The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus #1)(65)

“Get going, Sparky, before I skewer you.”

“Sparky?”

Even offended, Jason looked hot. It wasn’t fair. Then he made his way to the stairs and disappeared into the dark.

Piper counted her breaths, trying to gauge how much time had passed. She lost track at around forty-three. Then something in the warehouse went bang!

The echo died. Piper’s heart pounded, but she didn’t call out. Her instincts told her it might not be a good idea.

She stared at her splinted ankle. It’s not like I can run. Then she looked up again at the Monocle Motors sign. A little voice in her head pestered her, warning of danger. Something from Greek mythology …

Her hand went to her backpack. She took out the ambrosia squares. Too much would burn her up, but would a little more fix her ankle?

Boom. The sound was closer this time, directly below her. She dug out a whole square of ambrosia and stuffed it in her mouth. Her heart raced faster. Her skin felt feverish.

Hesitantly, she flexed her ankle against the splint. No pain, no stiffness at all. She cut through the duct tape with her dagger and heard heavy steps on the stairs—like metal boots.

Had it been five minutes? Longer? The steps didn’t sound like Jason, but maybe he was carrying Leo. Finally she couldn’t stand it. Gripping her dagger, she called out, “Jason?”

“Yeah,” he said from the darkness. “On my way up.”

Definitely Jason’s voice. So why did all her instincts say Run?

With effort, she got to her feet.

The steps came closer.

“It’s okay,” Jason’s voice promised.

At the top of the stairs, a face appeared out of the darkness—a hideous black grin, a smashed nose, and a single bloodshot eye in the middle of his forehead.

“It’s fine,” the Cyclops said, in a perfect imitation of Jason’s voice. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

LEO WISHED THE DRAGON HADN’T LANDED on the toilets.

Of all the places to crash, a line of Porta-Potties would not have been his first choice. A dozen of the blue plastic boxes had been set up in the factory yard, and Festus had flattened them all. Fortunately, they hadn’t been used in a long time, and the fireball from the crash incinerated most of the contents; but still, there were some pretty gross chemicals leaking out of the wreckage. Leo had to pick his way through and try not to breathe through his nose. Heavy snow was coming down, but the dragon’s hide was still steaming hot. Of course, that didn’t bother Leo.

After a few minutes climbing over Festus’s inanimate body, Leo started to get irritated. The dragon looked perfectly fine. Yes, it had fallen out of the sky and landed with a big ka-boom, but its body wasn’t even dented. The fireball had apparently come from built up gasses inside the toilet units, not from the dragon itself. Festus’s wings were intact. Nothing seemed broken. There was no reason it should have stopped.

“Not my fault,” he muttered. “Festus, you’re making me look bad.”

Then he opened the control panel on the dragon’s head, and Leo’s heart sank. “Oh, Festus, what the heck?”

The wiring had frozen over. Leo knew it had been okay yesterday. He’d worked so hard to repair the corroded lines, but something had caused a flash freeze inside the dragon’s skull, where it should’ve been too hot for ice to form. The ice had caused the wiring to overload and char the control disk. Leo couldn’t see any reason that would’ve happened. Sure, the dragon was old, but still, it didn’t make sense.

He could replace the wires. That wasn’t the problem. But the charred control disk was not good. The Greek letters and pictures carved around the edges, which probably held all kinds of magic, were blurred and blackened.

The one piece of hardware Leo couldn’t replace—and it was damaged. Again.

He imagined his mom’s voice: Most problems look worse than they are, mijo. Nothing is unfixable.

His mom could repair just about anything, but Leo was pretty sure she’d never worked on a fifty-year-old magic metal dragon.

He clenched his teeth and decided he had to try. He wasn’t walking from Detroit to Chicago in a snowstorm, and he wasn’t going to be responsible for stranding his friends.

“Right,” he muttered, brushing the snow off his shoulders.

“Gimme a nylon bristle detail brush, some nitrile gloves, and maybe a can of that aerosol cleaning solvent.”

The tool belt obliged. Leo couldn’t help smiling as he pulled out the supplies. The belt’s pockets did have limits. They wouldn’t give him anything magic, like Jason’s sword, or anything huge, like a chain saw. He’d tried asking for both. And if he asked for too many things at once, the belt needed a cooldown time before it could work again. The more complicated the request, the longer the cooldown. But anything small and simple like you might find around a workshop—all Leo had to do was ask.

He began cleaning off the control disk. While he worked, snow collected on the cooling dragon. Leo had to stop from time to time to summon fire and melt it away, but mostly he went into autopilot mode, his hands working by themselves as his thoughts wandered.

Leo couldn’t believe how stupid he’d acted back at Boreas’s palace. He should’ve figured a family of winter gods would hate him on sight. Son of the fire god flying a fire-breathing dragon into an ice penthouse—yeah, maybe not the best move. Still, he hated feeling like a reject. Jason and Piper got to visit the throne room. Leo got to wait in the lobby with Cal, the demigod of hockey and major head injuries.