The Lost Hero

“We have to get you warm.” Jason sat next to her and held out his arms a little awkwardly. “Uh, you mind if I …”

“I suppose.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

He put his arms around her and held her. They scooted closer to the fire. Coach Hedge chewed on his club and spit splinters into the fire.

Leo broke out some cooking supplies and started frying burger patties on an iron skillet. “So, guys, long as you’re cuddled up for story time … something I’ve been meaning to tell you. On the way to Omaha, I had this dream. Kinda hard to understand with the static and the Wheel of Fortune breaking in —”

“Wheel of Fortune?” Piper assumed Leo was kidding, but when he looked up from his burgers, his expression was deadly serious.

“The thing is,” he said, “my dad Hephaestus talked to me.”

Leo told them about his dream. In the firelight, with the wind howling, the story was even creepier. Piper could imagine the static-filled voice of the god warning about giants who were the sons of Tartarus, and about Leo losing some friends along the way.

She tried to concentrate on something good: Jason’s arms around her, the warmth slowly spreading into her body, but she was terrified. “I don’t understand. If demigods and gods have to work together to kill the giants, why would the gods stay silent? If they need us—”

“Ha,” said Coach Hedge. “The gods hate needing humans. They like to be needed by humans, but not the other way around. Things will have to get a whole lot worse before Zeus admits he made a mistake closing Olympus.”

“Coach,” Piper said, “that was almost an intelligent comment.”

Hedge huffed. “What? I’m intelligent! I’m not surprised you cupcakes haven’t heard of the Giant War. The gods don’t like to talk about it. Bad PR to admit you needed mortals to help beat an enemy. That’s just embarrassing.”

“There’s more, though,” Jason said. “When I dreamed about Hera in her cage, she said Zeus was acting unusually paranoid. And Hera—she said she went to those ruins because a voice had been speaking in her head. What if someone’s influencing the gods, like Medea influenced us?”

Piper shuddered. She’d had a similar thought—that some force they couldn’t see was manipulating things behind the scenes, helping the giants. Maybe the same force was keeping Enceladus informed about their movements, and had even knocked their dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Perhaps Leo’s sleeping Dirt Woman, or another servant of hers …

Leo set hamburger buns on the skillet to toast. “Yeah, Hephaestus said something similar, like Zeus was acting weirder than usual. But what bothered me was the stuff my dad didn’t say. Like a couple of times he was talking about the demigods, and how he had so many kids and all. I don’t know. He acted like getting the greatest demigods together was going to be almost impossible—like Hera was trying, but it was a really stupid thing to do, and there was some secret Hephaestus wasn’t supposed to tell me.”

Jason shifted. Piper could feel the tension in his arms.

“Chiron was the same way back at camp,” he said. “He mentioned a sacred oath not to discuss—something. Coach, you know anything about that?”

“Nah. I’m just a satyr. They don’t tell us the juicy stuff. Especially an old—” He stopped himself.

“An old guy like you?” Piper asked. “But you’re not that old, are you?”

“Hundred and six,” the coach muttered.

Leo coughed. “Say what?”

“Don’t catch your panties on fire, Valdez. That’s just fifty-three in human years. Still, yeah, I made some enemies on the Council of Cloven Elders. I’ve been a protector a longtime. But they started saying I was getting unpredictable. Too violent. Can you imagine?”

“Wow.” Piper tried not to look at her friends. “That’s hard to believe.”

Coach scowled. “Yeah, then finally we get a good war going with the Titans, and do they put me on the front lines? No! They send me as far away as possible—the Canadian frontier, can you believe it? Then after the war, they put me out to pasture. The Wilderness School. Bah! Like I’m too old to be helpful just because I like playing offense. All those flower-pickers on the Council—talking about nature.”

“I thought satyrs liked nature,” Piper ventured.

“Shoot, I love nature,” Hedge said. “Nature means big things killing and eating little things! And when you’re a —you know—vertically challenged satyr like me, you get in good shape, you carry a big stick, and you don’t take nothing from no one! That’s nature.” Hedge snorted indignantly. “Flower-pickers. Anyway, I hope you got something vegetarian cooking, Valdez. I don’t do flesh.”

“Yeah, Coach. Don’t eat your cudgel. I got some tofu patties here. Piper’s a vegetarian too. I’ll throw them on in a second.”

The smell of frying burgers filled the air. Piper usually hated the smell of cooking meat, but her stomach rumbled like it wanted to mutiny.

I’m losing it, she thought. Think broccoli. Carrots. Lentils.

Her stomach wasn’t the only thing rebelling. Lying by the fire, with Jason holding her, Piper’s conscience felt like a hot bullet slowing working its way toward her heart. All the guilt she’d been holding in for the last week, since the giant Enceladus had first sent her a dream, was about to kill her.

Her friends wanted to help her. Jason even said he’d walk into a trap to save her dad. And Piper had shut them out.

For all she knew, she’d already doomed her father when she attacked Medea.

She choked back a sob. Maybe she’d done the right thing in Chicago by saving her friends, but she’d only delayed her problem. She could never betray her friends, but the tiniest part of her was desperate enough to think, What if I did?

She tried to imagine what her dad would say. Hey, Dad, if you were ever chained up by a cannibal giant and I had to betray a couple of friends to save you, what should I do?

Funny, that had never come up when they did Any Three Questions. Her dad would never take the question seriously, of course. He’d probably tell her one of Grandpa Tom’s old stories—something with glowing hedgehogs and talking birds—and then laugh about it as if the advice was silly.

Piper wished she remembered her grandpa better. Sometimes she dreamed about that little two-room house in Oklahoma. She wondered what it would’ve been like to grow up there.

Her dad would think that was nuts. He’d had spent his whole life running away from that place, distancing himself from the rez, playing any role except Native American. He’d always told Piper how lucky she was to grow up rich and well cared-for, in a nice house in California.

She’d learned to be vaguely uncomfortable about her ancestry—like Dad’s old pictures from the eighties, when he had feathered hair and crazy clothes. Can you believe I ever looked like that? he’d say. Being Cherokee was the same way for him—something funny and mildly embarrassing.

But what else were they? Dad didn’t seem to know. Maybe that’s why he was always so unhappy, changing roles. Maybe that’s why Piper started stealing things, looking for something her dad couldn’t give her.

Leo put tofu patties on the skillet. The wind kept raging. Piper thought of an old story her dad had told her … one that maybe did answer some of her questions.

One day in second grade she’d come home in tears and demanded why her father had named her Piper. The kids were making fun of her because Piper Cherokee was a kind of airplane.

Her dad laughed, as if that had never occurred to him. “No, Pipes. Fine airplane. That’s not how I named you. Grandpa Tom picked out your name. First time he heard you cry, he said you had a powerful voice—better than any reed flute piper. He said you’d learn to sing the hardest Cherokee songs, even the snake song.”

“The snake song?”

Dad told her the legend—how one day a Cherokee woman had seen a snake playing too near her children and killed it with a rock, not realizing it was the king of rattlesnakes. The snakes prepared for war on the humans, but the woman’s husband tried to make peace. He promised he’d do anything to repay the rattlesnakes. The snakes held him to his word. They told him to send his wife to the well so the snakes could bite her and take her life in exchange. The man was heartbroken, but he did what they asked. Afterward, the snakes were impressed that the