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Seven half-bloods shall answer the phone call,

To tempest or fire the world must autumn.

An oath to keep with a terminal breath,

And foes bear arms to the Doors of Expiry.

I

Jason

JASON HATED BEING OLD.

His joints hurt. His legs shook. As he tried to climb the hill, his lungs rattled similar a box of rocks.

He couldn't come across his face, thank goodness, simply his fingers were gnarled and bony. Bulging bluish veins webbed the backs of his hands.

He even had that old-human smell – mothballs and chicken soup. How was that possible? He'd gone from xvi to lxx-v in a matter of seconds, but the old-man smell happened instantly, similar Boom. Congratulations! Y'all stink!

'Almost there.' Piper smiled at him. 'You're doing smashing.'

Piece of cake for her to say. Piper and Annabeth were bearded as lovely Greek serving maidens. Fifty-fifty in their white sleeveless gowns and laced sandals, they had no trouble navigating the rocky path.

Piper'south mahogany pilus was pinned up in a braided spiral. Silverish bracelets adorned her arms. She resembled an ancient statue of her mom, Aphrodite, which Jason plant a little intimidating.

Dating a beautiful girl was nerve-racking enough. Dating a girl whose mom was the goddess of love … well, Jason was e'er agape he'd do something unromantic and Piper'southward mom would pout downwardly from Mount Olympus and alter him into a feral hog.

Jason glanced uphill. The summit was still a hundred yards above.

'Worst idea ever.' He leaned against a cedar tree and wiped his forehead. 'Hazel'southward magic is too skillful. If I have to fight, I'll be useless.'

'Information technology won't come to that,' Annabeth promised. She looked uncomfortable in her serving-maiden outfit. She kept hunching her shoulders to go along the apparel from slipping. Her pinned-up blonde bun had come undone in the back and her pilus dangled like long spider legs. Knowing her hatred of spiders, Jason decided not to mention that.

'We infiltrate the palace,' she said. 'We go the information nosotros need, and we get out.'

Piper set up down her amphora, the tall ceramic wine jar in which her sword was hidden. 'We can residuum for a second. Take hold of your breath, Jason.'

From her waist cord hung her cornucopia – the magic horn of plenty. Tucked somewhere in the folds of her apparel was her knife, Katoptris. Piper didn't look dangerous, simply if the need arose she could dual-wield Angelic bronze blades or shoot her enemies in the face up with ripe mangoes.

Annabeth slung her own amphora off her shoulder. She, too, had a concealed sword, but fifty-fifty without a visible weapon she looked deadly. Her stormy grey eyes scanned the surroundings, alert for any threat. If any dude asked Annabeth for a beverage, Jason figured she was more likely to kick the guy in the bifurcum.

He tried to steady his animate.

Beneath them, Afales Bay glittered, the h2o so blue it might've been dyed with food colouring. A few hundred yards offshore, the Argo II rested at anchor. Its white sails looked no bigger than postage stamp stamps, its ninety oars similar toothpicks. Jason imagined his friends on deck post-obit his progress, taking turns with Leo's spyglass, trying not to laugh as they watched Grandpa Jason hobble uphill.

'Stupid Ithaca,' he muttered.

He supposed the island was pretty enough. A spine of forested hills twisted down its centre. Chalky white slopes plunged into the ocean. Inlets formed rocky beaches and harbours where red-roofed houses and white stucco churches nestled against the shoreline.

The hills were dotted with poppies, crocuses and wild cherry trees. The breeze smelled of blooming myrtle. All very dainty – except the temperature was about a hundred and 5 degrees. The air was as steamy as a Roman bathhouse.

It would've been easy for Jason to control the winds and fly to the height of the hill, merely nooo. For the sake of stealth, he had to struggle along equally an old dude with bad knees and chicken-soup stink.

He thought near his last climb, two weeks ago, when Hazel and he had faced the brigand Sciron on the cliffs of Republic of croatia. At least then Jason had been at full strength. What they were almost to face would be much worse than a bandit.

'Yous sure this is the correct hill?' he asked. 'Seems kind of – I don't know – placidity.'

Piper studied the ridgeline. Braided in her hair was a bright blue harpy feather – a souvenir from concluding night's assail. The feather didn't exactly get with her disguise, simply Piper had earned it, defeating an unabridged flock of demon chicken ladies by herself while she was on duty. She downplayed the accomplishment, but Jason could tell she felt adept about information technology. The feather was a reminder that she wasn't the same girl she'd been last wintertime, when they'd starting time arrived at Camp Half-Blood.

