“They cannot see or hear us,” Arielle said. “We’re not sure why. Every so often, a mortal tries to enter the park and then gets confused and simply turns away. This entire area is sealed off, only mythics within…and now you, Praetor. The centaurs keep looking for weak spots, because they are not very bright, but the more force you apply to the barrier, the harder it will repel you.”
“Trust me on that,” Asterion grumbled. “I have only been here a little longer than you, Hazel, but the first thing I did was try to charge through this magic boundary. I nearly broke my horns off.”
She turned and gazed across the park. On the opposite side of the plaza stood another museum-type building—a long facade of white stone and glass, its roof a grassy landscape of artificial hills.
“That’s the California Academy of Sciences,” Hazel realized. “We’re in Golden Gate Park!”
Asterion scratched the side of his snout. “I am not familiar with human geographical locations. Are we still in San Francisco?”
Hazel nodded. Trapped or not, she felt a sense of relief. At least they weren’t someplace beyond the reach of all help—like in Tartarus or Alaska. “This is maybe five miles from the courthouse downtown. Which raises the question of how those guards transported us here.”
“Yeah,” Quinoa said, his face scrunched up in his characteristic scowl. “We wondered if it was that shadow-travel thing you and Nico are always talking about, but—”
“Shadow-travel!” Hazel hastily set down the karpos. “Let me try something.”
She stepped toward a nearby cypress, whose trunk cast a nice dark shadow across the crushed stone. She imagined her bed in Camp Jupiter, with the extra-cushy pillow she loved so much. She put one foot in the shadow, willing herself to travel through it…but nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” she said mournfully. “I should be able to shadow-travelanywhere.”
Asterion crossed his arms. “None of this makes sense. The abductions. The trials. Sentencing us to death, but instead, sending us to some sort of…holding area. What does this Court of the Dead want, and how did they get the power to create something like this prison?”
“Too many questions,” Arielle muttered. “We’ve been here fordaysnow, and new mythics just keep arriving, but…” She froze. “Wait. What about the others? Are Orcus and Johan and Semele all right?”
She sounded so worried Hazel was tempted to give her another hug.
“They were fine when I left camp.” She gave the mythics a quick recap of what had been happening since they’d been abducted, including their standoff with Laverna in the principia.
Quinoa grunted. “That explains why the last thing I remember is a sack going over my head. Oh man…I just hope the kindergartners aren’t too disappointed. I promised I’d come back and teach them how to raise earthworms! And youneverbreak a promise to a kid.”
Hazel couldn’t bear seeing him so dispirited, his tiny shoulders and diaper sagging. “We’re going to get out of here,” she told him. “And I never break a promise to a friend.”
Quinoa hugged her leg and began to sniffle. “I’m not crying,” he insisted. “It’s just all the dust.”
Arielle sat on the nearest bench and began to massage her donkey knee. Hazel suspected it must be hard on the joints to have mismatched legs.
“At least you got more information at your trials,” the empousa said. “I didn’t think to demand the judges introduce themselves.”
“Those masks were terrifying,” Quinoa agreed, wiping away a green streak (that totally wasn’t a tear) from his face. “Not that I was personally scared, mind you, but I can see how others could have been.”
Hazel smiled. “Well, Asterion had more presence of mind than I did.”
“And this Pirithous person…” said Arielle. “You recognized him from the Underworld?”
“Yeah,” Hazel said. “He, um, used to hang out in the Fields of Asphodel.”
She explained that byhang out, she actually meant Pirithous had been stuck in an outcropping of granite like he’d fallen asleep and melted into the rock. But how he’d managed to escape, Hazel had no idea.
Arielle grimaced. “So Pirithous was not one of the judges of the dead?”
“Far from it,” Hazel said.
Thinking about Asphodel, she looked around at the stunted trees in the barren fields of crushed rock—so much like the Civic Center Plaza next to the courthouse. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Pirithous had chosen two locations reminiscent of Asphodel in which to judge and detain his convicted mythics. It gave Hazel the same uneasy feeling as Pirithous’s grotesque Hades/Pluto mask, like the court was meant to be an elaborate mockery—a criticism of her father and his entire system of judgment.
“Pirithous must have done something truly heinous,” Asterion said, “to warrant such punishment.”
“And now he thinks he’s worthy of judging others,” Quinoa said. “Typical human—no offense.”
Hazel shrugged. There were plenty of humans she admired, and others she was embarrassed to share a species with. They were not so different from mythics in that respect.
