Chapter 49

Always Exorcise Your Ghosts

Only the fact I was holding Nico saved my life. Somehow, before we could plunge too deep into the seemingly endless pit, shadows swallowed us. Unfortunately, he was too exhausted to take us very far. We were spat out just a few feet away on a still-whole ledge– very much not smashed flat, which I was grateful for, but also not back in the light of day.

I still hit the ground with enough force that I was surprised my teeth weren't introduced to the back of my throat. Somehow, nothing broke. I groaned, rolling over, and blinked dust from my stinging eyes.

We were in a pit, or maybe crater would be the better word. The thing was big, twice the width of a high school gymnasium and seeming to extend on for forever straight down. Light filtered in from above, but it was hazy, partially blocked by dislodged rocks and fine clouds of soil.

I heard a groan, then scraping. Nico got to his feet. There was a big bruise above his eye and cuts along his arms, but he seemed to have taken the fall better than I had, as if the impact had punched the drowsiness straight out of him. In my defense, he had more experience with life-threatening plummets.

For a second I was worried he wouldn't waste time and put a sword through my chest. But I couldn't spot his blade. Empty-handed, he held his palms face-down over my chest.

"I did it." His voice was thick, only a step off of a cough. "I told you I would, didn't I? I got him."

It seemed like he was talking to himself, but I'd seen entirely too much to believe that. Minos took physical form.

"So you did," said the old dead king. "He does seem thoroughly gotten." The ghost glanced at the lip above us. "I suppose luck is a type of competence. Very well, young master. You've done well."

"I don't care about your praise. Uphold the deal. Do the ritual and free my sister."

"Right. Your sister. Of course." Minos looked down at me. "Don't squirm. This will be smoother for everyone that way."

My world still felt dizzy. I doubted I could've moved much if I tried. But I still did my best to give him a look that said, Swim in the Styx and disappear.

The ghost did not, in fact, teleport out to go unravel his existence. Instead he shut his translucent eyes and began to chant in Ancient Greek.

I caught about one word in three, my brain translating as much as it could. The bits I did get didn't make me feel any better. Lots about death, balance, and exchange.

What I definitely noticed was the change around us. It wasn't visible like Nico's meltdown. You couldn't hear anything, and the only smell stayed that of damp, deep earth. But the feeling was there, a certain chill, like something was clawing its way up from the earth's core to take a peak at what was going on.

Minos's chanting reached a crescendo. I tried to rise, but Nico put his boot on my chest. With the final words Minos spoke slower, and I caught all of them.

—a soul overdue and another cut short, the trade is made!

Nothing happened.

I didn't explode, crumple dead, or even change colors. The chill dissipated. Nico said, "That's it?"

"Darn." Minos sounded disappointed, but not surprised. "It really was true."

"What was? Did it work?"

He faced Nico. "I was mistaken. This boy is not my old enemy."

Nico gaped at him. "Wh-What does that mean? After all this you're telling me, 'Oh, sorry, turns out I had it wrong the whole time!' Then what was all of this for?"

"Calm yourself," Minos said. "This is distressing for me, too. I truly don't know how this could have happened. There is no mistake, though. The boy's soul does not belong to Daedalus. We will need to retreat and strategize."

"But my sister is right here!"

Minos shook his head as if dealing with a petulant child. "And she is still under their control. Think! Recall what I told you, about the foul spell woven on her. Daedalus is the caster! Without tracking him down, your sister will never be free."

"I thought Daedalus was an inventor," Nico said. "How'd he cast a spell like that anyway?"

"He is many things," Minos said dismissively. "Don't underestimate him. See?" He waved his hand at me. "Even now he has deceived us, sending out a decoy. You will need to return later for your sister. We will find out the truth of the magic worked on her then."

Nico looked at me. Even in the low light, I got the feeling he was asking a silent question, and I nodded. He faced Minos. "Or I can ask her myself."

"Young master," Minos said, "now is not the time for jokes. You must get out of here. Shadow travel away."

Nico laughed. "Now there's a joke. I don't have the energy to shadow travel right now if I wanted to. And anyway, not interested. You've been using me, haven't you? I heard it but I didn't believe it… Until now."

"Do not let honeyed words pollute your mind!"

"That's what I'm trying to do." Nico held out his hand. With the last of his energy his sword appeared in it, dark blade ready to slice ghost flesh. "You did save my life once, and I'm thankful for that. So get out of here. Just this time, I'll forget about you lying to me."

