Eye of Hecate

Leo

Fly a helicopter? Sure, why not. I've done plenty of crazier things this week.

The sun is going down as we fly north over the Richmond Bridge, and I can't believe the day has gone so quickly. Once again, nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly.

Piloting the chopper, I go back and forth between confidence and panic. If I don't think about it, I find myself automatically flipping the right switches, checking the altimeter, easing back on the stick, and flying straight. If I allow myself to consider what I'm doing, I start freaking out. I imagine my Aunt Rosa yelling at me in Spanish, telling me I'm a delinquent lunatic who's going to crash and burn. Part of me suspects she's right.

"Going okay?" Piper asks from the back seat. She sounds more nervous than I am, so I put on a brave face.

"Aces," I say. "So what's the Wolf House?"

Jason kneels forward. "An abandoned mansion in the Sonoma Valley. A demigod built it—Jack London."

I can't place the name. "He an actor?"

"Writer," Piper says. "Adventure stuff, right?"

"Yeah," Ozzy nods. "Call of the Wild, White Fang, stuff like that. He was a demigod?"

"Yeah," Jason says. "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 he made a fortune writing. He bought a big ranch in the country and decided to build this huge mansion—the Wolf House."

"Named that 'cause he wrote about wolves?" I guess.

"Partially," Jason says. "But the site, and the reason he wrote about wolves—he was dropping hints about his personal experience. There're 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 bay slips behind us, and the helicopter continues north. Ahead of us, yellow hills roll out as far as I can see.

"So Jack London went to Camp Half-Blood," I guess.

"No," Jason says. "No, he didn't."

"Bro, you're freaking me out with the mysterious talk. Are you remembering your past or not?"

"Pieces," Jason says. "Only pieces. None of it good. The Wolf House is on sacred ground. It'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 supposed to move in. A few years later, London died, and his ashes were buried on the site."

"So," Piper says, "how do you know all this?"

A shadow crosses Jason's face. Probably just a cloud, but I could swear the shape looks like an eagle.

"I started my journey there too," Jason says. "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."

I keep my hand on the joystick, guiding the chopper at full speed—racing toward the north. I can see some weather ahead—a spot of darkness like a cloudbank or a storm, right where we're going.

Piper's dad called me a hero earlier. And I can't believe some of the things I've done—smacking around Cyclopes, disarming exploding doorbells, battling six-armed ogres with construction equipment, kissing the most beautiful girl in the world, who sits right beside me. They seem like they happened to another person. I'm just Leo Valdez, an orphaned kid from Houston. I spent my life running away, and part of me still wants to run. What am I thinking, flying toward a cursed mansion to fight more evil monsters?

My mom's voice echoes in my head: Nothing is unfixable.

Except the fact that you're gone forever, I think.

Seeing Piper and her dad back together really drove that home. Even if I survive this quest and save Hera, I won't have any happy reunions. I won't be going back to a loving family. I won't see my mom. Even Ozzy, who has finally come back into my life, who I finally kissed, who I'm totally head over heels for, will have to go back to wherever she came from in Brooklyn.

The helicopter shudders. Metal creaks, and I can almost imagine the tapping is Morse code: Not the end. Not the end.

I level out the chopper, and the creaking stops. I'm just hearing things. I can't dwell on my mom, or the idea that keeps bugging me—that Gaea is bringing souls back from the Underworld—so why can't I make some good come out of it? Thinking like that will drive me crazy. I have a job to do.

I let my instincts take over—just like flying the helicopter. If I think about the quest too much, or what might happen afterward, I'll panic. The trick is not to think—just get through it.

"Thirty minutes out," I tell my friends, though I'm not sure how I know. "If you want to get some rest, now's a good time."

Jason and Piper strap themselves into the back of the helicopter and pass out almost immediately. Ozzy and I stay wide-awake.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Ozzy says, "I'm sorry, by the way, if that was weird. Me kissing you. I was just...I was happy to be alive, and...well, you saved my life, and you'd looked so heroic standing up on that hydraulic axe, I just..." her voice trails out, and she turns her head to look out the window, her cheeks tinged bright red.