Page 31 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

“T hree o’clock in the morning,” Will announced.

He’d brought a pocket watch to keep time, because of course he had.

Nico knew he should have felt tired, but he didn’t. He barely wanted to blink, afraid he’d miss the inevitable.

If it was inevitable. The attack last night had happened much earlier. Was it possible the vault’s magic protections had thwarted the witch lady? Or was she just trolling them, letting them stay up all night for nothing while she got her beauty sleep?

Nico was starting to think their plan was a bust. They’d had no further updates from Frank or the other sentries upstairs.

The night had been quiet and annoyingly uneventful.

He imagined the legionnaires manning the walls of Camp Jupiter were super bummed that they hadn’t had anyone to impale with their ballistae or pour boiling oil on.

Nico was about to suggest taking a walk around the archive, just to stretch their legs, when the whole room went cuckoo with Cocoa Puffs.

The unassigned cacodemons began bouncing around, hissing and howling.

Loneliness scuttled up Nico’s shirt and clung to his neck, sending a wave of memories straight into his bloodstream.

Curled in the bronze jar, waiting to die; alone in the Labyrinth, his sobs echoing through the dark stone tunnels.

Grief wriggled into a pocket in Will’s cargo pants and started wailing, Screee!

Screee! Guilt vaulted onto Hazel’s head.

The demigods got to their feet. The mythics ran from the stacks to join them, their Puffs also going bonkers.

The room seemed to come into sharper focus. With Loneliness at his neck, Nico could smell mildew from the bookshelves, hear the low hum of magic in the walls, even taste the acrid dust infiltrating his nostrils. The air pressure dropped so suddenly that the metal trapdoor creaked above them.

“Someone’s coming,” Nico said. He tapped the tessera on his bracelet. “Frank?”

No answer.

“Deion?” Will tried. “Savannah? Yazan?”

Nothing.

Nico drew his Stygian blade. He locked eyes with Hazel, who nodded back. Ready.

It wasn’t easy to look intimidating with a Cocoa Puff nested in your hair, but Hazel managed. She clenched her fists and took a deep breath. Her face was steely with determination. Her amber eyes locked onto something across the room—something Nico could not see.

“There you are,” she growled. “Halt!”

The command rolled across the archive like a shock wave, almost knocking Nico off his feet.

The light grew brighter, banishing shadows, making everything in the room look sharp and freshly created.

The Cocoa Puffs continued to bounce about, snarling and growling.

Nico could feel his demigod awareness buzzing into overdrive, his senses heightened to new levels, but when he followed Hazel’s gaze, he still saw nothing. Will looked equally mystified.

Without warning, Hazel drew her Imperial gold spatha. She lunged forward so quickly Nico had to stumble out of her way. With her free hand, she grabbed…something, then pushed it against the far wall, her blade held horizontally at throat level.

“No more games,” Hazel demanded. “Show yourself.”

A woman flickered into a view. At least, she looked like a human woman.

She wore a multi-pocketed sackcloth dress, cinched at the waist with a length of rope.

Her feet were dirty and bare, her hair a wild mass of black.

Her features were like those of a feral cat—bright angry eyes, dilated pupils, flared nostrils, and bared teeth that looked both too sharp and too numerous.

The edge of Hazel’s sword pressed against her windpipe.

The woman hissed. In one hand, she held a black iron staff. In the other, she gripped the tied-off mouth of a burlap sack.

Maybe she was related to La Befana, the Christmas witch. But if that sack was full of presents, Nico suspected they’d been stolen from children after this lady had knocked them unconscious.

“Who are you?” Hazel said. “What do you want?”

The woman snarled, struggling against Hazel’s grip, but the Imperial gold blade dug deeper into her throat, breaking the skin. With a noxious hiss, golden fluid dribbled from the wound—ichor, the blood of the gods.

“Oh, Hazel, Hazel.” The woman didn’t look older than her mid-thirties, but her voice was gravelly and ancient, the way it had sounded the night before through the tessera. “You know exactly what I’m doing,” she croaked. “I’m taking out the trash. And you are tonight’s pickup!”

Nico advanced, his own sword raised. “Where did you take the others? What have you done with our friends?”

