The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)

Jason took his time responding.

He removed his jacket, hung it in the wardrobe. He undid his tie and folded it over the coat hook. I had a flashback to my old friend Fred Rogers, the children’s television host, who radiated the same calm centredness when hanging up his work clothes. Fred used to let me crash on his sofa whenever I’d had a hard day of poetry-godding. He’d offer me a plate of cookies and a glass of milk, then serenade me with his songs until I felt better. I was especially fond of ‘It’s You I Like’. Oh, I missed that mortal!

Finally, Jason strapped on his gladius. With his glasses, shirt, trousers, loafers and sword, he looked less like Mister Rogers and more like a well-armed paralegal.

‘What makes you think I’m holding back?’ he asked.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Don’t try to be evasively prophetic with the god of evasive prophecies.’

Jason sighed. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing the Roman tattoo on the inside of his forearm – the lightning bolt emblem of our father. ‘First of all, it wasn’t exactly a prophecy. It was more like a series of quiz-show questions.’

‘Yes. Herophile delivers information that way.’

‘And you know how prophecies are. Even when the Oracle is friendly, they can be hard to interpret.’

‘Jason …’

‘Fine,’ he relented. ‘The Sibyl said … She told me if Piper and I went after the emperor, one of us would die.’

Die. The word landed between us with a thud, like a large, gutted fish.

I waited for an explanation. Jason stared at his foam core Temple Hill as if trying to bring it to life by sheer force of will.

‘Die,’ I repeated.

‘Yeah.’

‘Not disappear, not wouldn’t come back, not suffer defeat.’

‘Nope. Die. Or more accurately, three letters, starts with D.’

‘Not dad, then,’ I suggested. ‘Or dog.’

One fine blond eyebrow crept above the rim of his glasses. ‘If you seek out the emperor, one of you will dog? No, Apollo, the word was die.’

‘Still, that could mean many things. It could mean a trip to the Underworld. It could mean a death such as Leo suffered, where you pop right back to life. It could mean –’

‘Now you’re being evasive,’ Jason said. ‘The Sibyl meant death. Final. Real. No replays. You had to be there. The way she said it. Unless you happen to have an extra vial of the physician’s cure in your pockets …’

He knew very well I did not. The physician’s cure, which had brought Leo Valdez back to life, was only available from my son Asclepius, god of medicine. And, since Asclepius wanted to avoid an all-out war with Hades, he rarely gave out free samples. As in never. Leo had been the first lucky recipient in four thousand years. He would likely be the last.

‘Still …’ I fumbled for alternate theories and loopholes. I hated thinking of permanent death. As an immortal, I was a conscientious objector. As good as your afterlife experience might be (and most of them were not good), life was better. The warmth of the actual sun, the vibrant colours of the upper world, the cuisine … really, even Elysium had nothing to compare.

Jason’s stare was unrelenting. I suspected that in the weeks since his talk with Herophile he had run every scenario. He was well past the bargaining stage in dealing with this prophecy. He had accepted that death meant death, the way Piper McLean had accepted that Oklahoma meant Oklahoma.

I didn’t like that. Jason’s calmness again reminded me of Fred Rogers, but in an exasperating way. How could anyone be so accepting and level-headed all the time? Sometimes I just wanted him to get mad, to scream and throw his loafers across the room.

‘Let’s assume you’re correct,’ I said. ‘You didn’t tell Piper the truth because –?’

‘You know what happened to her dad.’ Jason studied the calluses on his hands, proof he had not let his sword skills atrophy. ‘Last year when we saved him from the fire giant on Mount Diablo … Mr McLean’s mind wasn’t in good shape. Now, with all the stress of the bankruptcy and everything else, can you imagine what would happen if he lost his daughter too?’

I recalled the dishevelled movie star wandering his driveway, searching for imaginary coins. ‘Yes, but you can’t know how the prophecy will unfold.’

‘I can’t let it unfold with Piper dying. She and her dad are scheduled to leave town at the end of the week. She’s actually … I don’t know if excited is the right word, but she’s relieved to get out of LA. Ever since I’ve known her, the thing she’s wanted most is more time with her dad. Now they have a chance to start over. She can help her dad find some peace. Maybe find some peace herself.’

His voice caught – perhaps with guilt, or regret, or fear.

‘You wanted to get her safely out of town,’ I deduced. ‘Then you planned to find the emperor yourself.’

Jason shrugged. ‘Well, with you and Meg. I knew you’d be coming to find me. Herophile said so. If you’d just waited another week –’

‘Then what?’ I demanded. ‘You would’ve let us lead you cheerily off to your death? How would that have affected Piper’s peace of mind, once she found out?’

Jason’s ears reddened. It struck me just how young he was – no more than seventeen. Older than my mortal form, yes, but not by much. This young man had lost his mother. He had survived the harsh training of Lupa the wolf goddess. He’d grown up with the discipline of the Twelfth Legion at Camp Jupiter. He’d fought Titans and giants. He’d helped save the world at least twice. But by mortal standards he was barely an adult. He wasn’t old enough to vote or drink.

Despite all his experiences, was it fair of me to expect him to think logically, and consider everyone else’s feelings with perfect clarity, while pondering his own death?

I tried to soften my tone. ‘You don’t want Piper to die. I understand that. She wouldn’t want you to die. But avoiding prophecies never works. And keeping secrets from friends, especially deadly secrets … that really never works. It’ll be our job to face Caligula together, steal that homicidal maniac’s shoes and get away without any five-letter words that start with D.’

The scar ticked at the corner of Jason’s mouth. ‘Drama?’

‘You’re horrible,’ I said, but some of the tension dissolved between my shoulder blades. ‘Are you ready?’

He glanced at the photo of his sister Thalia, then at the model of Temple Hill. ‘If anything happens to me –’

‘Stop.’

‘If it does, if I can’t keep my promise to Kymopoleia, would you take my mock-up design to Camp Jupiter? The sketchbooks for new temples at both camps – they’re right there on the shelf.’

‘You’ll take them yourself,’ I insisted. ‘Your new shrines will honour the gods. It’s too worthy a project not to succeed.’

He picked a shard of lightbulb glass off the roof of the Zeus hotel token. ‘Worthy doesn’t always matter. Like what happened to you. Have you talked to Dad since …?’

He had the decency not to elaborate: Since you landed in the garbage as a flabby sixteen-year-old with no redeeming qualities.

I swallowed back the taste of copper. From the depths of my small mortal mind, my father’s words rumbled: YOUR FAULT. YOUR PUNISHMENT.

‘Zeus hasn’t spoken to me since I became mortal,’ I said. ‘Before that, my memory is fuzzy. I remember the battle last summer at the Parthenon. I remember Zeus zapping me. After that, until the moment I woke up plummeting through the sky in January – it’s a blank.’

‘I know that feeling, having six months of your life taken away.’ He gave me a pained look. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.’

‘What could you have done?’

‘I mean at the Parthenon. I tried to talk sense into Zeus. I told him he was wrong to punish you. He wouldn’t listen.’