Untitled Part 24
Don't believe it.
As Nico came to, Hazel's words floated through his head. His hands pressed against cold concrete. The thrum of traffic filled his ears. The air smelled of eucalyptus. Someone was tugging on the sleeve of his jacket.
"Nico!" Will's voice sounded far away. "Nico, get up!"
Don't believe it, Hazel had said.
Then fire and ash.
Nico was crying. He reached out with his senses, trying to locate his sister's life force. He felt nothing.
"I know," said Will, his voice cracking. "But we can't do anything for her right now. We have to tell Frank."
Nico managed to sit up.
They had shadow-traveled back to where they'd started—the sentry post outside the Caldecott Tunnel. Deion and Yazan were still on duty, staring down at Nico with shocked expressions.
In a single morning, in less time than one changing of the guards, Nico's world had turned inside out. Asterion...gone. Hazel...
He wanted to scream. He wanted to summon every restless soul from the Underworld—to rip apart the entire East Bay until there was nothing left but overturned earth and roaming skeletons. But he barely had the energy to stand, even with Deion and Yazan's help.
The Cocoa Puffs swarmed him, hissing and growling in agitation. Will pulled him into a fierce hug.
Nico buried his face in the crook of his boyfriend's neck. Will's whole body trembled as they both sobbed. Nico could smell traces of soot and smoke in his hair.
Nico tried again to reach out for Hazel—to see if he could feel the ripples that her death should have caused.
He had lost so very many people over the years, he'd become adept at sensing when someone important to him had died.
But this time he felt nothing.
Please not her, he prayed. Please not again.
Darkness swirled at the edge of his consciousness. He wanted to pass out, to give in to it, but Will was there, holding him up. Nico pulled back just enough to study Will's face. He looked so angelic in that moment, his eyes pleading and concerned.
"Wait." Will sniffled, then rummaged in the pockets of his cargo pants. He produced a chocolate chip cookie. "Eat."
Nico wanted to refuse. How could he think of food? But his body had its own ideas. He wolfed down the cookie in three bites.
"What happened?" Yazan's voice was filled with dread. "Where's Hazel?"
Nico's and Will's faces must have told him all he needed to know. Yazan's expression hardened.
"Deion, use the tessera," ordered Will. "Call Frank. Now."
If Deion said anything else, Nico didn't hear it. He collapsed against Will and sank back into a bottomless void.
His dreams fluctuated.
First, he was stuck in that room again, with someone knocking at the door, but this time the space was brighter than Will's energy—brighter than the sun itself. He kept his eyes shut. Still the glow burned through his eyelids, searing his retinas. He heard the door open. That was a first. But he couldn't bring himself to look.
He sensed her approach—a shift in the light, a coolness in the air. She drifted toward him. Her fingers caressed his face as lightly as the whiskers of a cat.
"Brother," she said, "why did you leave me?"
"I'm right here, Hazel!"
The light made it impossible to look. He wanted to reach out, to take her hand, but his arms remained frozen at his sides.
"I can't find you!" She sounded farther away now. And her voice was no longer Hazel's.
It had been months since he'd last heard his big sister speak, when his father had granted him a final chance to say good-bye to her.
"Bianca!" he cried. "Help me. Tell me what to do!"
"You were supposed to help me," she said.
Somehow the voice became both Hazel's and Bianca's—a blend of their gentle tones. Nico tried to distinguish Hazel's slight Southern lilt from Bianca's softer consonants, a remnant of her Venetian accent, but he couldn't. He realized it didn't matter. His sisters shared one voice and one fate. He had failed them both.
Next, he found himself lounging in a grassy field on a warm afternoon. Cherry trees swayed overhead, their branches heavy with white-and-pink blooms. A few feet away, an expanse of water shimmered in the sunlight. The opposite shore was so far away it might have been a lake or a bay, but Nico recognized where he was—the Potomac River, the park where his mother had taken them in Washington, DC, during those first few weeks in America, before the fire that destroyed their lives.
A picnic basket sat between him and Bianca. She was reading her wellworn copy of Anne of Green Gables for the millionth time. As usual, she wore wide-legged trousers and a polo shirt, the way she preferred to dress whenever she was out of school. Her feet were bare, of course.
Their mother knelt beside the wicker basket, rummaging for something inside. The older version of Nico, the one who was dreaming, wanted to focus on her, to memorize the details of her face that had faded over the decades. She was wearing a blue gingham dress, and her dark hair was tied back in a bow. She hummed an Italian tune, maybe "Vivere"—"To Live"— because even Nico's dreams had a dark sense of irony.
