The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus)(3)

I exhaled. “Okay. Creepy mansion, here we come.”

The brass door knocker was shaped like Medusa’s face, which wasn’t a good sign. The porch floorboards creaked under our feet. The windows’ shutters were falling apart, but the glass was grimy and covered on the other side with dark curtains, so we couldn’t see in.

Thalia knocked.

No answer.

She jiggled the handle, but it seemed to be locked. I was hoping she’d decide to give up. Instead she looked at me expectantly. “Can you do your thing?”

I gritted my teeth. “I hate doing my thing.”

Even though I’ve never met my dad and don’t really want to, I share some of his talents. Along with being messenger of the gods, Hermes is the god of merchants—which explains why I’m good with money—and travelers, which explains why the divine jerk left my mom and never came back. He’s also the god of thieves. He’s stolen things like—oh, Apollo’s cattle, women, good ideas, wallets, my mom’s sanity, and my chance at a decent life.

Sorry, did that sound bitter?

Anyway, because of my dad’s godly thieving, I’ve got some abilities I don’t like to advertise.

I placed my hand on the door’s dead bolt. I concentrated, sensing the internal pins that controlled the latch. With a click, the bolt slid back. The lock on the handle was even easier. I tapped it, turned it, and the door swung open.

“That is so cool,” Thalia murmured, though she’d seen me do it a dozen times.

The doorway exuded a sour evil smell, like the breath of a dying man. Thalia marched through anyway. I didn’t have much choice except to follow.

Inside was an old-fashioned ballroom. High above, a chandelier glowed with trinkets of Celestial bronze—arrowheads, bits of armor, and broken sword hilts—all casting a sickly yellow sheen over the room. Two hallways led off to the left and right. A staircase wrapped around the back wall. Heavy drapes blocked the windows.

The place might’ve been impressive once, but now it was trashed. The checkerboard marble floor was smeared with mud and crusty dried stuff that I hoped was just ketchup. In one corner, a sofa had been disemboweled. Several mahogany chairs had been busted to kindling. At the base of the stairs sat a heap of cans, rags, and bones—human-sized bones.

Thalia pulled her weapon from her belt. The metal cylinder looked like a Mace canister, but when she flicked it, it expanded until she was holding a full-sized spear with a Celestial bronze point. I grabbed my golf club, which wasn’t nearly as cool.

I started to say, “Maybe this isn’t such a good—”

The door slammed shut behind us.

I lunged at the handle and pulled. No luck. I pressed my hand on the lock and willed it to open. This time nothing happened.

“Some kind of magic,” I said. “We’re trapped.”

Thalia ran to the nearest window. She tried to part the drapes, but the heavy black fabric wrapped around her hands.

“Luke!” she screamed.

The curtains liquefied into sheets of oily sludge like giant black tongues. They oozed up her arms and covered her spear. It felt like my heart was trying to climb my throat, but I charged at the drapes and whacked them with my golf club.

The ooze shuddered and reverted to fabric long enough for me to pull Thalia free. Her spear clattered on the floor.

I dragged her away as the curtains returned to ooze and tried to catch her. The sheets of sludge lashed at the air. Fortunately, they seemed anchored to the curtain rods. After a few more failed attempts to reach us, the ooze settled down and changed back to drapes.

Thalia shivered in my arms. Her spear lay nearby, smoking as if it had been dipped in acid.

She raised her hands. They were steaming and blistered. Her face paled like she was going into shock.

“Hold on!” I lowered her to the ground and fumbled through my backpack. “Hold on, Thalia. I’ve got it.”

Finally I found my bottle of nectar. The drink of the gods could heal wounds, but the bottle was almost empty. I poured the rest over Thalia’s hands. The steam dissipated. The blisters faded.

“You’re going to be fine,” I said. “Just rest.”

“We—we can’t…” Her voice was shaky, but she managed to stand. She glanced at the drapes with a mixture of fear and nausea. “If all the windows are like that, and the door is locked—”

“We’ll find another way out,” I promised.

This didn’t seem like the time to remind her that we wouldn’t have been here if not for the stupid goat.

I considered our options: a staircase going up, or two dark hallways. I squinted down the hall to the left. I could make out a pair of small red lights glowing near the floor. Maybe night-lights?

Then the lights moved. They bobbed up and down, growing brighter and closer. A growl made my hair stand on end.

Thalia made a strangled sound. “Um, Luke…”

She pointed to the other hallway. Another pair of glowing red eyes glared at us from the shadows. From both hallways came a strange hollow clack, clack, clack, like someone playing bone castanets.

“The stairs are looking pretty good,” I said.

As if in reply, a man’s voice called from somewhere above us: “Yes, this way.”

The voice was heavy with sadness, as if he were giving directions to a funeral.