'The ruins are upwardly there,' she promised. 'I saw them in Katoptris's blade. And you heard what Hazel said. "The biggest –" '

' "The biggest gathering of evil spirits I've ever sensed," ' Jason recalled. 'Yes, sounds awesome.'

After contesting through the underground temple of Hades, the last matter Jason wanted was to deal with more evil spirits. But the fate of the quest was at stake. The crew of the Argo Ii had a big conclusion to make. If they chose wrong, they would fail, and the entire earth would exist destroyed.

Piper's blade, Hazel's magical senses and Annabeth'due south instincts all agreed – the answer lay here in Ithaca, at the ancient palace of Odysseus, where a horde of evil spirits had gathered to await Gaia's orders. The programme was to sneak among them, learn what was going on and determine the best course of activeness. And so get out, preferably alive.

Annabeth re-adjusted her gold belt. 'I hope our disguises hold upward. The suitors were nasty customers when they were alive. If they find out we're demigods –'

'Hazel'southward magic will piece of work,' Piper said.

Jason tried to believe that.

The suitors: a hundred of the greediest, evilest cutting-throats who'd ever lived. When Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, went missing after the Trojan State of war, this mob of B-list princes had invaded his palace and refused to go out, each one hoping to marry Queen Penelope and take over the kingdom. Odysseus managed to return in cloak-and-dagger and slaughter them all – your basic happy homecoming. But, if Piper's visions were right, the suitors were now back, haunting the place where they'd died.

Jason couldn't believe he was well-nigh to visit the bodily palace of Odysseus – one of the most famous Greek heroes of all fourth dimension. So again, this whole quest had been one heed-blowing event after another. Annabeth herself had only come up back from the eternal abyss of Tartarus. Given that, Jason decided perchance he shouldn't complain nearly being an old human being.

'Well …' He steadied himself with his walking stick. 'If I look as old as I feel, my disguise must be perfect. Let's go going.'

As they climbed, sweat trickled downwards his neck. His calves ached. Despite the estrus, he began to shiver. And, try as he might, he couldn't stop thinking about his recent dreams.

Ever since the House of Hades, they'd become more vivid.

Sometimes Jason stood in the underground temple of Epirus, the behemothic Clytius looming over him, speaking in a chorus of disembodied voices: Information technology took all of you lot together to defeat me. What will you lot do when the Earth Mother opens her eyes?

Other times Jason constitute himself at the crest of Half-Claret Hill. Gaia the Earth Mother rose from the ground – a swirling effigy of soil, leaves and stones.

Poor child. Her voice resonated beyond the mural, shaking the bedrock under Jason'south anxiety. Your begetter is showtime among the gods, all the same you are always 2nd all-time – to your Roman comrades, to your Greek friends, even to your family. How will you prove yourself?

His worst dream started in the courtyard of the Sonoma Wolf House. Before him stood the goddess Jun

o, glowing with the radiance of molten silver.

Your life belongs to me, her voice thundered. An appeasement from Zeus.

Jason knew he shouldn't expect, merely he couldn't close his eyes as Juno went supernova, revealing her true godly grade. Pain seared Jason's heed. His torso burned away in layers like an onion.

Then the scene changed. Jason was still at the Wolf Business firm, merely now he was a footling boy – no more than 2 years old. A woman knelt before him, her lemony scent then familiar. Her features were watery and indistinct, just he knew her voice: vivid and brittle, like the thinnest layer of ice over a fast stream.

I will exist dorsum for y'all, honey, she said. I will run into you presently.

Every time Jason woke up from that nightmare, his face was beaded with sweat. His eyes stung with tears.

Nico di Angelo had warned them: the Business firm of Hades would stir their worst memories, make them see things and hear things from the past. Their ghosts would become restless.

Jason had hoped that particular ghost would stay away, but every dark the dream got worse. Now he was climbing to the ruins of a palace where an army of ghosts had gathered.

That doesn't mean she'll be in that location, Jason told himself.

Simply his hands wouldn't stop trembling. Every step seemed harder than the last.

'Almost there,' Annabeth said. 'Allow'south –'

BOOM! The hillside rumbled. Somewhere over the ridge, a crowd roared in blessing, like spectators in a coliseum. The audio made Jason's pare crawl. Not so long ago, he'd fought for his life in the Roman Colosseum before a auspicious ghostly audience. He wasn't broken-hearted to echo the experience.

'What was that explosion?' he wondered.

'Don't know,' Piper said. 'But it sounds like they're having fun. Let's become make some dead friends.'

II

Jason

NATURALLY, the state of affairs was worse than Jason expected.

It wouldn't accept been any fun otherwise.

Peering through the olive bushes at the summit of the rise, he saw what looked like an out-of-control zombie frat party.