Her face, however, was hazy on the edge of his vision. The younger Nico, the boy in the dream, was mostly ignoring her as he shuffled through his Mythomagic deck. Finally he found the card he'd been searching for: Hades. He held it up and studied it in the light.
"Nico, did you remember to pack the fresh mozzarella?" his mother asked.
Younger Nico didn't answer. He was too busy staring at the dark-robed figure on his card. The god reclined on an onyx throne. An iron helmet rested on his knee. His face was half-drowned in shadow, but he seemed to be peering sternly out at Nico, as if asking Why do you come before me?
Nico wondered what life would be like if all the gods and monsters were real. Would it be as exciting as Mythomagic made it seem?
"Nico!" His mother cursed in Italian. "Che cosa stai faccendo? You packed your figurines?"
She pulled a Mythomagic statuette from the picnic basket. Nico saw that she had pricked her finger on one of its sharp points as she was searching for the mozzarella.
Nico had never seen this game piece before, but he knew exactly what it was: Hazel in her final moments, just before the two-pronged spear touched her and reduced her to ashes. The miniature Hazel held her spatha up high, and now a drop of Maria di Angelo's blood glistened on its point.
His dream changed again. He and Will were descending the stairs to the Underworld, as they'd done months ago on their quest to Tartarus.
Will stopped and frowned. "I'm having déjà vu. Weren't we just here?" This time, Nico could grasp the edges of the dream. Nausea washed over him as he tried to reconcile the different layers of reality.
"Ugh," he muttered under his breath. "I want to wake up."
"Wake up from what?" Will asked.
"I'm in the middle of a dream."
"You mean we're in a dream, right? Because I could swear this stretch of steps keeps repeating itself."
"That too," Nico said, his head throbbing. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
"Oh, everything matters." Will grabbed Nico's wrist so tightly it hurt. "You can't ignore what you've done, Nico."
Suddenly, the underground passageway turned darker. Much darker.
Nico focused on his boyfriend's face...but it was now hidden behind a golden mask, a grotesque, leering caricature of Will Solace.
Nico lurched away. His foot missed a step. He tumbled backward, spinning in the void while Will's malevolent laughter echoed in his ears.
Nico awoke abruptly.
Fear was cuddled against his face, its hedgehog-like spines digging into his cheek.
He sat up, his mind still swimming through the images from his dreams. He wanted to believe the nightmares had been caused by the Puff, but he suspected that wasn't true. Fear had found him, snuggled up to him, because it had sensed Nico needed him. It seemed to be sending him a message: This is my emotion you are feeling. Recognize it. Embrace it. I will help.
The cacodemons were more complex than Nico had given them credit for. He should talk to Hazel....
That's when reality came crashing back over him.
Hazel was gone.
He sat bolt upright, frightening his Puff so badly that it leaped off the bed.
"Sorry," he told it, rubbing the spine marks on his face.
Fear bounded away and joined its siblings, who were all curled up on the next bunk over. Will wasn't there. Nico was alone in the guest barracks, with no memory of how he'd gotten there. He was glad the Romans were used to hard work, because they seemed to be spending a lot of their time dragging his unconscious body back to bed.
Hazel...He closed his eyes and tried once more to sense her life force.
He remembered the vacancy he'd felt when Jason died—like a piece of the universe had been hacked away with a dull knife. This didn't feel the same. Instead of emptiness, there was a distant pain, deep and aching, and it had a shape.
Don't believe it, she had said.
Nico tried to hold on to that glimmer of hope. She must be alive. Otherwise, he would fall apart, and too many people still needed him— Will, Frank, and the other mythics.
But he also worried. Was he being delusional? Was his hope overriding his instincts as a child of Hades?
Nico's stomach grumbled. One thing about being alive: his body didn't care how sad he was. It wanted food.
He headed to the bathroom to freshen up and change clothes. He grabbed his bomber jacket but froze when he found a four-inch gash on the left sleeve. The black leather had been ripped open—maybe by a nail on Suzanne's club, or by a falling stalactite. Nico had no memory of it happening. The inner wool lining sprouted from the tear like dandelion fuzz.
