The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(25)

A forty-eight-hour ultimatum, Nero had said in my dream. Then he would burn down New York.

Gods, why wasn’t there an option C on this multiple-choice test?

Clink, clink, clink.

Dionysus rose at the head table, a glass and spoon in his hands. The dining pavilion fell silent. Demigods turned and waited for morning announcements. I recalled Chiron having much more trouble getting everyone’s attention. Then again, Chiron didn’t have the power to turn the entire assembly into bunches of grapes.

“Mr. A and Will Solace, report to the head table,” Dionysus said.

The campers waited for more.

“That’s all,” Mr. D said. “Honestly, do I need to tell you how to eat breakfast? Carry on!”

The campers resumed their normal happy chaos. Will and I picked up our plates.

“Good luck,” Kayla said. “I have a feeling you’ll need it.”

We went to join Dionysus and Nico at the International Head-table of Pancakes.





DIONYSUS HAD NOT ASKED FOR MEG, BUT she joined us anyway.

She plopped down next to me with her plate of flapjacks and snapped her fingers at Dionysus. “Pass the syrup.”

I feared Mr. D might turn her into a taxidermied back end for Seymour, but he simply did as she asked. I suppose he didn’t want to polymorph the only other person at camp who liked pinochle.

Peaches stayed behind at the Demeter table, where he was getting fawned over by the campers. This was just as well, since grape gods 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?”