LEO HAD DESIGNED the mess hall’s walls to show real-time scenes from Camp Half-Blood. At first he had thought that was a pretty awesome idea. Now he wasn’t so sure.
The scenes from back home—the campfire sing-alongs, dinners at the pavilion, volleyball games outside the Big House—just seemed to make his friends sad. The farther they got from Long Island, the worse it got. The time zones kept changing, making Leo feel the distance every time he looked at the walls. Here in Italy the sun had just come up. Back at Camp Half-Blood it was the middle of the night. Torches sputtered at the cabin doorways. Moonlight glittered on the waves of Long Island Sound. The beach was covered in footprints, as if a big crowd had just left.
With a start, Leo realized that yesterday—last night, whatever—had been the Fourth of July. They’d missed Camp Half-Blood’s annual party at the beach with awesome fireworks prepared by Leo’s siblings in Cabin Nine.
He decided not to mention that to the crew, but he hoped their buddies back home had had a good celebration. They needed something to keep their spirits up, too.
He remembered the images he’d seen in his dream—the camp in ruins, littered with bodies; Octavian standing at the volleyball pit, casually talking in Gaea’s voice.
He stared down at his eggs and bacon. He wished he could turn off the wall videos.
“So,” Jason said, “now that we’re here…”
He sat at the head of the table, kind of by default. Since they’d lost Annabeth, Jason had done his best to act as the group’s leader. Having been praetor back at Camp Jupiter, he was probably used to that; but Leo could tell his friend was stressed. His eyes were more sunken than usual. His blond hair was uncharacteristically messy, like he’d forgotten to comb it.
Leo glanced at the others around the table. Hazel was bleary-eyed, too, but of course she’d been up all night guiding the ship through the mountains. Her curly cinnamon-colored hair was tied back in a bandana, which gave her a commando look that Leo found kind of hot—and then immediately felt guilty about.
Next to her sat her boyfriend Frank Zhang, dressed in black workout pants and a Roman tourist T-shirt that said CIAO! (was that even a word?). Frank’s old centurion badge was pinned to his shirt, despite the fact that the demigods of the Argo II were now Public Enemies Numbers 1 through 7 back at Camp Jupiter. His grim expression just reinforced his unfortunate resemblance to a sumo wrestler. Then there was Hazel’s half brother, Nico di Angelo. Dang, that kid gave Leo the freaky-deakies. He sat back in his leather aviator jacket, his black T-shirt and jeans, that wicked silver skull ring on his finger, and the Stygian sword at his side. His tufts of black hair stuck up in curls like baby bat wings. His eyes were sad and kind of empty, as if he’d stared into the depths of Tartarus—which he had.
The only absent demigod was Piper, who was taking her turn at the helm with Coach Hedge, their satyr chaperone.
Leo wished Piper were here. She had a way of calming things down with that Aphrodite charm of hers. After his dreams last night, Leo could use some calm.
On the other hand, it was probably good she was above deck chaperoning their chaperone. Now that they were in the ancient lands, they had to be constantly on guard. Leo was nervous about letting Coach Hedge fly solo. The satyr was a little trigger-happy, and the helm had plenty of bright, dangerous buttons that could cause the picturesque Italian villages below them to go BOOM!
Leo had zoned out so totally he didn’t realize Jason was still talking.
“—the House of Hades,” he was saying. “Nico?”
Nico sat forward. “I communed with the dead last night.”
He just tossed that line out there, like he was saying he got a text from a buddy.
“I was able to learn more about what we’ll face,” Nico continued. “In ancient times, the House of Hades was a major site for Greek pilgrims. They would come to speak with the dead and honor their ancestors.”
Leo frowned. “Sounds like Día de los Muertos. My Aunt Rosa took that stuff seriously.”
He remembered being dragged by her to the local cemetery in Houston, where they’d clean up their relatives’ gravesites and put out offerings of lemonade, cookies, and fresh marigolds. Aunt Rosa would force Leo to stay for a picnic, as if hanging out with dead people were good for his appetite.
Frank grunted. “Chinese have that, too—ancestor worship, sweeping the graves in the springtime.” He glanced at Leo. “Your Aunt Rosa would’ve gotten along with my grandmother.”
