The Shadow Summoner | Book Three - PJO Universe

seventeen

DARK PROPHECY

They gathered at the window and peered down. The emperor was nowhere to be seen. Some of their friends stood in the roundabout below, gazing up at them with confused expressions.

"A little warning, perhaps?" Jimmy called.

He had run out of enemies to electrocute. He and Hunter Kowalski now stood unscathed in the middle of a mosaic of fallen glass shards.

"Where's Commodus?" Ariana asked.

Hunter shrugged. "We didn't see him."

"What do you mean?" Apollo demanded. "He literally just flew out this window."

"No," Leo corrected. "He Lityerses-ly flew out the window. Am I right? Those were some sweet moves, man."

Lit nodded. "Thanks."

The two bumped fists as if they hadn't spent the last few days talking about how much they wanted to kill each other.

They would have made fine Olympian gods.

"Well," Thalia said. Her new gray highlights from Apollo's solar blast looked quite fetching. "I guess we should do a sweep of the neighborhood. If Commodus is still out there..." She gazed down South Illinois Street. "Wait, is that Meg?"

"What?" Ariana said, whipping her head round.

Rounding the corner were three karpoi, holding Meg McCaffrey aloft as if she were bodysurfing (or peach-surfing).

Ariana almost jumped out the window to get to her.

"The Throne of Memory," Apollo told Emmie. "We need it now!"

"Apollo what the fuck did you do to her!" Ariana exclaimed.

They met the karpoi in the building's front foyer. One of the Peacheses had retrieved the Arrow of Dodona from under the Mercedes's driver's seat and now carried it in his teeth like a pirate's accessory.

He offered it to Apollo. He slipped the arrow back into my quiver for safekeeping.

Josephine and Leo rushed in from a side room, carrying between them Apollo's old backpack-the Throne of Memory.

They placed it in the center of a still-smoldering Persian rug. The peach babies carefully lowered
Meg into the seat.

"Calypso," Ariana said. "Notepad?"

"Got it!" She brandished her small legal tablet and pencil. Ariana decided she would make an excellent high school student after all. She actually came to class prepared!

Ariana and Apollo knelt next to Meg. Her skin was too blue, her breath too ragged. Apollo placed his hands on the sides of her face and checked her eyes.

Her pupils were pinpoints. Her consciousness seemed to be withdrawing, getting smaller and smaller.

"Stay with me, Meg." Apollo pleaded.

Ariana had tears in her eyes. She didn't trust herself to speak.

"You're among friends now. You're in the Throne of Mnemosyne. Speak your prophecy!"

Meg lurched upright. Her hands gripped the sides of the chair as if a strong electric current had taken hold of her.

They all backed away, forming a rough circle around her as dark smoke spewed from her mouth and encircled her legs.

When she spoke, it was thankfully not in Trophonius's voice-just a deep neutral monotone worthy of Delphi itself:

The words that memory wrought are set to fire,
Ere new moon rises o'er the
Devil's Mount.
The changeling lord shall face a challenge dire,
Till bodies fill the Tiber beyond
count.