help that immediately after the war with Kronos, Annabeth and Percy had started dating …
Nico set down his fartura. Suddenly it didn’t taste so good.
He recalled his talk with Annabeth at Epirus, just before he’d left with the Athena Parthenos.
She’d pulled him aside and said, ‘Hey, I have to talk to you.’
Panic had seized him. She knows.
‘I want to thank you,’ she continued. ‘Bob … the Titan … he only helped us in Tartarus because you were kind to him. You told him we were worth saving. That’s the only reason we’re alive.’
She said we so easily, as if she and Percy were interchangeable, inseparable.
Nico had once read a story from Plato, who claimed that in the ancient times all humans had been a combination of male and female. Each person had two heads, four arms, four legs. Supposedly, these combo-humans had been so powerful they made the gods uneasy, so Zeus split them in half – man and woman. Ever since, humans had felt incomplete. They spent their lives searching for their other halves.
And where does that leave me? Nico wondered.
It wasn’t his favourite story.
He wanted to hate Annabeth, but he just couldn’t. She’d gone out of her way to thank him at Epirus. She was genuine and sincere. She never overlooked him or avoided him like most people did. Why couldn’t she be a horrible person? That would’ve made it easier.
The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you … your fate will be even sadder than mine.