“Friends?” The woman cackled. “They are not your friends, Nico di Angelo. They’re monsters. Criminals. They have been charged, sentenced, and”—she paused, clearly relishing Nico’s look of anguish—“ punished .”

Nico’s jaw trembled. Anger might have been upstairs with Frank, but Nico felt like he’d just swallowed the cacodemon whole. “What does that mean? Talk!”

Instead, she spat in Hazel’s face.

Hazel barely reacted, but it was enough to loosen her grip.

The woman pushed Hazel away, howled, and swung her staff.

Hazel just managed to parry the strike. Orcus screeched and flew at the intruder.

Johan lumbered into battle. Will raised his hand and summoned a flash of light so brilliant the woman winced and looked away—but it wasn’t enough.

She swept her staff in a wide arc. It didn’t connect with anyone, but Orcus, Johan, and Will all went flying backward, crashing into the back wall.

“Will!” Nico yelled, but he couldn’t run to him. He couldn’t leave Hazel alone against this witch. He stood his ground.

The intruder looked at Nico with amusement. She glanced at Hazel and rattled her burlap sack, which sounded like it was half-full of copper pots.

“Into my bag you go, Praetor Levesque,” she said. “I’m not normally a murderous god, but if you won’t be a good girl, I will happily kill everyone here.”

“NO!” Nico charged and swung his blade. The woman raised her staff, but the Stygian iron edge cut clean through it. The sword met the side of the woman’s neck….

And what happened next, Nico couldn’t quite process, no matter how heightened his senses were.

With no gush of ichor, no obvious cut, no gore of any kind, the woman’s head disconnected from her body.

It spiraled upward, but then, instead of falling, it floated in place, hovering just above her left shoulder.

“Oh, dear!” The head laughed with glee. “Whatever shall I do?”

Her body joined the charade, waving its arms frantically and running in a circle. The mythics and demigods watched, frozen in horror. Even the Cocoa Puffs didn’t seem sure of how to feel.

“Well then,” said the woman’s head, her mouth twisting into a sneer, “I suppose we’ll go with murdering—”

“STOP!” The god Terminus flash-banged into existence, placing himself between the intruder and Hazel.

It was one of those moments when Nico’s mind seemed to disconnect from the flow of time.

He scanned his surroundings like a third-person observer.

He saw Will struggling to his feet, apparently unhurt.

He saw the blemmyae and the tiny griffin regaining their bearings as Semele fussed over them—a maternal cloud of smoke.

He saw Hazel and himself with swords drawn, saved from somewhat-certain death at the hands of a headless witch by a statue with no arms. And he said to himself, This is really my life.

Terminus snarled. “You.”

The woman snarled right back. “Terminus. You useless chunk of marble.”

“Threaten these mortals again,” said the god, “and you will find out how useless I am.” He blinked. “That was a threat. It was meant to imply that I am actually very useful.”

“Terminus,” Hazel said in a low voice, “you know this person?”

Terminus scoffed. “You would have to dive very deep into Roman history to know her, Praetor Levesque. That’s how unimportant she is. This is Laverna, goddess of thieves, cheats, and liars. The disconnected head is a dead giveaway. It’s a thing she does.”

The goddess’s body did a grotesque curtsy that would have earned her a reprimand in the Fifth Cohort’s square-dancing classes. Her head floated down and reconnected with her neck.

“Delighted,” she said. “Always a pleasure to meet new Romans, steal from them, and disgrace their sorry excuse for a godly guardian.”

Terminus glowered. “Oh, you’re going to enjoy your time in a Roman jail!” He shifted on his pedestal. “That was sarcasm. It was meant to imply you will not enjoy your time at all.”

“Why are you stealing our friends?” Semele demanded, saving the god of boundaries from further awkwardness.

Laverna looked down her nose at the eidolon. “That word again. Friends. You are monsters. Act like it! You will all face the judgment of the court!”

Nico’s hands felt sweaty on the hilt of his sword. “What court?”

The goddess laughed. “Jump in my bag, little demigod, and you will find out. If you think I am terrifying, wait until you meet the masters: the judges!”

“ENOUGH!”

For a microsecond, Nico thought the booming voice had come from Terminus. But it was Will. He marched toward Laverna, his whole body wreathed in light. He glowed like his father’s chariot, radiating enough heat to make steam curl off Nico’s jacket.

