The Hidden Oracle (The Trials of Apollo #1)(34)

A blanket was draped over me.

Will said, “Sleep well, Apollo.”

Perhaps it was his persuasive voice, or the fact that I was more exhausted than I had been in centuries. Immediately, I drifted into unconsciousness.


Thank the remaining eleven Olympians, I had no dreams.

I woke in the morning feeling strangely refreshed. My chest no longer hurt. My nose no longer felt like a water balloon attached to my face. With the help of my offspring (cabin mates—I will call them cabin mates), I managed to master the arcane mysteries of the shower, the toilet, and the sink. The toothbrush was a shock. The last time I was mortal, there had been no such thing. And underarm deodorant—what a ghastly idea that I should need enchanted salve to keep my armpits from producing stench!

When I was done with my morning ablutions and dressed in clean clothes from the camp store—sneakers, jeans, an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, and a comfy winter coat of flannel wool—I felt almost optimistic. Perhaps I could survive this human experience.

I perked up even more when I discovered bacon.

Oh, gods—bacon! I promised myself that once I achieved immortality again, I would assemble the Nine Muses and together we would create an ode, a hymnal to the power of bacon, which would move the heavens to tears and cause rapture across the universe.

Bacon is good.

Yes—that may be the title of the song: “Bacon Is Good.”

Seating for breakfast was less formal than dinner. We filled our trays at a buffet line and were allowed to sit wherever we wished. I found this delightful. (Oh, what a sad commentary on my new mortal mind that I, who once dictated the course of nations, should get excited about open seating.) I took my tray and found Meg, who was sitting by herself on the edge of the pavilion’s retaining wall, dangling her feet over the side and watching the waves at the beach.

“How are you?” I asked.

Meg nibbled on a waffle. “Yeah. Great.”

“You are a powerful demigod, daughter of Demeter.”

“Mm-hm.”

If I could trust my understanding of human responses, Meg did not seem thrilled.

“Your cabin mate, Billie…Is she nice?”

“Sure. All good.”

“And Peaches?”

She looked at me sideways. “Disappeared overnight. Guess he only shows up when I’m in danger.”

“Well, that’s an appropriate time for him to show up.”

“Ap-pro-pri-ate.” Meg touched a waffle square for each syllable. “Sherman Yang had to get seven stitches.”

I glanced over at Sherman, who sat at a safe distance across the pavilion, glaring daggers at Meg. A nasty red zigzag ran down the side of his face.

“I wouldn’t worry,” I told Meg. “Ares’s children like scars. Besides, Sherman wears the Frankenstein look rather well.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, but her gaze remained far away. “Our cabin has a grass floor—like, green grass. There’s a huge oak tree in the middle, holding up the ceiling.”

“Is that bad?”

“I have allergies.”

“Ah…” I tried to imagine the tree in her cabin. Once upon a time, Demeter had had a sacred grove of oaks. I remembered she’d gotten quite angry when a mortal prince tried to cut it down.

A sacred grove…

Suddenly the bacon in my stomach expanded, wrapping around my organs.

Meg gripped my arm. Her voice was a distant buzz. I only heard the last, most important word: “—Apollo?”

I stirred. “What?”

“You blanked out.” She scowled. “I said your name six times.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Where did you go?”

I could not explain. I felt as if I’d been standing on the deck of a ship when an enormous, dark, and dangerous shape passed beneath the hull—a shape almost discernible, then simply gone.

“I—I don’t know. Something about trees….”

“Trees,” Meg said.

“It’s probably nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. I couldn’t shake the image from my dreams: the crowned woman urging me to find the gates. That woman wasn’t Demeter—at least, I didn’t think so. But the idea of sacred trees stirred a memory within me…something very old, even by my standards.

I didn’t want to talk about this with Meg, not until I’d had time to reflect. She had enough to worry about. Besides, after last night, my new young master made me more apprehensive than ever.

I glanced at the rings on her middle fingers. “So yesterday…those swords. And don’t do that thing.”

Meg’s eyebrows furrowed. “What thing?”

“That thing where you shut down and refuse to talk. Your face turns to cement.”

She gave me a furious pout. “It does not. I’ve got swords. I fight with them. So what?”

“So it might have been nice to know that earlier, when we were in combat with plague spirits.”

“You said it yourself: those spirits couldn’t be killed.”

“You’re sidestepping.” I knew this because it was a tactic I had mastered centuries ago. “The style you fight in, with two curved blades, is the style of a dimachaerus, a gladiator from the late Roman Empire. Even back then, it was rare—possibly the most difficult fighting style to master, and one of the most deadly.”