Also, Antinous sounded confident that he could detect the Argo II. Hazel’s magic seemed to be obscuring the ship so far, but there was no telling how long that would last.
Jason had the intel they’d come for. Their goal was Athens. The safer route, or at least the not impossible route, was around the southern coast. Today was 20 July. They only had twelve days before Gaia planned to wake, on 1 August, the ancient Feast of Hope.
Jason and his friends needed to leave while they had the chance.
But something else bothered him – a cold sense of foreboding, as if he hadn’t heard the worst news yet.
Eurymachus had mentioned Delphi. Jason had secretly hoped to visit the ancient site of Apollo’s Oracle, maybe get some insight into his personal future, but if the place had been overrun by monsters …
He pushed aside his plate of cold food. ‘Sounds like everything is under control. For your sake, Antinous, I hope so. These demigods are resourceful. They closed the Doors of Death. We wouldn’t want them sneaking past you, perhaps getting help from Delphi.’
Antinous chuckled. ‘No risk of that. Delphi is no longer in Apollo’s control.’
‘I – I see. And if the demigods sail the long way around the Peloponnese?’
‘You worry too much. That journey is never safe for demigods, and it’s much too far. Besides, Victory runs rampant in Olympia. As long as that’s the case, there is no way the demigods can win this war.’
Jason didn’t understand what that meant either, but he nodded. ‘Very well. I will report as much to King Porphyrion. Thank you for the, er, meal.’
Over at the fountain, Michael Varus called, ‘Wait.’
Jason bit back a curse. He’d been trying to ignore the dead praetor, but now Varus walked over, surrounded in a hazy white aura, his deep-set eyes like sinkholes. At his side hung an Imperial gold gladius.
‘You must stay,’ Varus said.
Antinous shot the ghost an irritated look. ‘What’s the problem, legionnaire? If Iros wants to leave, let him. He smells bad!’
The other ghosts laughed nervously. Across the courtyard, Piper shot Jason a worried glance. A little further away, Annabeth casually palmed a carving knife from the nearest platter of meat.
Varus rested his hand on the pommel of his sword. Despite the heat, his breastplate was glazed with ice. ‘I lost my cohort twice in Alaska – once in life, once in death to a Graecus named Percy Jackson. Still I have come here to answer Gaia’s call. Do you know why?’
Jason swallowed. ‘Stubbornness?’
‘This is a place of longing,’ Varus said. ‘All of us are drawn here, sustained not only by Gaia’s power but also by our strongest desires. Eurymachus’s greed. Antinous’s cruelty.’
‘You flatter me,’ the ghoul muttered.
‘Hasdrubal’s hatred,’ Varus continued. ‘Hippias’s bitterness. My ambition. And you, Iros. What has drawn you here? What does a beggar most desire? Perhaps a home?’
An uncomfortable tingle started at the base of Jason’s skull – the same feeling he got when a huge electrical storm was about to break.
‘I should be going,’ he said. ‘Messages to carry.’
Michael Varus drew his sword. ‘My father is Janus, the god of two faces. I am used to seeing through masks and deceptions. Do you know, Iros, why we are so sure the demigods will not pass our island undetected?’
Jason silently ran through his repertoire of Latin cuss words. He tried to calculate how long it would take him to get out his emergency flare and fire it. Hopefully he could buy enough time for the girls to find shelter before this mob of dead guys slaughtered him.
He turned to Antinous. ‘Look, are you in charge here or not? Maybe you should muzzle your Roman.’
The ghoul took a deep breath. The arrow rattled in his throat. ‘Ah, but this might be entertaining. Go on, Varus.’
The dead praetor raised his sword. ‘Our desires reveal us. They show us for who we really are. Someone has come for you, Jason Grace.’
Behind Varus, the crowd parted. The shimmering ghost of a woman drifted forward, and Jason felt as if his bones were turning to dust.
‘My dearest,’ said his mother’s ghost. ‘You have come home.’
III
Jason
SOMEHOW HE KNEW HER. He recognized her dress – a flowery green-and-red wraparound, like the skirt of a Christmas tree. He recognized the colourful plastic bangles on her wrists that had dug into his back when she hugged him goodbye at the Wolf House. He recognized her hair, an over-teased corona of dyed blonde curls and her scent of lemons and aerosol.
Her eyes were blue like Jason’s, but they gleamed with fractured light, like she’d just come out of a bunker after a nuclear war – hungrily searching for familiar details in a changed world.
‘Dearest.’ She held out her arms.
