Page 54 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

She glanced down. An enormous pair of hands jutted from the ground and wrapped around her legs, holding her in place within the spire. She felt like she should know who those hands belonged to, but the name evaded her.

The mythics continued to dig. The cavern filled with oil. No one seemed aware of it except Hazel.

It was all her fault. Somehow, she knew this.

A tiny griffin—was that Orcus?—disappeared under the dark tide. A few bubbles rose to the surface. Then nothing.

As the oil rose, things got stranger. An empousa raised her emerald shovel.

Suddenly, her arm fell off. A blemmyae swung his golden pickax and stabbed himself right between the chest-eyes.

Hazel watched in horror as this scene repeated across the cavern: every mythic using her conjured tools lost a limb or crippled themself in some bizarre accident.

Where had she seen this before?

Charlie Gasceaux. A name she hadn’t thought of in decades…He had lost his arm because of a bracelet he’d purchased from Hazel’s mother. Back then, all of Hazel’s gems had been cursed. Anyone who used them or tried to sell them met a gruesome fate.

Now the curse was happening again .

She was powerless to stop it. The maimed army of mythics disappeared under the inky waves.

Just as the oil reached Hazel’s chin…

Someone shook her awake. Fuzzy shapes loomed over her, haloed in sunlight.

“Hazel,” said Arielle. “You need to see this.”

She rubbed her eyes and sat up. The smell hit her first: musky and earthy, the odor of hundreds of creatures trapped together, breathing the same stale air for much too long. Hazel’s shirt clung to her sweaty back.

Asterion stood next to her, with Quinoa perched on his shoulder. “I am sorry we had to wake you, but there has been a development. Pirithous has arrived…and he is not alone.”

Hazel tried to stand and immediately regretted it. The whole world spun. She almost toppled over, but Arielle caught her arm.

“I’ve got you,” said the empousa.

Asterion took her other arm and then bellowed deeply to the crowd, “Make way!”

And the crowd parted . It was so instantaneous that Hazel could hardly believe it.

Mythics lined up to either side of them, letting her pass.

Every eye was on her. It was an odd sensation, to be seen by so many at once, but she didn’t feel the same hostility from them that she had earlier.

She believed Asterion’s words: the mythics were now seeing her in a different light.

She would have been relieved, even elated, but she couldn’t quite shake the memory of her dream—all these creatures drowning in oil, dying from her cursed gems and precious metals.

She passed the harpies she’d seen the day before. One of the injured ones bowed. “We will remember what you gave us.”

Hazel smiled back weakly. Her throat was too dry to speak.

Just before they reached the edge of the barrier, Asterion stopped and pointed toward the de Young Museum. “There.”

The sun was now arcing toward the west, casting a warm afternoon light over Golden Gate Park.

On the road in front of the museum, where Hazel might have expected to see a school bus or a public shuttle, there stood an enormous two-wheeled wooden wagon, its top covered with a canvas tarp.

Chained to the yoke, instead of horses or oxen, were two Cyclopes.

Pirithous himself was approaching the barrier, flanked by Mary Tudor, Tantalus, and the two red-robed skeletal guards from the courtroom, still holding their double-pronged spears.

The judges’ black gowns flowed around them.

Their gold masks glinted on ropes around their necks.

Mary Tudor and Tantalus looked almost bored, annoyed even, but Pirithous was beaming with excitement.

A few mortals passed by, enjoying their afternoon in the park, but none of them acknowledged the strange procession. Hazel concluded that the Mist must still be working, but that didn’t reassure her. She didn’t like the expression on Pirithous’s face.

While the judges were still out of earshot, she turned to Asterion. “Any idea what this means?”

“No,” admitted the bull-man. “But I do have some good news. It appears there is a limit to the dodecahedron’s reach underground. The diggers are close. I have asked them to keep working while we deal with…whatever our jailers want.”

Hazel allowed herself a moment of relief. “Thank the gods. Because I’ll be honest with you—I’m not feeling very well right now.”

“Neither am I,” Quinoa muttered. “Even we karpoi require oxygen, and it stinks like Orcus’s farts in here.” He hesitated. “I miss that gassy griffin.”

Hazel scanned the perimeter of their prison.

Her heart sank as she noticed more of Pirithous’s allies approaching from all directions.

To her right, their old enemy Laverna, her head reattached, was riding what looked like a manticore.

To their left, the three gray-robed di inferi were directing a mob of shambling undead, trying to get them to form a line.

“Why are they trying to surround us?” Hazel wondered.

Asterion frowned. He gestured to Rhodope, the orange-feathered leader of the harpies, who immediately flew to his side.

“My friend,” he said, “please check the perimeter. Hazel has noted that Pirithous’s forces seem to be encircling us.”

With a bitter squawk, Rhodope flew off.

Hazel’s hand tightened on her spatha, though she doubted she had the strength for a sword fight. “What are they up to? They can’t seriously think Pluto is going to show up.”

“And yet he appears to believe so,” grumbled Arielle. “And I think that’s all that matters—he believes what he says.”

“There are many of us,” Asterion said, loud enough for the nearby mythics to hear him. “If Pirithous wants a fight, he will get one.”

The mythics muttered in agreement, closing ranks around them. Hazel wanted to feel the same hopefulness and determination, but she mostly just felt pain. Her lungs burned, begging her for more oxygen.

Finally Pirithous’s entourage reached the barrier. Their captor strode forward, a smug look on his face.

“It is time, Hazel Levesque! You can tell your fellow prisoners to stop digging. That is pointless now.”

Dread bloomed in Hazel’s chest. Apparently, Pirithous had been keeping tabs on their activities.

“If you think we’re giving up,” she growled, “that’s never happening. We will break out of here.”

Pirithous laughed like this was an excellent joke.

“You misunderstand me, dear girl,” he said. “You can stop digging because you don’t need to find a way out. I’m setting you all free.”