“But hidden,” Nico agreed. “And we wait for tonight. So far, the disappearances have only happened at night.”
Will nodded. “Which means we’ll need to get some sleep today, while we can.”
Frank frowned at the map. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d welcome an excuse to take a day and catch up on my sleep. But I don’t understand—”
“I get it,” Hazel said suddenly. “But how?”
“We’ll need Savannah’s help,” Nico said. “And anyone you’ve got who can operate well at night.”
“Hold on!” Orcus demanded. “Does somebody want to explain this plan to me?”
The griffin looked at Nico with desperate hope. Nico remembered how he had felt yesterday, holding the trembling little guy in his arms after rescuing him from the highway. Hehadto make this work.
“I can only promise you one thing,” he told Orcus. “You’re going to hate it.”
At sunset, Asterion and his friends gathered outside the mythics’ quarters. They had dressed for bed, though no one expected to get any sleep tonight. Orcus wore his tiny nightcap, while Asterion had donned a handmade blue sleeping gown. Semele…well, she was smoke.
Johan wore briefs and a bathrobe, open at the chest so he could see. His large pectoral eyes shifted from side to side, so his whole midsection looked like the face of a paranoid neighbor peeking out from between terry-cloth curtains. Nico couldn’t blame Johan for feeling afraid. In his position, Nico would’ve felt the same way.
He instinctively looked down, expecting to see Fear hugging his ankle, but no. The Puffs were likely fast asleep in the guest barracks. Nico wondered if the cacodemons were linked somehow to his own exhaustion. That might explain why they’d been sleeping so much the past few days. Or it simply could have been all the physical activity and shadow-travel.
The thought of how much Nico had done in such a short span of time made him tired all over again.
Will went over the plan once more with the mythics. Usually when he overexplained like this—telling everyone not to be nervous, assuring them that the plan would work—it meant he himself was nervous and unsure the plan would work. But Nico didn’t judge. He appreciated the calming sound of his boyfriend’s voice.
“Nico and I will be roving,” he said. “He’ll shadow-travel us wherever we’re needed. Frank’s going to be directing operations from the principia. The Second and Fifth Cohorts have deployed groups of sentries along the boundaries of camp. Terminus will be on speed dial. If anyone detects anything, he’ll personally check it out and go ‘minor god’ on any intruders. Don’t worry. We are going to find out how your friends disappeared.”
“Disappeared.”Semele added a hint of disgust to the word. “That’s a funny way to describe what happened. Our friends werestolen.”
“Maybe so,” said Nico. “But if the mythic-napper tries again tonight, this whole plan is designed to catch them.”
Asterion studied the tessera that now hung from his wrist. Savannah had spent the day collecting, modifying, and redistributing every bracelet in camp. Now each mythic had one (except Semele, who couldn’t handle physical objects) and so did at least one person in every sentry group. Nico wasn’t sure how Savannah had done it, but she’d managed to turn the brightness down to zero so the Iris-messages conveyed voices only—because it would be a little hard to run night surveillance and catch an intruder if the sentries were communicating with giant glowing rainbow spheres.
“We just whisper into it?” Asterion asked.
Will nodded. “All the tesserae will be linked in one big Iris-network. Don’t speak into it unless you absolutely need to, but you should be able to hear anything going on at any location.”
“Ingenious,” Johan said.
Will smiled. “Occasionally, my boyfriend has a brilliant idea.”
There was no reason for Nico to blush. He blushed anyway.
Orcus flapped his wings. “So while you’re roving around, who’s here protecting us?”
“Here they come now.” Nico gestured across the field, where Hazel was marching toward them with Yazan and a goat-legged guy with the unlikely name Maynard Thee Faun.
Semele hissed like steam from a kettle. “And they’llactuallyprotect us?”
Heat rose to Nico’s face again. He wanted to yell,That’s Hazel! Do you know how much she’s done for you?
“Of course,” he said instead. “But I understand why you’re asking.”
“Then you’ll understand why I don’t trust mortal guards.” She fumed, literally, and drifted into the house.
“Please excuse her,” said Asterion. “She is the oldest among us and has the most reason to hate the upper world. She is trying, but her journey is her own. I cannot ask her to speed it up.”
“I don’t take it personally,” Nico said, though he wondered what had left Semele so bitter. If she was older than the legend of the Minotaur…that wasold.
