Page 19 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

I f the dictionary had an illustration for the word uneventful , Nico figured it would show a picture of everything that happened during his second full day at Camp Jupiter. The caption would read: This is not uneventful.

The chaos started at breakfast. Nico and Will had just finished their predawn calisthenics-and-tango workout with Lavinia’s Fifth Cohort when they strolled into the mess hall and saw Asterion loading up his tray at the breakfast-taco bar.

“Hello, friends!” Asterion called.

Unfortunately, the bull-man wasn’t watching his surroundings. He raised his arm to wave and knocked the tray right out of Centurion Maurice’s hands. Scrambled eggs went flying.

“Dude!” Maurice cried out, wiping food off his purple Camp Jupiter tee.

“I’m so sorry,” Asterion rumbled. “Let me help.”

He leaned down to pick up the fallen tray, but when he stood up again, his horn hooked the tablecloth.

Since he wasn’t a magician, when Asterion pulled the cloth out from under the buffet, the entire contents of the taco bar went flying in a volcanic eruption of cheese, eggs, tortillas, and chorizo that rained down on the nearest sitting area, which happened to belong to the elite First Cohort.

“Oh, gods.” Will tented his hands over his mouth as he watched one of the most fearsome characters in Greek mythology stutter apologies and pick corn chips out of the Romans’ hair. The tablecloth still hung from Asterion’s horn like a hot-sauce-stained drape.

“Leave!” pleaded Terrence, the centurion of the First Cohort. “We’ll get it. Please stop helping!”

Wind spirits rushed in to clean the disaster area. Asterion hung his head and lumbered toward the exit. Nico and Will escorted him out of the mess hall.

“You didn’t mean any harm,” Nico consoled him, painfully aware that he’d said the same thing about Semele the night before when she’d walked through the girl with pigtails.

“It is my fault nonetheless.” Asterion heaved a sigh. “I am not used to operating in such small spaces, with so many small people.”

Nico heard the sadness in his voice. Belatedly, he realized that Asterion had been the only mythic in the mess hall. Where were the others?

Before he could ask, Hazel came running down the Via Praetoria and crashed right into him. “There you are! I—” She faltered when she saw Asterion. “Why are you wearing breakfast? Never mind! Nico, I need your help.”

“What’s up?”

“No time to explain!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the nearest shadow.

It was the first time Nico had shadow-traveled as someone else’s passenger.

The sensation was violent . He felt like a piece of origami being twisted and folded over and over.

Was this what it was like for demigods of different parentages?

He suddenly felt bad for ever having put anyone through this.

They stumbled out into a patch of sunlight with the roar of traffic all around them. Nico shielded his eyes. He flinched as an SUV raced past, blaring its horn.

He was back on the median of Highway 24, right outside the Caldecott Tunnel. Cars zipped by in both directions.

“Why are we—?”

“Over there!” Hazel pointed.

Nico’s throat constricted.

About thirty yards away, stuck smack in the middle of the southbound lanes, the tiny griffin Orcus cowered in fear on the asphalt, his head tucked beneath his wings.

“Oh, no ,” Nico muttered. “What is he doing there ?”

“I made a mistake,” Hazel said. “Orcus wanted to start surveillance, but he wasn’t ready. He flew too far outside camp, I guess, and…” She gestured helplessly at the griffin.

Nico started to ask why Orcus couldn’t simply fly away. Then the answer dawned on him. Just like with Savannah the day before, panic attacks weren’t logical. They robbed you of reason and paralyzed your ability to do even the simplest of things.

“I tried to get to him,” Hazel said, “but—”

“No shadows in the middle of the highway,” Nico guessed.

Even if they’d tried, shadow-travel didn’t have pinpoint accuracy.

Hazel or Nico might teleport right in front of an eighteen-wheeler.

In fact, if it weren’t for the double-wide lines painted between the second and third lanes, Orcus wouldn’t have had any room to cower.

It was a miracle he hadn’t been hit yet.

