Page 59 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

N ico was charging forward in full battle mode when the Mist broke.

Suddenly his body wouldn’t respond. A wave of exhaustion brought him to his knees. His legs turned to lead.

Defiance screamed in his chest pouch. Around him, the other Puffs chimed in, howling in pain and outrage.

The world spun. Darkness loomed at the corners of his vision.

“Will?” he called. He felt so weak he wasn’t sure if the word made it out of his mouth.

“Nico!” a voice called out. He looked for whoever it was, but he saw no one. He knew his friends must still be close only because of their screaming cacodemons.

Then the voice was closer, speaking right in his ear.

“Nico, listen to me.” It was Semele, her tone urgent. “The Mist has been broken. You need to lose your cacodemon now .”

He struggled to process that. Sweat poured down his face. He didn’t want to lose his cacodemon. It was his cacodemon. But maybe that was just Defiance being defiant.

“I don’t understand….” His throat felt cracked and dry.

He managed to turn his head. His friends were all in similar distress.

Lavinia lay flat on her back, her magical dance shoes making her legs twitch as if they might do the jitterbug all on their own.

Poor Orcus had beak-planted on the pavement, his wings splayed like he was doing his impression of roadkill. And Will…

Oh, gods—no. Will was curled into a fetal position. He was sobbing along with his Puff, Loneliness, which radiated heartbreak so strong Nico could practically see the emotion rippling through the air.

“Stand up, son of Hades!” commanded Semele. Her voice was like a slap to the face. “You will not die this way!”

Die? he thought. Am I dying?

But that wasn’t what shocked him to his senses. It was the realization that Will needed his help. Somehow, he got to one knee. His muscles screamed in protest.

He raised his eyes, trying to focus on Semele. At best, he expected to see a wisp of gray, but the apparition before him was so bright it seared his retinas.

Semele was made of stars and smoke, like a fireworks display frozen in midair.

The colors were too intense to stare at directly, but if Nico looked at her from the corner of his eye, he saw a beautiful woman in a flowing white chiton, her hair a cascade of amber ringlets, her eyes like quasars in a misty nebula.

He tried to remember how to speak. “Is this…you?”

“My true form,” she agreed. “Nico, your Puffs have been heightening your senses, letting you see through the Mist. But now the Mist has shattered. You cannot stand such intense exposure to reality. If you don’t dull your minds, you will burn.”

Her words…actually made sense. Of course, Semele had been the only one who couldn’t carry a cacodemon.

She was unaffected. But the rest of them had gone into battle with their Puffs, preparing for the Mist. It was like they’d acclimated their eyes to darkness so they could detect even the slightest glimmer of light.

Now, with the Mist broken, they’d stepped out of a dark movie theater into the blazing sun of high noon.

He looked past Semele’s shimmering form, though his eyes felt like they were melting.

The world was too three-dimensional. The trees vibrated with life.

The smell of eucalyptus was so pungent it made him swoon.

He heard the distant screaming of panicked mortals, the whir of helicopter blades somewhere over the horizon.

In front of the de Young Museum, a confrontation was in progress.

He could make out the dark robes of the three judges.

And there stood Hazel, facing them, her spatha at the ready, but everyone’s attention seemed to be on the sky directly overhead. Was that a funnel cloud descending? Did San Francisco have tornadoes?

“What—what do you mean burn ?” he asked Semele.

The eidolon huffed with impatience. “I mean burn . Look at your friends!”

She was right. Frank’s body had begun to steam. Savannah was writhing, smoke tapering from her fingers like extinguished candles. And Will…

No , Nico thought. He couldn’t let them die. There wasn’t time to help them all remove their Puffs. He could barely make his own hands work. He drew on Defiance’s strength, which was probably the exact thing he shouldn’t do, and screamed, “Cocoa Puffs, to me!”

He was dimly aware of Semele shouting, cursing his idiocy…

or maybe that was his own inner voice. The cacodemons screeched in unison.

The ones who hadn’t been paired with anyone reached him first. The others in harnesses wriggled free of their pouches and bounced toward him in a frenzied stampede.

But they didn’t just gather around him—they melted into him, returning to the dark cradle of Nico’s soul from which they’d sprung.

It felt right, welcoming them home. It was also overwhelming, suffocating, and incendiary. He tasted soot. Smoke filled his lungs. His vision began to dim, but he could see Will stirring, opening his eyes. His friends were sitting up, looking around in bewilderment. Good. That was something.

“Nico!” Will scrambled over and took his shoulders. “What—what did you do?”

“It’s okay,” he croaked.

“It is not okay!” Will shook him, as if that might dislodge the cacodemons. He looked around desperately, and then locked his eyes on Semele. “Can you do anything? Please!”

