restraints. There were only a few seconds until he would be loose.
Nico was out of tricks. Summoning that wall of bones had drained him. It would take all his remaining energy to shadow-travel – assuming he could even find a shadow to travel into.
A shadow.
He looked at the silver pocketknife in his hand. An idea came to him – possibly the stupidest, craziest idea he’d had since he thought, Hey, I’ll get Percy to swim in the River Styx! He’ll love me for that!
‘Reyna, get up here!’ he yelled.
She slammed another wolf in the head and ran. In mid-stride, she flicked her sword, which elongated into a javelin, then used it to launch herself up like a pole-vaulter. She landed next to Nico.
‘What’s the plan?’ she asked, not even out of breath.
‘Show-off,’ he grumbled.
A knotted rope fell from above.
‘Climb, ya silly non-goats!’ Hedge yelled.
‘Go,’ Nico told her. ‘Once you’re up there, hang on tight to the rope.’
‘Nico –’
‘Do it!’
Her javelin shrank back into a sword. Reyna sheathed it and began to climb, scaling the column despite her armour and her supplies.
Down in the plaza, Aurum and Argentum were nowhere to be seen. Either they’d retreated or they’d been destroyed.
Lycaon broke free of his bone cage with a triumphant howl. ‘You will suffer, son of Hades!’
What else is new? Nico thought.
He palmed the pocketknife. ‘Come get me, you mutt! Or do you have to stay like a good dog until your master shows up?’
Lycaon sprang through the air, his claws extended, his fangs bared. Nico wrapped his free hand around the rope and concentrated, a bead of sweat trickling down his neck.
As the wolf king fell on him, Nico thrust the silver knife into Lycaon’s chest. All around the temple, wolves howled as one.
The wolf king sank his claws into Nico’s arms. His fangs stopped less than an inch from Nico’s face. Nico ignored his own pain and jabbed the pocketknife to the hilt between Lycaon’s ribs.
‘Be useful, dog,’ he snarled. ‘Back to the shadows.’
Lycaon’s eyes rolled up in his head. He dissolved into a pool of inky darkness.
Then several things happened at once. The outraged pack of wolves surged forward. From a nearby rooftop, a booming voice yelled, ‘STOP THEM!’
Nico heard the unmistakable sound of a large bow being drawn taut.
Then he melted into the pool of Lycaon’s shadow, taking his friends and the Athena Parthenos with him – slipping into cold ether with no idea where he would emerge.
XVII
Piper
PIPER COULDN’T BELIEVE how hard it was to find deadly poison.
All morning she and Frank had scoured the port of Pylos. Frank allowed only Piper to come with him, thinking her charmspeak might be useful if they ran into his shape-shifting relatives.
As it turned out, her sword was more in demand. So far, they’d slain a Laistrygonian ogre in the bakery, battled a giant warthog in the public square and defeated a flock of Stymphalian birds with some well-aimed vegetables from Piper’s cornucopia.
She was glad for the work. It kept her from dwelling on her conversation with her mother the night before – that bleak glimpse of the future Aphrodite had made her promise not to share …
Meanwhile, Piper’s biggest challenge in Pylos was the ads plastered all over town for her dad’s new movie. The posters were in Greek, but Piper knew what they said: TRISTAN MCLEAN IS JAKE STEEL: SIGNED IN BLOOD.
Gods, what a horrible title. She wished her father had never taken on the Jake Steel franchise, but it had become one of his most popular roles. There he was on the poster, his shirt ripped open to reveal perfect abs (gross, Dad!), an AK-47 in each hand, a rakish smile on his chiselled face.
Halfway across the world, in the smallest, most out-of-the-way town imaginable, there was her dad. It made Piper feel sad, disoriented, homesick and annoyed all at once. Life went on. So did Hollywood. While her dad pretended to save the world, Piper and her friends actually had to. In eight more days, unless Piper could pull off the plan Aphrodite had explained … well, there wouldn’t be any more movies, or theatres, or people.
Around one in the afternoon, Piper finally put her charmspeak to work. She spoke with an Ancient Greek ghost in a Laundromat (on a one-to-ten scale for weird conversations, definitely an eleven) and got directions to an ancient stronghold where the shape-shifting descendants of Periclymenus supposedly hung out.
After trudging across the island in the afternoon heat, they found the cave perched halfway up a beachside cliff. Frank insisted that Piper wait for him at the bottom while he checked it out.
Piper wasn’t happy about that, but she stood obediently on the beach, squinting up at the cave entrance and hoping she hadn’t guided Frank into a death trap.
