SAFE . . . reyna ramirez-arellano

90 - giant pigs

BRIAR COULDN'T BELIEVE how hard it was to find deadly poison.

All morning after Olympia she and Frank had scoured the port of Pylos. Frank allowed only Briar to come with him, thinking her charmspeak might be useful if they ran into his shape-shifting relatives.

As it turned out, her knife was more in demand. So far, they'd slain a Laistrygonian ogre in the bakery, battled a giant warthog in the public square, and defeated a flock of Stymphalian birds with some well-aimed vegetables from Briar's cornucopia.

She was glad for the work. It kept her from dwelling on her conversation with her mother the night before – that bleak glimpse of the future Venus had made her promise not to share . . . Briar shook her head. She couldn't think about that. Not right now.

Around one in the afternoon, Briar finally put her charmspeak to work. She spoke with an Ancient Greek ghost in a Laundromat ( on a one-to-ten scale for weird conversations, definitely an eight ) and got directions to an ancient stronghold where the shape-shifting descendants of Periclymenus supposedly hung out.

After trudging across the island in the afternoon heat, they found the cave perched halfway up a beachside cliff. Frank insisted that Briar wait for him at the bottom while he checked it out.

Briar stood obediently on the beach, squinting up at the cave entrance and hoping she hadn't guided Frank into a death trap.

Behind her, a stretch of white sand hugged the foot of the hills. Sunbathers sprawled on blankets. Little kids splashed in the waves. The blue sea glittered invitingly.

Eventually, she'd moved so she could dip her feet in the water. Her sandals were in the sand nearby, and she was standing in water that engulfed her feet, watching the waves roll by.

She glanced up at the cliff's summit. The ruins of an old castle clung to the ridge. Briar wasn't sure if that was part of the shape-changers' hideout or not. Nothing moved on the parapets. The entrance of the cave sat about seventy feet down the cliff face – a circle of black in the chalky yellow rock like the hole of a giant pencil sharpener.

Nestor's Cave, the Laundromat ghost had called it. Supposedly the ancient king of Pylos had stashed his treasure there in times of crisis. The ghost also claimed that Hermes had once hidden the stolen cattle of Apollo in that cave.

Cows.

Briar thought about the Montana incident and tried not to laugh out loud and look like a crazy person. Every time she thought about cows, or any farm animal, really, she remembered her time in Montana. Her experiences with Hera the cow queen, the katoblepones of Venice and the pictures of creepy death cows in the House of Hades hadn't helped.

Briar was just starting to think, Frank's been gone too long – when he appeared at the cave entrance. Next to him stood a tall grey-haired man in a white linen suit and a pale yellow tie. The older man pressed a small shiny object – like a stone or a piece of glass – into Frank's hands. He and Frank exchanged a few words. Frank nodded gravely. Then the man turned into a seagull and flew away.

Frank picked his way down the trail until he reached Briar. He didn't get into the water, though, so Briar went over to him and scraped the sand off her feet while they talked.

"I found them," he said.

"I noticed. You okay?"

He stared at the seagull as it flew towards the horizon.

Frank's close-cropped hair pointed forward like an arrow, making his gaze even more intense. His Roman badges – mural crown, centurion, praetor – glittered on his shirt collar. On his forearm, the SPQR tattoo with the crossed spears of Mars stood out darkly in the full sunlight.