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“Send your minion away,” Annabeth said. “It is better she doesn’t hear what I have to tell you.”
The twins didn’t like that, but Daedra snapped her fingers. “Leave us, Madeline.”
Madeline fled. For all I knew, she was going down the street to join Green Hair on his lunch break.
“Now,” Annabeth said, “perhaps you abandoned Circe—”
“Abandoned?” cried Daedra.
“—but I have gone on to even greater teachers!”
“Thereareno greater teachers!” yelled Phaedra.
Annabeth held up her Gramercy Park house keys, with the crossed-torch keychain. “Do you know these keys? Do you know who I work for?”
Phaedra gasped. “You—the goddess—?”
“Yes,” Annabeth said. “I work for the goddess Hecate herself!”
Technically, this was true, though Annabeth made it sound a lot more serious than a week of pet-sitting.
“That’s impossible.” Daedra sounded hurt. “She closed her school a century ago. She—she turned us away when we asked!”
The twins looked so dejected I actually felt bad for them. I imagined the four sisters showing up at the manse and getting yelled at by the door knockers.No, you can’t come in! Yes, you can! TIMBERDOODLE!Then maybe Hecate had scolded them, telling them to get lost. I thought about the ripped-up school flyer from 1913, and all those broken eyeglasses.…What Could Have Been. Whatever had happened a century ago to make Hecate close her school, she was still working through some issues. I just wished I understood what it had to do with SEJ.
“The goddess is very discerning about her students,” Annabeth said haughtily. “They have to be, well…smart. For instance, if you were going to steal the goddess’s beloved polecat, you should at least have known better than to name your new productGale.”
I’d heard the expressionput someone on their back foot, but I’d never actually seen it happen. Both Phaedra and Daedra put all their weight on the backs of their heels, leaning away from Annabeth as if she might breathe fire. I could have knocked them over with a plastic trident.
“I—I assure you,” Phaedra stammered, “we didn’tstealGale! She came here quite on her own!”
“And she’s here now,” Annabeth guessed. “Your sisters Filomena and Silbe have already met the goddess’s displeasure. If I find that any harm has come to Gale, I will be happy to show you what—”
“No need!” Daedra yelped. “Gale is perfectly fine. We can—we can send her home, perhaps next week?”
“Or the week after?” Phaedra said. “We do have a large order coming up.”
“You will show me the polecatnow,” Annabeth ordered.
The twins looked at each other. Annabeth had definitely pushed them toward fight or flight, and I guessed they were weighing their chances of either.
“Of course,” Daedra said. “Right this way.”
The twins hurried toward the back room, gesturing for us to follow.
Annabeth gave Grover and me a warning look. “Be ready,” she whispered.
She didn’t say ready for what, but we followed the nymphs into their workshop.
I don’t know how mythological villains can afford so much square footage in Manhattan. Like, they always seem to have these massive multilevel lairs with plenty of space for torture chambers and luxurious dens to recline in and plot their nefarious deeds or whatever. Do their landlords take golden drachmas? On the other hand, the air rights over the Empire State Building must’ve cost the gods of Mount Olympus several gazillion, so I guess I shouldn’t question it.
Phaedra and Daedra brought us down a winding iron staircase into a room big enough for an entire laboratory, which was good, because that’s what they had. Copper kettles spouted twenty different colors of steam. Pipes with gauges ran along the walls, with big red handwheels to control the pressure. In the center of the room, an honest-to-gods cauldron bubbled with golden liquid that was probably not chicken soup. Worktables were stacked with vials of herbs, spices, and desiccated parts of creatures and plants. After seeing Hecate’s more modest kitchen, this place should have looked impressive. It was way bigger and more complex. But honestly, I got the feeling these nymphs were trying too hard. Hecate’s kitchen seemed functional. This place seemed like it was sayingLook how super talented we are! Soon, we will figure out what we are doing!
And scurrying around the room, attached to a long golden chain that hung from a pulley system on the ceiling, was our old friend Gale.
The polecat did not appear to be enjoying her vacation. She ran furiously around the lab, followed by what looked like a swarm of angry metallic bees. Gale would rummage through a box of vials, put her paw on one of them, and the bees would swarm around it, picking it up, carrying it to the cauldron, and dumping it in. Then Gale would scamper to locate her next ingredient. If Gale stopped to think or just take a breath, the bees would swarm her and sting her on the butt. Gale barked at them and farted, but the bees didn’t seem to mind. They were probably Celestial bronze automatons, unbothered by trivial things like deadly gas.
“Gale!” Grover cried, forgetting that our role was to be silent and intimidating in our plastic armor.