“He was calling for you,” Hazel told Nico. “That’s why I came to get you.”

“For me ?” Nico wasn’t sure whether to feel honored or singled out. “Okay, okay, let’s get as close as we can.”

They made their way down the median, horns blaring and drivers yelling at them to get out of the middle of the highway, as if they might not have thought of that themselves.

“Orcus!” Nico called when they were within shouting range. “I’m here!”

“Nico?” The griffin poked his head out from beneath his wings. He looked so small and scared. The panic in his eyes broke Nico’s heart. “H-help! Help me!”

“Hold on, buddy!” Nico said. “I’m coming!”

He turned to Hazel. “Can you still manipulate the Mist?”

“I— Yes. Yes, I can do that. What do you need?”

Nico told her his idea. “It’s going to have to be gradual, though, so we don’t cause a million-car pileup.”

Hazel nodded. She took a breath and stared intently at the griffin. The air turned colder.

Right in front of Orcus, a bright orange traffic barrel shimmered into existence, with a flashing light and a sign that read ROAD WORK AHEAD. The traffic slowed and veered around it.

“Perfect,” Nico said. “Now if you can make me a path…”

Hazel kept her gaze on the griffin, as if she were shielding him with sheer willpower…

which she pretty much was. A row of traffic cones with lights and arrows popped into being, one after the other, slowly encroaching on the fast lanes, directing traffic to the right.

Cars swerved and laid on their horns, but none of them crashed into one another.

Nico supposed Bay Area drivers were used to unexpected obstacles.

After another minute, Hazel had created a slowdown guaranteed to ruin thousands of commuters’ mornings, but the lanes between Nico and Orcus were clear.

“Can’t—hold it—long,” Hazel warned through gritted teeth. Her eyes were tearing up; her legs shook from the effort.

Nico hopped the guardrail and dashed toward Orcus.

“I got you,” he said, scooping up the griffin, and then he gasped in pain as Orcus dug his sharp claws into Nico’s forearms. Apparently, grabbing a panicking griffin was as dangerous as grabbing a drowning swimmer.

Orcus was a shivering ball of nerves, no heavier than an average house cat.

Judging from the smell of his fur and feathers, he’d been farting. A lot.

“I’m sorry,” the griffin whimpered. “What is this place? What are those things?”

Nico realized he meant the cars. Had he never seen a highway before?

“Doesn’t matter right now,” said Nico. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

This part should’ve been easy: just cut across two lanes to get back to the guardrail.

But at that moment, Hazel’s knees buckled.

The illusion of traffic barriers vaporized.

This left nothing between Nico and—of course—an eighteen-wheeler, whose driver was so delighted to have the fast lanes clear ahead of him that he hit the gas.

Apparently, because the Mist had a sense of humor, the driver didn’t see Nico holding his griffin.

Nico panicked. No time to jump aside. No time to concentrate.

His eyes happened to fix on the metal doors that marked the entrance to Camp Jupiter. Two guards there were gesturing at him frantically, urging him to move. That was all Nico needed. He jumped forward, into the shadow of the truck that was about to hit him, Orcus howling in his arms.

A flash of cold darkness, and he materialized at the tunnel’s entrance, collapsing at the feet of the sentries.

“Julius Caesar!” cursed Yazan. “That was close.”

He and the other sentry, Deion, helped Nico to his feet.

“What did you just do ?” asked Deion. “Can you beam yourself around like on Star Trek ?”

Nico didn’t bother answering. He was too busy checking Orcus for injuries.

“I—I am fine, Nico di Angelo,” said Orcus, pressing his beak against Nico’s chest. “Thank you for rescuing me. I knew you would.”

Nico held Orcus tighter as his own head spun from the shadow-travel. He felt fiercely protective of this tiny, farting cat-bird. He wanted to wrap Orcus in one of Asterion’s warmest, fuzziest cable-knit sweaters and insulate him from all harm.

“What happened?” Nico asked him. “How did you end up in the middle of the highway?”

