XXXVII.

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UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES, wandering through Rome with Percy and Annabeth would have been pretty awesome. They navigated the winding streets, dodging cars and crazy Vespa drivers, squeezing through mobs of tourists, and waded through oceans of pigeons. The day warmed up quickly. Once they got away from the car exhaust on the main roads, the air smelled of baking bread and freshly cut flowers.

They aimed for the Colosseum because that was an easy landmark, but getting there proved harder than Mia anticipated. As big and confusing as the city had looked from above, it was even more so on the ground. Several times they got lost on dead-end streets. They found beautiful fountains and huge monuments by accident. Mia took pictures of all of them.

Annabeth commented on the architecture, but, naturally, Mia zoned out. Once she spotted a glowing purple ghost — a Lar — glaring at them from the window of an apartment building. She naturally glared back and put her finger to her lips, and he immediately closed the curtain. Another time she saw a white-robed woman — maybe a nymph or a goddess — holding a wicked-looking knife, slipping between ruined columns in a public park. Nothing attacked them, but Mia felt like they were being watched, and the watchers were not friendly.

Finally they reached the Colosseum, where a dozen guys in cheap gladiator costumes were scuffling with the police — plastic swords versus batons. Mia wasn't sure what that was about, but she, Annabeth, and Percy decided to keep walking. Sometimes mortals were even stranger than monsters.

They made their way west, stopping every once in a while to ask directions to the river. Mia had forgotten that — duh — people in Italy spoke Italian, not English. As it turned out, though, that wasn't much of a problem. She knew some Italian; enough to ask for directions and to have small talk.

"Since when did you know Italian?" Percy asked her.

Mia sent him a look, rolling her eyes. "Nico speaks Italian," she said, because that was incredibly obvious. "He curses a lot, and he taught me a little."

"You're telling me that you can curse in Italian?"

"Don't ask stupid questions, Percy," Mia told him, before forging on.

Next discovery: the Italians used euros. Mia regretted wearing an all black ensemble as they stopped outside a soda shop.

Luckily, she had a solution to this. "Someone hold this," she announced, and Annabeth held her backpack for her as she dug in there for her wallet. She fished it out and accepted her backpack back, zipping it up and slinging it over her shoulder. "Buy us some soda while I pester the locals for directions," she ordered.

"I love your last name," Percy told her as Annabeth took her wallet.

Mia's smugness faded when she remembered the last conversation she'd had with Sophia before she died. "No, he would not want to have our last name," she'd said. That felt like so long ago, when it was nearly a year ago. "Yeah, well . . . not a lot of people do," she said, then she walked off.

The sodas helped, but they were still hot and tired by the time they arrived at the Tiber River. The shore was edged with a stone embankment. A chaotic assortment of warehouses, apartments, stores, and cafés crowded the riverfront.

The Tiber itself was wide, lazy, and caramel-colored. A few tall cypress trees hung over the banks. The nearest bridge looked fairly new, made from iron girders, but right next to it stood a crumbling line of stone arches that stopped halfway across the river — ruins that might've been left over from the days of the Caesars.

"This is it." Annabeth pointed at the old stone bridge. "I recognize that from the map. But what do we do now?"

Percy examined their surroundings, then he gestured to a nearby café with tables overlooking the water. "It's about lunchtime. How about we try Mia's wallet again?"

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