~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Quebec City

{Leo}

Leo was totally buzzing.

   The expression on everyone's faces when he flew the dragon into camp? Priceless! He thought his cabinmates were going to bust a lug nut. Festus had been awesome too. He hadn't blowtorched a single cabin or eaten any satyrs, even if he did dribble a little oil from his ear. Okay, a lot of oil. Leo could work on that later.

   So maybe Leo didn't seize the chance to tell everybody about Bunker 9 or the flying boat design. He needed some time to think about all that. He could tell them when he came back.

   If I come back, part of him thought. Nah, he'd come back. He'd scored a sweet magic tool belt from the bunker, plus a lot of cool supplies now safely stowed in his backpack. Besides, he had a fire-breathing, only slightly leaky dragon on his side. What could go wrong?

  Well, the control disk could bust, the bad part of him suggested. Festus could eat you.

   Okay, so the dragon wasn't quite as fixed as Leo might've let on. He'd worked all night attaching those wings, but he hadn't found an extra dragon brain anywhere in the bunker. Hey, they were under a time limit! Three days until the solstice. They had to get going. Besides, Leo had cleaned the disk pretty well. Most of the circuits were still good. It would just have to hold together.

   His bad side started to think, Yeah, but what if—

   "Shut up, me," Leo said aloud.

   "What?" Piper asked.

   "Nothing," he said. "Long night. I think I'm hallucinating. It's cool."

   Sitting in front, Leo couldn't see their faces, but he assumed from their silence that his friends were not pleased to have a sleepless, hallucinating dragon driver.

   "Just joking." Leo decided it might be good to change the subject. "So what's the plan, bro? You said something about catching wind, or breaking wind, or something?"

   As they flew over New England, Jason laid out the game plan: First, find some guy named Boreas and grill him for information—

   "His name is Boreas?" Leo had to ask. "What is he, the God of Boring?"

   Second, Jason continued, they had to find those venti that had attacked them at the Grand Canyon—

   "Can we just call them storm spirits?" Leo asked. "Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks."

   And third, Jason finished, they had to find out who the storm spirits worked for, so they could find Hera and free her.

   "So you want to look for Dylan, the nasty storm dude, on purpose," Leo said. "The guy who threw me off the skywalk and sucked Coach Hedge into the clouds."

   "That's about it," Jason said. "Well... there may be a wolf involved, too. But I think she's friendly. She probably won't eat us, unless we show weakness." Jason told them about his dream—the big nasty mother wolf and a burnt-out house with stone spires growing out of the swimming pool.

   When Jason was done talking, Leo felt Kiara stiffen behind him. He risked a look back. The girl's face looked paler than he remembered. Maybe she remembered something, or maybe she was just scared of wolves. He decided not to make a joke about that since he was sure Kiara could kill him in the blink of an eye.

   He decided to go for a safer remark. "Uh-huh," he said. "But you don't know where this place is."

   "Nope," Jason admitted.