The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(100)

She stared at the sand.

“Well, anyway,” Leo said, “tomorrow I’ll start on the lumber. And in a few days…”

He looked out over the water. Something was bobbing on the waves. Leo watched in disbelief as a large wooden raft floated in on the tide and slid to a stop on the beach.

Leo was too dazed to move, but Calypso sprang to her feet.

“Hurry!” She sprinted across the beach, grabbed some supply bags, and ran them to the raft. “I don’t know how long it will stay!”

“But…” Leo stood. His legs felt like they’d turned to rock. He had just convinced himself he had another week on Ogygia. Now he didn’t have time to finish dinner. “That’s the magic raft?”

“Duh!” Calypso yelled. “It might work like it’s supposed to and take you where you want to go. But we can’t be sure. The island’s magic is obviously unstable. You must rig up your guidance device to navigate.”

She snatched up the console and ran toward the raft, which got Leo moving. He helped her fasten it to the raft and run wires to the small rudder in the back. The raft was already fitted with a mast, so Leo and Calypso hauled their sail aboard and started on the rigging.

They worked side by side in perfect harmony. Even among the Hephaestus campers, Leo had never worked with anyone as intuitive as this immortal gardener girl. In no time, they had the sail in place and all the supplies aboard. Leo hit the buttons on the Archimedes sphere, muttered a prayer to his dad, Hephaestus, and the Celestial bronze console hummed to life.

The rigging tightened. The sail turned. The raft began scraping against the sand, straining to reach the waves.

“Go,” Calypso said.

Leo turned. She was so close he couldn’t stand it. She smelled like cinnamon and wood smoke, and he thought he’d never smell anything that good again.

“The raft finally got here,” he said.

Calypso snorted. Her eyes might have been red, but it was hard to tell in the moonlight. “You just noticed?”

“But if it only shows up for guys you like—”

“Don’t push your luck, Leo Valdez,” she said. “I still hate you.”

“Okay.”

“And you are not coming back here,” she insisted. “So don’t give me any empty promises.”

“How about a full promise?” he said. “Because I’m definitely—”

She grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss, which effectively shut him up.

For all his joking and flirting, Leo had never kissed a girl before. Well, sisterly pecks on the cheek from Piper, but that didn’t count. This was a real, full-contact kiss. If Leo had had gears and wires in his brain, they would’ve short-circuited.

Calypso pushed him away. “That didn’t happen.”

“Okay.” His voice sounded an octave higher than usual.

“Get out of here.”

“Okay.”

She turned, wiping her eyes furiously, and stormed up the beach, the breeze tousling her hair.

Leo wanted to call to her, but the sail caught the full force of the wind, and the raft cleared the beach. He struggled to align the guidance console. By the time Leo looked back, the island of Ogygia was a dark line in the distance, their campfire pulsing like a tiny orange heart.

His lips still tingled from the kiss.

That didn’t happen, he told himself. I can’t be in love with an immortal girl. She definitely can’t be in love with me. Not possible.

As his raft skimmed over the water, taking him back to the mortal world, he understood a line from the Prophecy better—an oath to keep with a final breath.

He understood how dangerous oaths could be. But Leo didn’t care.

“I’m coming back for you, Calypso,” he said to the night wind. “I swear it on the River Styx.”

ANNABETH HAD NEVER BEEN SCARED OF THE DARK.

But normally the dark wasn’t forty feet tall. It didn’t have black wings, a whip made out of stars, and a shadowy chariot pulled by vampire horses.

Nyx was almost too much to take in. Looming over the chasm, she was a churning figure of ash and smoke, as big as the Athena Parthenos statue, but very much alive. Her dress was void black, mixed with the colors of a space nebula, as if galaxies were being born in her bodice. Her face was hard to see except for the pinpoints of her eyes, which shone like quasars. When her wings beat, waves of darkness rolled over the cliffs, making Annabeth feel heavy and sleepy, her eyesight dim.

The goddess’s chariot was made of the same material as Nico di Angelo’s sword—Stygian iron—and pulled by two massive horses, all black except for their pointed silver fangs. The beasts’ legs floated in the abyss, turning from solid to smoke as they moved.

The horses snarled and bared their fangs at Annabeth. The goddess lashed her whip—a thin streak of stars like diamond barbs—and the horses reared back.

“No, Shade,” the goddess said. “Down, Shadow. These little prizes are not for you.”

Percy eyed the horses as they nickered. He was still shrouded in Death Mist, so he looked like an out-of-focus corpse—which broke Annabeth’s heart every time she saw him. It also must not have been very good camouflage, since Nyx could obviously see them.

Annabeth couldn’t read the expression on Percy’s ghoulish face very well. Apparently he didn’t like whatever the horses were saying.