The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus #5)(7)

‘You must stay,’ Varus said.

Antinous shot the ghost an irritated look. ‘What’s the problem, legionnaire? If Iros wants to leave, let him. He smells bad!’

The other ghosts laughed nervously. Across the courtyard, Piper shot Jason a worried glance. A little further away, Annabeth casually palmed a carving knife from the nearest platter of meat.

Varus rested his hand on the pommel of his sword. Despite the heat, his breastplate was glazed with ice. ‘I lost my cohort twice in Alaska – once in life, once in death to a Graecus named Percy Jackson. Still I have come here to answer Gaia’s call. Do you know why?’

Jason swallowed. ‘Stubbornness?’

‘This is a place of longing,’ Varus said. ‘All of us are drawn here, sustained not only by Gaia’s power but also by our strongest desires. Eurymachus’s greed. Antinous’s cruelty.’

‘You flatter me,’ the ghoul muttered.

‘Hasdrubal’s hatred,’ Varus continued. ‘Hippias’s bitterness. My ambition. And you, Iros. What has drawn you here? What does a beggar most desire? Perhaps a home?’

An uncomfortable tingle started at the base of Jason’s skull – the same feeling he got when a huge electrical storm was about to break.

‘I should be going,’ he said. ‘Messages to carry.’

Michael Varus drew his sword. ‘My father is Janus, the god of two faces. I am used to seeing through masks and deceptions. Do you know, Iros, why we are so sure the demigods will not pass our island undetected?’

Jason silently ran through his repertoire of Latin cuss words. He tried to calculate how long it would take him to get out his emergency flare and fire it. Hopefully he could buy enough time for the girls to find shelter before this mob of dead guys slaughtered him.

He turned to Antinous. ‘Look, are you in charge here or not? Maybe you should muzzle your Roman.’

The ghoul took a deep breath. The arrow rattled in his throat. ‘Ah, but this might be entertaining. Go on, Varus.’

The dead praetor raised his sword. ‘Our desires reveal us. They show us for who we really are. Someone has come for you, Jason Grace.’

Behind Varus, the crowd parted. The shimmering ghost of a woman drifted forward, and Jason felt as if his bones were turning to dust.

‘My dearest,’ said his mother’s ghost. ‘You have come home.’

III

Jason

SOMEHOW HE KNEW HER. He recognized her dress – a flowery green-and-red wraparound, like the skirt of a Christmas tree. He recognized the colourful plastic bangles on her wrists that had dug into his back when she hugged him goodbye at the Wolf House. He recognized her hair, an over-teased corona of dyed blonde curls and her scent of lemons and aerosol.

Her eyes were blue like Jason’s, but they gleamed with fractured light, like she’d just come out of a bunker after a nuclear war – hungrily searching for familiar details in a changed world.

‘Dearest.’ She held out her arms.

Jason’s vision tunnelled. The ghosts and ghouls no longer mattered.

His Mist disguise burned off. His posture straightened. His joints stopped aching. His walking stick turned back into an Imperial gold gladius.

The burning sensation didn’t stop. He felt as if layers of his life were being seared away – his months at Camp Half-Blood, his years at Camp Jupiter, his training with Lupa the wolf goddess. He was a scared and vulnerable two-year-old again. Even the scar on his lip, from when he’d tried to eat a stapler as a toddler, stung like a fresh wound.

‘Mom?’ he managed.

‘Yes, dearest.’ Her image flickered. ‘Come, embrace me.’

‘You’re – you’re not real.’

‘Of course she is real.’ Michael Varus’s voice sounded far away. ‘Did you think Gaia would let such an important spirit languish in the Underworld? She is your mother, Beryl Grace, star of television, sweetheart to the king of Olympus, who rejected her not once but twice, in both his Greek and Roman aspects. She deserves justice as much as any of us.’

Jason’s heart felt wobbly. The suitors crowded around him, watching.

I’m their entertainment, Jason realized. The ghosts probably found this even more amusing than two beggars fighting to the death.

Piper’s voice cut through the buzzing in his head. ‘Jason, look at me.’

She stood twenty feet away, holding her ceramic amphora. Her smile was gone. Her gaze was fierce and commanding – as impossible to ignore as the blue harpy feather in her hair. ‘That isn’t your mother. Her voice is working some kind of magic on you – like charmspeak, but more dangerous. Can’t you sense it?’

‘She’s right.’ Annabeth climbed onto the nearest table. She kicked aside a platter, startling a dozen suitors. ‘Jason, that’s only a remnant of your mother, like an ara, maybe, or –’

‘A remnant!’ His mother’s ghost sobbed. ‘Yes, look what I have been reduced to. It’s Jupiter’s fault. He abandoned us. He wouldn’t help me! I didn’t want to leave you in Sonoma, my dear, but Juno and Jupiter gave me no choice. They wouldn’t allow us to stay together. Why fight for them now? Join these suitors. Lead them. We can be a family again!’

Jason felt hundreds of eyes on him.

This has been the story of my life, he thought bitterly. Everyone had always watched him, expecting him to lead the way. From the moment he’d arrived at Camp Jupiter, the Roman demigods had treated him like a prince in waiting. Despite his attempts to alter his destiny – joining the worst cohort, trying to change the camp traditions, taking the least glamorous missions and befriending the least popular kids – he had been made praetor anyway. As a son of Jupiter, his future had been assured.