Jason’s vision tunnelled. The ghosts and ghouls no longer mattered.
His Mist disguise burned off. His posture straightened. His joints stopped aching. His walking stick turned back into an Imperial gold gladius.
The burning sensation didn’t stop. He felt as if layers of his life were being seared away ?
?? his months at Camp Half-Blood, his years at Camp Jupiter, his training with Lupa the wolf goddess. He was a scared and vulnerable two-year-old again. Even the scar on his lip, from when he’d tried to eat a stapler as a toddler, stung like a fresh wound.
‘Mom?’ he managed.
‘Yes, dearest.’ Her image flickered. ‘Come, embrace me.’
‘You’re – you’re not real.’
‘Of course she is real.’ Michael Varus’s voice sounded far away. ‘Did you think Gaia would let such an important spirit languish in the Underworld? She is your mother, Beryl Grace, star of television, sweetheart to the king of Olympus, who rejected her not once but twice, in both his Greek and Roman aspects. She deserves justice as much as any of us.’
Jason’s heart felt wobbly. The suitors crowded around him, watching.
I’m their entertainment, Jason realized. The ghosts probably found this even more amusing than two beggars fighting to the death.
Piper’s voice cut through the buzzing in his head. ‘Jason, look at me.’
She stood twenty feet away, holding her ceramic amphora. Her smile was gone. Her gaze was fierce and commanding – as impossible to ignore as the blue harpy feather in her hair. ‘That isn’t your mother. Her voice is working some kind of magic on you – like charmspeak, but more dangerous. Can’t you sense it?’
‘She’s right.’ Annabeth climbed onto the nearest table. She kicked aside a platter, startling a dozen suitors. ‘Jason, that’s only a remnant of your mother, like an ara, maybe, or –’
‘A remnant!’ His mother’s ghost sobbed. ‘Yes, look what I have been reduced to. It’s Jupiter’s fault. He abandoned us. He wouldn’t help me! I didn’t want to leave you in Sonoma, my dear, but Juno and Jupiter gave me no choice. They wouldn’t allow us to stay together. Why fight for them now? Join these suitors. Lead them. We can be a family again!’
Jason felt hundreds of eyes on him.
This has been the story of my life, he thought bitterly. Everyone had always watched him, expecting him to lead the way. From the moment he’d arrived at Camp Jupiter, the Roman demigods had treated him like a prince in waiting. Despite his attempts to alter his destiny – joining the worst cohort, trying to change the camp traditions, taking the least glamorous missions and befriending the least popular kids – he had been made praetor anyway. As a son of Jupiter, his future had been assured.
He remembered what Hercules had said to him at the Straits of Gibraltar: It’s not easy being a son of Zeus. Too much pressure. Eventually, it can make a guy snap.
Now Jason was here, drawn as taut as a bowstring.
‘You left me,’ he told his mother. ‘That wasn’t Jupiter or Juno. That was you.’
Beryl Grace stepped forward. The worry lines around her eyes, the pained tightness in her mouth reminded Jason of his sister, Thalia.
‘Dearest, I told you I would come back. Those were my last words to you. Don’t you remember?’
Jason shivered. In the ruins of the Wolf House his mother had hugged him one last time. She had smiled, but her eyes were full of tears.
It’s all right, she had promised. But even as a little kid Jason had known it wasn’t all right. Wait here. I will be back for you, dearest. I will see you soon.
She hadn’t come back. Instead, Jason had wandered the ruins, crying and alone, calling for his mother and for Thalia – until the wolves came for him.
His mother’s unkept promise was at the core of who he was. He’d built his whole life around the irritation of her words, like the grain of sand at the centre of a pearl.
People lie. Promises are broken.
That was why, as much as it chafed him, Jason followed rules. He kept his promises. He never wanted to abandon anyone the way he’d been abandoned and lied to.
Now his mom was back, erasing the one certainty Jason had about her – that she’d left him forever.
Across the table, Antinous raised his goblet. ‘So pleased to meet you, son of Jupiter. Listen to your mother. You have many grievances against the gods. Why not join us? I gather these two serving girls are your friends? We will spare them. You wish to have your mother remain in the world? We can do that. You wish to be a king –’
‘No.’ Jason’s mind was spinning. ‘No, I don’t belong with you.’
Michael Varus regarded him with cold eyes. ‘Are you so sure, my fellow praetor? Even if you defeat the giants and Gaia, would you return home like Odysseus did? Where is your home now? With the Greeks? With the Romans? No one will accept you. And, if you get back, who’s to say you won’t find ruins like this?’