I Am Saved by My Own Doofus-ness Turns out dying has a theme song. It’s called “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
The horse’s hooves were an inch from my face when that song blasted from a nearby car horn. The noise startled some of the ghosts into evaporating.
The horse pivoted on its back legs, giving me time to roll sideways just as Janet the eel hit Peter Stuyvesant in the face, nearly knocking him out of his saddle.
I got to my feet, gasping and weaponless but uncrushed. Pulling up to the curb was a white delivery van that looked very familiar. My vision was swimming, but I knew what words were painted on the side of the van: DELPHI STRAWBERRY SERVICE.
I knew I’d forgotten something important—again. We’d invited our friends to a Halloween party tonight and never canceled it. You see, kids?
Absentmindedness can save your life.
The side panel door rolled open and costumed demigods poured out.
Connor Stoll led the way, wearing a prisoner’s orange jumpsuit with fake manacles on his ankles and wrists. “Dude, your yard decorations are fire!”
“They’re real!” I yelled. “Real ghosts!”
More demigods emerged from the van—Clovis from the Morpheus cabin, wearing a nightgown, nightcap, and slippers, which was not very different from how he usually lounged at camp; Harley from Hephaestus, the youngest of our campers, encased in a Celestial bronze Iron Man suit he’d probably made himself; Valentina Diaz from Aphrodite, dressed in a black 1940s evening gown with white gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, and twenty different strings of pearls around her neck.
Valentina scanned the ghostly horde. “Gross. Can we fight them?” “Yes, please!” Annabeth yelled from the porch.
Our friends charged into battle. Clovis waddled among the possessed people, yawning as he went. Coming from a child of Morpheus, that yawn was more infectious than the plague. The possessed crumpled on the spot and began to snore.
Meanwhile, Connor and Valentina and half a dozen other demigods waded into combat. Connor was pretty effective with his costume manacles.
Harley was a walking battering ram in his Bronze Man suit. Valentina’s pearls doubled as lassos—garroting trash spirits, slashing costumes into
shreds. Gale, Hecuba, and Nope bounded around the yard, alternately biting the dead and sniffing the newcomer demigods like, Oh, hi, are you my friend?
More passengers emerged from the van. I spotted Juniper with some other
dryads and satyrs. She heard Grover across the street shouting for help, got a fierce look in her eyes, and handed one of the other dryads a big terra-cotta vase she was carrying. I guessed it contained a cutting from her life-source juniper bush.
“Hold my pot,” she ordered. Then she marched off to help her boyfriend. I was feeling relieved until a rapier slashed the air just shy of my nose.
Officer Pete had regained control of his horse.
You must die, Stuyvesant said. Witches. Heretics. My mother’s minions.
“Dude, give it a rest,” I grumbled, dodging another swing.
My sword was nowhere to be seen. I patted my pockets. The pen would eventually return to me, but it hadn’t yet, and I didn’t have time to wait.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Annabeth on the porch, holding the spirit army at bay. She remained on one knee, her arms sinking lower and lower as she struggled to maintain the torches. I needed to help her, but Officer Pete was still in my face.
“Little help here?” I called out.
The eels flew in, wrapping themselves around Pete’s arms and neck, accessorizing his blue uniform with lovely yellow coils. Stuyvesant gurgled and struggled, trying to shake them.
Then a large figure came around the front of the van. I guess I hadn’t seen him yet because he’d been fighting across the street. It was our old friend Argus—camp security officer, van chauffeur, and the most useful combat Uber driver you could ever want.
He had bright blue eyes all over his massive body. For Halloween, he’d chosen the Amelia Earhart look. He’d donned old-fashioned pilot’s jodhpurs, leather boots, and a long white scarf. Across his bare chest and arms, he’d
covered each eye with an aviator’s goggle, so he looked like a massive suction-cup experiment gone wrong. He strode toward Officer
Pete, got his arms under the belly of the horse, and lifted it over his head—
Pete, eels, and all. (Argus, by the way, is pretty strong.) I wasn’t an expert on proper horse-lifting techniques, but Argus loved the pegasi at camp, so I figured he would be careful not to harm the animal. The horse, bewildered and possessed, just kept moving its legs through the air, getting nowhere,
while Stuyvesant cursed in Dutch and demanded that we all burn in the eternal fires of wherever bad Dutch people went.
Argus looked at me and pointed his chin toward Annabeth. Go.
I sprinted for the porch. Our friends had evened up the fight, but the spirits still wouldn’t go away. All we could do was distract them, take away their toys (people, costumes, garbage), and try to avoid getting our own souls drained to the dregs. We needed to end this.
I made it to Annabeth’s side. She was so dazed she almost brained me with a torch before she realized I wasn’t a ghost.
“Hi,” she wheezed.
“We need to cross the torches,” I said. “Both of us, together.” “We tried that.”
“Again,” I said. “While Stuyvesant is distracted.”
Pete peeled Bigwig the eel off his jack-o’-lantern face and tossed him aside. Argus’s arms were starting to shake under the weight of the horse and rider.
“We can’t risk it,” Annabeth said. “The spirits will break through!”
The ghosts made her point by rushing the front door. The fires held them at bay, but the whole house shook under the assault. Annabeth staggered, her back now against the door. The door knockers screamed and pleaded for their lives.
Annabeth tried to cross the torches by herself, but she didn’t have the strength. “Too … too heavy.”
“Hey, Wise Girl,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, “be wise. I don’t know much, but I do know we’re stronger together. Always.”
I’d finally found an argument Annabeth couldn’t counter. She grunted assent and let me take the torch from her left hand.
The world seemed to gutter and darken along with the torchlight. The spirits swirled around us, howling in triumph as Hecate’s power wavered.
“Hurry!” Annabeth yelled.
Standing side by side, we pulled in our torches. It was like arm-wrestling a tornado. I sensed that we had only seconds before the fires went out for
good. The torches weren’t meant to be shared by two people.
Then again … Annabeth and I were more than just two people. We were a pair, and when we stood at the crossroads, we did it together. I screamed and forced my torch inward. Annabeth did the same.
Our friends kept fighting. Grover’s panpipes had stopped. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one.
The flames of our torches now burned as one. Just a little more until we could cross the handles … but the torches fought us, repelling each other like same-polarity magnets.
You cannot! cried the ghost of Stuyvesant. Hecate must never— With one final burst of strength, we crossed the torches.
A blast of white-hot energy rippled outward from the porch. The ghosts dissolved into air. The police officer slumped in his saddle. The horse freaked out and whinnied, Why am I flying? before Argus set him gently down and let him gallop away with his unconscious rider. Trash and empty
costumes blew across the yard. The people Clovis had put to sleep started to wake up again.
The last ghost standing was the coal-dust cloud of Peter Stuyvesant, now without a human host. He was dissolving slowly, returning to the shadows, but he kept wailing, his angry voice turning desperate, almost heartbroken.
I cannot go, he howled. I cannot allow her to stay in my city. …
Clovis walked over to the fading ghost. He frowned at the swirling coal
particles like they were the remnants of a dream—something that had made sense right until the moment he woke up.
“It’s okay, cousin,” Clovis said. “It’s a big city now. It belongs to all of us. You’ve done your part. Now you deserve a rest. Bring it in.”
Clovis embraced the ghost, and with a long sigh, Stuyvesant let go and dissolved.
Connor Stoll sauntered toward us, grinning happily. His manacles must have come off in the melee.
“You guys sure know how to throw a party!” he said. “Can we come in now, or what?”
