The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4)(6)

“You don’t have a car.”

“I need to feed my dog—”

“Don!” Lavinia snapped. “You owe me.”

“Okay, okay.” Don tugged his wrist free and rubbed it, his expression aggrieved. “Look, just because I said Poison Oak might be at the picnic doesn’t mean, you know, I promised she would be.”

Lavinia’s face turned terra-cotta red. “That’s not what I meant! I’ve covered for you, like, a thousand times. Now you need to help me with this.”

She gestured vaguely at me, the hearse, the world in general. I wondered if Lavinia was new to Camp Jupiter. She seemed uncomfortable in her legionnaire armor. She kept shrugging her shoulders, bending her knees, tugging at the silver Star of David pendant that hung from her long, slender neck. Her soft brown eyes and tuft of pink hair only accentuated my first impression of her—a baby giraffe that had wobbled away from her mother for the first time and was now examining the savannah as if thinking, Why am I here?

Meg stumbled up next to me. She grabbed my quiver for balance, garroting me with its strap in the process. “Who’s Poison Oak?”

“Meg,” I chided, “that’s none of our business. But if I had to guess, I’d say Poison Oak is a dryad whom Lavinia here is interested in, just like you were interested in Joshua back at Palm Springs.”

Meg barked, “I was not interested—”

Lavinia chorused, “I am not interested—”

Both girls fell silent, scowling at each other.

“Besides,” Meg said, “isn’t Poison Oak…like, poisonous?”

Lavinia splayed her fingers to the sky as if thinking, Not that question again. “Poison Oak is gorgeous! Which is not to say I’d definitely go out with her—”

Don snorted. “Whatever, dude.”

Lavinia glared crossbow bolts at the faun. “But I’d think about it—if there was chemistry or whatever. Which is why I was willing to sneak away from my patrol for this picnic, where Don assured me—”

“Whoa, hey!” Don laughed nervously. “Aren’t we supposed to be getting these guys to camp? How about that hearse? Does it still run?”

I take back what I said about fauns not being good at anything. Don was quite adept at changing the subject.

Upon closer inspection, I saw how badly damaged the hearse was. Aside from numerous eucalyptus-scented dents and scratches, the front end had crumpled going through the guardrail. It now resembled Flaco Jiménez’s accordion after I took a baseball bat to it. (Sorry, Flaco, but you played so well I got jealous, and the accordion had to die.) “We can carry the coffin,” Lavinia suggested. “The four of us.”

Another angry screech cut through the evening air. It sounded closer this time—somewhere just north of the highway.

“We’ll never make it,” I said, “not climbing all the way back up to the Caldecott Tunnel.”

“There’s another way,” Lavinia said. “Secret entrance to camp. A lot closer.”

“I like close,” Meg said.

“Thing is,” said Lavinia, “I’m supposed to be on guard duty right now. My shift is about to end. I’m not sure how long my partner can cover for me. So when we get to the camp, let me do the talking about where and how we met.”

Don shuddered. “If anyone finds out Lavinia skipped sentry duty again—”

“Again?” I asked.

“Shut up, Don,” Lavinia said.

On one hand, Lavinia’s troubles seemed trivial compared to, say, dying and getting eaten by a ghoul. On the other hand, I knew that Roman-legion punishments could be harsh. They often involved whips, chains, and rabid live animals, much like an Ozzy Osbourne concert circa 1980.

“You must really like this Poison Oak,” I decided.

Lavinia grunted. She scooped up her manubalista bolt and shook it at me threateningly. “I help you, you help me. That’s the deal.”

Meg spoke for me: “Deal. How fast can we run with a coffin?”


Not very fast, as it turned out.

After grabbing the rest of our things from the hearse, Meg and I took the back end of Jason’s coffin. Lavinia and Don took the front. We did a clumsy pallbearer jog along the shoreline, me glancing nervously at the treetops, hoping no more ghouls would rain from the sky.

Lavinia promised us that the secret entrance was just across the lake. The problem was, it was across the lake, which meant that, not being able to pallbear on water, we had to lug Jason’s casket roughly a quarter mile around the shore.

“Oh, come on,” Lavinia said when I complained. “We ran over here from the beach to help you guys. The least you can do is run back with us.”

“Yes,” I said, “but this coffin is heavy.”

“I’m with him,” Don agreed.

Lavinia snorted. “You guys should try marching twenty miles in full legionnaire gear.”

“No, thanks,” I muttered.

Meg said nothing. Despite her drained complexion and labored breathing, she shouldered her side of the coffin without complaint—probably just to make me feel bad.

Finally we reached the picnic beach. A sign at the trailhead read:

LAKE TEMESCAL

SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK