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“She’s my hero!” Barbara said.

“No, I get that. She’s my hero, too. It’s just...” I decided not to elaborate. I’d been prepared for Barbara to demand something much more difficult, like a personal quest or a box of gold-foil collectors’ edition Mythomagic cards. “I can definitely arrange a meet and greet.”

“Deal!” she said cheerfully. “But if you’re discovered, I have no idea who you are or how you got under the cart, and I will scream, ‘Demigod! Kill him!’ Cool?”

“I would expect nothing less.”

So I curled up under the cart with the chalice of immortality in my lap, hidden behind a white tablecloth embroidered with lightning bolts, as Barbara wheeled me into the dining room.

“Anyway,” Zeus was saying, “there I was, surrounded by angry llamas.... Well, you can imagine!”

“My dear,” said Hera, “there were no llamas in ancient Greece.”

“Well, there were in Crete!” Zeus growled. “I don’t know, maybe Kronos decided we couldn’t have nice things and he sent them all to Peru, but at the time, wow! Llamas everywhere! As I was saying, I was all alone. No Amalthea. No Kouretes. Just me in my diapers, a mere mewling babe, if you can picture it—”

“I can picture it, Dad,” Athena said dryly.

The cart creaked and wobbled. I was so close to the dining table I could smell wet lion fur. I didn’t dare look, but I figured I must be getting close to Ganymede.

Just a few more feet...

“Stop that!” Zeus snapped.

The cart stopped.

“I’m telling a story here, Barbara!”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

There was a long pause. I imagined all the gods staring at the cart, wondering why it seemed so heavily laden and why it was creaking more than usual. I waited for Barbara to yellDemigod! Kill him!

Finally, Zeus grunted. “Where was I?”

“Crete,” Hermes said. “Surrounded by llamas.”

“Right, so...”

I had trouble keeping track of the story. Partly, my heart was hammering too loudly. And partly, I just didn’t want to keep track of the story.

Zeus rambled on, trying to build sympathy for his poor baby self all alone on Crete. I doubted his audience was feeling the suspense since (spoiler) he was immortal, so the possibility of him getting killed by llamas was quite low. Nevertheless, I hoped everyone had stopped looking at the pastry cart. I risked lifting the bottom of the tablecloth.

I had a great view of Zeus’s sandaled feet. Did he polish those toenails or what?

Focus, Percy.

Ganymede stood on the other side of Zeus—only ten feet away, but still too far to slip him the chalice, especially since there was a lightning god between us. I tried to look up to see Ganymede’s face, but my angle wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t tell if he knew I was there or if he was too busy sweating Greek fire to notice.

I wondered if I could crawl from the cart to under the table, past all those immaculately groomed godly feet, without getting noticed. Probably not. Then I glanced to my right and locked eyes with the lion.

Well, that was super. He looked sleepy and surprised, like he was wondering if he was still dreaming or if the pastry cart really had a human head on the bottom shelf.

Probably the worst thing I could have done was to continue staring at him. So that’s what I did. He had pretty gold eyes. I’ve never been much of a cat person, but I could see the appeal of that big fuzzy face resting on giant fluffy paws, except for the fact that the face had fangs and the paws had claws.

I tried to use my son-of-the-sea-god patent-pending telepathy to send him a message:I am harmless. Please do not eat me.But I was pretty sure that 1) the lion was not a sea creature, and 2) even if I could communicate with him, he would not listen to me.

I mouthed,Okay, bye.

I slowly lowered the edge of the tablecloth. It would not protect me from the lion, but maybe he would forget about me?