Nico was speechless. He’d seen Will glow before. He’d teased him for being a Care Bear. But since when could he do this ? Even stranger, the cacodemon Grief advanced at his heel, its antlers lowered.

Laverna hissed and backed away—perhaps because thieves and daylight do not go well together.

“You will tell us everything,” Will ordered. “Or you’ll burn.”

Even Terminus looked impressed. “That’s good. Do that!”

“It doesn’t matter,” the goddess growled. “You could kill me now, and a hundred more would be ready to take my place. We are putting the world to rights!”

“Who is we ?” Will raised his hand. Even at a distance, the heat from his fingers made angry red blisters erupt on Laverna’s face.

The goddess did the only sensible thing. She kicked Hazel in the shin and ran.

Nico jabbed at the goddess with his Stygian sword.

He missed. Hazel stumbled into Will, who was forced to “flame off” to avoid incinerating her.

Terminus yelled, “I’ve got her!” and tried to grab Laverna with his imaginary arms. Johan charged in to help, but with his horrible depth perception, he only managed to tackle Terminus.

Orcus squawked. Semele shouted, “Stop her!” which was incredibly useful advice.

The goddess wove between her tormentors, doing her best to reach the stacks, where Nico figured she would try to disappear into the Mist. She would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those pesky Cocoa Puffs.

Loneliness sprang onto her dress, latching its appendages into the sackcloth and burrowing into the nearest pocket. Grief launched itself at Laverna’s leg, sinking its teeth into her calf.

Laverna howled. She tried to shake the cacodemon off her leg, but Grief bit down even harder.

“What are you?” she screamed at the dark, spiky attack emotion. “Why do I feel so terrible?”

Nico almost laughed. Grief was probably not something a thief goddess was used to dealing with.

She stumbled and fell to her knees, shrieking…

and then she literally unraveled. Her hair turned into dirty threads like the head of a mop.

Her face transformed into coils of jute.

The goddess collapsed, her flesh and clothes disintegrating until there was nothing left but a pile of rotten ropes.

Grief stood atop the pile, proudly shaking its antlers like, Yeah, I did that .

Loneliness shook itself free of the ropes. It was chewing on some kind of laminated card it must have retrieved from Laverna’s pocket—maybe a stolen ID? That seemed like the sort of thing a thief goddess would carry.

Johan nudged the ropes with his foot. “Is she dead?”

Terminus snorted. “I doubt it. Just retreated into whatever dark sewer she calls home until she can regain her strength. But she won’t be anxious to tangle with me again!”

The rest of the group looked too stunned to argue.

“Is everybody okay?” Hazel asked.

There seemed to be no injuries. No one was missing.

Orcus tilted his beak. “Does that mean we won?”

“We stopped Laverna,” Semele corrected. “That is not the same as winning. And we should check on the sentries upstairs. I suspect we will find them fast asleep.”

Oh, great , thought Nico. If Frank had spent all night hanging out with Anger and then fallen asleep on the job anyway, Frank and Anger were basically going to be the same person when they woke up.

He studied Will, whose T-shirt and cargo pants were still steaming.

“What was that?” Nico demanded. “The light. The fire.”

Will looked embarrassed. “Dunno. I got angry.”

“Well…it was hot.”

Will shrugged. “I am the son of the sun god.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Nico.

Hazel knelt next to the pile of rope formerly known as Laverna. She held out her hand to Loneliness, who was still chewing on his plastic prize. “Mind if I see that, buddy?”

Loneliness dropped the laminated card into her palm. The Puff’s smile curled into a perfect half circle under its single eye, like it was enormously pleased with itself.

Hazel brought the card over to Nico. It was an ID, but not any kind that Nico would have expected. He wiped off the Puff drool. Printed on green card stock, glistening in its slightly chewed plastic sleeve, was a court officer’s identification badge.

Laverna’s face stared back at him, though she’d combed her hair and put on a power dress for the photo.

Underneath was her name, along with what Nico assumed was a made-up surname: LAVERNA SHIRLIUS.

Okay…Next to that, around the seal of California, small block letters read: CALIFORNIA SUPERIOR COURT, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO.

N ico’s mouth twitched up in a half smile. “Well, gang, I think in the mystery business they call this a clue .”