“Uh, actually, this isn’t—”

“This isn’t a problem?” Piper supplied. “And you’d be delighted to lend it to me for the day? Fantastic!”

Bedrossian’s face convulsed. He forced out the words, “Yes. Of course.”

“Keys, please?”

Mr. Bedrossian tossed her the fob, then ran into his house as fast as his tight-fitting yoga pants would allow.

Meg whistled under her breath. “That was cool.”

“What was that?” Grover asked.

“That,” I said, “was charmspeaking.” I reappraised Piper McLean, not sure if I should be impressed or if I should run after Mr. Bedrossian in a panic. “A rare gift among Aphrodite’s children. Do you borrow Mr. Bedrossian’s car a lot?”

Piper shrugged. “He’s been an awful neighbor. He also has a dozen other cars. Believe me, we’re not causing him any hardship. Besides, I usually bring back what I borrow. Usually. Shall we go? Apollo, you can drive.”

“But—”

She smiled that sweetly scary I-could-make-you-do-it smile.

“I’ll drive,” I said.

We took the scenic coastal road south in the Bedrossian-mobile. Since the Escalade was only slightly smaller than Hephaestus’s fire-breathing hydra tank, I had to be careful to avoid sideswiping motorcycles, mailboxes, small children on tricycles, and other annoying obstacles.

“Are we going to pick up Jason?” I asked.

Next to me in the passenger’s seat, Piper loaded a dart into her blowgun. “No need. Besides, he’s in school.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m moving, remember? As of next Monday, I’m enrolled at Tahlequah High.” She raised her blowgun like a champagne glass. “Go, Tigers.”

Her words sounded strangely unironic. Again, I wondered how she could be so resigned to her fate, so ready to let Caligula expel her and her father from the life they had built here. But since she had a loaded weapon in her hand, I didn’t challenge her.

Meg’s head popped up between our seats. “We won’t need your ex-boyfriend?”

I swerved and almost ran over someone’s grandmother.

“Meg!” I chided. “Sit back and buckle up, please. Grover—” I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the satyr chewing on a strip of gray fabric. “Grover, stop eating your seat belt. You’re setting a bad example.”

He spat out the strap. “Sorry.”

Piper ruffled Meg’s hair, then playfully pushed her into the backseat. “To answer your question, no. We’ll be fine without Jason. I can show you the way into the maze. It was my dream, after all. This entrance is the one the emperor uses, so it should be the straightest shot to the center, where he’s keeping your Sibyl.”

“And when you went inside before,” I said, “what happened?”

Piper shrugged. “The usual Labyrinth stuff—traps, changing corridors. Also some strange creatures. Guards. Hard to describe. And fire. Lots of that.”

I remembered my vision of Herophile, raising her chained arms in the room of lava, apologizing to someone who wasn’t me.

“You didn’t actually find the Oracle?” I asked.

Piper was silent for half a block, gazing at flashes of ocean vista between houses. “I didn’t. But there was a short time when we got separated, Jason and me. Now…I’m wondering if he told me everything that happened to him. I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”

Grover refastened his mangled seat belt. “Why would he lie?”

“That,” Piper said, “is a very good question and a good reason to go back there without him. To see for myself.”

I had a sense that Piper was holding back quite a bit herself—doubts, guesses, personal feelings, maybe what had happened to her in the Labyrinth.

Hooray, I thought. Nothing spices up a dangerous quest like personal drama between formerly romantically involved heroes who may or may not be telling each other (and me) the whole truth.

Piper directed me into downtown Los Angeles.

I considered this a bad sign. “Downtown Los Angeles” had always struck me as an oxymoron, like “hot ice cream” or “military intelligence.” (Yes, Ares, that was an insult.)

Los Angeles was all about sprawl and suburbs. It wasn’t meant to have a downtown, any more than pizza was meant to have mango chunks. Oh, sure, here and there among the dull gray government buildings and closed-up storefronts, parts of downtown had been revitalized. As we zigzagged through the surface streets, I spotted plenty of new condos, hip stores, and swanky hotels. But to me, all those efforts seemed about as effective as putting makeup on a Roman legionnaire. (And believe me, I’d tried.)

We pulled over near Grand Park, which was neither grand nor much of a park. Across the street rose an eight-story honeycomb of concrete and glass. I seemed to recall going there once, decades before, to register my divorce from Greta Garbo. Or was it Liz Taylor? I couldn’t recall.

“The Hall of Records?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Piper said. “But we’re not going inside. Just park in the fifteen-minute loading zone over there.”

Grover leaned forward. “What if we’re not back in fifteen minutes?”

Piper smiled. “Then I’m sure the towing company will take good care of Mr. Bedrossian’s Escalade.”

Once on foot, we followed Piper to the side of the government complex, where she put her finger to her lips for quiet, then motioned for us to peek around the corner.

Running the length of the block was a twenty-foot-high concrete wall, punctuated by unremarkable metal doors that I assumed were service entrances. In front of one of those doors, about halfway down the block, stood a strange-looking guard.

Despite the warm day, he wore a black suit and tie. He was squat and burly, with unusually large hands. Wrapped around his head was something I couldn’t quite figure out, like an extra-large Arabic kaffiyeh made of white fuzzy terrycloth, which draped across his shoulders and hung halfway down his back. That alone might not have been so strange. He could have been a private security guard working for some Saudi oil tycoon. But why was he standing in an alley next to a nondescript metal door? And why was his face entirely covered in white fur—fur that exactly matched his headdress?

Grover sniffed the air, then pulled us back around the corner.

“That guy isn’t human,” he whispered.

“Give the satyr a prize,” Piper whispered back, though I wasn’t sure why we were being so quiet. We were half a block away, and there was plenty of street noise.

“What is he?” Meg asked.

Piper checked the dart in her blowgun. “That’s a good question. But they can be real trouble if you don’t take them by surprise.”

“They?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Piper frowned. “Last time, there were two. And they had black fur. Not sure how this one is different. But that door is the entrance to the maze, so we need to take him out.”

“Should I use my swords?” Meg asked.

“Only if I miss.” Piper took a few deep breaths. “Ready?”

I didn’t imagine she would accept no as an answer, so I nodded along with Grover and Meg.