RECLUSE - (n) a person who lives a solitary life and tends to avoid other people.
MAISIE ELLIOT WAS ANGRY.
Angry at the world.
Angry at the Gods.
Angry at the demigods who seemed to move on too fast.
And when forced onto a quest with three stranger...
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MAISIE'S HANDS GRIPPED THE HANDLE OVER HER HEAD TIGHTLY
She didn't trust Leo one bit to fly her to safety, but here he was, sitting in the pilots seat of a four-to-ten thousand pound hunk of metal. As crazy as this was, she had done crazier.
She felt like a mother watching her child drive for the first time— but not in the "i'm so proud of you" way. It was more like "I'm terrified for my life."
"Going okay?" Piper asked Leo from her spot in the copilots seat. Jason knelt between their seats while Maisie made herself comfy in the back seats.
"Aces," Leo replied. "So what's the wolf house?"
"An abandoned mansion in the Sonoma Valley," Jason said. "A demigod built it— Jack London."
"Is he an actor?" Leo asked.
"Writer," Piper said. "Adventure stuff, right? Call of the wild? White fang?"
"Yeah," Jason said. He was a son of Mercury— I mean, Hermes. He was an adventurer, traveled the world. He was even a hobo for a while. Then made a fortune writing. He bought a big ranch in the country and decided to build this huge mansion— the wolf house."
"Named that because he wrote about wolves?" Leo guessed.
"Particularly," Jason said. "But the site, and the reason he wrote about wolves— he was dropping hints about his personal experience. There's a lot of holes in his life story— how he was born, who his dad was, why he wandered around so much— stuff you can only explain if you know he was a demigod."
The helicopter continued north as the bay slipped into the distance. Yellow hills rolled as far as the eye could see.
"So Jack London went to Camp Half-Blood?" Leo asked.
"No," Jason said. "No, he didn't."
Maisie stopped picking at her peeling charred skin.
"Bro, you're freaking me out with this mysterious talk. Are you remembering your past or not?"
"Pieces," Jason said. "Only pieces. None of it's good. The wolf house is on sacred ground. That's where London started his journey as a child— where he found out he was a demigod. That's why he returned there. He thought he could live there, claim that land, but it wasn't meant for him. The wolf house was cursed. It burned in a fire a week before he and his wife were meant to move in. A few years later, London died, and his ashes were buried on the site."
"Jason," Maisie began, "how do you know all this?"
"I started my journey there too," Jason said. "It's a powerful place for demigods, a dangerous place. If Gaea can claim it, use its power to entomb Hera on the solstice and raise Porphyrion— that might be enough to awaken the earth goddess fully."
Everyone sent silent at that. There wasn't much else to talk about, but what Jason said was unnerving. If Jason had begun his journey at this "wolf house," there had to have been others as well. How many other demigods were Camp Half-Blood unaware of? And how had they never noticed them?
