In-flight beverages Include the tears of a god Please have exact change
Piper broke down. She fell against Leo and sobbed out the story until he, thunderstruck, red-eyed, hugged her back and buried his face in her neck.
The ground crew gave us space. The Hedges retreated to the Pinto, where the coach clasped Mellie and their baby tight, the way one should always do with family, knowing that tragedy could strike anyone, anytime.
Meg and I stood by, Jason’s diorama still fluttering in my arms.
Next to the Cessna, Festus raised his head, made a low, keening sound, then blasted fire into the sky. The ground crew looked a little nervous about that as they hosed down his wings. I supposed private jets didn’t often keen or spew fire from their nostrils, or … have nostrils.
The air around us seemed to crystallize, forming brittle shards of emotion that would cut us no matter which way we turned.
Leo looked like he’d been struck repeatedly. (And I knew. I had seen him struck repeatedly.) He brushed the tears from his face. He stared at the cargo hold, then at the diorama in my hands.
‘I didn’t … I couldn’t even say goodbye,’ he murmured.
Piper shook her head. ‘Me neither. It happened so fast. He just –’ ‘He did what Jason always did,’ Leo said. ‘He saved the day.’ Piper took a shaky breath. ‘What about you? Your news?’
‘My news?’ Leo choked back a sob. ‘After that, who cares about my news?’
‘Hey.’ Piper punched his arm. ‘Apollo told me what you were up to. What happened at Camp Jupiter?’
Leo tapped his fingers on his thighs, as if carrying on two simultaneous conversations in Morse code. ‘We – we stopped this attack. Sort of. There was
a lot of damage. That’s the bad news. A lot of good people …’ He glanced again at the cargo hold. ‘Well, Frank is okay. Reyna, Hazel. That’s the good news …’ He shivered. ‘Gods. I can’t even think right now. Is that normal? Like, just forgetting how to think?’
I could assure him that it was, at least in my experience.
The captain came down the steps of the plane. ‘Sorry, Miss McLean, but we are queued for departure. If we don’t want to lose our window –’
‘Yeah,’ Piper said. ‘Of course. Apollo and Meg, you guys go. I’ll be fine with the coach and Mellie. Leo –’
‘Oh, you’re not getting rid of me,’ said Leo. ‘You just earned a bronze dragon escort to Oklahoma.’
‘Leo –’
‘We’re not arguing about this,’ he insisted. ‘Besides, it’s more or less on the way back to Indianapolis.’
Piper’s smile was as faint as fog. ‘You’re settling in Indianapolis. Me, in Tahlequah. We’re really going places, huh?’
Leo turned to us. ‘Go on, you guys. Take … take Jason home. Do right by him. You’ll find Camp Jupiter still there.’
From the window of the plane, the last I saw of Piper and Leo, Coach and Mellie, they were huddled on the tarmac, plotting their journey east with their bronze dragon and their yellow Pinto.
Meanwhile, we taxied down the runway in our private jet. We rumbled into the sky – heading for Camp Jupiter and a rendezvous with Reyna, the daughter of Bellona.
I didn’t know how I would find Tarquin’s tomb, or who the soundless god was supposed to be. I didn’t know how we would stop Caligula from attacking the damaged Roman camp. But none of that bothered me as much as what had happened to us already – so many lives destroyed, a hero’s coffin rattling in the cargo hold, three emperors who were all still alive, ready to wreak more havoc on everyone and everything I cared about.
I found myself crying.
It was ridiculous. Gods don’t cry. But, as I looked at Jason’s diorama in the seat next to me, all I could think about was that he would never get to see his carefully labelled plans finished. As I held my ukulele, I could only picture Crest playing his last chord with broken fingers.
‘Hey.’ Meg turned in the seat in front of me. Despite her usual cat-eye glasses and preschool-coloured outfit (somehow mended, yet again, by the magic of the ever-patient dryads), Meg sounded more grown-up today. Surer of herself. ‘We’re going to make everything right.’
I shook my head miserably. ‘What does that even mean? Caligula is heading north. Nero is still out there. We’ve faced three emperors, and defeated none of them. And Python –’
She bopped me on the nose, much harder than she had Baby Chuck. ‘Ow!’
‘Got your attention?’ ‘I – Yes.’
‘Then listen: You will get to the Tiber alive. You will start to jive. That’s what the prophecy said back in Indiana, right? It will make sense once we get there. You’re going to beat the Triumvirate.’
I blinked. ‘Is that an order?’ ‘It’s a promise.’
I wished she hadn’t put it that way. I could almost hear the goddess Styx laughing, her voice echoing from the cold cargo hold where the son of Jupiter now rested in his coffin.
The thought made me angry. Meg was right. I would defeat the emperors. I would free Delphi from Python’s grasp. I would not allow those who had sacrificed themselves to do so for nothing.
Perhaps this quest had ended on a suspended fourth chord. We still had much to do.
But from now on I would be more than Lester. I would be more than an observer.
I would be Apollo. I would remember.