Minos swelled— literally. He took the huge form he had at Ruth glacier, chest puffed with vain anger. "You are making a mistake! Being deceived! You are—"

"Minos," Nico cut him off, sounding tired. "I'm a demigod. I understood your whole chant. You said it was a way of breaking a spell, but that was something different. A trade of souls? I understand that, too. All you care about is coming back to life. From the start, I was only a way of getting close to Daedalus. And now I'm not even that, so just leave. For both our sakes."

Minos stood perfectly still in the way only the dead could, not even his chest moving. I wondered if he was going to put up a fight. Then he shrunk to his original size.

"You're wrong, young master. You were never only a way of reaching Daedalus. Farewell for now. I wish you luck with this choice you've made."

He shimmered and vanished. There was something ominous in his parting line, not like it was a lie, but as if it had a double meaning woven in. After watching the space he'd been for a moment, Nico turned and helped me up.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Kind of," I wheezed. Pushing on my chest, I felt my diaphragm tremble. "I feel a little like a tennis ball that's just been served. Next time, let's avoid crazy power bursts in geographically compromised places, hm?"

He blushed. I think. It was hard to see under the dirt caked to his cheeks. "Sorry."

"It's fine. At least you chose the right thing in the end." I frowned. "Although you did try to sacrifice my soul first. Maybe cut that out for next time, too."

"Sorry," Nico repeated. "But in my defense, it wasn't your soul we tried to take. It was Daedalus's."

"Yeah, well, killing my teacher isn't much better in my book."

Nico perked up. "Your teacher? So you actually are close to him?"

"Sure. But he's not anything like what Minos told you."

"So he's not a caffeine-obsessed sadist that tortures children and kills innocents in his free time?"

"Other than the caffeine part? no." I thought back to training duels when I was younger, getting smacked around by a wooden sword. "Maybe the sadist one, too. But the rest are definitely wrong."

"Huh," Nico said. "And you're sure he didn't cast a spell on my sister to make her listen to you?"

"Definitely. Most of the time, she just insults me."

"And I can really see her?"

There was so much hope in his voice that I was proud to be able to say, "Yeah. Just as soon as we find a way out of here."

"Oh. Right." Nico looked up, eyeing the walls we were stuck beneath as if gauging whether or not he could jump it. Ultimately, he frowned. "That might be a problem."

"No kidding."

The trouble wasn't that we would starve or anything. Someone would come looking for me, and with the noise the collapse must've made, help might already be on its way. Maybe. The party's music had been pretty loud.

What worried me was how unstable everything still seemed. As I watched, clods of soil came loose and fell past about twenty feet from us. On the other side of the crater, the same thing happened again. Some of the mini-landslides had to be hundreds of pounds– easily enough to wipe out the ledge we were on if it came down in the wrong spot.

"You really don't have another shadow travel in you?" I asked, hoping that had just been a way of making Minos leave.

"Definitely not. I kind of wiped myself out back up there. I, uh, got scared."

"I could tell," I said. "Those hands were terrifying by the way."

"So what do we do now?"

"Good question." I thought about it. My powers came with a lot of nifty uses, but cliff scaling wasn't exactly part of the catalog. Who knew how long it would take for Nico's energy to recover. Which left… "Just wait, I guess."

Nico looked disappointed. "That's it? We aren't going to scale the wall, or summon pegauses, or drill through the ground or anything?"

"First off," I said, "it's pegasi. Second… I don't even know where to start with those others. Help should be on the way. As long as we don't get buried before then, we'll be fine."

"Oh. Okay." Nico was silent for a minute. "Hey, are all your plans this boring?"

Boring? I was trying to be practical for once! "Not even close. Earlier today, I dueled a giant to keep from being shot. And before that, I snuck into a gryphon nest before escaping via root slide. Your sister was with me for that one."

"Oh. That is cool," he said, but I couldn't tell if he meant my adventures or that I got to spend time with Bianca.

"Listen," I said after a second, trying to show in my voice that I was getting serious. "If we're going to be down here a while, I have some questions. I know somebody was working with you and Minos."

Nico looked at me. "How could you know that?"

"Dreams," I said. "Demigods can see visions in them, sights of true things happening in other—"

"I know," Nico interrupted. His face looked so gloomy, I wondered just what he'd seen. "I've had them."

"I saw you in mine," I explained. "Twice I watched you meet with the Cloaked Man. I saw him tell you where we'd be, how to catch us."

"Cloaked man?" Nico wondered. "Who— Oh. You mean the figure."

"The figure?"

He shrugged. "It's what I call him. Mysterious guy that never shows his face? Minos knew him. He introduced me."

The hope I'd been holding onto sputtered. It could never be the easy answer, could it? "So you don't know who they are?"

"Someone that works for the titans. I didn't care about asking more. Minos vouched for them, and I just wanted my sister back."