White-hot hatred surged through him—for Pirithous and his court, for all the misery they'd caused. A ripped sleeve was nothing compared to losing Hazel, of course. But this jacket had been with him through so many adventures. It had come out unscathed every time. Until now. It seemed like a bad omen.
Nico fought back tears.
She isn't dead, he told himself. And jackets can be mended.
But that just made him think of Asterion and his knitting needles, which made him even sadder.
He headed outside, leaving his Cocoa Puffs snoozing on Will's bunk.
It was early in the evening. The last rays of sunlight stretched over the Via Principalis. The camp felt strangely empty. Nico supposed dinner had already happened. Maybe the cohorts were off training or hunkered down in their barracks. The few campers he passed froze when they saw him, as if torn between wanting to say something and wanting to run away. Nico spared them the choice. He kept walking, his eyes fixed on the mess hall.
Word of Hazel's fate must have spread through the legion by now.
Did they blame Nico for not saving her?
He heard Mr. D's voice in his mind, reminding him to stay in the present. Don't think about the past you can't change. Don't leap forward to a future you can't predict.
The mess hall was empty except for a few wind spirits cleaning up from dinner, but the scent of roast beef still lingered in the air. Despite all his problems, Nico's mouth watered. He headed to the galley and managed to liberate some leftovers—a roast beef sandwich, some chips, and an apple (because healthy). He headed for the praetors' table, though the sight of Hazel's empty chair made him tear up again.
He sat down, and then took a deep breath. "She isn't dead," he said aloud this time.
"Are you sure?" said a voice at his ear.
Nico flinched.
It was Semele, of course. As Nico steadied his jumpy nerves, he thought how fortunate the eidolon was to be non-corporeal. If she'd had a physical form, she would've gotten an elbow in the face several times a day, the way she liked to sneak up on people.
"Semele," he said. "Sorry. I'm...a little jumpier than usual."
"Apologies, my child." Her smoky essence drifted to the right, taking the spot where Will usually sat. "I was hoping to find you."
Nico took a bite of his sandwich. "I assume someone told you what happened."
"Your boyfriend did," she confirmed, her voice heavy. "We were just speaking in the principia with Frank. He thinks Hazel is alive. Do you?"
Nico's heart ached yet again. On top of everything else, he'd slept through the day, putting the burden on Will to explain what had happened and deal with the reactions from Frank and the rest of the legion. Gods... Frank must be devastated.
"I'm not sure what to believe," Nico said. "As a child of Hades, I can usually sense when someone I care about has died. But with Hazel, I don't feel that. So maybe..." He didn't finish, not wanting to jinx anything.
"Will Solace believes the same thing," Semele said. "That Hazel is still alive somehow. And what of Asterion?"
Nico frowned. Another thing to feel guilty about—it hadn't even occurred to him to try to sense the bull-man's death. Could he sense the passing of a mythic? Their essence would return to Tartarus, which wasn't exactly like a soul being sent to Erebos, his father's kingdom. And then there was the fact that Pirithous had claimed Asterion would be executed in a way that prevented him from ever regenerating. How could that be?
He closed his eyes and tried to find Asterion. He remembered the bullman's gentle hug on his last night in camp, his dignified attitude before the court, and yes, even the pride he had taken in his hand-knitted underwear.
Nico sensed nothing.
He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't suppose..." He was hesitant to get Semele's hopes up, but he decided to ask anyway. "That little patch of Tartarus ground you have growing in your quarters...?"
"Alas, no." Semele sighed. "We checked it as soon as we heard, to see if perhaps Asterion's essence had lodged within it, waiting to regrow. But our small piece of home is still struggling to take root in the upper world. We are not even certain it will survive."
Nico wasn't surprised, but the news made his sandwich sit uneasily in his gut.
"I want to believe Hazel and Asterion are alive," he said. "But if so, where are they?"
"I do not know," said the eidolon. "But I would like to offer the services of those of us who remain. Orcus, Johan, myself...We will help you."
He raised an eyebrow, surprised at the change in Semele's attitude. Only a day ago, she'd been ready to leave camp and take her chances in the wider world.
"That's...Thank you, Semele," he said. "I just wish I knew how you could help."
"We will discover this together," she said. Then she hesitated. "I regret that I was so ready to leave. I am sorry to have spoken harshly to Asterion. I have many doubts, Nico di Angelo. After living as long as I have, I cannot but fear the worst from others. But Asterion gave me hope, which I have not felt in centuries. I have not been allowed this level of independence in a long, long time."