The ruins themselves weren't that impressive: a few stone walls, a weed-high-strung key courtyard, a expressionless-cease stairwell categorical into the rock. Some plywood sheets covered a pit and a metal scaffold supported a croaky archway.

But superimposed over the ruins was another layer of reality – a spectral mirage of the palace every bit it must have appeared in its heyday. Whitewashed stucco walls lined with balconies rose 3 storeys high. Columned porticoes faced the central atrium, which had a huge fountain and statuary braziers. At a dozen feast tables, ghouls laughed and ate and pushed 1 some other around.

Jason had expected well-nigh a hundred spirits, but twice that many were milling about, chasing spectral serving girls, bully plates and cups, and basically making a nuisance of themselves.

Most looked similar Lares from Army camp Jupiter – transparent purple wraiths in tunics and sandals. A few revellers had decayed bodies with gray flesh, matted clumps of pilus and nasty wounds. Others seemed to be regular living mortals – some in togas, some in modern concern suits or army fatigues. Jason even spotted one guy in a purple Campsite Jupiter T-shirt and Roman legionnaire armour.

In the eye of the atrium, a grey-skinned ghoul in a tattered Greek tunic paraded through the crowd, belongings a marble bosom over his caput like a sports bays. The other ghosts cheered and slapped him on the back. As the ghoul got closer, Jason noticed that he had an arrow in his throat, the feathered shaft sprouting from his Adam'south apple tree. Even more disturbing: the bosom he was holding … was that Zeus?

Information technology was hard to be sure. Most Greek god statues looked similar. But the bearded, glowering confront reminded Jason very much of the behemothic Hippie Zeus in Motel I at Camp Half-Blood.

'Our side by side offering!' the ghoul shouted, his vocalisation buzzing from the arrow in his pharynx. 'Let u.s. feed the Earth Female parent!'

The partiers yelled and pounded their cups. The ghoul made his way to the primal fountain. The crowd parted, and Jason realized the fountain wasn't filled with water. From the iii-foot-tall pedestal, a geyser of sand spewed upward, arcing into an umbrella-shaped pall of white particles before spilling into the circular basin.

The ghoul heaved the marble bust into the fountain. Every bit presently equally Zeus'south head passed through the shower of sand, the marble disintegrated like it was going through a wood chipper. The sand glittered gold, the colour of ichor – godly blood. Then the entire mount rumbled with a muffled BOOM, as if belching afterwards a repast.

The expressionless partygoers roared with approval.

'Whatever more than statues?' the ghoul shouted to the crowd. 'No? Then I guess we'll have to wait for some existent gods to sacrifice!'

His comrades laughed and applauded as the ghoul plopped himself downwardly at the nearest feast table.

Jason clenched his walking stick. 'That guy only disintegrated my dad. Who does he think he is?'

'I'yard guessing that'southward Antinous,' said Annabeth, 'one of the suitors' leaders. If I remember right, it was Odysseus who shot him through the neck with that arrow.'

Piper winced. 'You'd think that would keep a guy down. What most all the others? Why are there so many?'

'I don't know,' Annabeth said. 'Newer recruits for Gaia, I guess. Some must've come up back to life before we closed the Doors of Death. Some are simply spirits.'

'Some are ghouls,' Jason said. 'The ones with the gaping wounds and the grey skin, like Antinous … I've fought their kind before.'

Piper tugged at her bluish harpy feather. 'Tin they be killed?'

Jason remembered a quest he'd taken for Camp Jupiter years agone in San Bernardino. 'Not easily. They're strong and fast and intelligent. Also, they eat human flesh.'

'Fantastic,' Annabeth muttered. 'I don't see whatever pick except to stick to the plan. Split up, infiltrate, find out why they're here. If things go bad –'

'We use the fill-in program,' Piper said.

Jason hated the backup programme.

Before they left the send, Leo had given each of them an emergency flare the size of a altogether candle. Supposedly, if they tossed 1 in the air, it would shoot upwardly in a streak of white phosphorus, alerting the Argo Ii that the team was in trouble. At that signal, Jason and the girls would have a few seconds to have comprehend before the ship's catapults fired on their position, engulfing the palace in Greek burn and bursts of Celestial statuary shrapnel.

Not the safest plan, but at least Jason had the satisfaction of knowing that he could telephone call an air strike on this noisy mob of expressionless guys if the situation got dicey. Of course, that was assuming he and his friends could get abroad. And assuming Leo'southward doomsday candles didn't go off by accident – Leo'southward inventions sometimes did that – in which instance the conditions would become much hotter, with a 90 percent chance of fiery apocalypse.

'Be careful down there,' he told Piper and Annabeth.

