Hebe crossed her go-go boots at the ankles. She placed her arms across the back of the booth. With her smug expression, she reminded me more of a Mafia boss than a 1960s teenager.
“Is that why you’re here, then?” she asked. “You want to know the secret of youth? I imagine none of you really had a childhood, did you? Always running errands for the gods, fleeing monsters, adulting.”
Her expression soured, as if that word disgusted her.
“Our Skee-Ball tournament usually shaves off a year or two,” she continued. “Or you can redeem tickets for various elixirs at the rewards station. I’ll just warn you that if you’re looking for something extreme, I don’t turn anyone into babies. They do nothing but cry, poop, and throw up. The real childhood magic starts at around eight years old.”
Annabeth shifted in her seat. “There were no infants in the arcade. No one younger than, like, eight. Your manager, Sparky—”
“Stays in the main arcade,” Hebe said. “I am always the youngest person in any room, you see, even if it’s just by a few months. I can’t stand to be out-younged.” She brushed away the idea, banishing it from her presence. “But I do prefer the teenage years.”
“So you hang out in a karaoke bar,” I said. “Makes sense.”
She nodded. I made a mental note not to fight her with sarcasm. She was obviously immune.
“Now,” she said, “if you’ll tell me how young you want to be, I will tell you what it will cost.”
“No,” I said.
Suddenly the air around us felt colder and oilier than the pizza.
“No?” asked the goddess.
“That’s not why we’re here.”
Hebe’s expression turned from smug to “resting goddess face,” which was not a good thing.
“Then why,” she asked, “are you wasting my infinite time?”
“We’re looking for information,” Annabeth said.
“About the gods,” Grover added. “A god. Hypothetically. I don’t know . . . Ganymede, for example?”
I was tempted to shove a napkin dispenser in Grover’s mouth, but it was too late.
Hebe sat forward. Her fingernails were painted Day-Glo yellow. “Now why would you ask about him?”
The boomers finished their song. After a few high fives, they replaced their mics and shuffled offstage, heading back to the arcade. Typical boomer timing: have a blast, then leave right before everything goes sideways.
Grover squirmed under the goddess’s gaze. A shred of napkin clung to his goatee like a tiny ghost. “We’re just conducting a brief opinion survey—”
“He sent you here,” the goddess guessed. The longer she sat with us, the younger she looked. If I’d seen her at AHS, I would’ve pegged her for a sophomore or even a freshman—a very colorful, vindictive-looking freshman. “Tell me, why would Ganymede do that?”
Annabeth held up her hands, trying to show our peaceful intentions. “It’s not so much that he sent us—”
“He has been acting nervous lately,” mused Hebe. “But he wouldn’t send out a group of heroes unless . . .” She smiled. “Unless he’s lost something. Oh, you can’t be serious. He’s lost the chalice of the gods?”
She laughed with such delight, I started to relax. If she found this funny, maybe that was good. I liked delighted goddesses a lot more than angry ones.
I shrugged. “Well, we can neither confirm nor deny—”
“How wonderful!” She giggled. “That upstart little witch is in so much trouble! And he sent you to question me because . . . ?”
All the humor drained from her face. “Oh, I see.”
“We just wanted some background information,” I said hastily. “You know, like who might have a reason to, uh—”
“Steal the chalice,” she finished.
Annabeth shook her head. “We’re not implying—”
“You think I stole it! You came here to accuse me!”
“Not entirely!” Grover yelped. “I—I came here for the licorice!”
Hebe stood. Her dress swirled with pink-and-blue paisley light. “Heroes accusing me of theft! The only thing I’ve ever stolen is time from the Fates so mortals could enjoy longer lives! I care nothing for that . . . that usurper’s cup! Do you think I would want my old job back, waiting tables on Mount Olympus, when I have my own establishment right here with all the pizza, karaoke, and bumper cars I could ever desire?”
That sounded like another trick question. Stupidly, I tried to answer it.
“You’re right,” I said. “Of course that’s silly. But maybe you know someone else who could’ve stolen it? Or if you’d let us look around so we can report back that it definitely isn’t here—”
“ENOUGH!” Hebe roared. She spread her hands. “What did you say earlier, Percy Jackson? Getting older is part of life? Well, perhaps you should start that process over again. Maybe you’ll do it right this time and learn some manners!”
The goddess burst into a storm of rainbow glitter that knocked me right out of my chair.
If nostalgia was the door back to youth, I felt like Hebe had opened that door and drop-kicked me through it.
My entire body hurt. Muscles ached in my gut and back where I didn’t even know I had muscles. My brain throbbed like it was too big for my skull.
I lay flat on the floor, the carpet sticky and bristly against my arms. When I sat up, I felt both sluggish and too light, as if someone had given me a transfusion of liquid helium. Annabeth was lying on my left, just starting to stir. Grover was facedown a few feet away, snoring into the rug.
We were alive. We had not been turned into glitter or arcade tickets. Hebe had vanished. Something was wrong, though. My hands felt stubby. My pant legs were too long. The cuffs pooled around my ankles.
I didn’t really understand what had happened until Annabeth groaned and sat up. She, too, was swimming in her too-big clothes. Her face . . . well, look, I would know Annabeth’s face anywhere. I love her face. But this was a version of her I’d never seen before—except in a few old pictures and dream visions.
This was Annabeth the way she’d looked soon after she’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood. She’d regressed to about eight years old.
She rubbed her head and stared at me, her eyes going wide, then let out a curse that sounded strange coming from the mouth of a third grader. “Hebe younged us.”
“BLAAAAAHHHH!” Grover sat up and rubbed his head.
His horns had shrunk to tiny stubs. His goatee was now a gone-tee. His fake feet and shoes had rolled away from his suddenly baby-size hooves, and his shirt was so big it looked like a nightgown.
“I don’t feel so good.” He picked a string of cheese off his face, then looked at his hooves and moaned. “Oh, no. I don’t want to be a kid again!”
I didn’t know if he meant the human kind or the goat kind . . . probably both. Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, I remembered Grover telling me. Which meant . . . multiply by two, carry the one, divide by . . . Nope, never mind. I’d save the math for my homework. If I ever got home again.
“Maybe we’ll change back if we leave the building?” I suggested.
Annabeth stood up shakily. It was strange seeing her as a younger girl. I had an irrational fear that she would yell, Gross! Boy cooties! and run away from me.
Instead, she said doubtfully, “Worth a try.”
We made our way back through the amusement center. When we passed the coop, the chickens looked at us with renewed interest. I didn’t even know chickens could look interested, but they cocked their heads and clucked and flapped their wings. One of the chicks in particular, which had pink fluff around its eyes and beak, followed us along the fence, strutting and peeping.
“Wow, rude,” Grover said.
“What?”
“She’s threatening to tear the flesh from our bones.”
I glanced nervously at the chick. “Okay, li’l killer. Calm down. We’re leaving.”
Suddenly, Grover rounded on me, lowered his head, and butted me in the chest hard enough to push me back a step.
“Ow!” I complained. “Dude, why?”
“Sorry, sorry!” Grover rubbed his horns. “I—I need to play. I’m practicing social dominance in the herd.”
He butted me in the chest again.
“This is going to get old real quick,” I said.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods
Rick Riordan's books
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- The Complete Kane Chronicles
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- The Blood of Olympus
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the lightning thief
- The Son of Neptune
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- The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #3)
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