Nico wished he could see Semele's face...if eidolons had faces. Her voice reminded him of his nonna in Venice, almost a century before. Nico remembered little about his grandmother's face, but he knew she'd lived through wars, famines, and plagues. She'd seen entire nations rise and fall. She'd lost her husband, three of her children, and her home four times to floods, bombs, and fire. And yet just before Nico left for the United States, with the storm clouds of World War II on the horizon, she had hugged him fiercely and said, "Ce la farai." A simple statement, difficult to translate into English: You will make it. You will manage. You will be able to handle it. Somehow, she'd had absolute faith that Nico would be okay.
Semele spoke with that same tone—a combination of sorrow and steel —and the eidolon had been alive for thousands of years longer than his nonna.
"Can I ask you something?" Nico said. "When we first met, you said you hadn't possessed anyone in a long time. What made you stop?"
Semele's smoke swirled and twisted. "Gaea used us as tools. We eidolons did her bidding and nothing else. After centuries upon centuries of subjugation, I lost touch with who I was."
She drifted across the table like a miniature fog bank, settling over Hazel's chair. "Possessing someone is not as simple as changing places, Nico di Angelo, or putting on a costume. When an eidolon inhabits another person's body, we lose a bit of ourselves. We become weaker, more diluted, less visible. It is...the price we pay."
Nico shivered. He'd always thought of possession as a kind of violation —a power move by an evil spirit over a helpless victim. He'd never considered that it also diminished the possessor.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't imagine what that's like."
"But you are helping, Nico. Every day that I make choices for myself, I become more myself."
He couldn't see Semele, but he imagined her smiling. He wondered what the Court of the Dead would say about her "official record." She had chosen not to be a pawn of the gods, not to do the one thing eidolons were created to do. But that was making her more truly herself...whoever she had been when she lived as a mortal.
"Do you remember your life?" he asked.
"Mmm. It is more like the memory of a memory...a groove I have worn in my mind. I do not know if that makes sense."
Nico nodded. He'd worn a few grooves in his mind, too.
"I was once royalty," she said. "The details are fuzzy, but I know I became too proud of my beauty and power. I demanded something of Zeus himself, and...it did not go well. Someday, perhaps, if I regain enough of who I was, I will ask forgiveness of the person I hurt the most—my son."
Nico wasn't sure he'd understood her correctly. Her son?
Before he could ask, the doors of the mess hall creaked open.
"Ah," said Semele. "Your boyfriend and Praetor Zhang have arrived."
Sure enough, Will and Frank were making their way toward him. They both looked exhausted. Will's shoulders drooped. Frank had bags under his eyes.
"Hey, Nico," Frank said, collapsing in the nearest chair. "Hope you got some sleep."
He sounded glum and angry at the world, but not devastated, at least. Will must have shared his theory that Hazel was still alive.
Will kissed the top of Nico's head and then sat next to him. "We have some things to discuss with you."
Uh-oh, thought Nico. Out loud he said, "Yeah, Semele and I were just talking."
"Good evening, demigods," said Semele. "Have you made any progress on your plan?"
Nico looked to Will. "You have a plan?"
"A potential one," said Will. "Assuming, well—"
"Hazel is alive," Nico said. "She has to be."
Will nodded. "What she said at the end—that has to mean something."
Frank rubbed his eyes. "You have no idea how much I want that to be true, but I need to hear every detail—Nico, from your point of view this time."
Nico recounted what had happened in the courtroom. It was hard not to choke up as he described how Asterion and Hazel had been reduced to ashes.
"She told us to go," Nico said. "And at the very end, she said Don't believe it."
Will and Frank exchanged a look. Clearly, they'd already been discussing this.
"Before that," Frank said, "this judge Pirithous...He said Asterion and Hazel would be"—he grimaced—"executed in a way that helped their plan?"
"Whatever that means," Nico agreed. "And in a way that they wouldn't be able to come back from."
Frank clawed the table with his fingertips. Nico hadn't seen Frank shape-shift into an animal in quite a while. He assumed Frank still had that ability. But even in human form, Frank's big hands reminded him of a grizzly's paws.
"Hazel could see—can see through the Mist better than anyone I know," Frank said. "It's possible she saw something in the way Asterion disintegrated, or she realized something about it afterward, that told her this turn-to-ash moment wasn't death. It was something else."
