avoid brushing shoulders with the senator on her left. Tyson grinned at the Lar on his right, wriggling his fingers inside the ghost’s vaporous rib cage.
Behind them, the semicircle of tiered seats was packed to overflowing with legionnaires, Lares, retired veterans, and other citizens of New Rome. I hadn’t seen a lecture hall this crowded since Charles Dickens’s 1867 Second American Tour. (Great show. I still have the autographed T-shirt framed in my bedroom in the Palace of the Sun.)
I thought I should sit in front, being an honorary wearer of bed linens, but there was simply no room. Then I spotted Lavinia (thank you, pink hair) waving at us from the back row. She patted the bench next to her, indicating that she’d saved us seats. A thoughtful gesture. Or maybe she wanted something.
Once Meg and I had settled on either side of her, Lavinia gave Meg the supersecret Unicorn Sisterhood fist bump, then turned and ribbed me with her sharp elbow. “So, you’re really Apollo, after all! You must know my mom.”
“I—what?”
Her eyebrows were extra distracting today. The dark roots had started to grow out under the pink dye, which made them seem to hover slightly off center, as if they were about to float off her face.
“My mom?” she repeated, popping her bubble gum. “Terpsichore?”
“The—the Muse of Dance. Are you asking me if she’s your mother, or if I know her?”
“Of course she’s my mother.”
“Of course I know her.”
“Well, then!” Lavinia drummed a riff on her knees, as if to prove she had a dancer’s rhythm despite being so gangly. “I wanna hear the dirt!”
“The dirt?”
“I’ve never met her.”
“Oh. Um…” Over the centuries, I’d had many conversations with demigods who wanted to know more about their absentee godly parents. Those talks rarely went well. I tried to conjure a picture of Terpsichore, but my memories of Olympus were getting fuzzier by the day. I vaguely recalled the Muse frolicking around one of the parks on Mount Olympus, casting rose petals in her wake as she twirled and pirouetted. Truth be told, Terpsichore had never been my favorite of the Nine Muses. She tended to take the spotlight off me, where it rightly belonged.
“She had your color hair,” I ventured.
“Pink?”
“No, I mean…dark. Lots of nervous energy, I suppose, like you. She was never happy unless she was moving, but…”
My voice died. What could I say that wouldn’t sound mean? Terpsichore was graceful and poised and didn’t look like a wobbly giraffe? Was Lavinia sure there hadn’t been some mistake about her parentage? Because I couldn’t believe they were related.
“But what?” she pressed.
“Nothing. Hard to remember.”
Down at the rostrum, Reyna was calling the meeting to order. “Everyone, if you’ll please take your seats! We need to get started. Dakota, can you scoot in a little to make room for—Thanks.”
Lavinia regarded me skeptically. “That’s the lamest dirt ever. If you can’t tell me about my mom, at least tell me what’s going on with you and Ms. Praetor down there.”
I squirmed. The bench suddenly felt a great deal harder under my clunis. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Oh, please. The way you’ve been sneaking glances at Reyna since you got here? I noticed it. Meg noticed.”
“I noticed,” Meg confirmed.
“Even Frank Zhang noticed.” Lavinia turned up her palms as if she’d just provided the ultimate proof of complete obviousness.
Reyna began to address the crowd: “Senators, guests, we have called this emergency meeting to discuss—”
“Honestly,” I whispered to Lavinia, “it’s awkward. You wouldn’t understand.”
She snorted. “Awkward is telling your rabbi that Daniella Bernstein is going to be your date for your bat mitzvah party. Or telling your dad that the only dancing you want to do is tap, so you’re not going to carry on the Asimov family tradition. I know all about awkward.”
Reyna continued, “In light of Jason Grace’s ultimate sacrifice, and our own recent battle against the undead, we have to take very seriously the threat—”
“Wait,” I whispered to Lavinia, her words sinking in. “Your dad is Sergei Asimov? The dancer? The—” I stopped myself before I could say The smoking-hot Russian ballet star, but judging from Lavinia’s eye roll, she knew what I was thinking.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Stop trying to change the subject. Are you going to dish on—?”
“Lavinia Asimov!” Reyna called from the rostrum. “Did you have something to say?”
All eyes turned toward us. A few legionnaires smirked, as if this was not the first time Lavinia had been called out during a senate meeting.
Lavinia glanced from side to