Passing the Torch Works Out Super Well One block. That’s how far we made it.
Annabeth led us across 11th Street, then through Grover’s recommended
shortcut—a pedestrian path between two apartment buildings. The mortals we passed gave us a wide berth. Through the Mist, I imagined we looked
like a Halloween tour group. Please follow the torches for the Ghosts and Goblins Walk!
Hecuba and Nope went into border-collie mode. With their leashes dragging behind them, they raced around the spirits, making sure they all stayed in a
tight herd. I guess that’s what hellhounds did down in the Underworld, because Nope took to it instinctively.
“Nope!” he barked every time a ghost strayed. “Nope! Nope!” There would be no side trips for ice cream on this walking tour. We had just emerged onto 12th Street when Annabeth stumbled.
I managed to catch her left arm and keep the torch from dropping. Grover did the same on her right. The ghosts surged toward us, then ebbed back when Annabeth regained her balance. I got the feeling they’d been about a half second away from feeding on our immortal souls.
“I made a mistake,” Annabeth said.
Her breathing was ragged. Her legs wobbled like she’d just climbed all the way to Olympus.
“What can we do?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m not … going to have … enough strength … to get there.”
Gale climbed onto Grover’s shoulder. She chittered nervously, tapping her tiny wrist where her tiny watch would have been if she’d had one. We were going too slowly. Goo was a-wasting.
The ghosts swirled around us, seething with bitterness. Pete the Musketeer watched like a wolf waiting for the right moment to strike weakened prey. His hand rested on the hilt of his shadowy rapier.
Grover and I exchanged a panicked look. If Annabeth was admitting she’d made a mistake, we were in serious trouble. All heroes had fatal flaws.
Annabeth’s was pride. She always aimed as high as possible, confident she could go even higher. Most of the time, she was right. But calling for help after one block? The situation had to be desperate for her to swallow her
pride like that.
Then I remembered why fatal flaws were called fatal.
We couldn’t let her get worn-out so soon. She was the only one who could direct the ghosts to rebuild the house properly.
“Let me take the torches,” I said. Hecuba growled.
“That’s not a great idea,” Grover translated. “If you break the summoning
—”
“I can do it,” I insisted. “Walking these guys back to the manse—that I can handle. We need Annabeth fresh when we get there so she can take over.”
Hecuba made a sound between a grunt and a whimper.
“She doesn’t know if you can pass the torches from one person to another,” Grover said. “No one has ever tried that before.”
I met Annabeth’s eyes. “We can.”
I figured that, after holding the weight of the sky and trekking through
Tartarus together, the two of us were about as in sync as a couple could be.
There might not be any I in team, but there was definitely an A for Annabeth and … three other letters that didn’t really stand for anything, so let’s forget I said that. The point was, we were great collaborators. I wasn’t sure of much else, but I was sure of that.
I faced her, nose to nose, and held out my arms to match hers.
“It’s okay.” I wrapped my hands over hers on the torch handles. “Let me help.”
She loosened her grip and fell back into Grover’s arms.
The ghosts whirled into an angry storm of dust and smoke, but I kept the torches aloft and channeled my best mental hellpuppy voice. NOPE!
The spirits calmed. Or at least, they went back to their baseline level of homicidal rage.
“You’re going to follow me to Gramercy Park,” I ordered. “And you’re going to like it.”
For the first .00035th of a second, I felt pretty confident. The torches weren’t that heavy. The hissing voices and emotional onslaught from the dead weren’t that bad.
But by the time we got to Third Avenue, I was starting to think Grover was right. I needed to work out more. The torches felt like anvils. I was running a serious deficit of muscles and stuff. Sweat poured down my back.
I realized I wasn’t just carrying the torches—I was dragging an entire army of reluctant dead people behind me. They were making it as hard as they could, digging in their ghostly heels. Stuyvesant hovered nearby, watching me with amusement. And now this boy thinks he can control us.
