The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus)(2)

Thalia grabbed my wrist. “Come on. Let’s try to talk to it.”

“First we hide from the goat,” I said. “Now you want to talk to the goat?”

Thalia dragged me out of the rosebushes and pulled me across the street. I didn’t protest. When Thalia gets an idea in her head, you just have to go with it. She always gets her way.

Besides, I couldn’t let her go without me. Thalia has saved my life a dozen times. She’s my only friend. Before we met, I’d traveled for years on my own, lonely and miserable. Once in a while I’d befriend a mortal, but whenever I told them the truth about me, they didn’t understand. I’d confess that I was the son of Hermes, the immortal messenger dude with the winged sandals. I’d explain that monsters and Greek gods were real and very much alive in the modern world. My mortal friends would say, “That is so cool! I wish I was a demigod!” Like it’s some sort of game. I always ended up leaving.

But Thalia understood. She was like me. Now that I’d found her, I was determined to stick with her. If she wanted to chase a magical glowing goat, then we’d do that, even if I had a bad feeling about it.

We approached the statue. The goat didn’t pay us any attention. She chewed some grass, then butted her horns against the marble base of the monument. A bronze plaque read: Robert E. Lee. I didn’t know much about history, but I was pretty sure Lee was a general who lost a war. That didn’t strike me as a good omen.

Thalia knelt next to the goat. “Amaltheia?”

The goat turned. She had sad amber eyes and a bronze collar around her neck. Fuzzy white light steamed around her body, but what really caught my attention were her udders. Each teat was labeled with Greek letters, like tattoos. I could read a little Ancient Greek—it was sort of a natural ability for demigods, I guess. The teats read: Nectar, Milk, Water, Pepsi, Press Here for Ice, and Diet Mountain Dew. Or maybe I read them wrong. I hoped so.

Thalia looked into the goat’s eyes. “Amaltheia, what do you want me to do? Did my dad send you?”

The goat glanced at me. She looked a little miffed, like I was intruding on a private conversation.

I took a step back, resisting the urge to grab my weapon. Oh, by the way, my weapon was a golf club. Feel free to laugh. I used to have a sword made from Celestial bronze, which is deadly to monsters, but the sword got melted in acid (long story). Now all I had was a nine-iron that I carried on my back. Not exactly epic. If the goat went commando on us, I’d be in trouble.

I cleared my throat. “Um, Thalia, you sure this goat is from your dad?”

“She’s immortal,” Thalia said. “When Zeus was a baby, his mom Rhea hid him in a cave—”

“Because Kronos wanted to eat him?” I’d heard that story somewhere, how the old Titan king swallowed his own children.

Thalia nodded. “So this goat, Amaltheia, looked after baby Zeus in his cradle. She nursed him.”

“On Diet Mountain Dew?” I asked.

Thalia frowned. “What?”

“Read the udders,” I said. “The goat has five flavors plus an ice dispenser.”

“Blaaaah,” said Amaltheia.

Thalia patted the goat’s head. “It’s okay. He didn’t mean to insult you. Why have you led us here, Amaltheia? Where do you want me to go?”

The goat butted her head against the monument. From above came the sound of creaking metal. I looked up and saw the bronze General Lee move his right arm.

I almost hid behind the goat. Thalia and I had fought several magic moving statues before. They were called automatons, and they were bad news. I wasn’t anxious to take on Robert E. Lee with a nine-iron.

Fortunately, the statue didn’t attack. He simply pointed across the street.

I gave Thalia a nervous look. “What’s that about?”

Thalia nodded in the direction the statue was pointing.

Across the traffic circle stood a red brick mansion overgrown with ivy. On either side, huge oak trees dripped with Spanish moss. The house’s windows were shuttered and dark. Peeling white columns flanked the front porch. The door was painted charcoal black. Even on a bright sunny morning, the place looked gloomy and creepy—like a Gone with the Wind haunted house.

My mouth felt dry. “The goat wants us to go there?”

“Blaah.” Amaltheia dipped her head like she was nodding.

Thalia touched the goat’s curly horns. “Thank you, Amaltheia. I—I trust you.”

I wasn’t sure why, considering how afraid Thalia seemed.

The goat bothered me, and not just because she dispensed Pepsi products. Something was nagging at the back of my mind. I thought I’d heard another story about Zeus’s goat, something about that glowing fur…

Suddenly the mist thickened and swelled around Amaltheia. A miniature storm cloud engulfed her. Lightning flickered through the cloud. When the mist dissolved, the goat was gone.

I hadn’t even gotten to try the ice dispenser.

I gazed across the street at the dilapidated house. The mossy trees on either side looked like claws, waiting to grasp us.

“You sure about this?” I asked Thalia.

She turned to me. “Amaltheia leads me to good things. The last time she appeared, she led me to you.”

The compliment warmed me like a cup of hot chocolate. I’m a sucker that way. Thalia can flash those blue eyes, give me one kind word, and she can get me to do pretty much whatever. But I couldn’t help wondering: back in Charleston, had the goat led her to me, or simply led her into a dragon’s cave?