The Ship of the Dead by Rick Riordan

“THAT’S NEW,”said Alex.

The brownstone’s front door had been forced open, the dead bolt busted out of the frame. In the foyer, sprawled across the Oriental rug, lay the carcass of a wolf.

I shuddered.

You couldn’t swing a battle-ax in the Nine Worlds without hitting some kind of wolf: Fenris Wolf, Odin’s wolves, Loki’s wolves, werewolves, big bad wolfs, and independently contracted small business wolves that would kill anybody for the right price.

The dead wolf in Uncle Randolph’s foyer looked very much like the beasts that had attacked my mom two years ago, the night she died.

Wisps of blue luminescence clung to its shaggy black coat. Its mouth was contorted in a permanent snarl. On the top of its head, seared into the skin, was a Viking rune, though the fur around it was so badly burned I couldn’t tell which symbol it was. My friend Hearthstone might have been able to identify it.

Alex circled its pony-size carcass. He kicked it in the ribs. The creature remained obligingly dead.

“Its body hasn’t started to dissolve,” he noted. “Usually monsters disintegrate pretty soon after you kill them. You can still smell the burning fur on this one. Must’ve happened recently.”

“You think the rune was some kind of trap?”

Alex smirked. “I think your uncle knew a thing or two about magic. The wolf hit the carpet, triggering that rune, and BAM!”

I remembered all the times when, as a homeless kid, I’d broken into Uncle Randolph’s house when he wasn’t there to steal food, rifle through his office, or just be annoying. I’d never been bammed. I’d always considered Randolph a failure at home security. Now I felt a little nauseous, wondering if I could’ve ended up dead on the welcome mat with a rune burned into my forehead.

Was this trap the reason Randolph’s will had been so specific about Annabeth and me visiting the property before we took possession? Had Randolph been trying to get some postmortem revenge?

“You think the rest of the house is safe to explore?” I asked.

“Nope,” Alex said cheerfully. “So let’s do it.”

On the first floor, we found no more dead wolves. No runes exploded in our faces. The most gruesome thing we discovered was in Uncle Randolph’s refrigerator, where expired yogurt, sour milk, and moldy carrots were evolving into a preindustrial society. Randolph hadn’t even left me any chocolate in the pantry, the old villain.

On the second floor, nothing had changed. In Randolph’s study, the sun streamed through the stained-glass window, slanting red and orange light across the bookshelves and the displays of Viking artifacts. In one corner sat a big runestone carved with the sneering red face of (naturally) a wolf. Tattered maps and faded yellow parchments covered Randolph’s desk. I scanned the documents, looking for something new, something important, but I saw nothing I hadn’t seen the last time I’d been here.

I remembered the wording of Randolph’s will, which Annabeth had sent me.

It is critical,Randolph had stated, that my beloved nephew Magnus examine my worldly belongings as soon as possible. He should pay special attention to my papers.

I didn’t know why Randolph had put those lines in his will. In his desk drawers, I found no letter addressed to me, no heartfelt apology like Dear Magnus, I’m sorry I got you killed, then betrayed you by siding with Loki, then stabbed your friend Blitzen, then almost got you killed again.

He hadn’t even left me the mansion’s Wi-Fi password.

I gazed out the office window. Across the street in the Commonwealth Mall, folks were walking their dogs, playing Frisbee, enjoying the nice weather. The statue of Leif Erikson stood on his pedestal, proudly flaunting his metal bra, surveying the traffic on Charlesgate, and probably wondering why he wasn’t in Scandinavia.

“So.” Alex came up next to me. “You inherit all of this, huh?”

During our walk over, I’d told him the basics about Uncle Randolph’s will, but Alex still looked incredulous, almost offended.

“Randolph left the house to Annabeth and me,” I said. “Technically, I’m dead. That means it’s all Annabeth’s. Randolph’s lawyers contacted Annabeth’s dad, who told her, who told me. Annabeth asked me to check it out and”—I shrugged—“decide what to do with this place.”

From the nearest bookshelf, Alex picked up a framed photo of Uncle Randolph with his wife and daughters. I’d never met Caroline, Emma, or Aubrey. They’d died in a storm at sea many years ago. But I’d seen them in my nightmares. I knew they were the leverage Loki had used to warp my uncle, promising Randolph that he could see his family again if he helped Loki escape his bonds….And in a way, Loki had told the truth. The last time I’d seen Uncle Randolph, he was tumbling into a chasm straight to Helheim, the land of the dishonorable dead.

Alex turned over the photo, maybe hoping to find a secret note on the back. The last time we’d been in this office, we’d found a wedding invitation that way, and it had led us into all sorts of trouble. This time, there was no hidden message—just blank brown paper, which was a lot less painful to look at than the smiling faces of my dead relatives.

Alex put the picture back on the shelf. “Annabeth doesn’t care what you do with the house?”

“Not really. She’s got enough going on with college and, you know, demigod stuff. She just wants me to let her know if I find anything interesting—old photo albums, family history, that kind of thing.”

Alex wrinkled his nose. “Family history.” His face had the same slightly disgusted, slightly intrigued expression as when he’d kicked the dead wolf. “So what’s upstairs?”

“I’m not sure. When I was a kid, we weren’t allowed above the first two floors. And the few times I broke in more recently…” I turned up my palms. “I guess I never made it that far.”

Alex peered at me over the top of his glasses, his dark brown eye and his amber eye like mismatched moons cresting the horizon. “Sounds intriguing. Let’s go.”

