The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(54)

“Gaea told you about it,” Hazel guessed. “She ordered you to take it.”

Sciron shrugged. “Maybe. But she told me I could keep it for myself. Hard to pass up that offer! I don’t intend to die again, my friends. I intend to live a long life as a very wealthy man!”

“The statue won’t do you any good,” Hazel said. “Not if Gaea destroys the world.”

The muzzles of Sciron’s pistols wavered. “Pardon?”

“Gaea is using you,” Hazel said. “If you take that statue, we won’t be able to defeat her. She’s planning on wiping all mortals and demigods off the face of the earth, letting her giants and monsters take over. So where will you spend your gold, Sciron? Assuming Gaea even lets you live.”

Hazel let that sink in. She figured Sciron would have no trouble believing in double-crosses, being a bandit and all.

He was silent for a count of ten.

Finally his smile lines returned.

“All right!” he said. “I’m not unreasonable. Keep the statue.”

Jason blinked. “We can go?”

“Just one more thing,” Sciron said. “I always demand a show of respect. Before I let my victims leave, I insist that they wash my feet.”

Hazel wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. Then Sciron kicked off his leather boots, one after the other. His bare feet were the most disgusting things Hazel had ever seen…and she had seen some very disgusting things.

They were puffy, wrinkled, and white as dough, as if they’d been soaking in formaldehyde for a few centuries. Tufts of brown hair sprouted from each misshapen toe. His jagged toenails were green and yellow, like a tortoise’s shell.

Then the smell hit her. Hazel didn’t know if her father’s Underworld palace had a cafeteria for zombies, but if it did, that cafeteria would smell like Sciron’s feet.

“So!” Sciron wriggled his disgusting toes. “Who wants the left, and who wants the right?”

Jason’s face turned almost as white as those feet. “You’ve…got to be kidding.”

“Not at all!” Sciron said. “Wash my feet, and we’re done. I’ll send you back down the cliff. I promise on the River Styx.”

He made that promise so easily, alarm bells rang in Hazel’s mind. Feet. Send you back down the cliff. Tortoise shell.

The story came back to her, all the missing pieces fitting into place. She remembered how Sciron killed his victims.

“Could we have a moment?” Hazel asked the bandit.

Sciron’s eyes narrowed. “What for?”

“Well, it’s a big decision,” she said. “Left foot, right foot. We need to discuss.”

She could tell he was smiling under the mask.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m so generous, you can have two minutes.”

Hazel climbed out of her pile of treasure. She led Jason as far away as she dared—about fifty feet down the cliff, which she hoped was out of earshot.

“Sciron kicks his victims off the cliff,” she whispered.

Jason scowled. “What?”

“When you kneel down to wash his feet,” Hazel said. “That’s how he kills you. When you’re off-balance, woozy from the smell of his feet, he’ll kick you over the edge. You’ll fall right into the mouth of his giant turtle.”

Jason took a moment to digest that, so to speak. He glanced over the cliff, where the turtle’s massive shell glinted just under the water.

“So we have to fight,” Jason said.

“Sciron’s too fast,” Hazel said. “He’ll kill us both.”

“Then I’ll be ready to fly. When he kicks me over, I’ll float halfway down the cliff. Then when he kicks you, I’ll catch you.”

Hazel shook her head. “If he kicks you hard and fast enough, you’ll be too dazed to fly. And even if you can, Sciron’s got the eyes of a marksman. He’ll watch you fall. If you hover, he’ll just shoot you out of the air.”

“Then…” Jason clenched his sword hilt. “I hope you have another idea?”

A few feet away, Gale the weasel appeared from the bushes. She gnashed her teeth and peered at Hazel as if to say, Well? Do you?

Hazel calmed her nerves, trying to avoid pulling more gold from the ground. She remembered the dream she’d had of her father Pluto’s voice: The dead see what they believe they will see. So do the living. That is the secret.

She understood what she had to do. She hated the idea worse than she hated that farting weasel, worse than she hated Sciron’s feet.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Hazel said. “We have to let Sciron win.”

“What?” Jason demanded.

Hazel told him the plan.

“FINALLY!” SCIRON CRIED. “That was much longer than two minutes!”

“Sorry,” Jason said. “It was a big decision…which foot.”

Hazel tried to clear her mind and imagine the scene through Sciron’s eyes—what he desired, what he expected.

That was the key to using the Mist. She couldn’t force someone to see the world her way. She couldn’t make Sciron’s reality appear less believable. But if she showed him what he wanted to see…well, she was a child of Pluto. She’d spent decades with the dead, listening to them yearn for past lives that were only half-remembered, distorted by nostalgia.