The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(100)

“No,” I said. “I won’t forget. The memory is part of me now.”

“Well, then, good. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

“What?”

She pointed back to her friend Shel.

“Oh, of course. Take care of yourself, Piper McLean.”

“You too, Apollo. And next time, maybe give me a heads-up before popping in?”

I muttered something apologetic, but she had already turned to go—back to her new friend, her new life, and the stars in the sky.

The last and hardest reunion…Meg McCaffrey.

A summer day in Palm Springs. The dry, blistering heat reminded me of the Burning Maze, but there was nothing malicious or magical about it. The desert simply got hot.

Aeithales, the former home of Dr. Phillip McCaffrey, was an oasis of cool, verdant life. Tree limbs had grown to reshape the once fully manmade structure, making it even more impressive than it had been in Meg’s childhood. Annabeth would have been blown away by the local dryads’ environmental design. Windows had been replaced by layers of vines that opened and closed automatically for shade and cool, responding to the winds’ smallest fluctuations. The greenhouses had been repaired and were now packed with rare specimens of plants from all around Southern California. Natural springs filled the cisterns and provided water for the gardens and a cooling system for the house.

I appeared in my old Lester form on the pathway from the house to the gardens and was almost skewered by the Meliai, Meg’s personal troupe of seven super dryads.

“Halt!” they yelled in unison. “Intruder!”

“It’s just me!” I said, which didn’t seem to help. “Lester!” Still nothing. “Meg’s old, you know, servant.”

The Meliai lowered their spear points.

“Oh, yes,” said one.

“Servant of the Meg,” said another.

“The weak, insufficient one,” said a third. “Before the Meg had our services.”

“I’ll have you know I’m a full Olympian god now,” I protested.

The dryads did not look impressed.

“We will march you to the Meg,” one said. “She will pass judgment. Double-time!”

They formed a phalanx around me and herded me up the path. I could have vanished or flown away or done any number of impressive things, but they had surprised me. I fell into my old Lester-ish habits and allowed myself to be force-marched to my old master.

We found her digging in the dirt alongside her former Nero family members—showing them how to transplant cactus saplings. I spotted Aemillia and Lucius, contentedly caring for their baby cacti. Even young Cassius was there, though how Meg had tracked him down, I had no idea. He was joking with one of the dryads, looking so relaxed I couldn’t believe he was the same boy who had fled from Nero’s tower.

Nearby, at the edge of a newly planted peach orchard, the karpos Peaches stood in all his diapered glory. (Oh, sure. He showed up after the danger had passed.) He was engaged in a heated conversation with a young female karpos whom I assumed was a native of the area. She looked much like Peaches himself, except she was covered in a fine layer of spines.

“Peaches,” Peaches told her.

“Prickly Pear!” the young lady rejoined.

“Peaches!”

“Prickly Pear!”

That seemed to be the extent of their argument. Perhaps it was about to devolve into a death match for local fruit supremacy. Or perhaps it was the beginning of the greatest love story ever to ripen. It was hard to tell with karpoi.

Meg did a double take when she saw me. Her face split in a grin. She wore her pink Sally Jackson dress, topped with a gardening hat that looked like a mushroom cap. Despite the protection, her neck was turning red from the work outdoors.

“You’re back,” she noted.

I smiled. “You’re sunburned.”

“Come here,” she ordered.

Her commands no longer held force, but I went to her anyway. She hugged me tight. She smelled like prickly pear and warm sand. I might have gotten a little teary-eyed.

“You guys keep at it,” she told her trainees. “I’ll be back.”

The former imperial children looked happy to comply. They actually seemed determined to garden, as if their sanity depended on it, which perhaps it did.

Meg took my hand and led me on a tour of the new estate, the Meliai still in our wake. She showed me the trailer where Herophile the Sibyl now lived when she wasn’t working in town as a Tarot card reader and crystal healer. Meg boasted that the former Oracle was bringing in enough cash to cover all of Aeithales’s expenses.

Our dryad friends Joshua and Aloe Vera were pleased to see me. They told me about their work traveling across Southern California, planting new dryads and doing their best to heal the damage from the droughts and wildfires. They had lots of work still to do, but things were looking up. Aloe followed us around for a while, lathering Meg’s sunburnt shoulders with goo and chiding her.

Finally, we arrived in the house’s main room, where Luguselwa was putting together a rocking chair. She’d been fitted with new mechanical hands, compliments, Meg told me, of the Hephaestus cabin at Camp Half-Blood.

“Hey, cellmate!” Lu grinned. She made a hand gesture that was usually not associated with friendly greeting. Then she cursed and shook her metal fingers until they opened into a proper wave. “Sorry about that. These hands haven’t quite been programmed right. Got a few kinks to work out.”