“That’s copacetic,” Leo said. “You’ve done enough for us, T.”
Thalia inclined her head. “All in a day’s work, Valdez. But you do owe me a bottle of the Texas hot sauce you were telling me about.”
“That can be arranged,” Leo promised.
Josephine crossed her arms. “Well and good, but we’re left with the same dilemma. How do we get a message to California in five days?”
“Me,” Leo said.
We all stared at him.
“Leo,” Calypso said. “It took us six weeks just to get here from New York.”
“Yeah, but with three passengers,” he said. “And…no offense, one of them was a former god who was attracting us all kinds of negative attention.”
I could not argue with that. Most of the enemies who had attacked us on our journey had introduced themselves by screaming, There’s Apollo! Kill him!
“I travel fast and light,” Leo said. “I’ve covered that much distance before by myself. I can do it.”
Calypso did not look pleased. Her complexion turned just a shade lighter than her yellow legal pad.
“Hey, mamacita, I’ll come back,” he promised. “I’ll just enroll late for the spring semester! You can help me catch up on my homework.”
“I hate you,” she grumbled.
Leo squeezed her hand. “Besides, it’ll be good to see Hazel and Frank again. And Reyna, too, though that girl still scares me.”
I assumed Calypso was not too upset by this plan, since aerial spirits did not pick up Leo and hurl him through the rose window.
Thalia Grace gestured to the notepad. “So we’ve got one stanza figured out. Yippee. What about the rest?”
“I’m afraid,” I said, “the rest is about Meg and me.”
“Yep,” Meg agreed. “Pass the biscuits?”
Josephine handed her the basket, then watched in awe as Meg stuffed her mouth with one fluffy biscuit after another.
“So the line about the sun going southward,” Josephine said. “That’s you, Apollo.”
“Obviously,” I agreed. “The third emperor must be somewhere in the American Southwest, in a land of scorching death. We get there through mazes—”
“The Labyrinth,” Meg said.
I shuddered. Our last trip through the Labyrinth was still fresh in my mind—winding up in the caverns of Delphi, listening to my old enemy Python slithering and hissing right above our heads. I hoped this time, at least, Meg and I would not be bound together for a three-legged race.
“Somewhere in the Southwest,” I continued, “we must find the crossword speaker. I believe that refers to the Erythraean Sybil, another ancient Oracle. I…I don’t remember much about her—”
“Surprise,” Meg grumbled.
“But she was known to issue her prophecies in acrostics—word puzzles.”
Thalia winced. “Sounds bad. Annabeth told me how she met the Sphinx in the Labyrinth once. Riddles, mazes, puzzles…No thanks. Give me something I can shoot.”
Georgina whimpered in her sleep.
Emmie kissed the girl’s forehead. “And the third emperor?” she asked. “Do you know who it is?”
I turned over phrases of the prophecy in my mind—master of the swift white horse. That didn’t narrow it down. Most Roman emperors liked to portray themselves as victorious generals riding their steeds through Rome. Something unsettled me about that third stanza: to westward palace, in thine own enemy’s boots. I could not wrap my mental fingers around the answer.
“Meg,” I said, “what about the line Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots? Do you have any family in the Southwest? Do you remember ever going there before?”
She gave me a guarded look. “Nah.”
Then she shoved another biscuit in her mouth like an act of rebellion: Make me talk now, sucker.
“Hey, though.” Leo snapped his fingers. “That next line, The cloven guide alone the way does know. That means you get a satyr? They’re guides, aren’t they, like Coach Hedge was? That’s, like, their thing.”
“True,” Josephine said. “But we haven’t seen a satyr in these parts since—”
“Decades,” Emmie finished.
Meg gulped down her wad o’ carbs. “I’ll find us one.”
I scowled. “How?”
“Just will.”
Meg McCaffrey, a girl of few words and much belching.
Calypso flipped to the next page of her notepad. “That just leaves the closing couplet: When three are known and Tiber reached alive, / ’Tis only then Apollo starts to jive.”
Leo snapped his fingers and began dancing in his seat. “About time, man. Lester needs more jive.”
“Hmph.” I did not feel like getting into that topic. I was still sore that Earth, Wind & Fire had rejected my audition in 1973 because I was jive-deficient. “I believe those lines mean we will soon know the identity of all three emperors. Once our next quest is complete in the Southwest, Meg and I can travel to Camp Jupiter, reaching the Tiber alive. Then, I hope, I can find the path back to my former glory.”
“By…jive talkin’,” Leo sang.
“Shut up,” I grumbled.
No one offered any further interpretations of the sonnet. No one volunteered to take on my perilous quest duties for me.
“Well!” Josephine patted the dining table. “Who wants carrot cake with blowtorched meringue for dessert?”
The Hunters of Artemis left that night at moonrise.
As tired as I was, I felt the need to see them off. I found Thalia Grace in the roundabout, overseeing her Hunters as they saddled a herd of liberated combat ostriches.
“You trust them to ride?” I had thought only Meg McCaffrey was that crazy.
Thalia arched her eyebrows. “It’s not their fault they were trained for combat. We’ll ride them for a while, recondition them, then find a safe place to release them where they can live in peace. We’re used to dealing with wild animals.”
Already the Hunters had freed the ostriches from their helmets and razor wire. The steel fang implants had been removed from their beaks, making the birds look much more comfortable and (slightly) less murderous.
Jimmy moved among the herd, stroking their necks and speaking to them in soothing tones. He was immaculate in his brown suit, completely unscathed from the morning’s battle. His strange bronze hockey-stick weapon was nowhere to be seen. So the mysterious Olujime was a pit fighter, an accountant, a magical warrior, and an ostrich whisperer. Somehow I was not surprised.
“Is he going with you?” I asked.
Thalia laughed. “No. Just helping us get ready. Seems like a good guy, but I don’t think he’s Hunter material. He’s not even, uh…a Greek-Roman type, is he? I mean, he’s not a legacy of you guys, the Olympians.”
“No,” I agreed. “He is from a different tradition and parentage entirely.”
Thalia’s short spiky hair rippled in the wind, as if reacting to her uneasiness. “You mean from other gods.”
“Of course. He mentioned the Yoruba, though I admit I know very little about their ways.”
“How is that possible? Other pantheons of gods, side by side?”
I shrugged. I was often surprised by mortals’ limited imaginations, as if the world was an either/or proposition. Sometimes humans seemed as stuck in their thinking as they were in their meat-sack bodies. Not, mind you, that gods were much better.
“How could it not be possible?” I countered. “In ancient times, this was common sense. Each country, sometimes each city, had its own pantheon of gods. We Olympians have always been used to living in close proximity to, ah…the competition.”