He rubbed his fingers. Then he shifted his armor to hide the mark. It wasn’t a tattoo, I realized. It was an old burn…like he’d been branded.
“A reminder.” He picked up his sword and forced a smile. “Now, shall we go again?”
He pressed me hard, not giving me time for any more questions.
While he and I fought, Tyson played with Mrs. O’Leary, who he called the “little doggie.” They had a great time wrestling for the bronze shield and playing Get the Greek. By sunset, Quintus hadn’t even broken a sweat, which seemed kind of strange; but Tyson and I were hot and sticky, so we hit the showers and got ready for dinner.
I was feeling good. It was almost like a normal day at camp. Then dinner came, and all the campers lined up by cabin and marched into the dining pavilion. Most of them ignored the sealed fissure in the marble floor at the entrance—a ten-foot-long jagged scar that hadn’t been there last summer—but I was careful to step over it.
“Big crack,” Tyson said when we were at our table. “Earthquake, maybe?”
“No,” I said. “Not an earthquake.”
I wasn’t sure I should tell him. It was a secret only Annabeth and Grover and I knew. But looking in Tyson’s big eye, I knew I couldn’t hide anything from him.
“Nico di Angelo,” I said, lowering my voice. “He’s this half-blood kid we brought to camp last winter. He, uh…he asked me to guard his sister on a quest, and I failed. She died. Now he blames me.”
Tyson frowned. “So he put a crack in the floor?”
“These skeletons attacked us,” I said. “Nico told them to go away, and the ground just opened up and swallowed them. Nico…” I looked around to make sure no one was listening. “Nico is a son of Hades.”
Tyson nodded thoughtfully. “The god of dead people.”
“Yeah.”
“So the Nico boy is gone now?”
“I—I guess. I tried to search for him this spring. So did Annabeth. But we didn’t have any luck. This is secret, Tyson. Okay? If anyone found out he was a son of Hades, he would be in danger. You can’t even tell Chiron.”
“The bad prophecy,” Tyson said. “Titans might use him if they knew.”
I stared at him. Sometimes it was easy to forget that as big and childlike as he was, Tyson was pretty smart. He knew that the next child of the Big Three gods—Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades—who turned sixteen was prophesied to either save or destroy Mount Olympus. Most people assumed that meant me, but if I died before I turned sixteen, the prophecy could just as easily apply to Nico.
“Exactly,” I said. “So—”
“Mouth sealed,” Tyson promised. “Like the crack in the ground.”
I had trouble falling asleep that night. I lay in bed listening to the waves on the beach, and the owls and monsters in the woods. I was afraid once I drifted off I’d have nightmares.
See, for half-bloods, dreams are hardly ever just dreams. We get messages. We glimpse things that are happening to our friends or enemies. Sometimes we even glimpse the past or the future. And at camp, my dreams were always more frequent and vivid.
So I was still awake around midnight, staring at the bunk bed mattress above me, when I realized there was a strange light in the room. The saltwater fountain was glowing.
I threw off the covers and walked cautiously toward it. Steam rose from the hot salt water. Rainbow colors shimmered through it, though there was no light in the room except for the moon outside. Then a pleasant female voice spoke from the steam: Please deposit one drachma.
I looked over at Tyson, but he was still snoring. He sleeps about as heavily as a tranquilized elephant.
I didn’t know what to think. I’d never gotten a collect Iris-message before. One golden drachma gleamed at the bottom of the fountain. I scooped it up and tossed it through the mist. The coin vanished.
“O, Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow,” I whispered. “Show me…Uh, whatever you need to show me.”
The mist shimmered. I saw the dark shore of a river. Wisps of fog drifted across black water. The beach was strewn with jagged volcanic rock. A young boy squatted at the riverbank, tending a campfire. The flames burned an unnatural blue color. Then I saw the boy’s face. It was Nico di Angelo. He was throwing pieces of paper into the fire— Mythomagic trading cards, part of the game he’d been obsessed with last winter.
Nico was only ten, or maybe eleven by now, but he looked older. His hair had grown longer. It was shaggy and almost touched his shoulders. His eyes were dark. His olive skin had turned paler. He wore ripped black jeans and a battered aviator’s jacket that was several sizes too big, unzipped over a black shirt. His face was grimy, his eyes a little wild. He looked like a kid who’d been living on the streets.
I waited for him to look at me. No doubt he’d get crazy angry, start accusing me of letting his sister die. But he didn’t seem to notice me.
I stayed quiet, not daring to move. If he hadn’t sent this Iris-message, who had?
Nico tossed another trading card into the blue flames. “Useless,” he muttered. “I can’t believe I ever liked this stuff.”
“A childish game, master,” another voice agreed. It seemed to come from near the fire, but I couldn’t see who was talking.
Nico stared across the river. On the far shore was black beach shrouded in haze. I recognized it: the Underworld. Nico was camping at the edge of the River Styx.
“I’ve failed,” he muttered. “There’s no way to get her back.”
The other voice kept silent.
Nico turned toward it doubtfully. “Is there? Speak.”
Something shimmered. I thought it was just firelight. Then I realized it was the form of a man—a wisp of blue smoke, a shadow. If you looked at him head-on, he wasn’t there. But if you looked out of the corner of your eye, you could make out his shape. A ghost.
“It has never been done,” the ghost said. “But there may be a way.”
“Tell me,” Nico commanded. His eyes shined with a fierce light.
“An exchange,” the ghost said. “A soul for a soul.”
“I’ve offered!”
“Not yours,” the ghost said. “You cannot offer your father a soul he will eventually collect anyway. Nor will he be anxious for the death of his son. I mean a soul that should have died already. Someone who has cheated death.”
Nico’s face darkened. “Not that again. You’re talking about murder.”
“I’m talking about justice,” the ghost said. “Vengeance.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
The ghost laughed dryly. “You will learn differently as you get older.”
Nico stared at the flames. “Why can’t I at least summon her? I want to talk to her. She would…she would help me.”
“I will help you,” the ghost promised. “Have I not saved you many times? Did I not lead you through the maze and teach you to use your powers? Do you want revenge for your sister or not?”
I didn’t like the ghost’s tone of voice. He reminded me of a kid at my old school, a bully who used to convince other kids to do stupid things like steal lab equipment and vandalize the teachers’ cars. The bully never got in trouble himself, but he got tons of other kids suspended.