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My last shot was a miss. Black spots danced in my eyes. I crumpled to my knees, and the torch fell out of my hand.
In the demigod business, we have a technical term for situations like this. We call thembad.
I collapsed on the porch. The ghosts rushed in, ready to feast. Fortunately, there was Annabeth. (That sentence describes a lot of my life, actually.) She lunged, snatched the fallen torch before the flames could gutter out completely, and positioned herself between me and the dead.
“Get back!” she yelled. “Begone!”
She crossed the torches in front of her, the way Hecate had done in Eudora’s waterspout. The spirits crashed against the edge of the torchlight and reeled backward, hissing and howling, but they didn’t disappear. They raged through the front yard, rattling the fence, then zipped up and down Gramercy Park West with such force they shook streetlamps and peeled flagstones off the sidewalk.
Annabeth muttered, “Why aren’t they going away?”
(That sentence also describes a lot of my life.)
I was too worn-out to respond. Maybe we’d messed things up by passing the torches between us. I tried to get up, but my chest hurt. My arms were limp spaghetti. Nope valiantly tried to help by tugging at the hem of my jeans, but it was no use.
Grover, Hecuba, and Gale rushed to join us on the porch, because that’s where all the cool kids who didn’t want to get eaten by ghouls were.
“Not good, not good, not good,” Grover fretted. “What do we do?”
Gale barked and ran inside the mansion, though this seemed like a bad time for a chicken-carcass break. Hecuba stood her ground, growling at the blizzard of ghosts.
“We’re going to die!” said the lion door knocker.
“We’ll be fine!” said the horse.
“I’m gonna stick with STROOPWAFELS!” said the dog.
For the moment, the torchlight seemed to be keeping the dead at bay. They tore up the street and ripped limbs off the trees in the park in frustration, but the manse itself appeared to be within the protective radius of the blue fire.
We needed to keep it that way. Whatever else happened, we couldn’t let the ghosts wreck the mansion and undo all our hard work. Okay, alltheirhard work, but still…
“These are getting heavy.” Annabeth’s arms shook under the weight of the torches. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep the ghosts out.”
Gale reemerged from the mansion, dragging a bandolier of little glass vials behind her. She dropped them at Grover’s feet and chittered urgently.
“She says you both need these!” Grover fumbled with the vials, pulled the stopper from one, and dribbled the contents into my mouth. I worried I might turn into Octopus Boy again, develop beast breath, or go full flaming purple armadillo, but I wasn’t in any shape to protest. I gulped it down. A surge of warmth washed through my organs.
I recognized the sensation. It was nectar—the drink of the gods. The flavor varied every time I tried it. Usually, the taste reminded me of some favorite form of comfort food. This time…it was candy corn.
The taste brought me back to kindergarten. I was trick-or-treating with my mom in our apartment building. Everybody was giving out little bags of candy corn.…I guess because there’d been a sale at Duane Reade. I got such a stomachache I swore I’d never eat the stuff again.
It was a simple memory, but it was enough to clear my head. My arms tingled. I struggled to my feet. While Grover poured nectar into Annabeth’s mouth, I managed to pull out Riptide and uncap the blade without decapitating myself.
I still felt awful. It would’ve taken another twenty or thirty vials to get me back to full strength, but I knew that wasn’t possible. In small amounts, ambrosia and nectar did wonders for demigods. In larger amounts, they could make you spontaneously combust, which didn’t fit in with my healthy lifestyle.
“Thanks, Grover, Gale.” I jabbed my blade at the nearest ghost, who was getting a little too close to the edge of the torchlight. “How’s everybody feeling?”
“Fine,” Grover said. “Just an average night, you know.”
“Squeak!”said Gale.
The dogs snarled in their respective sizes: extra large and child’s medium.
“I’m better.” Annabeth waved the torches at the spirit mob. “Not great, but I’ll manage.”
Years ago, when she’d been Atlas’s prisoner, she’d held up the sky for much longer than I had. I knew she had next-level stamina. Still, I didn’t want her carrying those torches any longer than she had to. Oh, wait…carrying a torchfor someone. Wasn’t that an old-fashioned way to say you loved somebody? That was kind of sweet.
Stop that!I told myself.Focus!