"What about Minos?" I said. "Did he ever contact Pagomenos or Arim? Something about a deal?"

"I've never heard of those people." Nico laughed bitterly. "I guess that doesn't mean much though. Apparently there's tons he never told me."

He sat down with his sword across his lap, looking glum. I sat down next to him, both to give him company and because my legs had started to shake. Dirt kept tumbling from the walls in periodic slides, none close enough to worry about. With my butt against it, I could even feel a faint tremble in the earth underneath us.

"Don't beat yourself up over things," I said. "Minos has been fooling people a lot older than you since ancient times. Even other kings were scared of him. Since he became a judge of the dead, he's only gotten trickier."

"Yeah," Nico said, "a judge of the dead. What kind of son of Hades gets played by a ghost? That's just lame."

So much for cheering him up. "But what was his plan? I get he lied to you, but how was capturing me supposed to help him?"

Nico was real quiet. With his dark jacket and black pants in the low light, it felt almost like I was alone.

"He told me you were Daedalus," Nico finally said. "He said that Daedalus had escaped death by making himself into a machine. That we needed to track him down."

"That part was true. Other than my body being a robot one, I mean. Daedalus really is mechanical."

Nico frowned, like the idea of a soul escaping death upset him on some deep, instinctual level. "Minos convinced me Daedalus— I mean, you, but really Daedalus, was controlling Bianca. The only way to free her was to catch you, then he could break the spell. Turns out what he wanted never had anything to do with any spells in the first place."

I remembered his creepy chant and the words I'd caught. That finishing line ran through my head.

"An exchange of souls… Minos wanted to come back to life. He was trying to take over my body. You can do that? Just, like, trade one life for another?"

But Nico shook his head. "Not normally. That's why you're still fine. But there are exceptions. Souls that are out of time, that have lingered in the world longer than they were meant to, have extra value to my dad. If a spirit can find one and offer it to him he'll make the trade, no questions asked. Think of it like bounty hunting."

As cool as the idea of undead bounty hunters was, I refused to let myself get distracted.

"Then, just earlier…"

"Yes." Nico nodded grimly. "Minos tried to make a trade. If he'd been right, if you really had been Daedalus, you would be dead. And, in your body, Minos would've lived again. He would have been resurrected."

The idea was a terrifying one, and I had plenty of time to be scared by it. Nico and I sat in the chasm for at least thirty minutes, watching the light overhead dim from dusk to night. I tried not to be too irritated that nobody had come looking. If anything, it was my fault for having gone so far to make a simple call. How were they supposed to know where I'd ended up?

As time passed, though, I started getting nervous. The ledge we were perched on was shrinking. It was slow stuff, one little piece or another breaking off every few minutes. That didn't make me feel much better. Nervously, I leaned forward to look over the edge. "Think we could survive a fall from here?"

"I don't think it would matter," Nico said.

"Why not?"

"We'd end up the same place even if we survived." He sniffed the air, then nodded like he'd confirmed something. "This goes all the way down."

I gulped. "And still no shadow travel?"

"I could try. But, if I only have enough energy to get us in and not out…" he trailed off with a shiver. "Trust me, there's worse places to end up than the Underworld.

I'd take his word for it rather than checking firsthand. "Gotcha. Stick to waiting it is."

But, as time passed, I could feel my heart hammering. The more the ledge crumbled the faster the rest of it went. Soon we were shoulder to shoulder, standing up. There wasn't even room to spread out anymore.

"I'm starting to wonder if waiting is such a great plan," Nico said.

"Me too. If you have a better one…"

"I didn't say that," Nico said. "Just that waiting seems like a bad one."

"Well, that's very helpful."

"Help," he agreed. "Some help would be nice."

I cursed, eyes scanning the chasm's lip for what felt like the millionth time. Emmitt, Bianca, Hector… I'd take a stranger at this point, anyone to toss us a rope before we plummeted onto my Uncle's front porch.

The ledge cracked again. A fissure ran between my legs. When I heard a snap, I thought everything was over for me.

Somehow, things worked out. The rocks under my feet held on, even as the soil between them fell from sight.

"You have good luck," Nico noticed.

"You're the first person to tell me that," I said. "Thanks. But I have a bad feeling I just used the last of it."

How wrong I was. Right then, Nico said, "What's that?"

I looked up, which was nice because it gave me an excuse to stop looking down. A black shape was falling above us, about the size of a torso.

More specifically, the size of a back. As it got closer, I recognized my own backpack.

Now, I thought this thing was gone for good. After acting as a treasure holder to lure the tribes, I'd ditched it on the battlefield to keep from being weighed down. Then I'd forgotten about it. A lot had been going on. But now, miraculously, it was (literally) dropping into my lap. I snagged it by the strap.

