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“Oh…you don’t…Wait, seriously?”

She didn’t look like she was kidding. A few weeks ago, Annabeth had confided that she’d always wanted to design a haunted house. She’d grown up mostly at Camp Half-Blood, so she’d never done any of the typical Halloween activities like trick-or-treating, scary movies, or costume parties. She dreamed of creating a terrifying experience for all our friends. To me, that seemed a little strange, since we had terrifying experiences all year round without having to design them.

This being our last year in high school, Annabeth was determined to achieve this goal. The only problem was that she lived in a dorm and I lived in a tiny apartment. We couldn’t have a haunted house at camp, either, because our camp director, Mr. D, wouldn’t allow it. It’s hard to know why—probably because if he couldn’t have fun, nobody could have fun, and Mr. D’s idea of fun would have been to turn us all into Amazon river dolphins. I didn’t want to test him.

We’d half-heartedly planned our Halloween party for this coming Friday in Central Park, but it wasn’t ideal. Annabeth couldn’t construct a house of horrors there. Even hanging decorations in the trees would be risky—the cops were liable to chase us off. Besides, running around the park in costumes would feel too much like LARPing.

“Youareserious,” I realized. “You want to have our party at Hecate’s mansion?”

“Well, she’s not going to be there,” Annabeth pointed out. “We just have to figure out what time she’ll be back and finish cleaning up before that. Why not?”

I wasn’t even sure where to start with thewhy nots. UsuallyIwas the one suggesting boneheaded ideas. It was Annabeth’s job to explain all the reasons why they were boneheaded. I wasn’t used to our switching roles.

“Uh, I mentioned the incineration, didn’t I? Also, Hecate’s the goddess of the Mist and magic. Don’t you think she’ll know if we have a party at her house?”

“Hecate thinks Halloween is all about her, right? If she finds out, she’ll probably see the party as a form of worship. Besides, we’ll be super respectful.”

“Respectful,” I said. “Have you met our friends?”

“I wonder if her house has enough cobwebs,” Annabeth mused, “or if I should buy some more.…”

“Now my arachnophobic girlfriend is talking about buying cobwebs. Whoareyou?”

“No spiders,” she said. “Just cobwebs. For ambience! Listen, I’m going to run and get my stuff. I’ll ask Hana to cover for me since I won’t be sleeping in the dorm this week. Oh my gods, this is so great! I’ll meet you at the Black Ant in an hour. We’ll get dinner to go!”

She kissed me and ran off toward her dormitory.

So…both Grover and Annabeth were weirdly excited about the Hecate challenge. There were cobwebs, a weasel, and Mexican food in my immediate future. Even by my standards, this was going to be a strange week.

Icould have done without the grasshopper pizza.

When we picked up dinner at the Black Ant, Annabeth decided to get adventurous. Along with our usual enchiladas and tacos, she ordered the tlayudas—basically beans, cheese, and spicy grasshoppers baked on a large tortilla.

“They’re really good,” she assured me. “And bug protein is way more sustainable than other meats.”

“Grover’s a vegetarian,” I reminded her.

“I got him mushroom tacos.”

“I am also considering becoming a vegetarian. At least for tonight.”

“Oh, stop,” she said. “You need to try new things! Besides, we should eat something special for our first night at Hecate’s.”

I shut up and decided to count my blessings that the Black Ant didn’t offer eye-of-newt enchiladas. We collected our bagful of mushroom and grasshopper entrées, then headed uptown to Gramercy Park.

I’d never spent much time in that neighborhood. It kind of screamedRich people live here. Move along, Percy Jackson.Rows of elegant brownstones and fancy apartment buildings faced a leafy rectangular park, which was surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence to keep out the riffraff. From what I’d heard, you could only get into the park if you owned one of the surrounding residences, which granted you a key to open the gates. I guess that made the area attractive to billionaires. They could boast about having a Gramercy Park key if they got tired of boasting about the sports teams or private jets they owned. Personally, I didn’t get the appeal. Manhattan has hundreds of perfectly good public parks that are a lot bigger and free. Maybe that’s why I’ll never be a billionaire.

I figured it would be easy to find Hecate’s house. Gramercy Park West is only a block long. Even without knowing the house number, all we had to do was stroll down the sidewalk looking for a place witchy enough to be the goddess’s secret lair.

We passed the “manse” twice before we spotted it.

The whole facade was an optical illusion. If you looked at it from either side, its features blurred, blending into the other townhouses around it. The mansion only revealed itself when you looked at it dead-on.

Despite the clear evening, a layer of fog hung over the narrow front yard. Tendrils of mist curled through skeletal white bushes in the garden. A walkway made of cobblestones—or maybe human craniums—wound toward the front porch.

The townhouse itself was a five-story patchwork of weathered granite slabs—literal tombstones, some with the names and dates of the deceased still visible. Crouching gargoyles leered down at us from either side of the gabled roof. Black cast-iron filigree framed the windows, ran across the railing of the second-floor balcony, and spilled down either side of the main entrance like a mourning shawl made of metal lace. If Hecate wasn’t renting this place out for funerals and goth mitzvahs, she was missing out on big bucks.

“Okay, you’re right,” I told Annabeth. “This is already a perfect haunted house.”