The griffin blinked. “Is—is that what the accursed path of loud death beasts is called?”

Yazan and Deion looked at each other.

“You’ve never seen a highway before?” asked Yazan. “Or a car?”

“How is that possible?” asked Deion. “They’re everywhere .”

Nico glared at the guards, hoping they’d understand and lay off the criticism. But Orcus just ruffled his feathers, readjusting himself in Nico’s arms.

“I am newly regenerated from Tartarus after many centuries,” he told the sentries. “I saw very little except green hills as Asterion led us to New Rome. That mortal world I recognized. This . . .”

The griffin stared down at the roaring highway, the sprawl of lights and houses and noise that was the Bay Area.

“What have you done to the place? I came over the hill, thinking I would make a simple reconnaissance flight, and—it all hit me at once. The smell alone!” He farted for emphasis.

“I shut down, dropped from the sky like seagull poop. I truly am useless.”

“Hey, now,” Yazan said. “You’re not useless.”

Deion nodded agreement. “First time seeing all this? That would turn anybody into seagull poop. You’re a brave little dude.”

Orcus puffed his feathers. “Do you think so?”

Just then, Hazel came trudging up the hill, sweaty and out of breath from her boxing match with the Mist. “Oh, thank the gods,” she said. “What happened…?”

Her voice trailed off as she caught Nico’s eye. She got the message. Something important is going on here. Let it play out.

“The last time I was in the mortal world,” Orcus continued, clearly happy to have a sympathetic audience, “I could not even fly freely. I spent most of my life in a private zoo. In a cage . A man of great power kept me there.”

“I’m sorry,” said Deion. “That’s terrible.”

Yazan shuddered. “I hate cages. All animals deserve better. And mythics, of course.”

A tingle went up Nico’s spine. This was the first time he’d heard a rank-and-file legionnaire use the term mythic without even thinking about it.

“Thank you,” said Orcus. “There is not much of the mortal world I understand, but I am trying.”

Cuddled in Nico’s arms, the griffin’s body was shivering in a different way now, almost like…purring.

Before Nico could process that, an Iris-message flashed into existence at his side. It was like the one Nico had gotten at the Camp Half-Blood dining hall—a perfect oval, with brighter colors and a clearer picture than Nico was used to. Had the Romans invented high-definition Iris-messages? HDIM?

Will’s face stared out at them. He looked worried.

“Nico!” he said. “Sorry if I’m interrupting, but could you…uh…meet me at the principia?”

Hazel leaned over so Will could see her, too. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh!” Will’s next words came out in a torrent. “Hi, Hazel. Hello. Howareyou? Ihopeyou’regoodbecauseeverythingisfinehere.”

Nico held back a laugh. “Uh…sure, I’m on my way.”

“Do you need me, too?” Hazel asked.

“Oh, definitely not!” Will squeaked. “Not at all! We’re all good! Thank you!”

The Iris-message disappeared.

Hazel frowned at Nico. “I’m coming with you for sure now.”

“Orcus,” Nico said, “how you feeling, buddy? You want to come with us?”

“He can stay here, if he likes,” Yazan offered.

“Yeah,” Deion agreed. “We can explain about highways and stuff. Give him some safety tips.”

“I would like that!” Orcus fluttered out of Nico’s arms and landed next to the two sentries.

Hazel and Nico left them chatting amiably about the nature of automobiles, and then headed through the metal doors and back down the tunnel toward camp. Neither sibling was in any shape to try more shadow-travel.

“Sometime,” Nico said, “you need to explain why you guys have better Iris-messages.”

Hazel laughed. “You mean the tesserae ?”

“The what ?”

She smirked. “You Greeks, always playing catch-up. Be easier to show you later. I’m more interested in what we saw back there.” She pointed over her shoulder. “What just happened with Yazan and Deion and Orcus?”

A warm feeling spread through Nico’s chest. “I think,” he said, “that was the beginning of Romans getting along with mythics. Maybe this isn’t going to be impossible after all.”