Oh, right!
The Cocoa Puffs peered up at the girl. One of them—Defiance—rolled forward and inflated itself, growing spikes like a puffer fish. The message seemed to beYou got a spear? Big deal. Check me out.
Yazan stepped back hastily. “Are thosemonsters?”
Nico frowned. He didn’t like it when that word was applied to the Puffs. “Not monsters. Cacodemons. They’re with me.”
Yazan seemed to think about this. His instructions had probably not included escorting an army of demonic dust bunnies into camp.
“Very well,” he decided.
Savannah scowled. “Yazan, we can’t allow evenmore—”
“They are ourguests,” Yazan said, cutting her off. “Please, Nico di Angelo, follow us.”
Nico wondered what Savannah had been about to say—even morewhat?—but he didn’t have time to ask.
The sentries led Nico and Will up the path and through the metal doors, which slammed shut behind them. Magical torches guttered to life, filling the tunnel with an eerie purple light. The corridor sloped downward into the hillside.
Will shivered. His breath smoked in the cold air. “This is the entrance to Camp Jupiter?”
“Yep,” said Yazan.
“But…is the whole camp underground?” Will sounded worried—which was fair, considering that the last tunnel they’d been through had led to Tartarus.
Yazan chuckled. “No, no. Once we’re through the tunnel…Well, you’ll see.”
“Okay,” Will said warily. “Cool.”
He fished inside the pouch of his hoodie and produced a Ziploc bag of baked goods. He passed Nico an oatmeal raisin cookie. Then he offered the bag to Yazan and Savannah. “Helps with shadow-travel sickness,” he explained. “But I’ve got plenty.”
“Uh…I’m good,” said Savannah. She was studiously ignoring Defiance, who was dancing around her sandals, trying to pick a fight. “Snacks aren’t allowed while on duty.”
“Really?” Will looked shocked. “That’s a weird rule.”
Nico coughed. “He means to say that your rules are different here. But we respect them.”
“Yeah,” Will agreed, stuffing half a cookie in his mouth. “Respect.”
As they made their way through the tunnel, Nico was surprised how quickly his strength recovered. The cookie helped, and his nausea had passed. Now, however, he was starving. Perhaps this was a benefit of staying in one place for months—Nico had built up enough reserved energy to shadow-travel across the country without face-planting.
“I did warn you, right?” he murmured to Will as they walked. “Camp Jupiter is more formal. Stricter. Might take some getting used to.”
“I get that,” Will said. “I remember Leo Valdez telling me—”
“Leo Valdez?” Yazan whipped his head in Will’s direction. “You know the Great and Mighty Leo?”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Uh…yeah. I can attest that he’s a great and mighty goofball.”
“And sometimes a jerk,” Nico added. “He likes to trick people who don’t know any better into calling him the Great and Mighty Leo. Also, he doesn’t tell his friends when he comes back from the dead.”
“What?!” cried Yazan. “The Great—I mean Leo Valdezdied?”
“No, he—” Nico put his hand on his forehead. “Don’t worry about it. He’s very much alive. Shall we continue?”
Finally, a brightness grew at the far end of the tunnel. They stepped into the sunlight, and Will gasped. “Oh. My. Gods.”
Nico would always have an affinity for Camp Half-Blood. (And he certainly believed it was the superior camp, thank you very much.) But the idyllic panorama spread out below themwasbeautiful.
