The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,22
hint of doubt crept into my cranium. Was it possible—? No, surely not. If I fell for their tricks, I’d most likely get the Gray Sisters’ hot take on which facial products were perfect for my skin undertones.
“Not buying it,” I said.
“Not selling!” Wasp shrieked. “Too important, these lines! We would only tell you if you threatened us with terrible things!”
“I will not resort to threatening you—”
“He’s threatening us!” Tempest flailed. She slammed Wasp on the back so hard the communal eyeball popped right out of her socket. Wasp snatched it—and with a terrible show of fumbling, intentionally chucked it over her shoulder, right into my lap.
I screamed.
The sisters screamed, too. Anger, now bereft of guidance, swerved all over the road, sending my stomach into my esophagus.
“Get it off!” I squirmed and tilted my hips, hoping the eye would roll away, but it stayed stubbornly in my lap, staring up at me with the accusatory glare of a dead catfish. Meg did not help. Clearly, she didn’t want to do anything that might interfere with the coolness of us dying in a faster-than-light car crash.
“He will crush our eye,” Anger cried, “if we don’t recite our verses!”
“I will not!”
“We will all die!” Wasp said. “He is crazy!”
“I AM NOT!”
“Fine, you win!” Tempest howled. She drew herself up and recited as if performing for the people in Connecticut ten miles away: “A dare reveals the path that was unknown!”
Wasp concluded: “Or else the princeps never be o’erthrown!”
Meg clapped.
I stared at the Gray Sisters in disbelief. “That wasn’t doggerel. That was terza rima! You just gave us the next stanza of our actual prophecy!”
“Well, that’s all we’ve got for you!” Anger said. “Now give me the eye, quick. We’re almost at camp!”
Panic overcame my shock. If Anger couldn’t stop at our destination, we’d accelerate past the point of no return and vaporize in a colorful streak of plasma across Long Island.
And yet that still sounded better than touching the eyeball in my lap. “Meg! Kleenex?”
She snorted. “Wimp.” She scooped up the eye with her bare hand and tossed it to Anger.
Anger shoved the eye in her socket. She blinked at the road, yelled “YIKES!” and slammed on the brakes so hard my chin hit my sternum.
Once the smoke cleared, I saw we had skidded to a stop on the old farm road just outside of camp. To our left loomed Half-Blood Hill, a single great pine tree rising from its summit, the Golden Fleece glittering from the lowest branch. Coiled around the base of the tree was Peleus the dragon. And standing next to the dragon, casually scratching its ears, was an old frenemy of mine: Dionysus, the god of doing things to annoy Apollo.
PERHAPS THAT LAST COMMENT WAS UNFAIR.
Dionysus was the god of other things, such as wine, madness, Oscar-night after-parties, and certain types of vegetation. But to me, he would always be the annoying little brother who followed me around, trying to get my attention by imitating everything I did.
You know the type. You’re a god. Your little brother pesters Dad to make him a god, too, even though being a god is supposed to be your thing. You have a nice chariot pulled by fiery horses. Your little brother insists on getting his own chariot pulled by leopards. You lay waste to the Greek armies at Troy. Your little brother decides to invade India. Pretty typical stuff.
Dionysus stood at the top of the hill, as if he’d been expecting us. Being a god, maybe he had. His leopard-skin golf shirt matched the Golden Fleece in the branch above him quite well. His mauve golf slacks did not. In the old days, I might have teased him about his taste in clothes. Now, I couldn’t risk it.
A lump formed in my throat. I was already carsick from our taxi ride and our impromptu game of catch-the-eyeball. My wounded forehead throbbed. My brain swirled with the new lines of prophecy the Gray Sisters had given us. I didn’t need any more things to worry about. But seeing Dionysus again…This would be complicated.
Meg slammed the taxi door behind her. “Thanks, guys!” she told the Gray Sisters. “Next time, tell me about the dog!”
Without so much as a good-bye or a plea to share their poetry with my literary agent, the Gray Sisters submerged in