Reyna hesitated, but I thought I detected a gleam in her eye. “Are you sure, Frank? I mean, yeah, of course you can do it. I know you can, but—”

“I’ll be fine.” Frank smiled like he meant it. “Apollo and Meg need you on this quest. Go.”

Why did Reyna look so excited? How crushing her work must have been, if, after carrying the burden of leadership for so long, she was looking forward to going on an adventure across the bay to kill a god.

“I suppose,” she said with obviously feigned reluctance.

“It’s settled, then.” Frank turned to Meg and me. “You guys rest up. Big day tomorrow. We’ll need your help with the war games. I’ve got a special job in mind for each of you.”

Hamster ball of death

Spare me your fiery doom

I’m not feeling it

OH, BOY, A SPECIAL job!

The anticipation was killing me. Or maybe that was the poison in my veins.

As soon as I returned to the coffee shop’s attic, I crashed on my cot.

Meg huffed, “It’s still light outside. You slept all day.”

“Not turning into a zombie is hard work.”

“I know!” she snapped. “I’m sorry!”

I looked up, surprised by her tone. Meg kicked an old paper latte cup across the room. She plopped onto her cot and glared at the floor.

“Meg?”

In her flower box, irises grew with such speed that their flowers crackled open like corn kernels. Just a few minutes ago, Meg had been happily insulting me and gorging on jelly beans. Now…Was she crying?

“Meg.” I sat up, trying not to wince. “Meg, you’re not responsible for me getting hurt.”

She twisted the ring on her right hand, then the one on her left, as if they’d become too small for her fingers. “I just thought…if I could kill him…” She wiped her nose. “Like in some stories. You kill the master, and you can free the people he’s turned.”

It took a moment for her words to sink in. I was pretty sure the dynamic she was describing applied to vampires, not zombies, but I understood what she meant.

“You’re talking about Tarquin,” I said. “You jumped into the throne room because…you wanted to save me?”

“Duh,” she muttered, without any heat.

I put my hand over my bandaged abdomen. I’d been so angry with Meg for her recklessness in the tomb. I’d assumed she was just being impulsive, reacting to Tarquin’s plans to let the Bay Area burn. But she’d leaped into battle for me—with the hope that she could kill Tarquin and erase my curse. That was even before I’d realized how bad my condition was. Meg must have been more worried, or more intuitive, than she’d let on.

Which certainly took all the fun out of criticizing her.

“Oh, Meg.” I shook my head. “That was a crazy, senseless stunt, and I love you for it. But don’t beat yourself up. Pranjal’s medicine bought me some extra time. And you did, too, of course, with your cheese-grating skills and your magical chickweed. You’ve done everything you could. When we summon godly help, I can ask for complete healing. I’m sure I’ll be as good as new. Or at least, as good as a Lester can be.”

Meg tilted her head, making her crooked glasses just about horizontal. “How can you know? Is this god going to give us three wishes or something?”

I considered that. When my followers called, had I ever shown up and granted them three wishes? LOL, nope. Maybe one wish, if that wish was something I wanted to happen anyway. And if this ritual only allowed me to call one god, who would it be—assuming I could even choose? Perhaps my son Asclepius would be able to heal me, but he couldn’t very well fight the Roman emperors’ forces and the hordes of undead. Mars might grant us success on the battlefield, but he’d look at my wound and say something like Yeah, rough break. Die bravely!

Here I was with purple lines of infection snaking down my arms, telling Meg not to worry.

“I don’t know, Meg,” I confessed. “You’re right. I can’t be sure everything will be okay. But I can promise you I’m not giving up. We’ve come this far. I’m not going to let a belly scratch stop us from defeating the Triumvirate.”

She had so much mucus dripping from her nostrils, she would’ve made Buster the unicorn proud. She sniffled, wiping her upper lip with her knuckle. “I don’t want to lose somebody else.”

My mental gears weren’t turning at full speed. I had trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that by “somebody else,” Meg meant me.

I recalled one of her early memories, which I’d witnessed in my dreams: she’d been forced to gaze upon her father’s lifeless body on the steps of Grand Central Station while Nero, his murderer, hugged her and promised to take care of her.

I remembered how she’d betrayed me to Nero in the Grove of Dodona out of fear of the Beast, Nero’s dark side, and how horrible she’d felt afterward, when we reunited in Indianapolis. Then she’d taken all her displaced anger and guilt and frustration and projected it onto Caligula (which, to be honest, was a pretty good place to put it). Meg, being unable to lash out at Nero, had wanted so badly to kill Caligula. When Jason died instead, she was devastated.

Now, aside from all the bad memories the Roman trappings of Camp Jupiter might have triggered for her, she was faced with the prospect of losing me. In a moment of shock, like a unicorn staring me right in the face, I realized that despite all the grief Meg gave me, and the way she ordered me around, she cared for me. For the past three months, I had been her one constant friend, just as she had been mine.

The only other person who might have come close was Peaches, Meg’s fruit-tree spirit minion, and we hadn’t seen him since Indianapolis. At first, I’d assumed Peaches was just being temperamental about when he decided to appear, like most supernatural creatures. But if he had tried to follow us to Palm Springs, where even the cacti struggled to survive…I didn’t relish a peach tree’s odds of survival there, much less in the Burning Maze.

Meg hadn’t mentioned Peaches to me once since we were in the Labyrinth. Now I realized his absence must have been weighing on her, along with all her other worries.

What a horribly insufficient friend I had been.

“Come here.” I held out my arms. “Please?”

Meg hesitated. Still sniffling, she rose from her cot and trudged toward me. She fell into my hug like I was a comfy mattress. I grunted, surprised by how solid and heavy she was. She smelled of apple peels and mud, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t even mind the mucus and tears soaking my shoulder.

I’d always wondered what it would be like to have a younger sibling. Sometimes I’d treated Artemis as my baby sister, since I’d been born a few minutes earlier, but that had been mostly to annoy her. With Meg, I felt as if it were actually true. I had someone who depended on me, who needed me around no matter how much we irritated each other. I thought about Hazel and Frank and the washing away of curses. I supposed that kind of love could come from many different types of relationships.

“Okay.” Meg pushed herself away, wiping her cheeks furiously. “Enough of that. You sleep. I’m—I’m going to get dinner or whatever.”