Page 12 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

T hat evening at dinner, Nico and Will reunited with Frank Zhang.

The praetor must’ve had a rough day. His jeans were ripped and muddy around the hems. His T-shirt was streaked with paint and grime, but he grinned as he lumbered toward them like a happy grizzly bear with a military buzz cut.

“Sorry I’m so filthy,” he said. “I’m still going to give you a hug.”

“Bring it in,” said Will.

Despite Frank’s size and strength, his embrace of Nico was strangely tender. His back was damp with sweat. He smelled of turpentine, but Nico didn’t mind. He was thankful that he could now consider Camp Jupiter’s other praetor a friend.

Their relationship had started off rocky.

Like many demigods, Frank had found Nico eerie and unnerving.

Nico had been wary of the clumsy, bashful giant who had an obvious crush on his sister Hazel.

But the time they’d spent together aboard the Argo II had done wonders to change both of their minds.

Once you earned his trust, Frank was one of the most loyal friends you could have.

Which was why Nico needed to understand Frank’s concerns about the mythics. If he opposed granting them asylum, there had to be a reason. Frank wasn’t the type to turn away those in need just because they were different.

As Frank settled in next to him, Nico glanced across the mess hall.

Asterion and his friends had gathered around a cluster of sofas near the kitchen.

The bull-man grazed from a tray piled high with salad.

The griffin Orcus munched on a corncob held in his tiny front paws.

Johan had gone straight for dessert—maybe because cake and cookies went best with tea.

Arielle and Quinoa didn’t seem to be eating at all.

And Semele…well, Nico wasn’t sure if Semele was with them.

Did wisps of smoke eat? Did empousai require fresh human blood? The dietary restrictions alone would be a massive challenge, and Nico realized that Hazel must be struggling with hundreds of questions like those.

Frank followed Nico’s gaze. His face clouded. “They started having dinner in the mess hall a couple of nights ago. Looks like the demigods aren’t bothering them at the moment. That’s something.”

“ Have demigods been bothering them?” Will asked.

Frank’s face reddened. He glanced at Hazel, as if worried about starting an argument. “It’s complicated. There’s been some…tension.”

“That’s one word for it,” Hazel said.

Awkwardness hung in the air between the two praetors.

Nico shifted in his seat. “I saw some graffiti on the barracks.”

Frank scowled. “Yeah. If I find out who did that, I’m going to go ancient Roman on them. I’ll sew them into a sack with rabid animals and throw them into the river.”

Nico assumed he was kidding. He hoped he was kidding. Then again, he remembered what Hazel had said about Frank’s son of the war god side occasionally rising to the surface.

“We can’t punish our way through this, though,” Hazel said. “We need to find a way to live together.”

Frank tilted his head. Nico could almost hear the question Frank was struggling not to ask out loud: Do we, though?

“We have an idea,” Nico offered, “about how we can help.”

He was about to say more, when a commotion broke out at the front of the mess hall. Multiple legionnaires leaped out of their seats. One guy with dark skin and shoulder-length locs bleached at the ends hopped up on the table and screamed, “What are those ?”

Nico’s stomach sank as his Cocoa Puffs came bounding into view.

They swarmed the First Cohort’s table, sniffing at shoes and bouncing on sofas as the legionnaires backed away, terrified.

“Oh, no,” said Nico, rising. “Puffs! I’m over here!”

Everyone in the mess hall turned in Nico’s direction.

Years ago, his greatest fear was being noticed, or seeming to be the odd one out.

That didn’t bother him as much anymore. Wasn’t the whole world full of odd ones out?

Besides, the Puffs were basically like his kids, even if Nyx had called them that in a derogatory way.

“Sorry, everyone!” he said to the diners. “They’re harmless, I promise. Just, uh, try not to touch them.”

For some reason, this did not seem to reassure the legionnaires.

The Puffs bounced over to him, gathering around his feet like a pack of caffeinated rats.

“Nico…” Frank’s voice was carefully controlled. “Did you bring more monsters to Camp Jupiter?”

Nico scowled. “We’re not calling them monsters , remember?”

Frank looked like he was counting to five, trying to regain his composure. “Right,” he said at last. “So…what did you call them, pugs ?”

“Puffs,” corrected Will. “Short for Cocoa Puffs. Which is a nickname for cacodemons.”