"There's a precedent," Will said. "Years ago, Percy's mom was turned into a golden burst of dust"—he glanced sheepishly at Semele—"by Asterion, actually. But she wasn't killed. Hades transported her to the Underworld."
Semele made a sound like she was clearing her throat. (Which made Nico wonder if eidolons even had throats to clear.) "You believe our friends were taken to the Underworld, then? Do these judges have such power?"
Nico stared at his half-eaten apple. "I'm not sure about the Underworld. We don't know enough about the judges, or their purpose, but they had half a dozen minor gods in that court. If Hazel and Asterion were taken somewhere..."
"They could still be alive," Semele said. "Perhaps Quinoa and Arielle, too. I am not familiar with this Pirithous, but I can ask Johan to search the archives. Perhaps he can find out more. Or any mention of this court."
"Good idea," said Frank. "In the meantime, we'll get our strike team ready."
Nico felt an electric charge pass through his body. "Strike team?"
"We're getting our people back," Frank said. "A small group of our most versatile fighters—" When Nico started to protest, Frank raised his hand. "This is going to be a rescue operation, not a pitched battle. Bringing the entire legion would be too unwieldy. Besides, we don't have enough coverage for everyone."
"Coverage?" Nico asked.
Will smiled. "That's my contribution to the plan. With your permission, of course. My idea is Wearable Cocoa Puffs."
Nico's mouth fell open. "Wearable...like accessories?"
"They've helped us see through the Mist," Will reminded him. "They seem to heighten our senses, right? So why not train the mythics and a few other legionnaires to use them without getting overwhelmed? We could use every advantage we can get."
"That's not a terrible idea," Nico said.
Will gave him a mock bow, like You flatter me.
"Besides," Will said, "if we have extra Puffs, they're great for throwing at our enemies. We've seen that they can confuse even gods."
"Just what we need," Frank grumbled. "More confusion."
"Frank, it's something," said Will.
"I know, I know. I just hate this feeling. I trust my bow, my sword, even my ability to turn into a mountain lion. But trusting cacodemons that none of us understand, when Hazel could be..."
"She's not gone," Nico assured him. "Remember how I knew Jason was dead? This isn't the same, Frank. She'll be okay. We have to hold on to that."
"And the others," Semele added dryly. "Asterion, Arielle, Quinoa."
"Of course," Nico said. "We'll rescue them all."
Semele drifted back across the table and hovered at Will's shoulder. "Very well. This leaves us with a few small questions. When do we go? Where are we going? And what do we do when we get there?"
Nico smirked. He suspected that eidolons could get away with such a high level of snark because they were impossible to strangle.
"It's true, we're in the dark here," he admitted. "I'm tempted to leave right now. I'm terrified of what kind of danger our friends might be in. But we need at least some time for our team to get used to the Cocoa Puffs. I suggest we train all day tomorrow and leave in the evening. Unless I sense something in the meantime that, uh, changes the time frame...."
He didn't elaborate on what that might mean. Frank's expression darkened, but he nodded in agreement.
"That seems wise," Semele said. "Making decisions from a place of fear is not advisable."
Frank wiped at his reddened eyes. "In terms of where we go...Unless we get a different lead from Johan's research, we should start at the courthouse. And once we get there..."
There was no way to finish that. There were too many unknowns. But Nico imagined some of the thoughts running through Frank's head. He suspected the wrath of Frank Zhang was going to make the court sorry they'd ever picked up their gavels.
"Tomorrow, then," said Semele. "The mythics will be ready."
Her smoky form dissolved, leaving the three demigods in an uncomfortable silence. Nico looked at Frank and Will and wondered if either of them had gotten any sleep that day.
Knowing them...probably not.
"We need to rest," he said.
Will opened his mouth to speak, but Nico held up a finger. "Yes, I'm well aware that I'm the one telling us to rest."
"How dare you kill my joke before I could tell it," said Will.
Frank's eyes were still glassy and red. "I just wish I could talk to her," he said, his voice breaking. "If I could have some sort of proof that she's alive..."
An idea formed in Nico's mind. It was probably a bad idea, but it seemed silly not to try it. "You know, she was wearing a tessera bracelet...."
Frank seemed to put those words together slowly, letting the meaning sink in.
He grabbed his own bracelet and rubbed his thumb along the glossy ceramic pendant. "Show me Hazel Levesque," he said. "Wherever she is.
But nothing happened. No rainbow-tinted sphere. No Hazel. Just darkness and silence.
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