The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(31)

A room so impressive should not have been empty. It felt like a temple without statues, music and gold offerings. (Oh, why did I torture myself with such analogies?)

Sitting on the fireplace surround, going through a stack of papers, was a young woman with coppery skin and layered dark hair. Her orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt led me to assume that I was looking at Piper, daughter of Aphrodite and Tristan McLean.

Our footsteps echoed in the vast space, but Piper did not look up as we approached. Perhaps she was too engrossed in her papers, or she assumed we were movers.

‘You want me to get up again?’ she muttered. ‘Pretty sure the fireplace is staying here.’

‘Ahem,’ I said.

Piper glanced up. Her multicoloured irises caught the light like smoky prisms. She studied me as if not sure what she was looking at (oh, boy, did I know the feeling), then gave Meg the same confused once-over.

She fixed her eyes on Grover and her jaw dropped. ‘I – I know you,’ she said. ‘From Annabeth’s photos. You’re Grover!’

She shot to her feet, her forgotten papers spilling across the Saltillo tiles. ‘What’s happened? Are Annabeth and Percy all right?’

Grover edged back, which was understandable given Piper’s intense expression.

‘They’re fine!’ he said. ‘At least, I assume they’re fine. I haven’t actually, um, seen them in a while, b-but I have an empathy link with Percy, so if he wasn’t fine I think I’d know –’

‘Apollo.’ Meg knelt down. She picked up one of the fallen papers, her frown even more severe than Piper’s.

My stomach completed its turn inside out. Why had I not noticed the colour of the documents sooner? All the papers – envelopes, collated reports, business letters – were dandelion yellow.

‘ “N.H. Financials”,’ Meg read from the letterhead. ‘ “Division of Triumvirate –” ’

‘Hey!’ Piper swiped the paper from her hand. ‘That’s private!’ Then she faced me as if doing a mental rewind. ‘Wait. Did she just call you Apollo?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ I gave her an awkward bow. ‘Apollo, god of poetry, music, archery and many other important things, at your service, though my learner’s permit reads Lester Papadopoulos.’

She blinked. ‘What?’

‘Also, this is Meg McCaffrey,’ I said. ‘Daughter of Demeter. She doesn’t mean to be nosy. It’s just that we’ve seen papers like these before.’

Piper’s gaze bounced from me to Meg to Grover. The satyr shrugged as if to say, Welcome to my nightmare.

‘You’re going to have to rewind,’ Piper decided.

I did my best to give her the elevator-pitch summary: my fall to earth, my servitude to Meg, my two previous quests to free the Oracles of Dodona and Trophonius, my travels with Calypso and Leo Valdez …

‘LEO?’ Piper grabbed my arms so hard I feared she would leave bruises. ‘He’s alive?’

‘Hurts,’ I whimpered.

‘Sorry.’ She let go. ‘I need to know everything about Leo. Now.’

I did my best to comply, fearing that she might physically pull the information from my brain otherwise.

‘That little fire-flicker,’ she grumbled. ‘We search for months, and he just shows up at camp?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘There is a waiting list of people who would like to hit him. We can fit you in sometime next fall. But right now we need your help. We have to free a Sibyl from the emperor Caligula.’

Piper’s expression reminded me of a juggler’s, trying to track fifteen different objects in the air at once.

‘I knew it,’ she muttered. ‘I knew Jason wasn’t telling me –’

Half a dozen movers suddenly lumbered through the front door, speaking in Russian.

Piper scowled. ‘Let’s talk on the terrace,’ she said. ‘We can exchange bad news.’





13


Don’t move the gas grill

Meg is still playing with it

We are so KA-BOOM





Oh, the scenic ocean vista! Oh, the waves crashing against the cliffs below, and the gulls whirling overhead! Oh, the large, sweaty mover in a lounge chair, checking his texts!

The man looked up when we arrived on the terrace. He scowled, grudgingly got to his feet and lumbered inside, leaving a mover-shaped perspiration stain on the fabric of the chair.

‘If I still had my cornucopia,’ Piper said, ‘I’d shoot those guys with glazed hams.’

My abdominal muscles twitched. I’d once been hit in the gut by a roasted boar shot from a cornucopia when Demeter was especially angry with me … but that’s another story.

Piper climbed the terrace fence and sat on top of it, facing us, her feet hooked around the rails. I supposed she’d perched there hundreds of times and no longer thought about the long drop. Far below, at the bottom of a zigzagging wooden stairway, a narrow strip of beach clung to the base of the cliffs. Waves crashed against jagged rocks. I decided not to join Piper on the railing. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but I was definitely afraid of my own poor sense of balance.

Grover peered at the sweaty lounge chair – the only piece of furniture left on the terrace – and opted to remain standing. Meg strolled over to a built-in stainless-steel gas grill and began playing with the knobs. I estimated we had about five minutes before she blew us all to bits.