The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(52)

In the meantime, I had to deal with Caligula. I would have to foil his plan to make me the secret ingredient in his sun-god soup. And I would have to do this while having no godly powers at my disposal. My archery skills had deteriorated. My singing and playing weren’t worth olive stones. Divine strength? Charisma? Light? Fire power? All gauges read EMPTY.

My most humiliating thought: Medea would capture me, try to strip away my divine power and find I didn’t have any left.

What is this? she would scream. There’s nothing here but Lester!

Then she would kill me anyway.

As I contemplated these happy possibilities, we wound our way through the Pasadena Valley.

‘I’ve never liked this city,’ I murmured. ‘It makes me think of game shows, tawdry parades and drunk washed-up starlets with spray-on tans.’

Piper coughed. ‘FYI, Jason’s mom was from here. She died here, in a car accident.’

‘I’m sorry. What did she do?’

‘She was a drunk washed-up starlet with a spray-on tan.’

‘Ah.’ I waited for the sting of embarrassment to fade. It took several miles. ‘So why would Jason want to go to school here?’

Piper gripped the wheel. ‘After we broke up, he transferred to an all-boys boarding school up in the hills. You’ll see. I guess he wanted something different, something quiet and out-of-the-way. No drama.’

‘He’ll be happy to see us, then,’ Meg muttered, staring out of the window.

We made our way into the hills above town, the houses getting more and more impressive as we gained altitude. Even in Mansion Land, though, trees had started to die. Manicured lawns were turning brown around the edges. When water shortages and above-average temperatures affected the upmarket neighbourhoods, you knew things were serious. The rich and the gods were always the last to suffer.

At the crest of a hill stood Jason’s school – a sprawling campus of blond-brick buildings interlaced with garden courtyards and walkways shaded by acacia trees. The sign in front, done in subtle bronze letters on a low brick wall, read: EDGARTON DAY AND BOARDING SCHOOL.

We parked the Escalade on a nearby residential street, using the Piper McLean if-it’s-towed-we’ll-just-borrow-another-car strategy.

A security guard stood at the front gates of the school, but Piper told him that we were allowed to go inside, and the guard, with a look of great confusion, agreed that we were allowed to go inside.

The classrooms all opened onto the courtyards. Student lockers lined the open walkways. It was not a school design that would have worked in, say, Milwaukee during blizzard season, but in Southern California it spoke to just how much the locals took their mild, consistent weather for granted. I doubted the buildings even had air-conditioning. If Caligula continued cooking gods in his Burning Maze, the Edgarton school board might have to rethink that.

Despite Piper’s insistence that she had distanced herself from Jason’s life, she had his schedule memorized. She led us right to his fourth-period classroom. Peering through the windows, I saw a dozen students – all young men in blue blazers, white shirts, red ties, grey trousers and shiny shoes, like junior business executives. At the front of the class, in a director’s chair, a bearded teacher in a tweed suit was reading from a paperback copy of Julius Caesar.

Ugh. Bill Shakespeare. I mean, yes, he was good. But even he would’ve been horrified at the number of hours mortals spent drilling his plays into the heads of bored teenagers, and the sheer number of pipes, tweed jackets, marble busts and bad dissertations even his least favourite plays had inspired. Meanwhile, Christopher Marlowe got the short end of the Elizabethan stick. Kit had been much more gorgeous.

But I digress.

Piper knocked on the door and poked her head in. Suddenly the young men no longer looked bored. Piper said something to the teacher, who blinked a few times, then waved go ahead to a young man in the middle row.

A moment later, Jason Grace joined us in the walkway.

I had only seen him a few times before – once when he was a praetor at Camp Jupiter; once when he had visited Delos; then shortly afterwards, when we had fought side by side against the giants at the Parthenon.

He’d fought well enough, but I can’t say I’d paid him any special attention. In those days, I was still a god. Jason was just another hero in the Argo II’s demigod crew.

Now, in his school uniform, he looked quite impressive. His blond hair was cropped short. His blue eyes flashed behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Jason closed the classroom door behind him, tucked his books under his arm and forced a smile, a little white scar twitching at the corner of his lip. ‘Piper. Hey.’

I wondered how Piper managed to look so calm. I’d gone through many complicated break-ups. They never got easier, and Piper didn’t have the advantage of being able to turn her ex into a tree or simply wait until his short mortal life was over before returning to earth.

‘Hey, yourself,’ she said, just a hint of strain in her voice. ‘This is –’

‘Meg McCaffrey,’ Jason said. ‘And Apollo. I’ve been waiting for you guys.’

He didn’t sound terribly excited about it. He said it the way someone might say, I’ve been waiting for the results from my emergency brain scan.

Meg sized up Jason as if she found his glasses far inferior to her own. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ Jason peered down the walkway in each direction. ‘Let’s go back to my dorm room. We’re not safe out here.’