The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5)(22)

‘Leo!’ Piper’s voice came from somewhere behind him. ‘We need you.’

The Celestial bronze O-ring slipped out of Leo’s pliers and slid into the depths of the crawl space.

Leo sighed. ‘Talk to the pants, Piper! ’Cause the hands are busy!’

‘I am not talking to the pants. Meeting in the mess hall. We’re almost at Olympia.’

‘Yeah, fine. I’ll be there in a sec.’

‘What are you doing, anyway? You’ve been poking around inside the hull for days.’

Leo swept his flashlight across the Celestial bronze plates and pistons he’d been installing slowly but surely. ‘Routine maintenance.’

Silence. Piper was a little too good at knowing when he was lying. ‘Leo –’

‘Hey, while you’re out there, do me a favour. I got this itch right below my –’

‘Fine, I’m leaving!’

Leo allowed himself a couple more minutes to fasten the brace. His work wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. But he was making progress.

Of course, he’d laid the groundwork for his secret project when he first built the Argo II, but he hadn’t told anyone about it. He had barely been honest with himself about what he was doing.

Nothing lasts forever, his dad once told him. Not even the best machines.

Yeah, okay, maybe that was true. But Hephaestus had also said, Everything can be reused. Leo intended to test that theory.

It was a dangerous risk. If he failed, it would crush him. Not just emotionally. It would physically crush him.

The thought made him claustrophobic.

He wriggled out of the crawl space and went back into his cabin.

Well … technically it was his cabin, but he didn’t sleep there. The mattress was littered with wires, nails and the guts of several disassembled bronze machines. His three massive rolling tool cabinets – Chico, Harpo and Groucho – took up most of the room. Dozens of power tools hung on the walls. The worktable was piled with photocopied blueprints from On Spheres, the forgotten Archimedes text Leo had liberated from an underground workshop in Rome.

Even if he wanted to sleep in his cabin, it would’ve been too cramped and dangerous. He preferred to bed down in the engine room, where the constant hum of machinery helped him fall asleep. Besides, ever since his time on the island of Ogygia, he had become fond of camping out. A bedroll on the floor was all he needed.

His cabin was only for storage … and for working on his most difficult projects.

He pulled his keys from his tool belt. He didn’t really have time, but he unlocked Groucho’s middle drawer and stared at the two precious objects inside: a bronze astrolabe he’d picked up in Bologna, and a fist-sized chunk of crystal from Ogygia. Leo hadn’t figured out how to put the two things together yet, and it was driving him crazy.

He’d been hoping to get some answers when they visited Ithaca. After all, it was the home of Odysseus, the dude who had constructed the astrolabe. But, judging from what Jason had said, those ruins hadn’t held any answers for him – just a bunch of ill-tempered ghouls and ghosts.

Anyway, Odysseus never got the astrolabe to work. He hadn’t had a crystal to use as a homing beacon. Leo did. He would have to succeed where the cleverest demigod of all time had failed.

Just Leo’s luck. A super-hot immortal girl was waiting for him on Ogygia, but he couldn’t figure out how to wire a stupid chunk of rock into the three-thousand-year-old navigation device. Some problems even duct tape couldn’t solve.

Leo closed the drawer and locked it.

His eyes drifted to the bulletin board above his worktable, where two pictures hung side by side. The first was the old crayon drawing he’d made when he was seven years old – a diagram of a flying ship he’d seen in his dreams. The second was a charcoal sketch Hazel had recently made for him.

Hazel Levesque … that girl was something. As soon as Leo rejoined the crew in Malta, she’d known right away that Leo was hurting inside. The first chance she got, after all that mess in the House of Hades, she’d marched into Leo’s cabin and said, ‘Spill.’

Hazel was a good listener. Leo told her the whole story. Later that evening, Hazel came back with her sketch pad and her charcoal pencils. ‘Describe her,’ she insisted. ‘Every detail.’

It felt a little weird helping Hazel make a portrait of Calypso – as if he were talking to a police artist: Yes, officer, that’s the girl who stole my heart! Sounded like a freaking country song.

But describing Calypso had been easy. Leo couldn’t close his eyes without seeing her.

Now her likeness gazed back at him from the bulletin board – her almond-shaped eyes, her pouty lips, her long straight hair swept over one shoulder of her sleeveless dress. He could almost smell her cinnamon fragrance. Her knitted brow and the downward turn of her mouth seemed to say, Leo Valdez, you are so full of it.

Dang, he loved that woman!

Leo had pinned her portrait next to the drawing of the Argo II to remind himself that sometimes visions do come true. As a little kid, he’d dreamed about a flying ship. Eventually he built it. Now he would build a way to get back to Calypso.

The hum of the ship’s engines changed to a lower pitch. Over the cabin loudspeaker, Festus’s voice creaked and squeaked.

‘Yeah, thanks, buddy,’ Leo said. ‘On my way.’