The Tyrant’s Tomb by Rick Riordan

Our great opening!

Win a free Inferno trip!

And take a cupcake!

I DON’T KNOW WHICHgood-bye was hardest.

At first light, Hazel and Frank met us at the coffee shop for one final thank-you. Then they were off to rouse the legion. They intended to get right to work on repairs to the camp to take everyone’s minds off the many losses before shock could set in. Watching them walk away together down the Via Praetoria, I felt a warm certainty that the legion was about to see a new golden age. Like Frank, the Twelfth Legion Fulminata would rise from the ashes, though hopefully wearing more than just their undergarments.

Minutes later, Thalia and Reyna came by with their pack of gray wolves, their metal greyhounds, and their pair of rescue pegasi. Their departure saddened me as much as my sister’s, but I understood their ways, those Hunters. Always on the move.

Reyna gave me one last hug. “I’m looking forward to a long vacation.”

Thalia laughed. “Vacation? RARA, I hate to tell you, but we’ve got hard work ahead! We’ve been tracking the Teumessian Fox across the Midwest for months now, and it hasn’t been going well.”

“Exactly,” Reyna said. “A vacation.” She kissed Meg on the top of her head. “You keep Lester in line, okay? Don’t let him get a big head just because he’s got a nice new bow.”

“You can count on me,” Meg said.

Sadly, I had no reason to doubt her.

When Meg and I left the café for the last time, Bombilo actually cried. Behind his gruff exterior, the two-headed barista turned out to be a real sentimentalist. He gave us a dozen scones, a bag of coffee beans, and told us to get out of his sight before he started bawling again. I took charge of the scones. Meg, gods help me, took the coffee.

At the gates of camp, Lavinia waited, chewing her bubble gum while she polished her new centurion badge. “This is the earliest I’ve been up in years,” she complained. “I’m going to hate being an officer.”

The sparkle in her eyes told a different story.

“You’ll do great,” Meg said.

As Lavinia bent to hug her, I noticed a stippled rash running down Ms. Asimov’s left cheek and neck, unsuccessfully covered by some foundation.

I cleared my throat. “Did you perhaps sneak out last night to see Poison Oak?”

Lavinia blushed adorably. “Well? I’m told that my centurionship makes me very attractive.”

Meg looked concerned. “You’re going to have to invest in some calamine lotion if you keep seeing her.”

“Hey, no relationship is perfect,” Lavinia said. “At least with her, I know the problems right up front! We’ll figure it out.”

I had no doubt she would. She hugged me and ruffled my hair. “You’d better come back and see me. And don’t die. I will kick your butt with my new dancing shoes if you die.”

“Understood,” I said.

She did one last soft-shoe routine, gestured to us like, Over to you, then raced off to muster the Fifth Cohort for a long day of tap-dancing.

Watching her go, I marveled at how much had happened to all of us since Lavinia Asimov first escorted us into camp, just a few days before. We had defeated two emperors and a king, which would have been a strong hand in even the most cutthroat poker game. We had put to rest the souls of a god and a Sibyl. We had saved a camp, a city, and a lovely pair of shoes. Most of all, I had seen my sister, and she had restored me to good health—or what passed for good health for Lester Papadopoulos. As Reyna might say, we had added quite a bit to our “good things” column. Now Meg and I were embarking on what might be our last quest with good expectations and hopeful spirits…or at least a good night’s sleep and a dozen scones.

We took one final trip into New Rome, where Tyson and Ella were expecting us. Over the entrance of the bookstore, a newly painted sign proclaimed CYCLOPS BOOKS.

“Yay!” Tyson cried as we came through the doorway. “Come in! We are having our great opening today!”

“Grand opening,” Ella corrected, fussing over a platter of cupcakes and a bunch of balloons at the information desk. “Welcome to Cyclops Books and Prophecies and Also an Orange Cat.”

“That wouldn’t all fit on the sign,” Tyson confided.

“It should have fit on the sign,” Ella said. “We need a bigger sign.”

