me. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave her someplace safe with a couple of fauns, and of course Aurum and Argentum. She’ll be taken care of while she heals. You and Meg, do what you need to do.”
Her confident stance and her take-charge tone made her almost unrecognizable as the gawky, nervous legionnaire we’d met at Lake Temescal. She reminded me more of Reyna now, and of Meg. Mostly, though, she seemed like a stronger version of herself—a Lavinia who had decided what she needed to do and would not rest until she did it.
“Where are you going?” I asked, still utterly confused. “Why won’t you come back to camp with us?”
Meg stumbled over, ambrosia crumbles stuck around her mouth. “Don’t pester her,” she told me. Then to Lavinia: “Is Peaches…?”
Lavinia shook her head. “He and Don are with the advance group, making contact with the Nereids.”
Meg pouted. “Yeah. Okay. The emperors’ ground forces?”
Lavinia’s expression turned somber. “They already passed by. We hid and watched. Yeah…It’s not good. I’m sure they’ll be in combat with the legion by the time you get there. You remember the path I told you about?”
“Yeah,” Meg agreed. “Okay, good luck.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I tried to make a time-out sign, though my uncoordinated hands made it look more like a tent. “What are you talking about? What path? Why would you come out here just to hide as the enemy army passes by? Why are Peaches and Don talking to…Wait. Nereids?”
Nereids are spirits of the sea. The nearest ones would be…Oh.
I couldn’t see much from our trash-filled gulley. I definitely couldn’t see the San Francisco Bay, or the string of yachts taking up position to fire on the camp. But I knew we were close.
I looked at Lavinia with newfound respect. Or disrespect. Which is it when you realize that someone you knew was crazy is actually even crazier than you suspected?
“Lavinia, you are not planning—”
“Stop right there,” she warned, “or I’ll have Felipe put you down for a nap, too.”
“But Michael Kahale—”
“Yeah, we know. He failed. The emperors’ troops were bragging about it as they marched past. It’s one more thing they have to pay for.”
Brave words, but her eyes betrayed a flicker of worry, telling me she was more terrified than she let on. She was having trouble keeping up her own courage and preventing her makeshift troops from losing their nerve. She did not need me reminding her how insane her plan was.
“We’ve all got a lot to do,” she said. “Good luck.” She ruffled Meg’s hair, which did not need any more ruffling. “Dryads and fauns, let’s move!”
Harold and Felipe picked up Reyna’s makeshift stretcher and jogged off down the gully, Aurum and Argentum bounding around them like, Oh, boy, another hike! Lavinia and the others followed. Soon they were lost in the underbrush, vanishing into the terrain as only nature spirits and girls with bright pink hair can do.
Meg studied my face. “You whole?”
I almost wanted to laugh. Where had she picked up that expression? I had zombie poison coursing through my body and up into my face. The dryads thought I would turn into a shambling undead minion of Tarquin as soon as it got fully dark. I was shaking from exhaustion and fear. We apparently had an enemy army between us and camp, and Lavinia was leading a suicide attack on the imperial fleet with inexperienced nature spirits, when an actual elite commando force had already failed.
When had I last felt “whole”? I wanted to believe it was back when I was a god, but that wasn’t true. I hadn’t been completely myself for centuries. Maybe millennia.
At the moment, I felt more like a hole—a void in the cosmos through which Harpocrates, the Sibyl, and a lot of people I cared about had vanished.
“I’ll manage,” I said.
“Good, because look.” Meg pointed toward the Oakland Hills. I thought I was seeing fog, but fog didn’t rise vertically from hillsides. Close to the perimeter of Camp Jupiter, fires were burning.
“We need wheels,” said Meg.
Welcome to the war
We hope you enjoy your death
Please come again soon!
OKAY, BUT WHY DID it have to be bicycles?
I understood that cars were a deal-breaker. We had crashed enough vehicles for one week. I understood that jogging to camp was out of the question, given the fact that we could barely stand.
But why didn’t demigods have some sort of ride-share app for summoning giant eagles? I decided I would create one as soon as I became a god