Embers of Renewal | Leo Valdez

Chapter 7

It had been a while since Chiron had summoned the council. It was in the Big House rec room, around a Ping-Pong table, and one of the satyrs was serving nachos and sodas. Nova had brought Seymour the leopard head in from the living room and hung him on the wall. Every once in a while, a counselor would toss him a Snausage.

It was Leo, Piper, and Jason's first meeting as senior counselors, and they were looking around the room, taking in all of the faces they didn't recognize. Clarisse, leader of the Ares cabin, had her boots on the table, but nobody seemed to care. Clovis from Hypnos cabin was snoring in the corner, while Butch from Iris cabin was seeing how many pencils he could fit in Clovis's nostrils. Travis from Hermes was holding a lighter under a Ping-Pong ball to see if it would burn, and Will from Apollo was absently wrapping and unwrapping an Ace bandage around his wrist. Lou Ellen, from the Hecate cabin, was playing "got-your-nose" with Miranda from Demeter, except that Lou Ellen really had magically disconnected Miranda's nose, and Miranda was trying to get it back.

Nova covered a laugh behind her mechanical hand, and snapped her other hand as she watched the two campers. Miranda's nose attached Lou Ellen's face, and Lou Ellen's nose attached where Miranda's should have been.

They turned around confused, but laughed when they saw Nova watching them, who sent the two girls a fluttery wave. She snapped once more, sending each nose to their rightful owner.

Nova had influence over the Mist, much like the Hecate campers, but that wasn't an ability she had inherited from her mother. Chaos had influence over matter (more or less), so that gave Nova abilities to influence matter in Newtonian and non-Newtonian ways. But the Mist was magic—not something that Chaos had passed on to Nova.

No—she had learned the ways of the Mist elsewhere.

Nova felt a splitting pain in the back of her head, and she squeezed her eyes shut to distract herself from the headache.

She felt a pat on her back, and tentatively opened her eyes to see Annabeth beside her, rubbing her back to bring her to focus again.

"The hem of your shirt is melting," Annabeth whispered in her ear. Indeed, Nova noticed when she looked down, the fabric was melting off, but most of her shirt was still intact. When she got distracted sometimes, matter would start acting up, fabric melting, metal splintering—-really, just things that shouldn't be possible according to the laws of physics, or whatever.

"Thanks," she murmured, and raised her right index finger as she willed an exacto knife to surface from the tip of her mechanical finger. The hem of the shirt couldn't be saved, so Nova sawed it off carefully with the sharp blade, balling up the tattered fabric and snapping it out of existence.

When Nova finished, she looked back at Annabeth, who looked tense. She wore armor over her camp clothes, with her knife at her side and her blond hair pulled pack in a ponytail. Nova noticed her fixing Jason with an expectant look, as if she were trying to extract information out of him by sheer willpower.

"Let's come to order," Chiron said. "Travis, if you'd kindly extinguish the flaming Ping-Pong ball, and Butch, I think twenty pencils is really too many for any human nostril. Thank you, Nova, for giving Miranda her nose back. Now, as you can see, Jason, Piper and Leo have returned successfully... more or less. Some of you have heard parts of their story, but I will let them fill you in."

Everyone looked at Jason, who cleared his throat and began the story. Piper and Leo chimed in from time to time, filling in the details he forgot.

It only took a few minutes, but it seemed longer. The silence was heavy, and for so many ADHD demigods to sit still listening for that long, Nova knew the story was pretty wild. He ended with Hera's visit right before the meeting—an addition to the story Piper had told in the dining pavilion.