The third floor consisted of two large bedrooms. The front one was spotlessly clean, cold, and impersonal. Two twin beds. A dresser. Bare walls. Maybe a guest room, though I doubted Randolph entertained many people. Or maybe this had been Emma and Aubrey’s room. If so, Randolph had removed all traces of their personalities, leaving a white void in the middle of the house. We didn’t linger.

The second bedroom must have been Randolph’s. It smelled like his old-fashioned clove cologne. Towers of musty books leaned against the walls. Chocolate-bar wrappers filled the wastebasket. Randolph had probably eaten his entire stash right before leaving home to help Loki destroy the world.

I supposed I couldn’t blame him. I always say, Eat chocolate first, destroy the world later.

Alex hopped onto the four-poster bed. He bounced up and down, grinning as the springs squeaked.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making noise.” He leaned over and rifled through Randolph’s nightstand drawer. “Let’s see. Cough drops. Paper clips. Some wadded-up Kleenex that I am not going to touch. And…” He whistled. “Medication for bowel discomfort! Magnus, all this bounty belongs to you!”

“You’re a strange person.”

“I prefer the term fabulously weird.”

We searched the rest of the bedroom, though I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Pay special attention to my papers, Randolph’s will had urged. I doubted he meant the wadded-up tissues.

Annabeth hadn’t been able to get much information out of Randolph’s lawyers. Our uncle had apparently revised his will the day before he died. That might mean Randolph had known he didn’t have long to live, felt some guilt about betraying me, and wanted to leave me some sort of last message. Or it might mean he’d revised the will because Loki had ordered him to. But if this was a trap to lure me here, then why was there a dead wolf in the foyer?

I found no secret papers in Randolph’s closet. His bathroom was unremarkable except for an impressive collection of half-empty Listerine bottles. His underwear drawer was packed with enough navy-blue Jockeys to outfit a squadron of Randolphs—all briefs, perfectly starched, ironed, and folded. Some things defy explanation.

On the next floor, two more empty bedrooms. Nothing dangerous like wolves, exploding runes, or old-dude underwear.

The top floor was a sprawling library even larger than the one in Randolph’s office. A haphazard collection of novels lined the shelves. A small kitchenette took up one corner of the room, complete with a mini fridge and an electric teapot and—CURSE YOU, RANDOLPH!—still no chocolate. The windows looked out over the green-shingled rooftops of Back Bay. At the far end of the room, a staircase led up to what I assumed would be a roof deck.

A comfy-looking leather chair faced the fireplace. Carved in the center of the marble surround was (of course) a snarling wolf’s head. On the mantel, in a silver tripod stand, sat a Norse drinking horn with a leather strap and a silver rim etched with runic designs. I’d seen thousands of horns like that in Valhalla, but it surprised me to find one here. Randolph had never struck me as the mead-swilling type. Maybe he sipped his Earl Grey tea out of it.

“Madre de Dios,”Alex said.

I stared at him. It was the first time I’d ever heard him speak Spanish.

He tapped one of the framed photos on the wall and gave me a wicked grin. “Please tell me this is you.”

The picture was a shot of my mother with her usual pixie haircut and brilliant smile, jeans, and flannel camping shirt. She stood in the hollowed-out trunk of a sycamore tree, holding a baby Magnus up to the camera—my hair a tuft of white gold, my mouth glistening with drool, my gray eyes wide like What the heck am I doing here?

“That’s me,” I admitted.

“You were so cute.” Alex glanced over. “What happened?”

“Ha, ha.”

I scanned the wall of photos. I was amazed Uncle Randolph had kept one of me and my mom right where he’d see it whenever he sat in his comfy chair, almost as if he actually cared about us.

Another photo showed the three Chase siblings as children—Natalie, Frederick, and Randolph—all dressed in World War II military uniforms, brandishing fake rifles. Halloween, I guessed. Next to that was a picture of my grandparents: a frowning, white-haired couple dressed in clashing 1970s-style plaid clothes, like they were either on their way to church or the senior citizens’ disco.

Confession: I had trouble telling my grandfather and grandmother apart. They’d died before I could meet them, but from their pictures, you could tell they were one of those couples that had grown to resemble each other over the years until they were virtually indistinguishable. Same white helmet-hair. Same glasses. Same wispy mustaches. In the photo, a few Viking artifacts, including the mead horn that now sat on Randolph’s mantel, hung on the wall behind them. I’d had no idea my grandparents were into Norse stuff, too. I wondered if they’d ever traveled the Nine Worlds. That might explain their confused, slightly cross-eyed expressions.

Alex perused the titles on the bookshelves.

“Anything good?” I asked.

He shrugged. “The Lord of the Rings. Not bad. Sylvia Plath. Nice. Oh, The Left Hand of Darkness. I love that book. The rest…meh. His collection is a little heavy on dead white males for my taste.”

“I’m a dead white male,” I noted.

Alex raised one eyebrow. “Yes, you are.”

I hadn’t realized Alex was a reader. I was tempted to ask if he liked some of my favorites: Scott Pilgrim or maybe Sandman. Those were fabulously weird. But I decided this might not be the right time to start a book club.

I searched the shelves for diaries or hidden compartments.

Alex meandered over to the last flight of stairs. He peered upward and his complexion turned as green as his hair. “Uh, Magnus? You should probably see this.”

I joined him.

At the top of the staircase, a domed Plexiglas hatch led to the roof. And on the other side, pacing and snarling, was another wolf.