“What else did she say?” Piper repeated.

Jason looked at Meg, then at me, maybe for moral support.

“The Sibyl told me where I could find the emperor,” he said. “Well, more or less. She said Apollo would need the information. He would need…a pair of shoes. I know that doesn’t make much sense.”

“I’m afraid it does,” I said.

Meg ran her fingers along the plastic rooftops of the map. “Can we kill the emperor while we’re stealing his shoes? Did the Sibyl say anything about that?”

Jason shook his head. “She just said that Piper and I…we couldn’t do anything more by ourselves. It had to be Apollo. If we tried…it would be too dangerous.”

Piper laughed drily. She raised her hands as if making an offering to the water stain.

“Jason, we’ve been through literally everything together. I can’t even count how many dangers we’ve faced, how many times we’ve almost died. Now you’re telling me you lied to me to, what, protect me? To keep me from going after Caligula?”

“I knew you would have done it,” he murmured. “No matter what the Sibyl said.”

“Then that would’ve been my choice,” Piper said. “Not yours.”

He nodded miserably. “And I would’ve insisted on going with you, no matter the risk. But the way things have been between us…” He shrugged. “Working as a team has been hard. I thought—I decided to wait until Apollo found me. I messed up, not telling you. I’m sorry.”

He stared at his Temple Hill display, as if trying to figure out where to place a shrine to the god of feeling horrible about failed relationships. (Oh, wait. He already had one. It was for Aphrodite, Piper’s mom.)

Piper took a deep breath. “This isn’t about you and me, Jason. Satyrs and dryads are dying. Caligula’s planning to turn himself into a new sun god. Tonight’s the new moon, and Camp Jupiter is facing some kind of huge threat. Meanwhile, Medea is in that maze, throwing around Titan fire—”

“Medea?” Jason sat up straight. The lightbulb in his desk lamp burst, raining glass across his diorama. “Back up. What’s Medea got to do with this? What do you mean about the new moon and Camp Jupiter?”

I thought Piper might refuse to share the information, just for spite, but she didn’t. She gave Jason the lowdown about the Indiana prophecy that predicted bodies filling the Tiber. Then she explained Medea’s cooking project with her grandfather.

Jason looked like our father had just hit him with a thunderbolt. “I had no idea.”

Meg crossed her arms. “So, you going to help us or what?”

Jason studied her, no doubt unsure what to make of this scary little girl in teal camouflage.

“Of—of course,” he said. “We’ll need a car. And I’ll need an excuse to leave campus.” He looked hopefully at Piper.

She got to her feet. “Fine. I’ll go talk to the office. Meg, come with me, just in case we run into that empousa. We’ll meet you boys at the front gate. And Jason—?”

“Yeah?”

“If you’re holding anything else back—”

“Right. I—I get it.”

Piper turned and marched out of the room. Meg gave me a look like You sure about this?

“Go on,” I told her. “I’ll help Jason get ready.”

Once the girls had left, I turned to confront Jason Grace, one son of Zeus/Jupiter to another.

“All right,” I said. “What did the Sibyl really tell you?”

JASON took his time responding.

He removed his jacket, hung it in the closet. He undid his tie and folded it over the coat hook. I had a flashback to my old friend Fred Rogers, the children’s television host, who radiated the same calm centeredness when hanging up his work clothes. Fred used to let me crash on his sofa whenever I’d had a hard day of poetry-godding. He’d offer me a plate of cookies and a glass of milk, then serenade me with his songs until I felt better. I was especially fond of “It’s You I Like.” Oh, I missed that mortal!

Finally, Jason strapped on his gladius. With his glasses, dress shirt, slacks, loafers, and sword, he looked less like Mister Rogers and more like a well-armed paralegal.

“What makes you think I’m holding back?” he asked.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t try to be evasively prophetic with the god of evasive prophecies.”

Jason sighed. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing the Roman tattoo on the inside of his forearm—the lightning bolt emblem of our father. “First of all, it wasn’t exactly a prophecy. It was more like a series of quiz show questions.”

“Yes. Herophile delivers information that way.”

“And you know how prophecies are. Even when the Oracle is friendly, they can be hard to interpret.”

“Jason…”

“Fine,” he relented. “The Sibyl said…She told me if Piper and I went after the emperor, one of us would die.”

Die. The word landed between us with a thud, like a large, gutted fish.

I waited for an explanation. Jason stared at his foam core Temple Hill as if trying to bring it to life by sheer force of will.

“Die,” I repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Not disappear, not wouldn’t come back, not suffer defeat.”

“Nope. Die. Or more accurately, three letters, starts with D.”

“Not dad, then,” I suggested. “Or dog.”

One fine blond eyebrow crept above the rim of his glasses. “If you seek out the emperor, one of you will dog? No, Apollo, the word was die.”

“Still, that could mean many things. It could mean a trip to the Underworld. It could mean a death such as Leo suffered, where you pop right back to life. It could mean—”

“Now you’re being evasive,” Jason said. “The Sibyl meant death. Final. Real. No replays. You had to be there. The way she said it. Unless you happen to have an extra vial of the physician’s cure in your pockets…”

He knew very well I did not. The physician’s cure, which had brought Leo Valdez back to life, was only available from my son Asclepius, god of medicine. And since Asclepius wanted to avoid an all-out war with Hades, he rarely gave out free samples. As in never. Leo had been the first lucky recipient in four thousand years. He would likely be the last.

“Still…” I fumbled for alternate theories and loopholes. I hated thinking of permanent death. As an immortal, I was a conscientious objector. As good as your afterlife experience might be (and most of them were not good), life was better. The warmth of the actual sun, the vibrant colors of the upper world, the cuisine…really, even Elysium had nothing to compare.

Jason’s stare was unrelenting. I suspected that in the weeks since his talk with Herophile, he had run every scenario. He was well past the bargaining stage in dealing with this prophecy. He had accepted that death meant death, the way Piper McLean had accepted that Oklahoma meant Oklahoma.

I didn’t like that. Jason’s calmness again reminded me of Fred Rogers, but in an exasperating way. How could anyone be so accepting and levelheaded all the time? Sometimes I just wanted him to get mad, to scream and throw his loafers across the room.