On top of the old-fashioned cash register, Aristophanes yawned as if it was all the same to him. He was wearing a tiny party hat and an expression that said, I am only wearing this because demigods don’t have phone cameras or Instagram.

“Customers can get prophecies for their quests!” Tyson explained, pointing at his chest, which was covered even more densely with Sibylline verse. “They can pick up the latest books, too!”

“I recommend the 1924 Farmer’s Almanac,” Ella told us. “Would you like a copy?”

“Ah…maybe next time,” I said. “We were told you had a prophecy for us?”

“Yep, yep.” Ella ran her finger down Tyson’s ribs, scanning for the correct lines.

The Cyclops squirmed and giggled.

“Here,” Ella said. “Over his spleen.”

Wonderful, I thought. The Prophecy of Tyson’s Spleen.

Ella read aloud:

“O son of Zeus the final challenge face

The tow’r of Nero two alone ascend

Dislodge the beast that hast usurped thy place.”

I waited.

Ella nodded. “Yep, yep, yep. That’s it.” She went back to her cupcakes and balloons.

“That can’t be it,” I complained. “That makes no poetic sense. It’s not a haiku. It’s not a sonnet. It’s not…Oh.”

Meg squinted at me. “Oh, what?”

“Oh, as in Oh, no.” I remembered a dour young man I’d met in medieval Florence. It had been a long time ago, but I never forgot someone who invented a new type of poetry. “It’s terza rima.”

“Who?” Meg asked.

“It’s a style Dante invented. In The Inferno. Three lines. The first and the third line rhyme. The middle line rhymes with first line of the next stanza.”

“I don’t get it,” Meg said.

“I want a cupcake,” Tyson announced.

“Face and place rhyme,” I told Meg. “The middle line ends with ascend. That tells us that when we find the next stanza, we’ll know it’s correct if the first line and third lines rhyme with ascend. Terza rima is like an endless paper chain of stanzas, all linked together.”

Meg frowned. “But there isn’t a next stanza.”

“Not here,” I agreed. “Which means it must be somewhere out there….” I waved vaguely to the east. “We’re on a scavenger hunt for more stanzas. This is just the starting point.”

“Hmph.”

As always, Meg had summarized our predicament perfectly. It was very much hmph. I also did not like the fact that our new prophecy’s rhyme scheme had been invented to describe a descent into hell.

“‘The tower of Nero,’” Ella said, repositioning her balloon display. “New York, I bet. Yep.”

I suppressed a whimper.

The harpy was right. We would need to return to where my problems began—Manhattan, where the gleaming Triumvirate headquarters rose from downtown. After that, I would have to face the beast who had usurped my place. I suspected that line didn’t mean Nero’s alter ego, the Beast, but the actual beast Python, my ancient enemy. How I could reach him in his lair at Delphi, much less defeat him, I had no idea.

“New York.” Meg clenched her jaw.

I knew this would be the worst of homecomings for her, back to her stepfather’s house of horrors, where she’d been emotionally abused for years. I wished I could spare her the pain, but I suspected she’d always known this day would come, and like most of the pain she had gone through, there was no choice but to…well, go through it.

“Okay,” she said, her voice resolute. “How do we get there?”

“Oh! Oh!” Tyson raised his hand. His mouth was coated in cupcake frosting. “I would take a rocket ship!”

I stared at him. “Do you have a rocket ship?”

His expression deflated. “No.”

I looked out the bookstore’s picture windows. In the distance, the sun rose over Mount Diablo. Our journey of thousands of miles could not begin with a rocket ship, so we’d have to find another way. Horses? Eagles? A self-driving car that was programmed not to fly off highway overpasses? We’d have to trust in the gods for some good luck. (Insert HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA here.) And maybe, if we were very fortunate, we could at least call on our old friends at Camp Half-Blood once we returned to New York. That thought gave me courage.

“Come on, Meg,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of miles to cover. We need to find a new ride.”