“Cacodemons,” Frank said. “As in evil spirits.”

“Frank, please,” Hazel said. “I know you’ve been on edge lately, but—”

“No, it’s fine.” He kept his eyes fixed on Nico. “I’m sorry. I was surprised, is all.”

Nico could sense that things definitely were not fine, but Frank was trying.

“My bad,” Nico said. “I keep forgetting to tell people that I have a little battalion of dark emotions following me around.”

Nico briefly explained what Nyx had done to him months earlier when they went to Tartarus to rescue Bob.

He did his best to name each of the cacodemons for Frank, but before he could finish, half of them split off and started wandering the mess hall.

Defiance scuttled over to the Second Cohort table and began to yap, demanding table scraps.

Loneliness rolled onto the top of a girl’s sneaker and decided to take a nap there, while the girl stared down at it in horror.

“Uh, you’ll have to excuse them,” Nico said. “I’m learning that each has a mind of its own. Even though they were created from my memories and feelings, they’re independent living beings.”

“And if you touch them?” asked Frank.

Hazel cleared her throat. “They make you feel whatever emotion they represent.”

“They don’t do it maliciously,” Will added. “We think that’s how they try to communicate. It’s actually kind of exciting.”

“Exciting,” Frank repeated.

“I like them,” rumbled a deep voice.

Nico looked to his right—and up and up —to find Asterion standing over him.

How a seven-foot-tall Minotaur had managed to sneak up on them, Nico wasn’t sure, especially since Asterion was wearing the loudest cable-knit hooded cardigan that had ever been created—a fever dream of turquoise, yellow, and chartreuse wool.

The cacodemon Sadness had fallen asleep in the crook of the bull-man’s arm.

“This one is my favorite,” said Asterion. Tears streaked the fur of his left cheek. “Though holding it fills me with a terrible longing.”

“It does that sometimes,” Nico said.

“Join us?” Will asked the bull-man.

Hazel and Frank exchanged an uncomfortable look, perhaps worrying about the optics of Asterion sitting at the officers’ table, but Asterion bowed his head in gratitude. “Thank you, yes.”

The bench groaned under Asterion’s weight.

“Praetor Zhang,” he began, “I enjoyed our time together today, remodeling the Temple of Mars.”

Frank nodded. “Yes, me, too. Thanks for all your help. And you can just call me Frank.”

“The temple looks much better now,” Asterion continued. “I hope you will consider my offer to make a hand-knitted cloth for the altar.”

Frank studied the bull-man’s cardigan. “I’m sure that would be…colorful.”

“And in that spirit of cooperation,” said Asterion, “I have another proposal to make. I believe there are many ways we mythics can contribute to Camp Jupiter, but these can only be discovered by working side by side. I propose that tomorrow the mythics begin training with your demigods.”

Frank picked at a spot of dirt on his purple jersey. Nico had the feeling that the praetor was suppressing the urge to scream into his shirt. “Training. With the demigods?”

“Is that such an offensive idea, son of Mars?”

“No,” said Frank quickly. “I just think we have to be very careful about what we’re doing here.”

Asterion made a rumbling noise deep in his throat—like a mm-hmm of assent, though it came out more like hmm-moo .

“We agree on that, Praetor Zhang. I am not trying to rush this process.” He paused.

“If I may be honest…we are nervous. We have never done anything like this. On the other hand, we can only learn how to benefit one another if we work together. Like today, and the altar cloth.”

“Right,” Frank said. “Like the altar cloth.”

Hazel put her hand on Frank’s. “We’ll discuss your generous offer, Asterion,” she said. “As it happens, Nico and Will were just about to tell us their idea about how they can help.”

“Oh, yes?” said another voice, right next to Nico.

The hairs rose on the back of his neck. Nico nearly bolted upright. Then he realized it was just Semele.

“I’m sorry, Nico di Angelo,” said the eidolon. “I did not mean to startle you. I have not yet figured out how to announce my presence in a way that doesn’t terrify you mortals.”

“It’s fine,” said Nico, forcing himself to relax his shoulders. “Um…so anyway, we were thinking….”

He gave Will a Help me out look.

“We’d like to train with the legion for a few days,” Will said. “Get to know everyone, learn your routines. You know, see for ourselves what’s been going on.”

