A picture of me.
I eat oatmeal. I got into the principia with dead rats. I flew away with a bag of poop. I disappeared while on sentry duty and again during the gladiator games. In their eyes, the connections between me and the bizarre happenings are obvious.
The timeline of the problems points to me too, they said. Before I arrived, Camp Jupiter was running smoothly. Afterward, not so much. And then there was my strange behavior. Laughing hysterically at Frank after leaving Mars’s temple. Holing up in the Fourth’s latrine. Scribbling in a notebook. What was in that notebook, anyway? A list of future pranks? If so, they needed to confiscate it for the sake of the camp.
Then they dropped the final bomb: I was a legacy of Mercury, god of tricksters. Probatios have been known to act out to get their godly ancestors’ attention. It was possible, probable even, that I was pulling increasingly elaborate—and dangerous—pranks to gain Mercury’s blessing.
My heart was thudding so loudly by then I can’t believe they didn’t hear it. I wanted to scale the ladder and burst through the iron grate to tell them they were dead wrong. That I love being at Camp Jupiter and wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my place here or the safety of anyone who calls it home.
But I couldn’t. Because there’s no way they’d believe I was innocent. I mean, duh, I’d just made an unauthorized trek through the aqueducts to a secret entrance so I could spy inside the camp’s headquarters for a hidden sacred item! And now I was eavesdropping on the legion’s highest authorities. Couldn’t look guiltier if I’d tried.
Reyna was ready to call me before the Senate then and there. But Frank, gods bless him, argued against confronting me, saying first they needed definite proof that I was behind the pranks. Reyna finally agreed, but I could tell she wasn’t happy about it.
So now I’m hunched in my bunk, trying not to cry. Because it totally sucks that the praetors are suspicious of me. And it sucks that I can’t let them know I know.
No, the only way to earn their trust is to prove my innocence. That means ferreting out the real culprit.
Reyna and Frank haven’t been able to do that. But I’m holding mosaic tiles they don’t know about: those mysterious messages and my dream about a runaway misfit. Unless MV shows up or the ancile falls in my lap, the messages are a dead end for now.
But I know just who to visit to dig up info on the girl of my dreams.
At a time when nearly all the gods have gone silent, there’s one deity you can always get to appear by simply stepping over the line—the Pomerian Line, that is, the invisible boundary that encircles New Rome.
Sure enough, the second I put a sandaled toe over that borderline, Terminus popped up. Behind him was his comrade with arms, an adorable little girl named Julia who handles all matters in need of hands for him. When I told him I wanted to ask him some questions, not cross the line, he flashed me an exasperated look and vanished. (Julia disappeared with him. How that happens is a mystery for another time.)
Undeterred, I took a step back and then a step forward.
Pop! Terminus and Julia reappeared. He took one look at me, yelled “You again?” and disappeared with an irritated huff (and with Julia).
I did the cha-cha to and fro again. “I can do this all day,” I said when he materialized for the third time.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “What do you want to talk about?”
“My dad,” I answered. “And a little girl you didn’t want to let into camp.”
“You didn’t let a little girl into camp?” Julia looked wounded. “Why?”
“Because reasons,” he sniffed. “And I don’t know who your ‘dad’ is.” (Julia supplied the fingers for his air quotes.)
I told him my dad was a centurion here about twenty-five years ago. When that didn’t jog his memory, I mentioned the bleached-blond cowlick. He gave a snort of derision. “That boy became your father? My sympathies.” He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t look like him. You look like your mother.”
My jaw dropped. A million questions flooded my brain, like, How does he know my mother? Did my parents meet here? Was my mom a demigod or a legacy or what?
But right then, my focus had to be on my dream girl. “Why did you refuse to let that girl into camp?”
Terminus’s nose wrinkled. “Because she smelled like rotten eggs. Not her fault, I know, given who her godly parent was. But still…” He shuddered in distaste and vanished.
This time, I didn’t summon him back. Instead, I returned to the barracks to think and write down what I’d learned. If the praetors confiscate my journal, well, they’ll see I was only trying to help.
Here’s what I now know: The girl was a demigod, the daughter of a god or goddess associated with the smell of rotten eggs. The stench traveled with her, apparently, and was bad enough to make my dad, the legionnaires, and the aurae steer clear. Even gentle Hannibal couldn’t stand it. The girl’s parent wasn’t an Olympian, because none of them have odoriferous attributes (although some say Juno stinks).
A minor deity, then. I’ve consulted my ID the Deity textbook and come up with a list of two possibilities: Cloacina, the goddess of the cloaca maxima sewer system, and Mefitis, goddess of noxious vapors that emanate from the earth.
There are a couple of Cloacina’s kids here at camp, and I’ve never heard anyone complain about them smelling like rotten eggs or any other bad odor. So my denarius is on Mefitis.
Question: Assuming the malodorous demigod was Mefitis’s daughter, where would she go after she left Camp Jupiter?
Answer: Someplace where her out-of-control body odor wouldn’t offend anyone.
A moment from my dream, when she tipped over the garbage can, points to one such place: the landfill. Can’t do much better than that if you’re looking to disguise your own stench. And I not only think she went there…I think she’s still there.
She’s the worker, the one who stared at me and Aquila. She saw us through the Mist, I’m sure of it. Which means she’s a demigod. But if she’s working and living at the dump, how can she be causing problems here? She can’t be sneaking into camp, not if she’s still as pungent as Terminus says she was. Someone would be sure to notice.
Maybe she has an accomplice in camp, though I don’t know who would help her. From what I saw, she didn’t have much to offer besides recyclables, garbage, and—
Oh. Oh, my gods, I am such an idiot. Because there is someone who would want that stuff. He even bragged about getting the pick of the litter.
Elon.
Later…
Message to whoever left me those notes: Ego inveni MV. Translation: I found MV.
But not Elon. He was gone when I returned to Mars’s temple to look for him. His trash nest was still there, though. Buried beneath it was the glass bottle of swamp scum. Except it wasn’t swamp scum—it was swamp gas.
Mixed with the ghost of Mamurius Veturius.
The smell that came out of that bottle when I opened it…yee-gods. Poor Mamurius was a bilious shade of green when he stagger-floated out. Luckily, once he was in the fresh air again, he returned to his normal off-white and odor-free state. He regained his ghostly strength, too. Then he told me this story: