The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)

She predicted the fall of Troy. She foresaw the rise of Alexander the Great. She advised Aeneas on where he should establish the colony that would one day become Rome. But did the Romans listen to all her advice, like Watch out for emperors, Don’t go crazy with the gladiator stuff or Togas are not a good fashion statement? No. No, they didn’t.

For nine hundred years, Herophile roamed the earth. She did her best to help, but, despite my blessings and occasional deliveries of pick-me-up flower arrangements, she became discouraged. Everyone she’d known in her youth was dead. She’d seen civilizations rise and fall. She’d heard too many priests and heroes say, Wait, what? Could you repeat that? Let me get a pencil.

She returned home to her mother’s hillside in Erythrae. The spring had dried up centuries before, and with it her mother’s spirit, but Herophile settled in the nearby cave. She helped supplicants whenever they came to seek her wisdom, but her voice was never the same.

Gone was her beautiful singing. Whether she’d lost her confidence, or whether the gift of prophecy had simply changed into a different sort of curse, I couldn’t be sure. Herophile spoke haltingly, leaving out important words that the listener would have to guess. Sometimes her voice failed altogether. In frustration, she scribbled lines on dried leaves, leaving them for the supplicant to arrange in the proper order to find meaning.

The last time I saw Herophile … yes, the year was 1509 CE. I’d coaxed her out of her cave for one last visit to Rome, where Michelangelo was painting her portrait on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Apparently, she was being celebrated for some obscure prophecy long ago, when she’d predicted the birth of Jesus the Nazarene.

‘I don’t know, Michael,’ Herophile said, sitting next to him on his scaffold, watching him paint. ‘It’s beautiful, but my arms are not that …’ Her voice seized up. ‘Eight letters, starts with M.’

Michelangelo tapped his paintbrush to his lips. ‘Muscular?’

Herophile nodded vigorously.

‘I can fix that,’ Michelangelo promised.

Afterwards, Herophile returned to her cave for good. I’ll admit I lost track of her. I assumed she had faded away, like so many other ancient Oracles. Yet now here she was, in Southern California, at the mercy of Caligula.

I really should have kept sending those floral arrangements.

Now, all I could do was try to make up for my negligence. Herophile was still my Oracle, as much as Rachel Dare at Camp Half-Blood, or the ghost of poor Trophonius in Indianapolis. Whether it was a trap or not, I couldn’t leave her in a chamber of lava, shackled with molten manacles. I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Zeus had been right to send me to earth, to correct the wrongs I had allowed to happen.

I quickly shoved that thought aside. No. This punishment was entirely unfair. Still, ugh. Is anything worse than realizing you might agree with your father?

Grover navigated around the northern edge of Los Angeles, through traffic that moved almost as slowly as Athena’s brainstorming process.

I don’t wish to be unfair to Southern California. When the place was not on fire, or trapped in a brown haze of smog, or rumbling with earthquakes, or sliding into the sea, or choked with traffic, there were things I liked about it: the music scene, the palm trees, the beaches, the nice days, the pretty people. Yet I understood why Hades had located the main entrance to the Underworld here. Los Angeles was a magnet for human aspirations – the perfect place for mortals to gather, starry-eyed with dreams of fame, then fail, die and circle down the drain, flushed into oblivion.

There, you see? I can be a balanced observer!

Every so often I looked skyward, hoping to see Leo Valdez flying overhead on his bronze dragon, Festus. I wanted him to be carrying a large banner that said EVERYTHING’S COOL! The new moon wasn’t for two more days, true, but maybe Leo had finished his rescue mission early! He could land on the highway, tell us that Camp Jupiter had been saved from whatever threat had faced them. Then he could ask Festus to blowtorch the cars in front of us to speed up our travels.

Alas, no bronze dragon circled above, though it would’ve been hard to spot. The entire sky was bronze coloured.

‘So, Grover,’ I said, after a few decades on the Pacific Coast Highway, ‘have you ever met Piper or Jason?’

Grover shook his head. ‘Seems strange, I know. We’ve all been in SoCal for so long. But I’ve been busy with the fires. Jason and Piper have been questing and going to school and whatever. I just never got the chance. Coach says they’re … nice.’

I got the feeling he’d been about to say something other than nice.

‘Is there a problem we should know about?’ I asked.

Grover drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Well … they’ve been under a lot of stress. First, they were looking for Leo Valdez. Then they did some other quests. Then things started to go bad for Mr McLean.’

Meg glanced up from braiding a bougainvillea. ‘Piper’s dad?’

Grover nodded. ‘He’s a famous actor, you know. Tristan McLean?’

A frisson of pleasure went up my back. I loved Tristan McLean in King of Sparta. And Jake Steel 2: The Return of Steel. For a mortal, that man had endless abs.

‘How did things go badly?’ I asked.

‘You don’t read celebrity news,’ Grover guessed.

Sad but true. With all my running around as a mortal, freeing ancient Oracles and fighting Roman megalomaniacs, I’d had zero time to keep up with juicy Hollywood gossip.

‘Messy break-up?’ I speculated. ‘Paternity suit? Did he say something horrible on Twitter?’

‘Not exactly,’ Grover said. ‘Let’s just … see how things are going when we get there. It might not be so bad.’

He said that in the way people do when they expect it to be exactly that bad.

By the time we made it to Malibu, it was nearly lunchtime. My stomach was turning itself inside out from hunger and car sickness. Me, who used to spend all day cruising in the sun Maserati, car sick. I blamed Grover. He drove with a heavy hoof.

On the bright side, our Pinto had not exploded, and we found the McLean house without incident.

Set back from the winding road, the mansion at 12 Oro del Mar clung to rocky cliffs overlooking the Pacific. From street level, the only visible parts were the white stucco security walls, the wrought-iron gates and an expanse of red-clay-tiled roofs.

The place would have radiated a sense of privacy and Zen tranquility had it not been for the moving trucks parked outside. The gates stood wide open. Troops of burly men were carting away sofas, tables and large works of art. Pacing back and forth at the end of the driveway, looking bedraggled and stunned, as if he’d just walked away from a car wreck, was Tristan McLean.

His hair was longer than I’d seen it in the films. Silky black locks swept across his shoulders. He’d put on weight, so he no longer resembled the sleek killing machine he’d been in King of Sparta. His white jeans were smeared with soot. His black T-shirt was torn at the collar. His loafers looked like a pair of overbaked potatoes.

It didn’t seem right, a celebrity of his calibre just standing in front of his Malibu house without any guards or personal assistants or adoring fans – not even a mob of paparazzi to snap embarrassing pictures.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I wondered.

Meg squinted through the windshield. ‘He looks okay.’

‘No,’ I insisted. ‘He looks … average.’

Grover turned off the engine. ‘Let’s go say hi.’

Mr McLean stopped pacing when he saw us. His dark brown eyes seemed unfocused. ‘Are you Piper’s friends?’

I couldn’t find my words. I made a gurgling sound I hadn’t produced since I first met Grace Kelly.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Grover. ‘Is she home?’

‘Home …’ Tristan McLean tasted the word. He seemed to find it bitter and without meaning. ‘Go on inside.’ He waved vaguely down the driveway. ‘I think she’s …’ His voice trailed off as he watched two movers carting away a large marble statue of a catfish. ‘Go ahead. Doesn’t matter.’

I wasn’t sure if he was talking to us or to the movers, but his defeated tone alarmed me even more than his appearance.