Page 57 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

H azel felt like she was in a horror movie because of all the screaming around her.

When the Mist broke, an entire school group was exiting the de Young.

Once the kids saw two Cyclopes yoked to a wagon, they scattered in all directions with their teachers chasing after.

A mom pushing a stroller was politely navigating through a crowd of tourists when she realized the tourists were actually bloodsucking vampires with donkey legs and flaming hair.

She shrieked and pushed her stroller from zero to sixty as she fled down the sidewalk.

A taxi swerved off the road to avoid a giant scorpion, went airborne, and landed in the plaza wedged between two cypress trees.

Every mortal in sight was behaving similarly. Hazel couldn’t blame them.

The moment the world shattered, a compression wave exploded outward from a point just between Hazel and Pirithous. Zigzagging lines of white smoke like horizontal lightning split Golden Gate Park—breaking trees, buildings, cars, streets, and even the sky into a million jagged puzzle pieces.

It was as if Hazel had been looking through a lens her entire life.

She simply hadn’t realized it until the glass fractured and fell from her eyes.

When the white lightning faded and the dust settled, everything looked normal again—except sharper, rawer, and somehow uglier.

She’d never realized that Laistrygonian giants had so many warts, or that Cyclopes suffered from pink eye, or that Pirithous’s hair was actually a toupee.

What she did realize was that the Mist was gone.

The curtain separating mortal and godly realities had been ripped away—at least in this one area of San Francisco.

For the first time, perhaps ever, regular mortals were seeing exactly what demigods saw: a world full of monsters and magic.

Some of the less rattled mortals were filming the scene on their phones as they backed away from the plaza, and Hazel suspected that those images would appear online with no filter.

The implications were…not great.

Hazel could think of only a couple of upsides to this situation.

First, the invisible prison barrier had broken along with the Mist. She knew this because she could breathe again—cold, fresh air, rich with oxygen, without the stench of stale mythic breath and body odor.

Second, the hundreds of monsters on both sides of the barrier were momentarily just as stunned as the mortals.

No one was attacking anyone. At least not yet.

Her relief was short-lived, though. She was about to yell for Asterion to charge the wagon when a different sort of magical storm formed in front of her.

The ground shook from a peal of thunder so loud that even the largest monsters cowered. A black funnel cloud spiraled downward, seething like boiling water in a pot.

“Yes, yes!” cried Pirithous. “Come forth, Pluto! Come see what I have wrought!”

He snapped his fingers impatiently at his nearest minions. “What are you waiting for? Uncover the tarp!”

Kelli stared at him in disbelief, as if thinking Who, me? Then she grabbed a couple of Laistrygonian giants and led them toward the wagon.

Hazel regained her senses enough to draw her sword. “Asterion!”

Before she could order her troops into battle, another crack of thunder almost knocked her off her feet.

The tip of the funnel cloud now hovered only a hundred feet above her.

Every cell in her body was charged with panic.

A shape descended from the base of the tornado—a smoky human form floating toward them. It was definitely not Pluto.

“Hurry!” Pirithous snapped at his minions.

He was the only one in the park who looked excited. Hundreds of mythics milled restlessly, backing away from the incoming…whatever it was. Even the minor gods looked nervous.

The smoky form split, becoming two human shapes rather than one. Side by side, they descended from the sky, until they floated just above the ground between Hazel and Pirithous.

Their forms solidified into flesh. They looked so much alike they might have been identical twins.

The one on the right was dressed in a white tunic; the one on the left wore a flowing red palla.

Both had smooth bronze skin, shoulder-length dark hair, and the most beautiful faces Hazel had ever seen (which was saying something, since Hazel had seen Venus herself).

But the strangest thing about the pair was that they had no feet.

They hovered just over the pavement, their legs simply ending below the ankles.

The park had fallen silent. Even the nearest mortals had stopped screaming, though a few were still filming this newest development. Everyone watched the beautiful twins—who had to be gods, Hazel thought—towering over Pirithous.

Mary Tudor and Tantalus cautiously stepped back, leaving the chief judge on his own. As Pirithous realized that he had not, in fact, summoned Pluto, a mix of emotions rippled across his face—surprise, disappointment, confusion, fear. But he managed to hide them behind a smile.

“Welcome!” he said. “Thank you for answering my call!”

