The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(20)

He kept patting his waist, hoping his tool belt would magically reappear. It didn’t. He tried not to freak, but he’d come to depend on that belt for almost everything. He felt like somebody had stolen one of his hands.

“We’ll find it,” Jason promised.

Usually, Leo would have felt reassured. Jason had a talent for staying levelheaded in a crisis, and he’d gotten Leo out of plenty of bad scrapes. Today, though, all Leo could think about was the stupid fortune cookie he had opened in Rome. The goddess Nemesis had promised him help, and he’d gotten it: the code to activate the Archimedes sphere. At the time, Leo had had no choice but to use it if he wanted to save his friends—but Nemesis had warned that her help came with a price.

Leo wondered if that price would ever be paid. Percy and Annabeth were gone. The ship was hundreds of miles off course, heading toward an impossible challenge. Leo’s friends were counting on him to beat a terrifying giant. And now he didn’t even have his tool belt or his Archimedes sphere.

He was so absorbed with feeling sorry for himself that he didn’t notice where they were until Jason grabbed his arm. “Check it out.”

Leo looked up. They’d arrived in a smaller piazza. Looming over them was a huge bronze statue of a buck-naked Neptune.

“Ah, jeez.” Leo averted his eyes. He really didn’t need to see a godly groin this early in the morning.

The sea god stood on a big marble column in the middle of a fountain that wasn’t working (which seemed kind of ironic). On either side of Neptune, little winged Cupid dudes were sitting, kind of chillin’, like, What’s up? Neptune himself (avoid the groin) was throwing his hip to one side in an Elvis Presley move. He gripped his trident loosely in his right hand and stretched his left hand out like he was blessing Leo, or possibly attempting to levitate him.

“Some kind of clue?” Leo wondered.

Jason frowned. “Maybe, maybe not. There are statues of the gods all over the place in Italy. I’d just feel better if we ran across Jupiter. Or Minerva. Anybody but Neptune, really.”

Leo climbed into the dry fountain. He put his hand on the statue’s pedestal, and a rush of impressions surged through his fingertips. He sensed Celestial bronze gears, magical levers, springs, and pistons.

“It’s mechanical,” he said. “Maybe a doorway to the dwarfs’ secret lair?”

“Ooooo!” shrieked a nearby voice. “Secret lair?”

“I want a secret lair!” yelled another voice from above.

Jason stepped back, his sword ready. Leo almost got whiplash trying to look in two places at once. The red-furred dwarf in the cowboy hat was sitting about thirty feet away at the nearest café table, sipping an espresso held by his monkey-like foot. The brown-furred dwarf in the green bowler was perched on the marble pedestal at Neptune’s feet, just above Leo’s head.

“If we had a secret lair,” said Red Fur, “I would want a firehouse pole.”

“And a waterslide!” said Brown Fur, who was pulling random tools out of Leo’s belt, tossing aside wrenches, hammers, and staple guns.

“Stop that!” Leo tried to grab the dwarf’s feet, but he couldn’t reach the top of the pedestal.

“Too short?” Brown Fur sympathized.

“You’re calling me short?” Leo looked around for something to throw, but there was nothing but pigeons, and he doubted he could catch one. “Give me my belt, you stupid—”

“Now, now!” said Brown Fur. “We haven’t even introduced ourselves. I’m Akmon. And my brother over there—”

“—is the handsome one!” The red-furred dwarf lifted his espresso. Judging from his dilated eyes and his maniacal grin, he didn’t need any more caffeine. “Passalos! Singer of songs! Drinker of coffee! Stealer of shiny stuff!”

“Please!” shrieked his brother, Akmon. “I steal much better than you.”

Passalos snorted. “Stealing naps, maybe!” He took out a knife—Piper’s knife—and started picking his teeth with it.

“Hey!” Jason yelled. “That’s my girlfriend’s knife!”

He lunged at Passalos, but the red-furred dwarf was too quick. He sprang from his chair, bounced off Jason’s head, did a flip, and landed next to Leo, his hairy arms around Leo’s waist.

“Save me?” the dwarf pleaded.

“Get off!” Leo tried to shove him away, but Passalos did a backward somersault and landed out of reach. Leo’s pants promptly fell around his knees.

He stared at Passalos, who was now grinning and holding a small zigzaggy strip of metal. Somehow, the dwarf had stolen the zipper right off Leo’s pants.

“Give—stupid—zipper!” Leo stuttered, trying to shake his fist and hoist up his pants at the same time.

“Eh, not shiny enough.” Passalos tossed it away.

Jason lunged with his sword. Passalos launched himself straight up and was suddenly sitting on the statue’s pedestal next to his brother.

“Tell me I don’t have moves,” Passalos boasted.

“Okay,” Akmon said. “You don’t have moves.”

“Bah!” Passalos said. “Give me the tool belt. I want to see.”

“No!” Akmon elbowed him away. “You got the knife and the shiny ball.”