Leo had a terrifying image of his Aunt Rosa and some old Chinese woman in wrestlers’ outfits, whaling on each other with spiked clubs.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “I’m sure they would’ve been best buds.”
Nico cleared his throat. “A lot of cultures have seasonal traditions to honor the dead, but the House of Hades was open year-round. Pilgrims could actually speak to the ghosts. In Greek, the place was called the Necromanteion, the Oracle of Death. You’d work your way through different levels of tunnels, leaving offerings and drinking special potions—”
“Special potions,” Leo muttered. “Yum.”
Jason flashed him a look like, Dude, enough. “Nico, go on.”
“The pilgrims believed that each level of the temple brought you closer to the Underworld, until the dead would appear before you. If they were pleased with your offerings, they would answer your questions, maybe even tell you the future.”
Frank tapped his mug of hot chocolate. “And if the spirits weren’t pleased?”
“Some pilgrims found nothing,” Nico said. “Some went insane, or died after leaving the temple. Others lost their way in the tunnels and were never seen again.”
“The point is,” Jason said quickly, “Nico found some information that might help us.”
“Yeah.” Nico didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “The ghost I spoke to last night…he was a former priest of Hecate. He confirmed what the goddess told Hazel yesterday at the crossroads. In the first war with the giants, Hecate fought for the gods. She slew one of the giants—one who’d been designed as the anti-Hecate. A guy named Clytius.”
“Dark dude,” Leo guessed. “Wrapped in shadows.”
Hazel turned toward him, her gold eyes narrowing. “Leo, how did you know that?”
“Kind of had a dream.”
No one looked surprised. Most demigods had vivid nightmares about what was going on in the world.
His friends paid close attention as Leo explained. He tried not to look at the wall images of Camp Half-Blood as he described the place in ruins. He told them about the dark giant, and the strange woman on Half-Blood Hill, offering him a multiple-choice death.
Jason pushed away his plate of pancakes. “So the giant is Clytius. I suppose he’ll be waiting for us, guarding the Doors of Death.”
Frank rolled up one of the pancakes and started munching—not a guy to let impending death stand in the way of a hearty breakfast. “And the woman in Leo’s dream?”
“She’s my problem.” Hazel passed a diamond between her fingers in a sleight of hand. “Hecate mentioned a formidable enemy in the House of Hades—a witch who couldn’t be defeated except by me, using magic.”
“Do you know magic?” Leo asked.
“Not yet.”
“Ah.” He tried to think of something hopeful to say, but he recalled the angry woman’s eyes, the way her steely grip made his skin smoke. “Any idea who she is?”
Hazel shook her head. “Only that…” She glanced at Nico, and some sort of silent argument happened between them. Leo got the feeling that the two of them had had private conversations about the House of Hades, and they weren’t sharing all the details. “Only that she won’t be easy to defeat.”
“But there is some good news,” Nico said. “The ghost I talked to explained how Hecate defeated Clytius in the first war. She used her torches to set his hair on fire. He burned to death. In other words, fire is his weakness.”
Everybody looked at Leo.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”
Jason nodded encouragingly, like this was great news—like he expected Leo to walk up to a towering mass of darkness, shoot a few fireballs, and solve all their problems. Leo didn’t want to bring him down, but he could still hear Gaea’s voice: He is the void that consumes all magic, the cold that consumes all fire, the silence that consumes all speech.
Leo was pretty sure it would take more than a few matches to set that giant ablaze.
“It’s a good lead,” Jason insisted. “At least we know how to kill the giant. And this sorceress…well, if Hecate believes Hazel can defeat her, then so do I.”
Hazel dropped her eyes. “Now we just have to reach the House of Hades, battle our way through Gaea’s forces—”
“Plus a bunch of ghosts,” Nico added grimly. “The spirits in that temple may not be friendly.”
“—and find the Doors of Death,” Hazel continued. “Assuming we can somehow arrive at the same time as Percy and Annabeth and rescue them.”
Frank swallowed a bite of pancake. “We can do it. We have to.”
Leo admired the big guy’s optimism. He wished he shared it.
“So, with this detour,” Leo said, “I’m estimating four or five days to arrive at Epirus, assuming no delays for, you know, monster attacks and stuff.”
