THE HEALER| Heroes of Olympus

3

As soon as Jason saw the House, he knew he was a dead man.

It didn't look threatening, just a four-story manor painted baby blue with white trim. The wraparound porch had lounge chairs, a card table, and an empty wheelchair. Wind chimes shaped like nymphs turned into trees as they spun. The windows seemed to glare down at him like angry eyes. On the highest gable, a bronze eagle weathervane spun in the wind and pointed straight in his direction, as if telling him to turn around.

"I am not supposed to be here," he said. As if everything in his body was telling him that he was on enemy ground.

"You'll be fine Chiron's not that scary I promise." I said grabbing his arm and walking toward the building. We got one step before we heard footsteps on the front porch. Well—not footsteps—hooves.

"Chiron," I said, "This is Jason."

Jason backed up so fast he almost tripped. Rounding the corner of the porch was a man on horseback. Except he wasn't on horseback—he was part of the horse. From the waist up he was human, with curly brown hair and a well-trimmed beard. He wore a T-shirt that said World's Best Centaur, and had a quiver and bow strapped to his back. His head was so high up he had to duck to avoid the porch lights, because from the waist down, he was a white stallion. Chiron started to smile at Jason. Then the color drained from his face.

"You ..." The centaur's eyes flared like a cornered animal's. "You should be dead."

Well, I wasn't expecting that.

Chiron ordered Jason—well, invited, but it sounded like an order—to come inside the house. He told me to go back to my cabin, but I was stubborn and argued to stay which he eventually agreed to.

The centaur trotted over to the empty wheelchair on the porch. He slipped off his quiver and bow and backed up to the chair, which opened like a magician's box. Chiron gingerly stepped into it with his back legs and began scrunching himself into a space that should've been much too small. I imagined a truck's reversing noises—beep, beep, beep—as the centaur's lower half disappeared and the chair folded up, popping out a set of fake human legs covered in a blanket, so Chiron appeared to be a regular mortal guy in a wheelchair.

"Follow me," he ordered. "We have lemonade."

The living room looked like it had been swallowed by a rain forest. Grapevines curved up the walls and across the ceiling, they were leafy green and bursting with bunches of red grapes.Leather couches faced a stone fireplace with a crackling fire. Wedged in one corner, an old-style Pac-Man arcade game beeped and blinked. Mounted on the walls was an assortment of masks—smiley/frowny Greek theater types, feathered Mardi Gras masks, Venetian Carnevale masks withbig beak-like noses, carved wooden masks from Africa.

Grapevines grew through their mouths so they seemed to have leafy tongues. Some had red grapes bulging through their eye holes.

But the weirdest thing was the stuffed leopard's head above the fireplace. It looked so real, its eyes seemed to follow Jason. Then it snarled, and Jason nearly leaped out of his skin.

"Now, Seymour," Chiron chided. "Jason is a friend. Behave yourself."

"That thing is alive!" Jason said.

Chiron rummaged through the side pocket of his wheelchair and brought out a package of Snausages. He threw one to the leopard, who snapped it up and licked his lips.

"You must excuse the décor," Chiron said. "All this was a parting gift from our old director before he was recalled to Mount Olympus. He thought it would help us to remember him. Mr. D has a strange sense of humor."