Watch me, Pete, I growled back.
I kept going, fixing my mind on our destination. The manse. Just get back to the manse.
Annabeth seemed a little better, at least. She limped along at my side, her face set in concentration, trying to help me psychically shepherd the dead.
The hellhounds barked and raced around the edges, nipping at ghostly heels. Grover trotted ahead of us with Gale on his shoulder, blazing a trail through the wilds of the East Village.
“This way!” he urged. “One hoof in front of the other!”
Our strange procession staggered north. The torches became heavier. The flames scalded my forearms. Every so often, out of the corner of my eye, I
spotted a random new ghost crawling out of the sidewalk or emerging from a wall to join our parade. Great … for once, I was popular.
I lost track of time. My vision blurred. I felt like I was turning to smoke, blending into the spirit mob until I was nothing but jumbled feelings and fuzzy memories.
I was vaguely aware that Annabeth had jogged ahead to confer with Grover. “… no supplies,” Grover was saying. “Should we stop somewhere?” “Don’t worry,” Annabeth said. “We’ll figure it out.”
I was glad we wouldn’t be making that detour. I imagined dragging my army of ghosts into Home Depot and asking where we could find drywall and plaster.
The thought distracted me. I tripped on a crack. The torches guttered. The ghosts swarmed me.
“Percy!” Annabeth’s voice shocked me back into focus.
I raised the torches higher. The ghosts retreated, whispering insults.
Stuyvesant’s face was only a swirl of soot, but I was pretty sure he was leering at me.
“That was close,” Annabeth said. “Just keep going. You’re doing great.”
I staggered on as more and more spirits joined our procession. Traffic sounds became soft and damp like noises heard underwater. Pedestrians parted around us in slow motion, ignoring the torches and angry dead people.
Gale barked, helpfully urging me to pick up the pace. The smell of burning polyester was fading as the magic salve on my skin dried out and crumbled off my neck and wrists.
“It’s fine,” Annabeth told me. “It’s all fine.”
Proof positive that things were not fine.
Just get to the manse, I told myself.
I repeated those words so often they started to lose meaning. I hallucinated that Hecate was dancing in front of me, coaxing me to follow her. Her face split into three fiery guises—the horse, the lion, and the dog. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what they symbolized. I just knew I couldn’t meet their eyes.
I was approaching my final crossroads, like Hecate’s school did in 1914.
I remembered what Hecate had said at our first meeting: I devour those who waver before me. She wouldn’t help me choose a path. She would just watch to see which version of failure I picked.
At my side, the ghost of Peter Stuyvesant laughed softly. His peg leg had no substance, but it made an otherworldly clunk whenever it struck the pavement.
“Percy, almost there,” Annabeth said. “Look.”
We’d made it to the north end of Irving Place. Ahead of us stretched Gramercy Park West. On our left, only half a block away, rose the gray facade of the manse.
I could do this.
My legs were as heavy as cast iron, but a surge of anger gave me strength. Hecate didn’t reward hesitation? Fine.
I growled—probably saying something really inappropriate in Hellhound
—and marched straight ahead through the hallucinatory vision of Hecate. We made it to the mansion’s gate.
Annabeth and Grover hurried to either side of me. They braced my arms, and together we lurched up the cranium-stone path. The torch flames
guttered again, cooling to a dark red. Somehow, we made it to the front porch.
The ghosts milled about the yard, waiting for orders or a chance to kill us. They reminded me of large, angry, spectral garden gnomes, which fit right in with the manse’s vibe.
“My turn,” Annabeth said.
Brave words, but she still looked exhausted. I wasn’t any better. We’d barely managed to transfer the torches before. If we tried now, I was afraid we’d end up setting ourselves on fire, burning down the manse, and then getting eaten by garden ghouls.
I forced a few words from my dry throat. “How about … together?”
Grover started to object, but Hecuba’s bark cut him off. Gale added a few urgent chirps.
I got the message without a translation. Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!