The two gods interlocked their hands. They were positively beaming, their faces radiant with joyous light, but Hazel sensed something odd about them. These gods wore their smiles the same way Pirithous wore his golden mask—more to hide behind than to express real feeling.

“So,” said the god in the tunic, “you meant to summon us?”

“It has been very long indeed since someone did that,” said their twin, looking upon the gathered crowd with an inscrutable smile. “And you broke the Mist to do it?”

Their voices were as beautiful as their faces—soft and melodic, without a hint of displeasure—but Hazel’s every instinct screamed DANGER!

The rest of the crowd seemed to feel the same way.

The mythics, who had been so eager to escape or to fight only moments ago, stood motionless, as tense as grenade pins.

“I— Yes, of course!” said Pirithous, doing his best to regain his composure.

“It was I who orchestrated all of this!” He swept his hand across the plaza, indicating what had to be the weirdest crowd ever assembled.

“I am Pirithous, chief justice of the Court of the Dead. And I have summoned you here to join our cause!”

The gods kept floating and smiling. Over at the wagon, Kelli and her Laistrygonian giants were trying to remove the tarp, all sly-like, but it wasn’t really something they could do subtly.

Hazel was tempted to warn the twin gods that something was up.

A trap was about to be sprung. But her gut still told her to stay as still as possible.

Also, she wanted to see what would happen.

Part of her wondered if these gods might blast Pirithous into a pile of cinders and save them all a lot of trouble.

“I see,” said the twin in the red palla. “And what is your cause? My brother here…well, he and I are very interested in what you have to say!”

Pirithous spread his arms magnanimously. “We seek to restore order to the world! Monsters should be monsters! Gods should be honored! Many minor gods who have been forgotten now follow me. If you join us—”

“Minor gods…” said the twin who had been referred to as the brother. His voice was still pleasant—the way a poisonous flower might be pleasant. “Forgotten…”

Panic briefly crossed Pirithous’s face. “I don’t mean…Obviously you aren’t—”

“Then you know who we are,” said the other twin. “Since you summoned us in such a dramatic way.”

“Y-yes, of course I know!” said Pirithous, glancing back at Kelli as if to say Hurry up with that secret weapon! “Although this poor, ignorant one”—he gestured to Hazel, which she found quite rude—“does not know of your glory. Perhaps you would introduce yourselves for her sake?”

The twins turned to study Hazel. Only Asterion’s comforting presence behind her kept her from backing away.

“Poor, ignorant mortal,” said the brother. “I am Veritas, the god of truth. My sister is—”

“His counterpart, Aletheia,” she said. “Goddess of honesty.”

Pirithous looked delighted. “You see, Hazel Levesque? You see the quality of gods I have summoned?”

From across the plaza, Hazel heard a sound she hadn’t expected: a derisive snort. She glanced to her right and saw her old enemy Laverna, goddess of thieves, covering her mouth and trying very hard not to look at the newcomers.

Hazel frowned. She returned her focus to the twins and went with her gut.

“You’re lying,” she said. “You’re no gods of truth.”

For a heartbeat, the twins maintained their calm angelic demeanor. Their eyes gleamed. Hazel waited for them to blast her into the next dimension.

Then the brother grinned at his sister.

The sister laughed like she’d just heard a dirty joke. “Oh my gods. Their faces! At least this girl isn’t a complete fool.”

Pirithous blanched. “I don’t— Wait. What?”

“Ask your friend Laverna,” Hazel said. “She knows these two.”

“Laverna is here?” The brother cackled, his voice now more malicious than melodic. “Where are you, girl? Get over here!”

Laverna trudged over, her expression sour. With her sack over her shoulder and leaning on a new iron pole, she looked like Santa’s evil sister after a hard night’s work abducting naughty children.

Meanwhile, Kelli and her giants had finally succeeded in uncovering the wagon. When Pirithous saw this, he seemed to relax, his face regaining some of its old smugness.

“Laverna,” he said, “by the oath that binds you, I command you to tell me who these two…guests are.”

Hazel got the feeling he wanted to use a less polite word than guests . She didn’t know what oath Pirithous was talking about, but his command seemed to cause the goddess physical pain.

“The sister is Apate,” she said. “Spirit of deception. The brother is her counterpart: Dolus, god of trickery and guile.”