Wildfires, Heroes of Olympus ₂

032, the gang's all here...

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
SILVIANA           DUVALL

Sylvie wished she had an appetite, because the Romans knew how to eat.

Sets of couches and low tables were carted into the forum until it resembled a furniture showroom. Romans lounged in groups of ten or twenty, talking and laughing while wind spirits—aurae—swirled overhead, bringing an endless assortment of pizzas, sandwiches, chips, cold drinks, and fresh-baked cookies. Drifting through the crowd were purple ghosts—Lares—in togas and legionnaire armor. Around the edges of the feast, satyrs (no, fauns, Sylvie thought) trotted from table to table, panhandling for food and spare change.

Sylvie felt bad for them, and she missed Grover, so she gave the one named Don all that she had.

In the nearby fields, the war elephant frolicked with Mrs. O'Leary, and children played tag around the statues of Terminus that lined the city limits.

The whole scene was so familiar yet so completely alien that it gave Sylvie vertigo.

All she wanted to do was be with Percy—preferably alone. But she knew she would have to wait. If their quest was going to succeed, they needed these Romans, which meant getting to know them and building some goodwill.

Reyna and a few of her officers (including the blond kid Octavian, freshly back from burning a teddy bear for the gods) sat with Sylvie and the other Argo II crew members. Percy joined them with his three new friends, Finley, Hazel, and Frank.

As a tornado of food platters settled onto the table, Percy leaned over and whispered, "I want to show you around New Rome. Just me and you. The place is incredible."

Sylvie should've felt thrilled. Just me and you was exactly what she wanted. Instead, fear swelled in her throat. Why was Percy talking so enthusiastically about this place? Did he no longer care about Camp Half-Blood—their camp, their home?

She tried not to stare at the new marks on Percy's forearm—an SPQR tattoo like Jason's. At Camp Half-Blood, demigods got bead necklaces to commemorate years of training. Here, the Romans burned a tattoo into your flesh, as if to say: You belong to us. Permanently.

She swallowed her worry and concern. "Okay. Sure."

"I've been thinking," he said nervously. "I had this idea—"

He stopped as Reyna called a toast to friendship.

After introductions all around, the Romans and Greek crew began exchanging stories. Jason explained how he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood without his memory, and how he'd gone on a quest with Piper and Leo to rescue the goddess Hera (or Juno, take your pick—she was equally annoying in Greek or Roman) from imprisonment at the Wolf House in northern California.

"Impossible!" Octavian broke in. "That's our most sacred place. If the giants had imprisoned a goddess there—"

"They would've destroyed her," Piper said. "And blamed it on the Greeks, and started a war between camps. Now, be quiet and let Jason finish."