Hey, I know I haven't updated, but I really have no excuse this time. Forgive and forget? (Sweats nervously). Any ways. Even if I am going to stick to mainly Alex perspective, before I stop, I'm going to do one in Piper's perspective to balance things out. Just saying. Bare with. Don't kill me. Thank you. Enjoy.
"Thank you, guys," I said. "I—"
I wanted to tell them how much they meant to me. They'd sacrificed everything, maybe even the quest, to help me. I couldn't repay them, couldn't even put my gratitude into words. But my friends' expressions told me they understood.
Then, right next to Alex, the air began to shimmer. At first I thought it was heat off the tarmac, or maybe gas fumes from the helicopter, but I'd seen something like this before in Medea's fountain. It was an Iris message. An image appeared in the air—a dark-haired girl in silver winter camouflage, holding a bow.
Jason stumbled back in surprise. "Thalia!"
"Thank the gods," said the Hunter. The scene behind her was hard to make out, but I heard yelling, metal clashing on metal, and explosions.
"We've found her," Thalia said. "Where are you?"
"Oakland," he said. "Where are you?"
"The Wolf House! Oakland is good; you're not too far. We're holding off the giant's minions, but we can't hold them forever. Get here before sunset, or it's all over."
"Then it's not too late?" I cried. Hope surged through me, but Thalia's expression quickly dampened it.
"Not yet," Thalia said. "But Jason—it's worse than I realized. Porphyrion is rising. Hurry."
"But where is the Wolf House?" he pleaded.
"Our last trip," Thalia said, her image starting to flicker. "The park. Jack London. Remember?"
This made no sense to me, but Jason looked like he'd been shot. He tottered, his face pale, and the Iris message disappeared.
"Bro, you all right?" Leo asked. "You know where she is?"
"Yes," Jason said. "Sonoma Valley. Not far. Not by air."
Alex looked like an electric shock ran through her body. She straightened up, and her eyes widened. When Leo asked what was wrong, she shook her head and brushed him off. I knew something was up, and I made a mental note to ask her about it later.
I turned to the ranger pilot, who'd been watching all this with an increasingly puzzled expression.
"Ma'am," I said with my best smile. "You don't mind helping us one more time, do you?"
"I don't mind," the pilot agreed.
"We can't take a mortal into battle," Jason said. "It's too dangerous." He turned to Leo. "Do you think you could fly this thing?"
"Um …" Leo's expression didn't exactly reassure me. But then he put his hand on the side of the helicopter, concentrating hard, as if listening to the machine.
"Bell 412HP utility helicopter," Leo said. "Composite four-blade main rotor, cruising speed twenty-two knots, service ceiling twenty-thousand feet. The tank is near full. Sure, I can fly it."
I smiled at the ranger again. "You don't have a problem with an under-aged unlicensed kid borrowing your copter, do you? We'll return it."
"I—" The pilot nearly choked on the words, but she got them out: "I don't have a problem with that."
Leo grinned. "Hop in, kids. Uncle Leo's gonna take you for a ride."
"Can you say something that's actually gonna make us want to ride it?" Alex asked with a groan, but like the rest of us, she hopped on anyway.
The sun was going down as we flew north over the Richmond Bridge, and I couldn't believe the day had gone so quickly. Once again, nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly.
Piloting the chopper, Leo was going pretty steady. Of course, I didn't want to jinx it. Leo would pause for some time, and then start flipping switches pushing buttons. Then he would go silent again. This continued, until-
"Going okay?" I asked from the copilot's seat. I sounded more nervous than he looked, or tried to look.
"Aces," he said. "So what's the Wolf House?"
Jason knelt between their seats. "An abandoned mansion in the Sonoma Valley. A demigod built it—Jack London."
Leo couldn't seem place the name. Alex stuck her tounge out in that weird way she did when she was thinking.
"He an actor?"
"Writer," I 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 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?" Leo guessed.
"Partially," Jason said. "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 slipped behind us, and the helicopter continued north. Ahead of us, yellow hills rolled out as far as I could see.
"So Jack London went to Camp Half-Blood," Alex guessed.
"No," Jason said. "No, he didn't."
"Bro, you're freaking me out with the mysterious talk. Are you remembering your past or not?"
"Pieces," Jason said. "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," I said, "how do you know all this?"
A shadow crossed Jason's face. Probably just a cloud, but I could swear the shape looked like an eagle.
"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."
Leo kept his hand on the joystick, guiding the chopper at full speed—racing toward the north. There was a small dark spot where we were headed. I could only hope we could go around it.
There were some sudden metal creaking sounds that did not sound good. Leo leveled out the chopper, and the creaking stopped.
"Thirty minutes out," Leo told us, though I wasn't sure how he knew. "If you want to get some rest, now's a good time."
Jason strapped himself into the back of the helicopter and passed out almost immediately. Me, Alex and Leo stayed wide-awake.
After a few minutes of awkward silence, Leo said, "Your dad'll be fine, you know. Nobody's gonna mess with him with that crazy goat around."
I glanced at him
"My dad," I said thoughtfully. "Yeah, I know. I was thinking about Jason. I'm worried about him."
Leo nodded. The closer we got to that bank of dark clouds, the more I worried, too.
"He's starting to remember. That's got to make him a little edgy."
"But what if … what if he's a different person?"
I had had the same thought. If the Mist could affect their memories, could Jason's whole personality be an illusion, too? If our friend wasn't our friend, and we were heading into a cursed mansion—a dangerous place for demigods—what would happen if Jason's full memory came back in the middle of a battle?
"Nah," Leo decided. "After all we've been through? I can't see it. We're a team. Jason can handle it."
I smoothed my blue dress, which was tattered and burned from our fight on Mount Diablo. "I hope you're right. I need him …" I cleared my throat. "I mean I need to trust him…"
"I know," Leo said.
After seeing my dad break down, I couldn't afford to lose Jason as well. I'd just watched dad, my cool suave movie star dad, reduced to near insanity. It made me feel insecure, too. If weakness was inherited, I wondered, could I break down the same way dad did?
"Hey, don't worry," Leo said. "Piper, you're the strongest, most powerful beauty queen I've ever met. You can trust yourself. For what it's worth, you can trust me too."
The helicopter dipped in a wind shear, and I almost jumped out of my skin. Leo cursed and righted the chopper.
I laughed nervously. "Trust you, huh?"
"Yeah, Leo, trust you to crash this helicopter into a brick wall you didn't see because you were too busy boasting about the muscles you don't have, much," Alex added sarcastically.
"Ah, shut up, already." But he grinned at her, and for a second, it felt like he was just relaxing comfortably with a friend.
Then we hit the storm clouds.
