The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(82)

If you give a pan-

dos a ukulele, he

Will want lessons. DON’T.





The news simply went from bad to worse.

Neither Meg nor I could make the landline function. Whatever curse afflicted demigod use of communications, it prevented us from getting a dial tone.

In desperation, I asked Crest to try. For him, the phone worked fine. I took that as a personal affront.

I told him to dial 9-1-1. After he failed repeatedly, it dawned on me that he was trying to punch in IX-I-I. I showed him how to do it correctly.

‘Yes,’ he said to the operator. ‘There is a dead human on the beach. He requires help … The address?’

‘Twelve Oro del Mar,’ I said.

Crest repeated this. ‘That is correct … Who am I?’ He hissed and hung up.

That seemed like our cue to leave.

Misery upon misery: Gleeson Hedge’s 1979 Ford Pinto was still parked in front of the McLean house. Lacking a better option, I was forced to drive it back to Palm Springs. I still felt terrible, but the magic sealant Medea had used on my chest seemed to be mending me, slowly and painfully, like an army of little demons with staple guns running around in my ribcage.

Meg rode shotgun, filling the car with a smell like smoky sweat, damp clothes, and burning apples. Crest sat in the back seat with my combat ukulele, picking and strumming, though I had yet to teach him any chords. As I’d anticipated, the fret board was much too small for his eight-fingered hand. Every time he played a bad combination of notes (which was every time he played) he hissed at the instrument, as if he might be able to intimidate it into cooperating.

I drove in a daze. The further we got from Malibu, the more I found myself thinking, No. Surely that didn’t happen. Today must have been a bad dream. I did not just watch Jason Grace die. I did not just leave Piper McLean sobbing on that beach. I would never allow something like that to happen. I’m a good person!

I did not believe myself.

Rather, I was the sort of person who deserved to be driving a yellow Pinto in the middle of the night with a grumpy, raggedy girl and a hissing, ukulele-obsessed pandos for company.

I wasn’t even sure why we were returning to Palm Springs. What good would it do? Yes, Grover and our other friends were expecting us, but all we had to offer them was tragic news and an old pair of sandals. Our goal was in downtown Los Angeles: the entrance to the Burning Maze. To make sure Jason’s death was not in vain, we should have been driving straight there to find the Sibyl and free her from her prison.

Ah, but who was I kidding? I was in no shape to do anything. Meg wasn’t much better off. The best I could hope for was to make it to Palm Springs without dozing at the wheel. Then I could curl up at the bottom of the Cistern and cry myself to sleep.

Meg propped her feet on the dashboard. Her glasses had snapped in half, but she continued to wear them like skewed aviator goggles.

‘Give her time,’ she told me. ‘She’s angry.’

For a moment, I wondered if Meg was speaking of herself in the third person. That’s all I needed. Then I realized she meant Piper McLean. In her own way, Meg was trying to comfort me. The terrifying marvels of the day would never cease.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘You tried to kill yourself,’ she noted.

‘I – I thought it would … distract Medea. It was a mistake. It’s all my fault.’

‘Nah. I get it.’

Was Meg McCaffrey forgiving me? I swallowed back a sob.

‘Jason made a choice,’ she said. ‘Same as you. Heroes have to be ready to sacrifice themselves.’

I felt unsettled … and not just because Meg had used such a long sentence. I didn’t like her definition of heroism. I’d always thought of a hero as someone who stood on a parade float, waved at the crowd, tossed candy and basked in the adulation of the commoners. But sacrificing yourself? No. That would not be one of my bullet points for a hero-recruitment brochure.

Also, Meg seemed to be calling me a hero, putting me in the same category as Jason Grace. That didn’t feel right. I made a much better god than a hero. What I’d told Piper was true about the finality of death. Jason would not be coming back. If I perished here on earth, I would not be getting a do-over either. I could never face that idea as calmly as Jason had. I had stabbed myself in the chest fully expecting that Medea would heal me, if only so she could flay me alive a few minutes later. I was a coward that way.

Meg picked at a callus on her palm. ‘You were right. About Caligula. Nero. Why I was so angry.’

I glanced over. Her face was taut with concentration. She’d said the emperors’ names with a strange detachment, as if she were examining deadly virus samples on the other side of a glass wall.

‘And how do you feel now?’ I asked.

Meg shrugged. ‘The same. Different. I don’t know. When you cut the roots off a plant? That’s how I feel. It’s hard.’

Meg’s jumbled comments made sense to me, which wasn’t a good sign for my sanity. I thought about Delos, the island of my birth, which had floated on the sea without roots until my mother, Leto, settled on it to give birth to my sister and me.

It was difficult for me to imagine the world before I was born, to imagine Delos as a place adrift. My home had literally grown roots because of my existence. I had never been unsure of who I was, or who my parents were, or where I was from.