Immediately, a glowing rainbow sphere blazed to life. Frank’s floating head scowled out of it.
“What?”he snapped, and then immediately caught himself. “Sorry. Anger and I are getting in touch with our feelings.” He took a deep breath and continued in a calmer voice, “What’s going on down there?”
“Nothing much,” Nico said. “You?”
“All quiet,” Frank reported. “We had a brief freak-out because Yazan swore he heard an intruder tunneling under the principia’s front steps. Turned out to be a family of raccoons.”
Will grinned. “You gotta keep an eye on those raccoons.”
“Hrmph,” Frank grumbled. “Long as no one else disappears tonight. Thanks for the update.”
The Iris-message went dark.
Nico glanced down the length of the room. The mythics had disappeared somewhere in the stacks, though he could hear an occasional sneeze from Orcus.
“Semele?” he called. “All good down there?”
After a brief silence, Semele’s muffled voice replied, “Everyone is accounted for.”
Nico wondered if he’d interrupted her while she was trying to smoke a good book.
He gave Will a shrug. “Guess we just wait, then.”
But his nerves did not calm down. Blood pulsed in his ears.
“This is getting to you, isn’t it?” asked Will.
“A little bit.”
Will reached across the sleeping bags and laced his fingers through Nico’s.
“Just breathe,” he whispered. “I’m right here. So is Hazel. We got this.”
Nico remembered the exercises Mr. D had taught him. He tried his best to calm his breathing.
They waited.
And waited.
And waited.
“Three o’clock in the morning,” Will announced.
He’d brought a pocket watch to keep time, because of course he had.
Nico knew he should have felt tired, but he didn’t. He barely wanted to blink, afraid he’d miss the inevitable.
If itwasinevitable. The attack last night had happened much earlier. Was it possible the vault’s magic protections had thwarted the witch lady? Or was she just trolling them, letting them stay up all night for nothing while she got her beauty sleep?
Nico was starting to think their plan was a bust. They’d had no further updates from Frank or the other sentries upstairs. The night had been quiet and annoyingly uneventful. He imagined the legionnaires manning the walls of Camp Jupiter were super bummed that they hadn’t had anyone to impale with their ballistae or pour boiling oil on.
Nico was about to suggest taking a walk around the archive, just to stretch their legs, when the whole room went cuckoo with Cocoa Puffs. The unassigned cacodemons began bouncing around, hissing and howling. Loneliness scuttled up Nico’s shirt and clung to his neck, sending a wave of memories straight into his bloodstream.Curled in the bronze jar, waiting to die; alone in the Labyrinth, his sobs echoing through the dark stone tunnels.Grief wriggled into a pocket in Will’s cargo pants and started wailing,Screee! Screee!Guilt vaulted onto Hazel’s head.
The demigods got to their feet. The mythics ran from the stacks to join them, their Puffs also going bonkers.
The room seemed to come into sharper focus. With Loneliness at his neck, Nico could smell mildew from the bookshelves, hear the low hum of magic in the walls, even taste the acrid dust infiltrating his nostrils. The air pressure dropped so suddenly that the metal trapdoor creaked above them.
“Someone’s coming,” Nico said. He tapped the tessera on his bracelet. “Frank?”
