The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(25)

Had she been addressing Jason, or Piper, or both of them? If so, and if they had actually found the Oracle …

‘We need to talk to those demigods,’ I decided.

Mellie lowered her head. ‘I can’t take you. Going back … it would break my heart.’

Hedge shifted Baby Chuck to his other arm. ‘Maybe I could –’

Mellie shot him a warning look.

‘Yeah, I can’t go either,’ Hedge muttered.

‘I’ll take you,’ Grover volunteered, though he looked more exhausted than ever. ‘I know where the McLean house is. Just, uh, maybe we can wait until the morning?’

A sense of relief washed over the assembled dryads. Their spikes relaxed. The chlorophyll came back into their complexions. Grover may not have solved their problems, but he had given them hope – at the very least, a sense that we could do something.

I gazed at the circle of hazy orange sky above the Cistern. I thought about the fires blazing to the west, and what might be going on up north at Camp Jupiter. Sitting at the bottom of a shaft in Palm Springs, unable to help the Roman demigods or even know what was happening to them, I could empathize with the dryads – rooted in place, watching in despair as the wildfires got closer and closer.

I didn’t want to quash the dryads’ newfound hopes, but I felt compelled to say, ‘There’s more. Your sanctuary might not be safe for much longer.’

I told them what Incitatus had said to Caligula on the phone. And, no, I never thought I would be reporting on an eavesdropped conversation between a talking horse and a dead Roman emperor.

Aloe Vera trembled, shaking several highly medicinal triangle spikes from her hair. ‘H-how could they know about Aeithales? They’ve never bothered us here!’

Grover winced. ‘I don’t know, guys. But … the horse did seem to imply that Caligula was the one who had destroyed it years ago. He said something like I know you think you took care of it. But that place is still dangerous.’

Joshua’s bark-brown face turned even darker. ‘Doesn’t make sense. Even we don’t know what this place was.’

‘A house,’ Meg said. ‘A big house on stilts. These cisterns … they were support columns, geothermal cooling, water supply.’

The dryads bristled all over again. They said nothing, waiting for Meg to continue.

She drew in her wet feet, making her look even more like a nervous squirrel ready to spring away. I remembered how she’d wanted to leave here as soon as we arrived, how she’d warned it wasn’t safe. I recalled one line of the prophecy we hadn’t yet discussed: Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots.

‘Meg,’ I said, as gently as I could, ‘how do you know this place?’

Her expression turned tense but defiant, as if she wasn’t sure whether to burst into tears or fight me.

‘Because it was my home,’ she said. ‘My dad built Aeithales.’





11


No touchy the god

Unless your visions are good

And you wash your hands





You don’t do that.

You don’t just announce that your dad built a mysterious house on a sacred spot for dryads, then get up and leave without an explanation.

So, of course, that’s what Meg did.

‘See you in the morning,’ she announced to no one in particular.

She trudged up the ramp, still barefoot despite traipsing past twenty different species of cactus, and slipped into the dark.

Grover looked around at his assembled comrades. ‘Um, well, good meeting, everybody.’

He promptly fell over, snoring before he hit the ground.

Aloe Vera gave me a concerned glance. ‘Should I go after Meg? She might need more aloe goo.’

‘I’ll check on her,’ I promised.

The nature spirits began cleaning up their dinner trash (dryads are very conscientious about that sort of thing), while I went in search of Meg McCaffrey.

I found her five feet off the ground, perched on the rim of the furthest brick cylinder, facing inward and staring into the shaft below. Judging from the warm strawberry fragrance wafting from the cracks in the stone, I guessed this was the same well we’d used to exit the Labyrinth.

‘You’re making me nervous,’ I said. ‘Would you come down?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Of course not,’ I muttered.

I climbed up, despite the fact that scaling walls really wasn’t in my skill set. (Oh, who am I kidding? In my present state, I didn’t have a skill set.)

I joined Meg on the edge, dangling my feet over the abyss from which we’d escaped … Had it really been only this morning? I couldn’t see the net of strawberry plants below in the shadows, but their smell was powerful and exotic in the desert setting. Strange how a common thing can become uncommon in a new environment. Or, in my case, how an uncommonly amazing god can become so very common.

The night sapped the colour from Meg’s clothes, making her look like a greyscale traffic light. Her runny nose glistened. Behind the grimy lenses of her glasses, her eyes were wet. She twisted one gold ring, then the other, as if adjusting knobs on an old-fashioned radio.

We’d had a long day. The silence between us felt comfortable, and I wasn’t sure I could tolerate any further scary information about our Hoosier prophecy. On the other hand, I needed explanations. Before I went to sleep in this place again, I wanted to know how safe or unsafe it was, and whether I might wake up with a talking horse in my face.