The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(54)

Meg leaned closer to the display. ‘How come Potina gets a house but Quirinus gets a hotel?’

‘There’s not really any logic to it,’ Jason admitted. ‘I just used the tokens to mark positions.’

I frowned. I’d been fairly sure I’d got a hotel, as opposed to Ares’s house, because I was more important.

Meg tapped her mother’s token. ‘Demeter is cool. You should put the cool gods next to her.’

‘Meg,’ I chided, ‘we can’t arrange the gods by coolness. That would lead to too many fights.’

Besides, I thought, everyone would want to be next to me. Then I wondered bitterly if that would still be true when and if I made it back to Olympus. Would my time as Lester mark me forever as an immortal dweeb?

‘Anyway,’ Piper interrupted. ‘The reason we came: the Burning Maze.’

She didn’t accuse Jason of holding back information. She didn’t tell him what Medea had said. She simply studied his face, waiting to see how he would respond.

Jason laced his fingers. He stared at the sheathed gladius propped against the wall next to a lacrosse stick and a tennis racket. (These fancy boarding schools really offered the full range of extracurricular options.)

‘I didn’t tell you everything,’ he admitted.

Piper’s silence felt more powerful than her charmspeaking.

‘I – I reached the Sibyl,’ Jason continued. ‘I can’t even explain how. I just stumbled into this big room with a pool of fire. The Sibyl was … standing across from me, on this stone platform, her arms chained with some fiery shackles.’

‘Herophile,’ I said. ‘Her name is Herophile.’

Jason blinked, as if he could still feel the heat and cinders of the room.

‘I wanted to free her,’ he said. ‘Obviously. But she told me it wasn’t possible. It had to be …’ He gestured at me. ‘She told me it was a trap. The whole maze. For Apollo. She told me you’d eventually come find me. You and her – Meg. Herophile said there was nothing I could do except give you help if you asked for it. She said to tell you, Apollo – you have to rescue her.’

I knew all this, of course. I had seen and heard as much in my dreams. But hearing it from Jason, in the waking world, made it worse.

Piper rested her head against the wall. She stared at a water stain on the ceiling. ‘What else did Herophile say?’

Jason’s face tightened. ‘Pipes – Piper, look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s just –’

‘What else did she say?’ Piper repeated.

Jason looked at Meg, then at me, maybe for moral support.

‘The Sibyl told me where I could find the emperor,’ he said. ‘Well, more or less. She said Apollo would need the information. He would need … a pair of shoes. I know that doesn’t make much sense.’

‘I’m afraid it does,’ I said.

Meg ran her fingers along the plastic rooftops of the map. ‘Can we kill the emperor while we’re stealing his shoes? Did the Sibyl say anything about that?’

Jason shook his head. ‘She just said that Piper and I … we couldn’t do anything more by ourselves. It had to be Apollo. If we tried … it would be too dangerous.’

Piper laughed drily. She raised her hands as if making an offering to the water stain.

‘Jason, we’ve been through literally everything together. I can’t even count how many dangers we’ve faced, how many times we’ve almost died. Now you’re telling me you lied to me to, what, protect me? To keep me from going after Caligula?’

‘I knew you would have done it,’ he murmured. ‘No matter what the Sibyl said.’

‘Then that would’ve been my choice,’ Piper said. ‘Not yours.’

He nodded miserably. ‘And I would’ve insisted on going with you, no matter the risk. But the way things have been between us …’ He shrugged. ‘Working as a team has been hard. I thought – I decided to wait until Apollo found me. I messed up, not telling you. I’m sorry.’

He stared at his Temple Hill display, as if trying to figure out where to place a shrine to the god of feeling horrible about failed relationships. (Oh, wait. He already had one. It was for Aphrodite, Piper’s mom.)

Piper took a deep breath. ‘This isn’t about you and me, Jason. Satyrs and dryads are dying. Caligula’s planning to turn himself into a new sun god. Tonight’s the new moon, and Camp Jupiter is facing some kind of huge threat. Meanwhile, Medea is in that maze, throwing around Titan fire –’

‘Medea?’ Jason sat up straight. The lightbulb in his desk lamp burst, raining glass across his diorama. ‘Back up. What’s Medea got to do with this? What do you mean about the new moon and Camp Jupiter?’

I thought Piper might refuse to share the information, just for spite, but she didn’t. She gave Jason the lowdown about the Indiana prophecy that predicted bodies filling the Tiber. Then she explained Medea’s cooking project with her grandfather.

Jason looked like our father had just hit him with a thunderbolt. ‘I had no idea.’

Meg crossed her arms. ‘So, you going to help us or what?’

Jason studied her, no doubt unsure what to make of this scary little girl in teal camouflage.