The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(47)

I sneezed them out.

‘My friends?’ I asked.

Aloe moved aside. Behind her, Grover Underwood sat cross-legged between Piper’s and Meg’s sleeping bags, both girls fast asleep. Like me, they had been slathered with goo. It was a perfect opportunity to take a picture of Meg with green plugs sticking out of her nostrils, for blackmail purposes, but I was too relieved that she was alive. Also, I didn’t have a phone.

‘Will they be all right?’ I asked.

‘They were in worse shape than you,’ Grover said. ‘It was touch and go for a while, but they’ll pull through. I’ve been feeding them nectar and ambrosia.’

Aloe smiled. ‘Also, my healing properties are legendary. Just wait. They’ll be up and walking around by dinner.’

Dinner … I looked at the dark orange circle of sky above. Either it was late afternoon, or the wildfires were closer, or both.

‘Medea?’ I asked.

Grover frowned. ‘Meg told me about the battle before she passed out, but I don’t know what happened to the sorceress. I never saw her.’

I shivered in my aloe gel. I wanted to believe Medea had died in the fiery explosion, but I doubted we could be so lucky. Helios’s fire hadn’t seemed to bother her. Maybe she was naturally immune. Or maybe she had worked some protective magic on herself.

‘Your dryad friends?’ I asked. ‘Agave and Money Maker?’

Aloe and Grover exchanged a sorrowful look.

‘Agave might pull through,’ said Grover. ‘She went dormant as soon as we got her back to her plant. But Money Maker …’ He shook his head.

I had barely met the dryad. Still, the news of her death hit me hard. I felt as if I were dropping green leaf-coins from my body, shedding essential pieces of myself.

I thought about Herophile’s words in my dream: It won’t seem worth it to you. I’m not sure it is myself. But you must come. You must hold them together in their grief.

I feared that Money Maker’s death was only one small part of the grief that awaited us.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

Aloe patted my greasy shoulder. ‘It isn’t your fault, Apollo. By the time you found her, she was too far gone. Unless you’d had …’

She stopped herself, but I knew what she’d intended to say: Unless you’d had your godly healing powers. A lot would have been different if I’d been a god, not a pretender in this pathetic Lester Papadopoulos disguise.

Grover touched the blowpipe at Piper’s side. The river-cane tube had been badly charred, pitted with burn holes that would probably make it unusable.

‘Something else you should know,’ he said. ‘When Agave and I carried Money Maker out of the maze? That big-eared guard, the guy with the white fur? He was gone.’

I considered this. ‘You mean he died and disintegrated? Or he got up and walked away?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grover said. ‘Does either seem likely?’

Neither did, but I decided we had bigger problems to think about.

‘Tonight,’ I said, ‘when Piper and Meg wake up, we need to have another meeting with your dryad friends. We’re going to put this Burning Maze out of business, once and for all.’





20


O Muse, let us now

Sing in praise of botanists!

They do plant stuff. Yay.





Our council of war was more like a council of wincing.

Thanks to Grover’s magic and Aloe Vera’s constant sliming (I mean attention), Piper and Meg regained consciousness. By dinnertime, the three of us could wash, get dressed and even walk around without screaming too much, but we still hurt a great deal. Every time I stood up too fast, tiny golden Caligulas danced before my eyes.

Piper’s blowpipe and quiver – both heirlooms from her grandfather – were ruined. Her hair was singed. Her burned arms, glistening with aloe, looked like newly glazed brick. She called her father to warn him she would be spending the night with her study group, then settled into one of the Cistern’s brickwork alcoves with Mellie and Hedge, who kept urging her to drink more water. Baby Chuck sat on Piper’s lap, staring enraptured at her face as if it were the most amazing thing in the world.

As for Meg, she sat glumly by the pool, her feet in the water, a plate of cheese enchiladas on her lap. She wore a baby blue T-shirt from Macro’s Military Madness featuring a smiling cartoon AK-47 with the caption: SHOOTIE’S JUNIOR MARKSMAN CLUB! Next to her sat Agave, looking dejected, though a new green spike had started to grow where her withered arm had fallen off. Her dryad friends kept coming by, offering her fertilizer and water and enchiladas, but Agave shook her head glumly, staring at the collection of fallen money-maker petals in her hand.

Money Maker, I was told, had been planted on the hillside with full dryad honours. Hopefully, she would be reincarnated as a beautiful new succulent, or perhaps a white-tailed antelope squirrel. Money Maker had always loved those.

Grover looked exhausted. Playing all the healing music had taken its toll, not to mention the stress of driving back to Palm Springs at unsafe speeds in the borrowed/slightly stolen Bedrossian-mobile with five critical burn victims.

Once we had all gathered – condolences exchanged, enchiladas eaten, aloe slimed – I began the meeting.

‘All of this,’ I announced, ‘is my fault.’