Page 79

She shook her head. “I’m not…going to have…enough strength…to get there.”

Gale climbed onto Grover’s shoulder. She chittered nervously, tapping her tiny wrist where her tiny watch would have been if she’d had one. We were going too slowly. Goo was a-wasting.

The ghosts swirled around us, seething with bitterness. Pete the Musketeer watched like a wolf waiting for the right moment to strike weakened prey. His hand rested on the hilt of his shadowy rapier.

Grover and I exchanged a panicked look. If Annabeth was admitting she’d made a mistake, we were in serious trouble. All heroes had fatal flaws. Annabeth’s was pride. She always aimed as high as possible, confident she could go even higher. Most of the time, she was right. But calling for help after one block? The situation had to be desperate for her to swallow her pride like that.

Then I remembered why fatal flaws were calledfatal.

We couldn’t let her get worn-out so soon. She was the only one who could direct the ghosts to rebuild the house properly.

“Let me take the torches,” I said.

Hecuba growled.

“That’s not a great idea,” Grover translated. “If you break the summoning—”

“I can do it,” I insisted. “Walking these guys back to the manse—that I can handle. We need Annabeth fresh when we get there so she can take over.”

Hecuba made a sound between a grunt and a whimper.

“She doesn’t know if you can pass the torches from one person to another,” Grover said. “No one has ever tried that before.”

I met Annabeth’s eyes. “Wecan.”

I figured that, after holding the weight of the sky and trekking through Tartarus together, the two of us were about as in sync as a couple could be. There might not be anyIin team, but there was definitely anAfor Annabeth and…three other letters that didn’t really stand for anything, so let’s forget I said that. The point was, we were great collaborators. I wasn’t sure of much else, but I was sure of that.

I faced her, nose to nose, and held out my arms to match hers.

“It’s okay.” I wrapped my hands over hers on the torch handles. “Let me help.”

She loosened her grip and fell back into Grover’s arms.

The ghosts whirled into an angry storm of dust and smoke, but I kept the torches aloft and channeled my best mental hellpuppy voice.NOPE!

The spirits calmed. Or at least, they went back to their baseline level of homicidal rage.

“You’re going to follow me to Gramercy Park,” I ordered. “And you’re going to like it.”

For the first .00035th of a second, I felt pretty confident. The torches weren’tthatheavy. The hissing voices and emotional onslaught from the dead weren’tthatbad.

But by the time we got to Third Avenue, I was starting to think Grover was right. I needed to work out more. The torches felt like anvils. I was running a serious deficit of muscles and stuff. Sweat poured down my back. I realized I wasn’t just carrying the torches—I was dragging an entire army of reluctant dead people behind me. They were making it as hard as they could, digging in their ghostly heels. Stuyvesant hovered nearby, watching me with amusement.And now this boy thinks he can control us.

Watch me, Pete, I growled back.

I kept going, fixing my mind on our destination.The manse. Just get back to the manse.

Annabeth seemed a little better, at least. She limped along at my side, her face set in concentration, trying to help me psychically shepherd the dead. The hellhounds barked and raced around the edges, nipping at ghostly heels. Grover trotted ahead of us with Gale on his shoulder, blazing a trail through the wilds of the East Village.

“This way!” he urged. “One hoof in front of the other!”

Our strange procession staggered north. The torches became heavier. The flames scalded my forearms. Every so often, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a random new ghost crawling out of the sidewalk or emerging from a wall to join our parade. Great…for once, I was popular.

I lost track of time. My vision blurred. I felt like I was turning to smoke, blending into the spirit mob until I was nothing but jumbled feelings and fuzzy memories.

I was vaguely aware that Annabeth had jogged ahead to confer with Grover.

“... no supplies,” Grover was saying. “Should we stop somewhere?”