Piper crept around the left side of the ridge. Annabeth went correct. Jason pulled himself up with his walking stick and hobbled towards the ruins.

He flashed dorsum to the last time he'd plunged into a mob of evil spirits, in the House of Hades. If information technology hadn't been for Frank Zhang and Nico di Angelo …

Gods … Nico.

Over the past few days, every time Jason sacrificed a portion of a meal to Jupiter, he prayed to his dad to help Nico. That kid had gone through and then much, and yet he had volunteered for the most difficult job: transporting the Athena Parthenos statue to Camp One-half-Blood. If he didn't succeed, the Roman and Greek demigods would slaughter each other. And then, no affair what happened in Greece, the Argo Ii would have no home to return to.

Jason passed through the palace'southward ghostly gateway. He realized merely in time that a section of mosaic flooring in front of him was an illusion covering a ten-foot-deep excavation pit. He sidestepped it and connected into the courtyard.

The 2 levels of reality reminded him of the Titan stronghold on Mount Othrys – a disorienti

ng maze of blackness marble walls that randomly melted into shadow and solidified once again. At least during that fight Jason had had a hundred legionnaires at his side. Now all he had was an old man'due south body, a stick and two friends in slinky dresses.

Forty feet ahead of him, Piper moved through the oversupply, smiling and filling wineglasses for the ghostly revellers. If she was agape, she didn't bear witness it. So far the ghosts weren't paying her any special attending. Hazel's magic must have been working.

Over on the right, Annabeth collected empty plates and goblets. She wasn't smiling.

Jason remembered the talk he'd had with Percy before leaving the send.

Percy had stayed aboard to watch for threats from the sea, but he hadn't liked the thought of Annabeth going on this expedition without him – especially since it would exist the start fourth dimension they were apart since returning from Tartarus.

He'd pulled Jason aside. 'Hey, man … Annabeth would impale me if I suggested she needed everyone to protect her.'

Jason laughed. 'Yeah, she would.'

'But expect out for her, okay?'

Jason squeezed his friend's shoulder. 'I'll make sure she gets back to you safely.'

Now Jason wondered if he could go along that promise.

He reached the edge of the crowd.

A raspy voice cried, 'IROS!'

Antinous, the ghoul with the arrow in his throat, was staring right at him. 'Is that yous, you one-time beggar?'

Hazel'south magic did its work. Cold air rippled beyond Jason'due south face up as the Mist subtly contradistinct his appearance, showing the suitors what they expected to see.

'That's me!' Jason said. 'Iros!'

A dozen more ghosts turned towards him. Some scowled and gripped the hilts of their glowing purple swords. Too belatedly, Jason wondered if Iros was an enemy of theirs, simply he'd already committed to the role.

He hobbled forward, putting on his all-time cranky old man expression. 'Guess I'm late to the party. I promise you saved me some nutrient?'

One of the ghosts sneered in disgust. 'Ungrateful one-time panhandler. Should I kill him, Antinous?'

Jason'due south neck muscles tightened.

Antinous regarded him for three counts, and so chuckled. 'I'k in a good mood today. Come, Iros, join me at my tabular array.'

Jason didn't have much pick. He sabbatum across from Antinous while more ghosts crowded around, leering equally if they expected to run into a particularly vicious arm-wrestling contest.

Up close, Antinous's optics were solid yellow. His lips stretched paper-thin over wolfish teeth. At first, Jason idea the ghoul'southward curly dark hair was disintegrating. So he realized a steady stream of dirt was trickling from Antinous's scalp, spilling over his shoulders. Clods of mud filled the old sword gashes in the ghoul's grey skin. More clay spilled from the base of operations of the arrow wound in his pharynx.

The power of Gaia, Jason thought. The earth is holding this guy together.

Antinous slid a golden goblet and a platter of nutrient across the table. 'I didn't await to see yous hither, Iros. Merely I suppose even a beggar can sue for retribution. Potable. Eat.'

Thick red liquid sloshed in the goblet. On the plate sabbatum a steaming brown lump of mystery meat.

Jason's tum rebelled. Even if ghoul food didn't kill him, his vegetarian girlfriend probably wouldn't kiss him for a month.

He recalled what Notus the South Wind had told him: A wind that blows aimlessly is no expert to anyone.

Jason's unabridged career at Army camp Jupiter had been congenital on careful choices. He mediated betwixt demigods, listened to all sides of an statement, establish compromises. Even when he chafed against Roman traditions, he thought before he acted. He wasn't impulsive.

Notus had warned him that such hesitation would kill him. Jason had to cease deliberating and take what he wanted.

If he was an ungrateful beggar, he had to act like one.

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