I realized right when my fingers clenched what a bad idea that was. Catching a falling bag filled with pounds on pounds of metal was sure to yank me straight off my feet and pull me right down.

It didn't. When the weight settled on my arm it was next to nothing. Like the bag was completely empty.

"What the…"

"Where'd it come from?" Nico wondered. "There's nobody up there."

He was right. There wasn't anything that could've thrown it down.

"I guess it fell on its own."

"Right to us?"

"Apparently?"

"If you say so." Another piece crumbled off the ledge. At this point there was only a tiny shelf beneath us, the kind you'd see some psycho rock climber sleeping on in a viral video. "Hey," Nico said, "should we be panicking now? Unless there's a grappling hook in there, I think we're done for."

I drew the zipper back and opened the bag without much hope. Just from the weight I didn't expect to find anything.

But I did find something. I couldn't help myself. I started laughing with relief.

I probably sounded all sorts of crazy, but I'd totally forgotten this thing, and now it was — hopefully — about to save my life.

"Yes!" I said.

Nico gave me a funny look. "There really was a grappling hook?"

"Even better." I jammed my hand in, feeling something frigid on my fingers. "I don't know how to use one of those. This, though…"

There was one thing in the bag. Pulling it out I showed off a whistle of solid ice.

"A whistle?" Nico said. Then I guess he felt something from it, because he squinted. "No, a special whistle. It feels comforting."

Any other time and that wasn't how I'd describe Stygian ice. Right then, I was in the mood to heap a bunch more praise on it. "Watch."

I put it to my lips and blew.

Right away the ice shattered. The fragments glittered in the air. Just like at Antietam, the noise was at a pitch ears couldn't catch. I wasn't worried. I knew it had worked.

"What am I watching?" Nico wondered.

"Wait for it… Wait for it…"

"WOOF!"

Nico gurgled something, but the words were buried under dog fur. Mrs. O'Leary appeared between us, thousands of pounds of very happy hellhound.

The ledge immediately gave out under all that weight. I just laughed, wrapping my arms around my dog. We fell straight down.

"HANG ON!" I shouted to Nico. Then, to Mrs. O'Leary, "GET US OUT OF HERE, GIRL!"

"WOOOOOOOFFFFF!"

Mrs. O'Leary let the shadows swallow us. The brutal cold of shadow travel had never felt better.

We appeared on the other end from underneath the bridge to the city. Nico and I let go, slumping onto the earth, relishing the feeling of solid ground. I made a silent promise to never take it for granted again.

In no time Mrs. O'Leary had spun around, pressing her big wet nose on me.

"Great work girl," I said, giving her well-earned chin scratches. "Who's a good girl that saves her owner from falling to his death? You are! You are!"

Through her legs, I saw Nico sit up.

"Cool dog," he said.

"She's pretty great." I scratched her chin harder, making her back leg thump. "Isn't she? Ooooh yes, isn't she?"

"But why do you get a hellhound? Shouldn't that be my thing?"

"If you come back with us," I said, "I'll let you take her for walks."

Nico's eyes shone. "Deal!"

In the distance I heard voices calling my name. I pushed my way to my feet, navigating around Mrs. O'Leary's massive head. "On that note, there's somebody you need to see again. C'mon, I bet she's already looking for me."

Nico chattered as we walked through the city streets (The houses are so big!) and I found myself smiling. Mrs. O'Leary bounded all around us. Hyperboreans must've smelled some kind of way, because she shoved her nose at everything, tail wagging. She even found fire hydrant her size for once, before proceeding to show it what its cousins all around the world got to experience.

We navigated toward the voices shouting my name. Once or twice we shouted back, letting them know where we were, and before long you could tell we were close. Then we rounded a corner, and they came into sight.

It was Eddie, Irene, and Bianca. Bianca looked a little fresher after her nap, although her hair was still grimy and her hurt leg wouldn't take all her weight.

None of that mattered when she saw us. Her eyes caught Nico first. In a second she had taken in the way he was standing next to me, not running or attacking or bound up. She took off toward us at the quickest hobble she could manage.

It was in that moment. Watching such a fantastic thing, a reunion like this, I relaxed.

That was a mistake.

Later, I'd wonder if I could've been quicker. Maybe if I'd been on guard I could've done something— anything. But no, I stood there smiling like a dummy and left Aelia untransformed in my pocket.

Suddenly, Mrs. O'Leary was barking.

Mist appeared, soupy fog blanketing the street. Then it condensed, making shapes. Humanoid figures formed. They covered over with skin. Before anyone could react, dozens of soldiers had made a ring around Nico.