Jason smiled sourly. “Yeah. Those never happen.”
Leo looked at Hazel. “Hecate told you that Gaea was planning her big Wake Up party on August first, right? The Feast of Whatever?”
“Spes,” Hazel said. “The goddess of hope.”
Jason turned his fork. “Theoretically, that leaves us enough time. It’s only July fifth. We should be able to close the Doors of Death, then find the giants’ HQ and stop them from waking Gaea before August first.”
“Theoretically,” Hazel agreed. “But I’d still like to know how we make our way through the House of Hades without going insane or dying.”
Nobody volunteered any ideas.
Frank set down his pancake roll like it suddenly didn’t taste so good. “It’s July fifth. Oh, jeez, I hadn’t even thought of that.…”
“Hey, man, it’s cool,” Leo said. “You’re Canadian, right? I didn’t expect you to get me an Independence Day present or anything…unless you wanted to.”
“It’s not that. My grandmother…she always told me that seven was an unlucky number. It was a ghost number. She didn’t like it when I told her there would be seven demigods on our quest. And July is the seventh month.”
“Yeah, but…” Leo tapped his fingers nervously on the table. He realized he was doing the Morse code for I love you, the way he used to do with his mom, which would have been pretty embarrassing if his friends understood Morse code. “But that’s just coincidence, right?”
Frank’s expression didn’t reassure him.
“Back in China,” Frank said, “in the old days, people called the seventh month the ghost month. That’s when the spirit world and the human world were closest. The living and the dead could go back and forth. Tell me it’s a coincidence we’re searching for the Doors of Death during the ghost month.”
No one spoke.
Leo wanted to think that an old Chinese belief couldn’t have anything to do with the Romans and the Greeks. Totally different, right? But Frank’s existence was proof that the cultures were tied together. The Zhang family went all the way back to Ancient Greece. They’d found their way through Rome and China and finally to Canada.
Also, Leo kept thinking about his meeting with the revenge goddess Nemesis at the Great Salt Lake. Nemesis had called him the seventh wheel, the odd man out on the quest. She didn’t mean seventh as in ghost, did she?
Jason pressed his hands against the arms of his chair. “Let’s focus on the things we can deal with. We’re getting close to Bologna. Maybe we’ll get more answers once we find these dwarfs that Hecate—”
The ship lurched as if it had hit an iceberg. Leo’s breakfast plate slid across the table. Nico fell backward out of his chair and banged his head against the sideboard. He collapsed on the floor, with a dozen magic goblets and platters crashing down on top of him.
“Nico!” Hazel ran to help him.
“What—?” Frank tried to stand, but the ship pitched in the other direction. He stumbled into the table and went face-first into Leo’s plate of scrambled eggs.
“Look!” Jason pointed at the walls. The images of Camp Half-Blood were flickering and changing.
“Not possible,” Leo murmured.
No way those enchantments could show anything other than scenes from camp, but suddenly a huge, distorted face filled the entire port-side wall: crooked yellow teeth, a scraggly red beard, a warty nose, and two mismatched eyes—one much larger and higher than the other. The face seemed to be trying to eat its way into the room.
The other walls flickered, showing scenes from above deck. Piper stood at the helm, but something was wrong. From the shoulders down she was wrapped in duct tape, her mouth gagged and her legs bound to the control console.
At the mainmast, Coach Hedge was similarly bound and gagged, while a bizarre-looking creature—a sort of gnome/chimpanzee combo with poor fashion sense—danced around him, doing the coach’s hair in tiny pigtails with pink rubber bands.
On the port-side wall, the huge ugly face receded so that Leo could see the entire creature—another gnome chimp, in even crazier clothes. This one began leaping around the deck, stuffing things in a burlap bag—Piper’s dagger, Leo’s Wii controllers. Then he pried the Archimedes sphere out of the command console.
“No!” Leo yelled.
“Uhhh,” Nico groaned from the floor.
“Piper!” Jason cried.
“Monkey!” Frank yelled.
“Not monkeys,” Hazel grumbled. “I think those are dwarfs.”
“Stealing my stuff!” Leo yelled, and he ran for the stairs.
