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Hmm, interesting…
The crowd carried on. Hecate laughed and followed the celebration.
“Where is that?” I asked.
“The Philippines, I believe,” Eudora said. “They have a tradition called Pangangaluluwa—appeasing souls with food and festivity.” She shook her head. “I know I shouldn’t be doomsquirting, but I can’t help following her progress! If she makes her way back here, I donotwant to run into her in the faculty lounge. Especially…”
She stopped herself, looking guiltily at me.
“Especially if I fail?” I asked.
“No! I’m sure you won’t fail.” She hesitated. “Will you?”
“Love the confidence.” I told her what we’d been doing all week and that we needed to put the mansion back in order before Hecate returned in the morning. “Any advice? Any gifts from the sea that might help?”
Eudora’s doomsquirt fountain fizzled out.
“Perhaps you should run and hide,” she said, solidifying her front-runner status for Guidance Counselor of the Year. “I should probably make arrangements to visit the Mariana Trench for the rest of the term.”
“Wait…why would Hecate come afteryou?”
The Nereid winced. She seemed so uptight, I was afraid one of us would dissolve into water and get flushed through the floor. That tended to happen in Eudora’s office. Instead, she picked up her shell and returned it to her hair.
“I may have, ah, suggested you…” Eudora said. “For Hecate’s task.”
“Youwhat?!”
She swallowed. “Hecate ambushed me! She showed up on Olympus and…well, she asked me what I thought of you. I was shocked! She hadn’t spoken to me since 1914! I—I was desperate to impress her. And foolishly…I said you were quite competent.”
“Thanks?”
“I panicked! And now, if you fail, that meansIfailed. Oh, she won’t forgive me a second time.”
“I still don’t—Wait.”
I’m a little slow on the uptake. But when a puzzle finally starts coming together, I can usually finish it without having to bash too many of the pieces into place.
“Asecond time,” I said. “Nineteen fourteen. That’s the last year Hecate ran her magic school. You were part of that?”
Eudora stared at Sicky Frog. They looked equally miserable.
“The school was my idea,” she confessed. “Hecate gets sogloomywhen she’s on her own. It’s not healthy for her or her animals. I thought she would find it rewarding to teach young witches. And for a while, she did. I was the counselor and admissions director. I would bring promising students to her: demigods, mortals, nymphs, centaurs…all sorts. But when things fell apart…”
“What happened?”
She shrugged listlessly. “War. It’salwaysa war. Our students started taking sides, arguing with one another. It escalated from name-calling to violence to potion-flinging.”
“Potion-flinging is bad.”
Eudora nodded. “The students needed…more than we could give them. Empathy. Opportunities for healthy communication. I didn’t know how to close the rift. And Hecate, well, she believes in crossroads, in people making their own choices, even if all the choices are bad. She refused to intervene. Things got nasty toward the end. Then she kicked everyone out, swore never to teach again. She blamed me for putting her in that position.”
“Oh.”
I felt bad for Eudora. It sounded like she’d been doing exactly what my mom had recommended—trying to help a goddess who was hurting. And it backfired spectacularly. I’d seen what could happen when infighting started among demigods—choosing sides, calling names, throwing blame and sometimes weapons. Just last summer, I’d watched two rival camps almost destroy each other and the whole world in the process. Hecate had sabotaged herself, just like she seemed to be sabotaging us now. I was going to have to take away her candy cornandher kürtoskalács.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said.
Eudora sighed. “What was I thinking? A magic school! Can you imagine such a thing?”