Their pale faces were clearly dead. They wore bronze Greek armor. Each had a helmet and sandals, with some kind of crest on their breastplate. None had weapons, but they put their hands to work grabbing the son of Hades.

"Release me!" Nico shouted, but they wouldn't listen. A new vapor appeared, a familiar one, right above him.

"You are not the only one that commands the dead," Minos said.

"What are you doing?" Nico demanded.

"What I should have a long time ago."

Meanwhile, I wasn't sitting back. Anfisa transformed. I leaped forward to cut Nico free but was blocked by dead soldiers. More of them piled onto Mrs. O'Leary, slowing her down. Bianca screamed something that wasn't words. Arrow after arrow hissed from her bow, but soldiers took them in the chest or side or head without flinching, continuing to hold Nico down.

Minos was chanting. I recognized the words and slashed harder. It was the same spell he'd recited over me just an hour earlier.

Except, it hadn't worked then, right? Without Daedalus's soul, without an overdue soul, it shouldn't have any effect. What was Minos playing at?

Then a chilling thought hit me. Like his sister, Nico was a teenager born in the 30's. How much extra life had that added? How much stolen time was on his soul?

"We can't let that ghost finish!" I shouted. "We have to stop him!"

Irene and Eddie waded into dead soldiers, smashing them aside like bowling pins. Mrs. O'Leary shook off six. I spun and swung and struck, working overtime.

All of it was too late.

The chill was back in the air, that same cold attention from earlier. This time, though, it felt upset. Frustrated. Minos finished the chant, hurling his arms out wide.

Nico struggled uselessly against the soldiers holding him. "Do you really think this will work? I'm not an overdue soul! And anyway, dad won't take me."

"Oh but you are," Minos said. "And as for your father, you said it yourself explaining things to the Jackson brat. Rules are rules, regardless of his personal feelings. Goodbye, young master. You were a great pawn and back-up plan."

I dug for another earthquake. Nothing happened. I'd been pushed too hard that day. Somebody shrieked.

Bianca erupted from a shadow between Nico and Minos, jerking her hands in a gesture meant to rend Minos's form into nothing.

Except, by the time she did, there was no form to tear apart.

Minos had disappeared. I thought maybe he'd run. Then the soldiers released Nico.

He looked at his hands as if startled by them. "Flesh. I have… flesh. I did it! I live again!"

A chasm wider than the one I'd fallen into ripped open in my heart. Then I saw Bianca's face, and it doubled in size.

There weren't tears. She wasn't screaming. There was absolutely no expression, as if she'd completely shut down.

Minos noticed, too. He smiled at her with her brother's mouth.

"Tough luck, Bianca. Chin up. Without you, I never would've been able to manipulate him so easily. You have my thanks."

Bianca's knees gave out. I snapped.

Since the ritual the soldiers had stopped fighting back. I surged through them, Anfisa raised. Minos didn't see me coming until I was on top of him.

Fear filled his eyes… but I couldn't see them as his eyes. They were Nico's eyes. Maybe there was still some way to reverse this. I hesitated.

In that pause, Minos reacted. The soldiers turned back to mist and the cloud swallowed him.

"I'm glad you're so soft, Jackson," he said. "I would've hated to lose my second life so soon. Bye for now. We'll meet again, and when we do your teacher will be where he belongs— broken at my feet!"

The mist shot into the sky. When it had cleared, Minos was gone.

Irene and Eddie hung back, not sure what to do. Bianca was comatose with her eyes open. Even Mrs. O'Leary could tell something horrible had happened. Her ears were pressed to her head, and she was whining softly.

The street wasn't empty, but the world felt like it was. Everything seemed so heavy. Moving a finger was too much effort. Whispering would be too loud. The feeling of failure was seeping into my skin giving me, for once, the sensation of drowning.

How had this happened? My mind went back to the start. If I'd just been more alert. If Nico hadn't been so exhausted. If we'd just gotten him away from Minos sooner.

But none of that was the real problem. It was Minos himself, and the one setting everything up for him. The Cloaked Man.

And then it hit me.

There was one person that had sent me off on my own before the ambush. Someone who could project his spirit wherever he wanted. Someone that, like his uncle, could change his appearance to look like anything. That could make his voice sound however he wanted, and knew exactly where we would be every step of the way— because wherever we were, he was too.

I stomped down the street.

"Watch over Bianca," I told Irene.

She gaped at me. "And where in the world are you going?"

I didn't look back. Grief wasn't something I knew what to do with. But anger?

"There's something I need to do. Prometheus and I are going to have a nice, long, chat."

(-)