The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(18)

Hazel dropped her eyes. “Now we just have to reach the House of Hades, battle our way through Gaea’s forces—”

“Plus a bunch of ghosts,” Nico added grimly. “The spirits in that temple may not be friendly.”

“—and find the Doors of Death,” Hazel continued. “Assuming we can somehow arrive at the same time as Percy and Annabeth and rescue them.”

Frank swallowed a bite of pancake. “We can do it. We have to.”

Leo admired the big guy’s optimism. He wished he shared it.

“So, with this detour,” Leo said, “I’m estimating four or five days to arrive at Epirus, assuming no delays for, you know, monster attacks and stuff.”

Jason smiled sourly. “Yeah. Those never happen.”

Leo looked at Hazel. “Hecate told you that Gaea was planning her big Wake Up party on August first, right? The Feast of Whatever?”

“Spes,” Hazel said. “The goddess of hope.”

Jason turned his fork. “Theoretically, that leaves us enough time. It’s only July fifth. We should be able to close the Doors of Death, then find the giants’ HQ and stop them from waking Gaea before August first.”

“Theoretically,” Hazel agreed. “But I’d still like to know how we make our way through the House of Hades without going insane or dying.”

Nobody volunteered any ideas.

Frank set down his pancake roll like it suddenly didn’t taste so good. “It’s July fifth. Oh, jeez, I hadn’t even thought of that.…”

“Hey, man, it’s cool,” Leo said. “You’re Canadian, right? I didn’t expect you to get me an Independence Day present or anything…unless you wanted to.”

“It’s not that. My grandmother…she always told me that seven was an unlucky number. It was a ghost number. She didn’t like it when I told her there would be seven demigods on our quest. And July is the seventh month.”

“Yeah, but…” Leo tapped his fingers nervously on the table. He realized he was doing the Morse code for I love you, the way he used to do with his mom, which would have been pretty embarrassing if his friends understood Morse code. “But that’s just coincidence, right?”

Frank’s expression didn’t reassure him.

“Back in China,” Frank said, “in the old days, people called the seventh month the ghost month. That’s when the spirit world and the human world were closest. The living and the dead could go back and forth. Tell me it’s a coincidence we’re searching for the Doors of Death during the ghost month.”

No one spoke.

Leo wanted to think that an old Chinese belief couldn’t have anything to do with the Romans and the Greeks. Totally different, right? But Frank’s existence was proof that the cultures were tied together. The Zhang family went all the way back to Ancient Greece. They’d found their way through Rome and China and finally to Canada.

Also, Leo kept thinking about his meeting with the revenge goddess Nemesis at the Great Salt Lake. Nemesis had called him the seventh wheel, the odd man out on the quest. She didn’t mean seventh as in ghost, did she?

Jason pressed his hands against the arms of his chair. “Let’s focus on the things we can deal with. We’re getting close to Bologna. Maybe we’ll get more answers once we find these dwarfs that Hecate—”

The ship lurched as if it had hit an iceberg. Leo’s breakfast plate slid across the table. Nico fell backward out of his chair and banged his head against the sideboard. He collapsed on the floor, with a dozen magic goblets and platters crashing down on top of him.

“Nico!” Hazel ran to help him.

“What—?” Frank tried to stand, but the ship pitched in the other direction. He stumbled into the table and went face-first into Leo’s plate of scrambled eggs.

“Look!” Jason pointed at the walls. The images of Camp Half-Blood were flickering and changing.

“Not possible,” Leo murmured.

No way those enchantments could show anything other than scenes from camp, but suddenly a huge, distorted face filled the entire port-side wall: crooked yellow teeth, a scraggly red beard, a warty nose, and two mismatched eyes—one much larger and higher than the other. The face seemed to be trying to eat its way into the room.

The other walls flickered, showing scenes from above deck. Piper stood at the helm, but something was wrong. From the shoulders down she was wrapped in duct tape, her mouth gagged and her legs bound to the control console.

At the mainmast, Coach Hedge was similarly bound and gagged, while a bizarre-looking creature—a sort of gnome/chimpanzee combo with poor fashion sense—danced around him, doing the coach’s hair in tiny pigtails with pink rubber bands.

On the port-side wall, the huge ugly face receded so that Leo could see the entire creature—another gnome chimp, in even crazier clothes. This one began leaping around the deck, stuffing things in a burlap bag—Piper’s dagger, Leo’s Wii controllers. Then he pried the Archimedes sphere out of the command console.

“No!” Leo yelled.

“Uhhh,” Nico groaned from the floor.

“Piper!” Jason cried.

“Monkey!” Frank yelled.

“Not monkeys,” Hazel grumbled. “I think those are dwarfs.”