The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)

Still, Nero’s words unsettled me: Meg McCaffrey will come back to me. She will serve me yet.

I wondered … if my own father, Zeus, appeared to me just then and offered me a way back to Olympus, what price would I be willing to pay? Would I leave Meg to her fate? Would I abandon the demigods and satyrs and dryads who had become my comrades? Would I forget about all the terrible things Zeus had done to me over the centuries and swallow my pride, just so I could regain my place in Olympus, knowing full well I would still be under Zeus’s thumb?

I tamped down those questions. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers.

I joined Meg at the collapsed greenhouse. ‘Good morning.’

She did not look up. She’d been digging through the wreckage. Half-melted polycarbonate walls had been turned over and tossed aside. Her hands were dirty from clawing at the soil. Near her sat a grimy glass peanut-butter jar, the rusty lid removed and lying next to it. Cupped in her palm were some greenish pebbles.

I sucked in my breath.

No, they weren’t pebbles. In Meg’s hand lay seven coin-size hexagons – green seeds exactly like the ones in the memories she’d shared.

‘How?’ I asked.

She glanced up. She wore teal camouflage today, which made her look like an entirely different dangerous and scary little girl. Someone had cleaned her glasses (Meg never did), so I could see her eyes. They glinted as hard and clear as the rhinestones in her frames.

‘The seeds were buried,’ she said. ‘I … had a dream about them. The saguaro Hercules did it – put them in that jar right before he died. He was saving the seeds … for me, for when it was time.’

I wasn’t sure what to say. Congratulations. What nice seeds. Honestly, I didn’t know much about how plants grew. I did notice, however, that the seeds weren’t glowing as they had in Meg’s memories.

‘Do you think they’re still, uh, good?’ I asked.

‘Going to find out,’ she said. ‘Going to plant them.’

I looked around at the desert hillside. ‘You mean here? Now?’

‘Yep. It’s time.’

How could she know that? I also didn’t see how planting a few seeds would make a difference when Caligula’s maze was causing half of California to burn.

On the other hand, we were off on another quest today, hoping to find Caligula’s palace, with no guarantee we would come back alive. I supposed there was no time like the present. And if it made Meg feel better, why not?

‘How can I help?’ I asked.

‘Poke holes.’ Then she added, as if I might need extra guidance, ‘In the earth.’

I accomplished this with an arrow tip, making seven small impressions in the barren, rocky soil. I couldn’t help thinking that these seed holes didn’t look like very comfortable places to grow.

While Meg placed her green hexagons in their new homes, she directed me to get water from the Cistern’s well.

‘It has to be from there,’ she warned. ‘A big cupful.’

A few minutes later I returned with a Big-Hombre-size plastic cup from Enchiladas del Rey. Meg drizzled the water over her newly planted friends.

I waited for something dramatic to happen. In Meg’s presence, I’d got used to chia-seed explosions, demon peach babies and instant walls of strawberries.

The soil did not move.

‘Guess we wait,’ Meg said.

She hugged her knees and scanned the horizon.

The morning sun blazed in the east. It had risen today, as always, but no thanks to me. It didn’t care if I was driving the sun chariot, or if Helios was raging in the tunnels under Los Angeles. No matter what humans believed, the cosmos kept turning, and the sun stayed on course. Under different circumstances, I would have found that reassuring. Now I found the sun’s indifference both cruel and insulting. In only a few days, Caligula might become a solar deity. Under such villainous leadership, you might think the sun would refuse to rise or set. But shockingly, disgustingly, day and night would continue as they always had.

‘Where is she?’ Meg asked.

I blinked. ‘Who?’

‘If my family is so important to her, thousands of years of blessings, or whatever, why hasn’t she ever …?’

She waved at the vast desert, as if to say, So much real estate, so little Demeter.

She was asking why her mother had never appeared to her, why Demeter had allowed Caligula to destroy her father’s work, why she’d let Nero raise her in his poisonous imperial household in New York.

I couldn’t answer Meg’s questions. Or rather, as a former god, I could think of several possible answers, but none that would make Meg feel better: Demeter was too busy watching the crop situation in Tanzania. Demeter got distracted inventing new breakfast cereals. Demeter forgot you existed.

‘I don’t know, Meg,’ I admitted. ‘But this …’ I pointed at the seven tiny wet circles in the earth. ‘This is the sort of thing your mother would be proud of. Growing plants in an impossible place. Stubbornly insisting on creating life. It’s ridiculously optimistic. Demeter would approve.’

Meg studied me as if trying to decide whether to thank me or hit me. I’d got used to that look.

‘Let’s go,’ she decided. ‘Maybe the seeds will sprout while we’re gone.’

The three of us piled into the Bedrossian-mobile: Meg, Piper and me.

Grover had decided to stay behind – supposedly to rally the demoralized dryads, but I think he was simply exhausted from his series of near-death excursions with Meg and me. Coach Hedge volunteered to accompany us, but Mellie quickly un-volunteered him. As for the dryads, none seemed anxious to be our plant shields after what had happened to Money Maker and Agave. I couldn’t blame them.

At least Piper agreed to drive. If we got pulled over for possession of a stolen vehicle, she could charmspeak her way out of being arrested. With my luck, I would spend all day in jail, and Lester’s face would not look good in a mug shot.

We retraced our route from yesterday – the same heat-blasted terrain, the same smoke-stained skies, the same clogged traffic. Living the California dream.

None of us felt much like talking. Piper kept her eyes fixed on the road, probably thinking about a reunion she did not want with an ex-boyfriend she had left on awkward terms. (Oh, boy, I could relate.)

Meg traced the swirls on her teal camo pants. I imagined she was reflecting on her father’s final botany project and why Caligula had found it so threatening. It seemed unbelievable that Meg’s entire life had been altered by seven green seeds. Then again, she was a child of Demeter. With the goddess of plants, insignificant-looking things could be very significant.

The smallest seedlings, Demeter often told me, grow into century oaks.

As for me, I had no shortage of problems to think about.

Python awaited. I knew instinctively that I would have to face him one day. If by some miracle I survived the emperors’ various plots on my life, if I defeated the Triumvirate and freed the four other Oracles and single-handedly set everything right in the mortal world, I would still have to find a way to wrest control of Delphi from my most ancient enemy. Only then might Zeus let me become a god again. Because Zeus was just that awesome. Thanks, Dad.

In the meantime, I had to deal with Caligula. I would have to foil his plan to make me the secret ingredient in his sun-god soup. And I would have to do this while having no godly powers at my disposal. My archery skills had deteriorated. My singing and playing weren’t worth olive stones. Divine strength? Charisma? Light? Fire power? All gauges read EMPTY.

My most humiliating thought: Medea would capture me, try to strip away my divine power and find I didn’t have any left.

What is this? she would scream. There’s nothing here but Lester!

Then she would kill me anyway.

As I contemplated these happy possibilities, we wound our way through the Pasadena Valley.

‘I’ve never liked this city,’ I murmured. ‘It makes me think of game shows, tawdry parades and drunk washed-up starlets with spray-on tans.’

Piper coughed. ‘FYI, Jason’s mom was from here. She died here, in a car accident.’