“Guys,” Leo interrupted, “if we’re going to travel together, let’s try to keep it friendly.” He pressed an ice pack to his bruised bicep. “Besides, we were planning to head west anyway. I got to find my peeps Jason and Piper and Frank and Hazel and…well, pretty much everybody at Camp Jupiter, I guess. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun?” I asked. “The Oracle of Trophonius will supposedly swallow me in death and madness. Even if I survive that, my other trials will no doubt be long, harrowing, and quite possibly fatal.”
“Exactly,” Leo said. “Fun. I don’t know about calling the whole quest thing Apollo’s trials, though. I think we should call it Leo Valdez’s Victory Lap World Tour.”
Calypso laughed and laced her fingers in Leo’s. She may not have been immortal anymore, but she still had a grace and easiness about her that I could not fathom. Perhaps she missed her powers, but she seemed genuinely happy to be with Valdez—to be young and mortal, even if it meant she could die at any moment.
Unlike me, she had chosen to become mortal. She knew that leaving Ogygia was a risk, but she had done it willingly. I didn’t know how she’d found the courage.
“Hey, man,” Leo told me. “Don’t look so glum. We’ll find her.”
I stirred. “What?”
“Your friend Meg. We’ll find her. Don’t worry.”
A bubble of darkness burst inside me. For once, I hadn’t been thinking of Meg. I’d been thinking about myself, and that made me feel guilty. Perhaps Calypso was right to question whether or not I’d changed.
I gazed at the silent forest. I remembered Meg dragging me to safety when I was cold and soaked and delirious. I remembered how fearlessly she fought the myrmekes, and how she’d ordered Peaches to extinguish the match when Nero wanted to burn his hostages, despite her fear of unleashing the Beast. I had to make her realize how evil Nero was. I had to find her. But how?
“Meg knows the prophecy,” I said. “If she tells Nero, he will know our plans as well.”
Calypso took a bite of her apple. “I missed the whole Roman Empire. How bad can one emperor be?”
“Bad,” I assured her. “And he is allied with two others. We don’t know which ones, but it’s safe to assume they are equally cutthroat. They’ve had centuries to amass fortunes, acquire property, build armies…Who knows what they are capable of?”
“Eh,” Leo said. “We took down Gaea in, like, forty seconds. This’ll be easy squeezy.”
I seemed to recall that the lead-up to the fight with Gaea had involved months of suffering and near misses with death. Leo, in fact, had died. I also wanted to remind him that the Triumvirate might well have orchestrated all our previous troubles with the Titans and giants, which would make them more powerful than anything Leo had ever faced.
I decided that mentioning these things might affect group morale.
“We’ll succeed,” Calypso said. “We must. So we will. I have been trapped on an island for thousands of years. I don’t know how long this mortal life will be, but I intend to live fully and without fear.”
“That’s my mamacita,” Leo said.
“What have I told you about calling me mamacita?”
Leo grinned sheepishly. “In the morning we’ll start getting our supplies together. As soon as Festus gets a tune-up and an oil change, we’ll be good to go.”
I considered what supplies I would take with me. I had depressingly little: some borrowed clothes, a bow, a ukulele, and an overly theatrical arrow.
But the real difficulty would be saying good-bye to Will, Austin, and Kayla. They had helped me so much, and they embraced me as family more than I had ever embraced them. Tears stung my eyes. Before I could start sobbing, Will Solace stepped into the light of the hearth. “Hey, everybody! We’ve started a bonfire in the amphitheater! Sing-along time. Come on!”
Groans were mixed in with the cheers, but most everyone got to their feet and ambled toward the bonfire now blazing in the distance, where Nico di Angelo stood silhouetted in the flames, preparing rows of marshmallows on what looked like femur bones.
“Aw, man.” Leo winced. “I’m terrible at sing-alongs. I always clap and do the ‘Old MacDonald’ sounds at the wrong time. Can we skip this?”
“Oh, no.” I rose to my feet, suddenly feeling better. Perhaps tomorrow I would weep and think about good-byes. Perhaps the day after that we would be flying toward our deaths. But tonight, I intended to enjoy my time with my family. What had Calypso said? Live fully and without fear. If she could do it, then so could the brilliant, fabulous Apollo. “Singing is good for the spirits. You should never miss an opportunity to sing.”
Calypso smiled. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but for once I agree with Apollo. Come on, Leo. I’ll teach you to harmonize.”
Together, the three of us walked toward the sounds of laughter, music, and a warm, crackling fire.