The door is probably somewhere near the building anyway, right? The building has doors and archways and other door-like things.
Then what Sthenno said echoes in my mind: the door doesn’t look like a door. It’s a location—a certain place where, if my sisters and I open a portal, the door will appear.
Maybe I need to reorient my thinking. If we’re looking for a door that’s not a door, then the things that look like doors—the arches and actual doors—are less likely to be right.
As I survey the world around me, I run the third line of the riddle through my mind over and over again.
“Be three within three,” I mutter.
Three columns? Three benches? Three . . . I-don’t-know-whats.
Three within three, three within—
I gasp. “Three trees.”
It’s right there, right in front of me. As in directly in front of me.
Three gnarled and ancient-looking trees arranged in a triangular shape on a little piece of land that juts out into the pond just a tiny bit. They are tall, and their bark is almost black. Three within three. Three sisters within the triangle of three trees.
I quickly compare them to the other trees in the park. The rest look completely ordinary. There are none like them.
This has to be it.
Part of me wants to jump up and down, run over to the three trees—maybe hug them—and shout for my sisters to hurry up and join me. But I remember what Greer said about the weird texts, and what Gretchen said about feeling like we’re being watched. The last thing I want to do is draw attention to the door.
If anyone from the Olympic faction—Zeus, Apollo, or one of their many allies—finds out we’ve located the door before we’re ready, they won’t think twice about killing us to keep us from breaking the seal.
For all I know, one of their agents is somewhere here among the tourists, just waiting for a reason to strike.
Or someone from the monster side is hiding out nearby so they’re ready to attack the moment we open the door.
If we thought things were dangerous before, when we were just beginning to figure things out, then it’s going to be all-out war when the factions involved find out we’ve found the door.
There is no place more dangerous for me and my sisters to be.
So, without sparing the three trees another glance, I lean back on the bench, drape my arms over the back above Sillus’s snoring body, and wait for my sisters to return.
“Nothing,” Gretchen says with a huff when she and Nick return. “All normal doors and architectural details. This is a waste of time.”
She flops down on the bench next to me while Nick stays standing in front of us. Sillus sits up at the sound of her voice and climbs over my lap to cuddle into hers.
I can barely contain my excitement. Her hand moves to pet Sillus’s furry head.
“Um, Gretchen?” I ask offhandedly.
She turns her head to look at me.
“Don’t look,” I say, moving my lips as little as possible, “but the door is right in front of us.”
She immediately looks. “Where?”
“Gretchen,” I growl.
She quickly turns back to me. “Right. Where?”
“There—”
“I found several likely candidates,” Greer says, stepping in between me and Gretchen and the three trees. “We will have to test them to be certain. Though I’m not really sure how to do that.”
I glance up and give her a try-to-be-subtle look, but she’s not paying attention.
“We should narrow it down before we attempt anything. The rotunda would be a prime candidate,” she explains, “but there weren’t any noticeable threes. They could be hidden, of course, so we might as well start there.”
When Thane nudges her, she looks at him. Then, following his gaze, she finally looks at me.
Gretchen cuts to the chase. “Sit down, shut up, and act like nothing’s happening.”
Sillus lifts his head. “Huntress quiet.”
Greer purses her lips like she’s irritated, but then Gretchen gives her a fierce glare and her eyes widen as she sits down on my other side. I lean back and stare off to the south. Nick stands casually in front of Gretchen, while Thane—more relaxed than usual, but still way more tense than Nick—stands practically at attention between me and Greer.
“Directly in front of us,” I whisper, “is a triangle of trees. Three trees.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Gretchen subtly scan her gaze over the trees, checking it out. She returns her attention to me.
“You think that’s it?”
I shrug and shake my head. “I can’t be one hundred percent sure until we try.”
“Of course. It makes perfect sense,” Greer whispers. “It’s outdoors, under the sky.”
“And it would be easy enough to be three within three,” I explain.
Gretchen scowls, like she’s thinking it through. “And trees could be here forever and no one would notice.”
“Three tree,” Sillus whispers reverently.
“They look like they could have been here since the time of the gorgons,” I say.
Greer nods. “This must be it.”
“Agreed,” Gretchen says.
“So . . .” I look from one sister to the other. “Now what?”
CHAPTER 29
GREER
All my years of service in student government, mock United Nations, and various leadership roles in clubs and activities have trained me to step up and take charge. So that’s what I do.
“First,” I say, standing and stepping away from the bench, “we need to go somewhere else.”
The last thing we need to do is have a brainstorming session right here in front of the door, where anyone and everyone can see. We need to plan and strategize without worrying that one of the factions is going to burst in on the scene.
Gretchen and Grace stand with me while Nick and Thane flank us on either side, like bodyguards.
“The marina is two blocks that way,” I say, pointing to the northeast. I smile tightly. “It’s a lovely day to watch the boats sail by.”
And figure out how to save the world without getting ourselves killed in the process. Dying again would be so anticlimactic.
We walk in silence, lost in our thoughts. I don’t know about my sisters, but my heart is racing. I feel like all of a sudden this is all too real. Certainly I’ve seen monsters before. I have been in the abyss and the dungeons of Mount Olympus and fought creatures most humans have never even imagined. But this? It’s the gold ring. It’s what we’ve been talking about, what we’ve been trying to do. What we’ve been risking everything to make happen. What we were born to do, literally.
It’s fairly overwhelming.
If it weren’t so important or so immediate, I might stop to wonder if we can really do it. There is fear and doubt, no matter how much I tell myself I don’t believe in either. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if I think we can. We don’t have a choice. A lot of lives are depending on us, on our success. We have to do it.
We reach the corner of the marina, the spot where sailboats sleep and waves from the Bay gently slap against their hulls. It’s quiet, peaceful. And we’ve come here to talk about war.
I’m not certain whether that’s ironic or simply sad.
“Before we do anything else,” Gretchen says as soon as we’re settled, “we have a decision to make. Are we opening the door?”
“What?” Grace gasps.
I meet Gretchen’s gaze. “I didn’t think that was up for debate.”
Gretchen doesn’t blink as she speaks. “Maybe it’s not,” she says, “but we are in this together. The responsibility will be ours together. We need to decide this together.”