The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus #5)(18)

Each time a group approached, they’d stop at the edge of the courtyard and stare in disappointment at the statue. One British tour guide announced, ‘Ah, scaffolding. It appears this area is undergoing restoration. Pity. Let’s move along.’

And off they went.

At least the statue didn’t rumble, ‘DIE, UNBELIEVERS!’ and zap the mortals to dust. Reyna had once dealt with a statue of the goddess Diana like that. It hadn’t been her most relaxing day.

She recalled what Annabeth had told her about the Athena Parthenos: its magical aura both attracted monsters and kept them at bay. Sure enough, every so often, out of the corner of her eye, Reyna would spot glowing white spirits in Roman clothes flitting among the ruins, frowning at the statue in consternation.

‘Those lemures are everywhere,’ Gleeson muttered. ‘Keeping their distance for now – but come nightfall we’d better be ready to move. Ghosts are always worse at night.’

Reyna didn’t need to be reminded of that.

She watched as an elderly couple in matching pastel shirts and Bermuda shorts tottered through a nearby garden. She was glad they didn’t come any closer. Around the camp, Coach Hedge had rigged all sorts of trip wires, snares and oversized mousetraps that wouldn’t stop any self-respecting monster, but they might very well bring down a senior citizen.

Despite the warm morning, Reyna shivered from her dreams. She couldn’t decide which was more terrifying – the impending destruction of New Rome, or the way Octavian was poisoning the legion from the inside.

Your quest is a fool’s errand.

Camp Jupiter needed her. The Twelfth Legion needed her. Yet Reyna was halfway across the world, watching a satyr toast blueberry waffles on a stick over an open fire.

She wanted to talk about her nightmares, but she decided to wait until Nico woke up. She wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to describe them twice.

Nico kept snoring. Reyna had discovered that once he fell asleep it took a lot to wake him up. The coach could do a goat-hoof tap dance around Nico’s head and the son of Hades wouldn’t even budge.

‘Here.’ Hedge offered her a plate of flame-grilled waffles with fresh sliced kiwi and pineapple. It all looked surprisingly good.

‘Where are you getting these supplies?’ Reyna marvelled.

‘Hey, I’m a satyr. We’re very efficient packers.’ He took a bite of waffle. ‘We also know how to live off the land!’

As Reyna ate, Coach Hedge took out a notepad and started to write. When he was finished, he folded the paper into an aeroplane and tossed it into the air. A breeze carried it away.

‘A letter to your wife?’ Reyna guessed.

Under the rim of his baseball cap, Hedge’s eyes were bloodshot. ‘Mellie’s a cloud nymph. Air spirits send stuff by paper aeroplane all the time. Hopefully her cousins will keep the letter going across the ocean until it finds her. It’s not as fast as an Iris-message, but, well, I want our kid to have some record of me, in case, you know …’

‘We’ll get you home,’ Reyna promised. ‘You will see your kid.’

Hedge clenched his jaw and said nothing.

Reyna was pretty good at getting people to talk. She considered it essential to know her comrades-in-arms. But she’d had a tough time convincing Hedge to open up about his wife, Mellie, who was close to giving birth back at Camp Half-Blood. Reyna had trouble imagining the coach as a father, but she understood what it was like to grow up without parents. She wasn’t going to let that happen to Coach Hedge’s child.

‘Yeah, well …’ The satyr bit off another piece of waffle, including the stick he’d toasted it on. ‘I just wish we could move faster.’ He chin-pointed to Nico. ‘I don’t see how this kid is going to last one more jump. How many more will it take us to get home?’

Reyna shared his concern. In only eleven days, the giants planned to awaken Gaia. Octavian planned to attack Camp Half-Blood on the same day. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Perhaps Gaia was whispering in Octavian’s ear, influencing his decisions subconsciously. Or worse: Octavian was actively in league with the earth goddess. Reyna didn’t want to believe that even Octavian would knowingly betray the legion, but after what she’d seen in her dreams she couldn’t be sure.

She finished her meal as a group of Chinese tourists shuffled past the courtyard. Reyna had been awake for less than an hour and already she was restless to get moving.

‘Thanks for breakfast, Coach.’ She got to her feet and stretched. ‘If you’ll excuse me, where there are tourists, there are bathrooms. I need to use the little praetors’ room.’

‘Go ahead.’ The coach jangled the whistle that hung around his neck. ‘If anything happens, I’ll blow.’

Reyna left Aurum and Argentum on guard duty and strolled through the crowds of mortals until she found a visitors’ centre with restrooms. She did her best to clean up, but she found it ironic that she was in an actual Roman city and couldn’t enjoy a nice hot Roman bath. She had to settle for paper towels, a broken soap dispenser and an asthmatic hand dryer. And the toilets … the less said about those, the better.

As she was walking back, she passed a small museum with a window display. Behind the glass lay a row of plaster figures, all frozen in the throes of death. A young girl was curled in a fetal position. A woman lay twisted in agony, her mouth open to scream, her arms thrown overhead. A man knelt with his head bowed, as if accepting the inevitable.