Behind her, a stretch of white sand hugged the foot of the hills. Sunbathers sprawled on blankets. Little kids splashed in the waves. The blue sea glittered invitingly.
Piper wished she could surf those waters. She’d promised to teach Hazel and Annabeth someday, if they ever came out to Malibu … if Malibu still existed after 1 August.
She glanced up at the cliff’s summit. The ruins of an old castle clung to the ridge. Piper wasn’t sure if that was part of the shape-changers’ hideout or not. Nothing moved on the parapets. The entrance of the cave sat about seventy feet down the cliff face – a circle of black in the chalky yellow rock like the hole of a giant pencil sharpener.
Nestor’s Cave, the Laundromat ghost had called it. Supposedly the ancient king of Pylos had stashed his treasure there in times of crisis. The ghost also claimed that Hermes had once hidden the stolen cattle of Apollo in that cave.
Cows.
Piper shuddered. When she was little, her dad had driven her past a meat-processing plant in Chino. The smell had been enough to turn her into a vegetarian. Ever since, just the thought of cows made her ill. Her experiences with Hera the cow queen, the katoblepones of Venice and the pictures of creepy death cows in the House of Hades hadn’t helped.
Piper was just starting to think, Frank’s been gone too long – when he appeared at the cave entrance. Next to him stood a tall grey-haired man in a white linen suit and a pale yellow tie. The older man pressed a small shiny object – like a stone or a piece of glass – into Frank’s hands. He and Frank exchanged a few words. Frank nodded gravely. Then the man turned into a seagull and flew away.
Frank picked his way down the trail until he reached Piper.
‘I found them,’ he said.
‘I noticed. You okay?’
He stared at the seagull as it flew towards the horizon.
Frank’s close-cropped hair pointed forward like an arrow, making his gaze even more intense. His Roman badges – mural crown, centurion, praetor – glittered on his shirt collar. On his forearm, the SPQR tattoo with the crossed spears of Mars stood out darkly in the full sunlight.
He looked good in his new outfit. The giant warthog had slimed his old clothes pretty badly, so Piper had taken him for some emergency shopping in Pylos. Now he wore new black jeans, soft leather boots and a dark green Henley shirt that fitted him snugly. He’d been self-conscious about the shirt. He was used to hiding his bulk in baggy clothes, but Piper assured him he didn’t have to worry about that any more. Since his growth spurt in Venice, he’d grown into his bulkiness just fine.
You haven’t changed, Frank, she’d told him. You’re just more you.
It was a good thing Frank Zhang was still so sweet and soft-spoken. Otherwise he would’ve been a scary guy.
‘Frank?’ she prompted gently.
‘Yeah, sorry.’ He focused on her. ‘My, uh … cousins, I guess you’d call them … they’ve been living here for generations, all descended from Periclymenus the Argonaut. I told them my story, how the Zhang family had gone from Greece to Rome to China to Can
ada. I told them about the legionnaire ghost I saw in the House of Hades, urging me to come to Pylos. They … they didn’t seem surprised. They said it’s happened before, long-lost relatives coming home.’
Piper heard the wistfulness in his voice. ‘You were expecting something different.’
He shrugged. ‘A bigger welcome. Some party balloons. I’m not sure. My grandmother told me I would close the circle – bring our family honour and all that. But my cousins here … they acted kind of cold and distant, like they didn’t want me around. I don’t think they liked that I’m a son of Mars. Honestly, I don’t think they liked that I’m Chinese, either.’
Piper glared into the sky. The seagull was long gone, which was probably a good thing. She would have been tempted to shoot it out of the air with a glazed ham. ‘If your cousins feel that way, they’re idiots. They don’t know how great you are.’
Frank shuffled from foot to foot. ‘They got a little more friendly when I told them I was just passing through. They gave me a going-away present.’
He opened his hand. In his palm gleamed a metallic vial no bigger than an eyedropper.
Piper resisted the urge to step away. ‘Is that the poison?’
Frank nodded. ‘They call it Pylosian mint. Apparently the plant sprang from the blood of a nymph who died on a mountain near here, back in ancient times. I didn’t ask for details.’
The vial was so tiny … Piper worried there wouldn’t be enough. Normally she didn’t wish for more deadly poison. Nor was she sure how it would help them make the so-called physician’s cure that Nike had mentioned. But, if the cure could really cheat death, Piper wanted to brew a six-pack – one dose for each of her friends.
Frank rolled the vial around in his palm. ‘I wish Vitellius Reticulus were here.’
Piper wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. ‘Ridiculous who?’