Frank set down his fork and peered at Will skeptically. “Are you sure you’re ready for life at Camp Jupiter?”

“Of course,” Will said. “I’m a counselor at Camp Half-Blood, you know.”

Hazel chuckled to herself. “As if that’s anything like legion training.”

“Oh, come on,” Will said. “It can’t be that bad! Right, Nico?”

Nico examined a cobweb on the ceiling. “What was that? I didn’t hear you.”

“Not you, too,” Will said, feigning defeat. “Look, it’s like Asterion said. The best way we can help is to work side by side with you. Build some trust. Maybe we can be an example of how demigods and mythics can coexist.”

Frank nodded. “That’s all fine. I’m just afraid if you’re not used to military discipline, you’re not going to last long.”

Will rolled his eyes. “We’ll fit right in. And I promise I won’t complain about Camp Jupiter at all.”

“I’m not even going to shake on it,” said Frank. “That’s how certain I am that you’re gonna regret that statement.”

“It’s an admirable idea,” Hazel said to Will. “How about this? You two can bunk in the guest barracks. In the morning, you can train with the Fifth Cohort. We’ll see how it goes. How does that sound, Frank?”

Her question sounded pointed, like Work with me here.

“Sure,” Frank said. “Then, if Will and Nico are still up for it, in the afternoon they can do some training with the mythics, like Asterion suggested.”

His tone made it clear he doubted Nico and Will would last until the afternoon.

“Excellent!” Asterion stood, setting Sadness on the dinner table. “Thank you, Praetors. And now we should return to our own quarters before sunset. I have noted that we tend to make your legionnaires more nervous after dark. Come, Semele!”

Nico couldn’t tell whether Semele followed Asterion, but the other mythics rose and filed out of the mess hall, their progress followed by the eyes of half the legion.

As soon as they were gone, it was as if a mourning veil had been lifted from the place. The campers’ conversations increased in volume, became livelier. For the first time that evening, Nico heard laughter.

“Wow,” he said. “Will, did you notice that?”

“I did. Everyone’s relaxed now. Is it always like that?” he asked Hazel.

She sagged. “Always. Once Asterion or any of his friends enter a room, it’s like all the air disappears in an instant.”

“No one can relax around them,” agreed Frank.

“I understand why this is so hard,” Hazel said. “It’s where Frank and I are in total agreement.”

Frank squeezed her hand. “How do you change hundreds of years of teaching and tradition? We’ve literally taught some of these kids how to kill an empousa on sight.”

“Which is what Savannah tried to do,” said Hazel, “the first time she saw Arielle.”

Frank grimaced at the memory. “And her reaction was exactly what we’d want of her, right? As demigods, we’re protecting the world from nightmarish threats. But now those very threats are here, and they’re…they’re eating all the best cookies!”

Hazel rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “It’s hard for the mythics, too. They’re used to the chaos of Tartarus. Now they’re trying to live with a bunch of suspicious demigods they’ve been taught to hunt and kill.”

At the mention of Tartarus, where all “monsters” went to regenerate after their deaths on Earth, Nico frowned. He could feel his instincts kicking in, reminding him of what he and Will had gone through so recently.

Even Will’s good humor seemed to have dampened. “Your concerns…they make sense.”

“I don’t know how to serve both groups.” Hazel gave her food a desultory stab with her fork.

“To protect the legion while asking them to reconsider what they’ve been taught.

To offer Asterion’s group sanctuary but also ask them to adjust to an entirely new life.

Ugh! This makes me feel like I’m going to explode. ”

“Well, you’re not doing it alone,” said Frank. “I’m here. And as hard as this is, we’re going to figure it out. Especially now that we’ve got these two helping us.” He punched Nico’s arm playfully.

Hazel managed a laugh. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

Nico felt better, seeing that everything between Hazel and Frank wasn’t stress and tension. “We’ll figure this out,” he agreed. “Starting tomorrow.”

Frank grinned. “I still think you’re gonna fold like laundry, Will.”

“You wish,” Will said. “I survived Tartarus. Camp Jupiter will be cake .”

Nico gave him an encouraging smile, but he remembered his first visit to Camp Jupiter. It was very different from Camp Half-Blood.

No point telling Will this, though. Maybe he would do better than Nico feared. If not, at least Nico would be amused when Will realized how wrong he was.