The ghosts were getting restless. They had reached my chosen destination. Now what? Maybe could they rip us into bite-size pieces?
Meanwhile, Nope, oblivious to our danger, was trying to chomp the end of Stuyvesant’s shadow sword.
“Okay,” Annabeth said. “Together.”
She put her arm around my waist. She reached out for the torch in my right hand.
“Let me do the thinking,” she warned. “Gladly,” I croaked.
She took the torch.
Wow, that was a relief. Suddenly only the left side of my body felt like it
was dissolving in acid. On my right I had Annabeth, which was much better. I put my free arm around her waist. We held each other tight.
The torches blazed, heating up again to a bright blue flame.
Annabeth faced our surly mob of followers. “Fix the house,” she said. “Then you’ll be free.”
Behind us, the makeshift front door blasted open. The army of spirits rushed the front porch, parting around us like we were a rock in the rapids, and swept into the manse.
“Oh,” Grover said in a small voice. “I’m sure that’s fine.”
Annabeth and I managed to turn so we could watch the spirits’ progress. Fortunately, we’d had some practice doing three-legged races at camp.
Miniature tornadoes swirled through the great room. The dead cleared the broken glass, repaired the furniture, and painted the walls with sheets of ghostly frost. Above us, more ghosts swept across the building’s facade, mending the cracked tombstones and replacing those that had fallen.
“Percy,” Annabeth said weakly, “it’s going to work!”
I tried to smile, but even lifting the corners of my mouth felt like too much effort. I stayed focused on the task: Fix the house. Otherwise, I let Annabeth do the thinking.
The ghosts did all the heavy lifting, but it felt like they were draining the life force right out of me. The more they did, the more my legs shook. Only Stuyvesant remained aloof from the uproar. He probably considered himself above menial labor. He floated here and there, monitoring repairs, hissing
orders in Dutch, and letting his home-jongens do all the work.
Grover, Hecuba, and Gale stood in the front yard, stunned into silence.
Nope, who must have sensed we needed support, padded behind us, wedged his head between Annabeth’s leg and mine, and rested his snout on my shoe. Honestly, that was the best cute-puppy assist I could have asked for.
I don’t know how long the process took. Hours? Centuries? My sight dimmed. My brain wobbled in my skull like a gyroscope.
Finally, Annabeth said, “It’s done.”
The ghosts belched out of the house in a flood of gray ectoplasm and reassembled in the yard.
I looked at their results. The mansion was exactly as it had been when we arrived on Monday. The windows were all fixed. The three-paneled door gleamed with a new coat of paint. The ghosts had even polished and replaced the door knockers, which looked as astonished as pieces of metal can look.
“That was incredible!” said the lion. “That was horrible!” said the horse. “STROOPWAFELS!” said the dog.
So the door knockers worked again. Yay. Annabeth and I turned to survey the troops.
Hundreds of ghosts hung above the lawn like columns of campfire smoke. Stuyvesant limped back and forth in front of them, his spectral peg leg clunking against the cranium path. The dead were waiting, but I knew
they were at the end of their patience. They felt no sense of accomplishment. They only wanted one thing: release. Also, revenge. Okay, they wanted two things. We needed to dismiss them quickly and send them back to their graves.
“Ready?” Annabeth asked me. “One, two, three.”
She started pulling in her torch. I did the same. The idea was simple: Do what Hecate had done. Cross the torches in front of us and hope the spirits turned to dust and went bye-bye.
The problem was, my left arm rebelled. I had nothing left. No muscles.
No stuff. Just bringing the torch toward my chest felt like trying to close a rusty airplane-hangar door with one hand. I took a breath, dug deep to find whatever remained of my strength, and gave it one last shot.
“Percy?” Grover asked in alarm. “Percy!” Annabeth said.
“Sorry …” I muttered.
My last shot was a miss. Black spots danced in my eyes. I crumpled to my knees, and the torch fell out of my hand.
