Where You Go ― Jason Grace

iv. ophelia & leo leave jason hanging

"BRAVO!" AKMON APPLAUDED from a nearby café table. "You make a wonderful piñata, son of Jupiter!"

"Yes!" Passalos agreed. "Hercules hung us upside down once, you know. Oh, revenge is sweet!"

Leo lobbed a fireball at the dwarf, who was trying to juggle two pigeons and the Archimedes sphere.

"Eek!" Passalos jumped free of the explosion, dropping the sphere and letting the pigeons fly.

"Time to leave!" Akmon decided.

He tipped his bowler and sprang away, jumping from table to table. Passalos glanced at the Archimedes sphere, which had rolled between Leo's feet.

Leo summoned another fireball. "Try me," he snarled.

"Bye!" Passalos did a backflip and ran after his brother.

Leo scooped up the sphere and ran after Ophelia to Jason, who was still hanging upside down, thoroughly hog-tied except for his sword arm. He was trying to cut the cords with his gold blade but having no luck.

"Hold on," Leo said. "If I can find a release switch—"

"Just go!" Jason growled. "I'll follow you when I get out of this."

"But—" Ophelia protested.

"Don't lose them!"

Ophelia grumbled under her breath, but the Kerkopes were already disappearing around the far corner of the piazza. Leo and Ophelia left Jason hanging and ran after them.

❖

It was painfully obvious that the monkey-dwarfs were leading her and Leo into some kind of trap. They stayed just at the edge of her vision, scampering over red-tiled rooftops, knocking over window boxes, whooping and hollering and leaving a trail of screws and nails from Leo's tool belt.

Yeah—they definitely wanted to be followed.

Leo and Ophelia jogged after them. Leo cursed every time his pants fell down, and Ophelia had the vague thought that this would be a hilarious story to use to embarrass her friend far off in the future, but at the moment, she couldn't find it in her to even smile.

They turned a corner and saw two ancient stone towers jutting into the sky, side by side, much taller than anything else in the neighborhood—maybe medieval watchtowers? They leaned in different directions like gearshifts on a race car.

The Kerkopes scaled the tower on the right. When they reached the top, they climbed around the back and disappeared.

She and Leo waited to see if the Kerkopes would reappear, but they didn't—which meant they'd have to get up there and look for them.

"Great," Leo muttered.

"Any ideas?" Ophelia asked. She'd be the first to admit she wasn't a planner by any means—that was usually Annabeth, maybe Jason or Leo when she wasn't the one (though Leo's plans were almost always desperate and incredibly dangerous). Ophelia preferred to follow orders and act rather than to be the one to issue those orders, at least when it came to living people. Commanding ghosts was different—they couldn't be hurt or killed. Her orders didn't have the power to end their lives, since their lives were already technically over.

She didn't like ordering the living. There was too much danger, too much potential for mistakes that could end in death or serious injury. 

No, she wasn't a leader, and that was perfectly fine. Someone had to be the one to follow orders, and she didn't mind being that person one bit.