Nico reached for Will’s hand. He didn’t feel so good. He’d seen a number of monsters go up in flames before. Now he finally knew how they must have felt.

Semele’s voice cut through the pain, so close she might have been inside his head. “Nico, do you trust me?”

He fell into Will’s arms as the darkness pushed him toward unconsciousness. “I do,” he murmured. “With my life.”

“I am going to ask permission to do something,” she said. “I want your consent for me to possess you.”

Nico’s vision was almost gone, but he could dimly see Frank standing over him, his expression a mixture of fear and alarm.

“I can give you strength,” Semele continued. “I can help you survive this.”

Nico remembered a distant conversation, maybe from another life. “But…you don’t possess people anymore. You lose part of yourself every time.”

“I will take that risk!” Her voice seemed to catch in her throat, though she didn’t have a throat in this form. “I admit I have never done this with a willing party before. I am not sure what will happen. But I know what it is to burn. I cannot let that happen to you. Please, do you consent?”

Nausea roiled in his stomach. He was okay with dying if it saved his friends. But he also saw the pain in Will’s eyes. He knew he couldn’t leave him like this, not if there was any other way.

“I consent,” he said. “Please help me.”

Instantly, he sensed another identity in his mind.

He’d never spent much time thinking about his own consciousness, but now he could clearly feel the boundaries of his self, because he was being forced to share his skull with a roommate.

A second self had pushed its way in—a personality so full of energy and life that Nico thought his brain might burst.

Absorbing the cacodemons was one thing. At least they had been part of him to begin with. But this was too much. No brain was meant to hold two entire lives.

Easy , said a voice inside him—Semele’s familiar smoky tenor. I know this is uncomfortable, but if you accept my presence, we can work together.

His mind instinctively fought her intrusion. He pressed his hands to his temples and let loose an anguished cry.

“It’s not working,” Will fretted. “You’re killing him!”

“No,” Nico managed to say. Or was it Semele using his voice? “Wait.”

I’m sorry, Nico. Semele’s voice was deeply distressed. I have not done this in many centuries. I do not want to hurt you.

Nico believed her. Semele may have acted aloof at first, but she had never shown him anything but respect. She didn’t want to harm anyone.

She just wanted to help.

His consciousness began to stitch together with hers over this epiphany—their shared desire to protect the ones they loved.

You understand me , she said.

“I do,” he said aloud.

Nico sensed Semele’s character, her memories, her centuries of life.

She had been so many different things. She had suffered, and lost, and suffered more.

There was too much history for him to absorb at once, but he understood her basic goodness, her determination, her hard-won understanding of her own identity.

It seemed to fit perfectly with Nico’s own.

The darkness began to fade away. In its place, a new feeling grew:

Power.

It expanded from his mind into his chest, and then out to his limbs. The ache in his muscles evaporated. His pulse stopped pounding in his temples. With Will’s help, he stood. He no longer felt like he was going to fall over and disintegrate.

He breathed in, and this time, he knew he was breathing for two souls.

Will studied his face with concern. “Are you okay? Are you…you?”

Nico kissed him. He felt the same electric charge right down to his toes that he’d felt with their very first kiss.

“Yep,” he decided. “I’m still me. Now let’s get to work.”

He turned to survey the bizarre scene in the park. There were mythics everywhere—hundreds crowded together in the plaza, just as Naomi had described, and another group encircling them, no doubt allies of Pirithous.

The funnel cloud had disappeared, but where it had touched down, two unearthly figures now lay on the pavement, struggling under the weight of a giant black chain.

Nico had no idea who they were, but they were screaming in pain as Pirithous paraded around them, his arms wide while he yelled at the sky—something about Hades.

Pirithous. Semele’s voice was a snarl at the back of Nico’s occipital lobe. I would like to destroy him now.

“Agreed,” said Nico.

“What?” Will asked.

“Sorry—talking to myself. To Semele. It doesn’t matter. Is everyone okay?”

His friends nodded. Lavinia did a little tap dance, just to make sure she still could.

Savannah drew her sword. Yazan and Deion gave each other a fist bump.

Johan helped Lucius Silver to his feet and then said, “I think we could all use a nice cup of tea after this, but right now, yes. I am ready to boop some heads.”

“Bust some heads,” Frank offered. “That’s the expression.”

From across the plaza, Pirithous’s voice rang out. “Together, we will bring Hades to his knees!”

Anger burned triple-hot in Nico’s chest—his own, Semele’s, and the concentrated fury of his cacodemon Anger. He drew his Stygian sword and charged, his friends at his side.

They’d closed half the distance when Hazel’s voice reached them. “ATTACK!”

And the park devolved into chaos.