The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,29
and peach spirits don’t mix.
Will sat next to Nico and put an apple on his empty plate. “Eat something.”
“Hmph,” Nico said, though he leaned into Will ever so slightly.
“Right.” Dionysus held up a cream-colored piece of stationery between his fingers, like a magician producing a card. “This came for me last night via harpy courier.”
He slid it across the table so I could read the fancy print.
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus
Requests the pleasure of your company
At the burning of
The Greater New York Metropolitan Area
Forty-eight hours after receipt of this Invitation
UNLESS
The former god Apollo, now known as
Lester Papadopoulos,
Surrenders himself before that time to imperial justice
At the Tower of Nero
IN WHICH CASE
We will just have cake
GIFTS:
Only expensive ones, please
R.S.V.P.
Don’t bother. If you don’t show up, we’ll know.
I pushed away my huevos rancheros. My appetite had vanished. It was one thing to hear about Nero’s diabolical plans in my nightmares. It was another thing to see them spelled out in black-and-white calligraphy with a promise of cake.
“Forty-eight hours from last night,” I said.
“Yes,” Dionysus mused. “I’ve always liked Nero. He has panache.”
Meg stabbed viciously at her pancakes. She filled her mouth with fluffy, syrupy goodness, probably to keep herself from muttering curse words.
Nico caught my gaze across the table. His dark eyes swam with anger and worry. On his plate, the apple started to wither.
Will squeezed his hand. “Hey, stop.”
Nico’s expression softened a bit. The apple stopped its premature slide into old age. “Sorry. I just—I’m tired of talking about problems I can’t fix. I want to help.”
He said help as if it meant chop our enemies into small pieces.
Nico di Angelo wasn’t physically imposing like Sherman Yang. He didn’t have Reyna Ramírez-Arellano’s air of authority, or Hazel Levesque’s commanding presence when she charged into battle on horseback. But Nico wasn’t someone I would ever want as an enemy.
He was deceptively quiet. He appeared anemic and frail. He kept himself on the periphery. But Will was right about how much Nico had been through. He had been born in Mussolini’s Italy. He had survived decades in the time-warp reality of the Lotus Casino. He’d emerged in modern times disoriented and culture-shocked, arrived at Camp Half-Blood, and promptly lost his sister Bianca to a dangerous quest. He had wandered the Labyrinth in self-imposed exile, being tortured and brainwashed by a malevolent ghost. He’d overcome everyone’s distrust and emerged from the Battle of Manhattan as a hero. He’d been captured by giants during the rise of Gaea. He’d wandered Tartarus alone and somehow managed to come out alive. And through it all, he’d struggled with his upbringing as a conservative Catholic Italian male from the 1930s and finally learned to accept himself as a young gay man.
Anyone who could survive all that had more resilience than Stygian iron.
“We do need your help,” I promised. “Meg told you about the prophetic verses?”
“Meg told Will,” Nico said. “Will told me. Terza rima. Like in Dante. We had to study him in elementary school in Italy. Gotta say, I never thought it would come in handy.”
Will poked at his bran muffin. “Just so I’m clear…You got the first stanza from a Cyclops’s armpit, the second from a two-headed snake, and the third from three old ladies who drive a taxi?”
“We didn’t have much choice in the matter,” I said. “But yes.”
“Does the poem ever end?” Will asked. “If the rhyme scheme interlocks stanza to stanza, couldn’t it keep going forever?”
I shuddered. “I hope not. Usually the last stanza would include a closing couplet, but we haven’t heard one yet.”
“Which means,” Nico said, “that there are more stanzas to come.”
“Yippee.” Meg shoved more pancake in her mouth.
Dionysus matched her with a mouthful of his own, as if they were engaged in a competition to see who could devour the most and enjoy it the least.
“Well, then,” Will said with forced cheerfulness, “let’s discuss the stanzas we have. What was it—The tow’r of Nero two alone ascend? That part is obvious enough. It must mean Apollo and Meg, right?”
“We surrender,” Meg said. “That’s Luguselwa’s plan.”
Dionysus snorted. “Apollo, please tell me you’re not going to trust a Gaul. You haven’t gotten that addle-brained, have you?”
“Hey!” Meg said. “We can trust Lu. She let Lester throw her off a roof.”
Dionysus narrowed his eyes. “Did she survive?”
Meg looked flustered. “I mean—”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “She did.”
I told them what I had seen in my dreams: the broken Gaul brought before Nero’s throne, the emperor’s ultimatum, then my plunge into the caverns beneath Delphi, where