“Wait,” I said. “What is Will’s ‘thing’?”
Will kept his focus on Nico. “Do I have to?”
“We can’t use our weapons for light,” Nico reminded him. “And we’ll need a little bit more, because the trogs don’t need any. I’d rather be able to see them.”
Will wrinkled his nose. “Fine.” He set down his pack and stripped off his linen overshirt, leaving just his tank top.
I still had no idea what he was doing, though the girls didn’t seem to mind letting him do his thing. Did Will keep a concealed flashlight in his undershirt? Was he going to provide light by rubbing lichen on himself and smiling brilliantly?
Whatever the case, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the trogs. I vaguely recalled a British Invasion band from the 1960s called the Troggs. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this subterranean race might all have mop-top hairdos and black turtlenecks and would use the word groovy a lot. I did not need that level of horror in my life.
Will took a deep breath. When he exhaled…
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. We’d been in near-total darkness so long, I wasn’t sure why Will’s outline suddenly seemed clearer. I could see the texture of his jeans, the individual tufts of his hair, the blue of his eyes. His skin was glowing with a soft, warm golden light as if he’d ingested sunshine.
“Whoa,” Meg said.
Rachel’s eyebrows floated toward her hairline.
Nico smirked. “Friends, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.”
“Could you not make a big deal about it?” Will asked.
I was speechless. How could anyone not make a big deal about this? As far as demigod powers went, glowing in the dark was perhaps not as showy as skeleton-summoning or tomato-vine mastery, but it was still impressive. And, like Will’s skill at healing, it was gentle, useful, and exactly what we needed in a pinch.
“I’m so proud,” I said.
Will’s face turned the color of sunlight shining through a glass of cranberry juice. “Dad, I’m just glowing. I’m not graduating at the top of my class.”
“I’ll be proud when you do that, too,” I assured him.
“Anyway.” Nico’s lips quivered like he was trying not to giggle. “I’ll call the cavern-runners now. Everybody stay calm, okay?”
“Why are they called cavern-runners?” Rachel asked.
Nico held up his hand, indicating Wait or You’re about to find out.
He faced the darkness and shouted, “Troglodytes! I am Nico di Angelo, son of Hades! I have returned with four companions!”
Shuffling and clicking filled the cavern, as if Nico’s voice had dislodged a million bats. One moment, we were alone. The next moment, an army of troglodytes stood before us as if they’d materialized out of hyperspace. With unsettling certainty, I realized they had run here from wherever they’d been—yards away? miles away?—with speed that rivaled that of Hermes himself.
Nico’s warnings suddenly made sense to me. These creatures were so fast they could have killed us before we had time to draw a breath. If I’d had a weapon in hand, and if I’d raised it instinctively, accidentally…I would now be the grease spot formerly known as Lester formerly known as Apollo.
The troglodytes looked even stranger than the 1960s band that had appropriated their name. They were small humanoids, the tallest barely Meg’s height, with vaguely froglike features: wide thin mouths, recessed noses, and giant, brown, heavily lidded orbs for eyes. Their skin came in every shade from obsidian to chalk. Bits of stone and moss decorated their dark plaited hair. They wore a riot of clothing styles from modern jeans and T-shirts to 1920s business suits to Colonial-era frilly shirts and silk waistcoats.
The real showstopper, however, was their selection of hats, some piled three or four high on their heads: tricorns, bowlers, racing caps, top hats, hard hats, ski caps, and baseball caps.
The trogs looked like a group of rowdy schoolchildren who’d been set loose in a costume store, told to try on whatever they wanted, and then allowed to crawl through the mud in their new outfits.
“We see you, Nico di Angelo!” said a trog in a miniature George Washington costume. His speech was interspersed with clicks, screeches, and growls, so it actually sounded like “CLICK. We—grr—see you—SCREEE—Nico—CLICK—di Angelo—grr.”
George Washingtrog gave us a pointy-toothed grin. “Are these the sacrifices you promised? The trogs are hungry!”
MY LIFE DIDN’T FLASH BEFORE MY EYES, but I did find myself reviewing the past for anything I might have done to offend Nico di Angelo.
I imagined him saying Yes, these are the sacrifices!, then taking Will’s hand and skipping away into the darkness while Rachel, Meg, and I were devoured by an army of costumed, muddy miniature frogmen.
“These are not the sacrifices,” Nico said, allowing me to breathe again. “But I have brought you a better offering! I see you, O great Screech-Bling!”
Nico did not say screech, mind you. He screeched in a way that told me he’d been practicing Troglodytish. He had a lovely, ear-piercing accent.
The trogs leaned in, sniffing and waiting, while Nico held out his hand to Will like gimme.
Will reached into his bag. He pulled out the desiccated lizard and handed to Nico, who unwrapped it like a holy relic and held it aloft.
The crowd let out a collective gasp. “Oooh!”
Screech-Bling’s nostrils quivered. I thought his tricorn hat might pop off his head from excitement. “Is that a—GRR—five-lined skink—CLICK?”
“It is—GRR,” Nico said. “This was difficult to find, O Screech-Bling, Wearer of the Finest Hats.”
Screech-Bling licked his lips. He was drooling all over his cravat. “A rare gift indeed. We often find Italian wall lizards in our domain. Turtles. Wood frogs. Rat snakes. Occasionally, if we are very lucky, a pit viper.”
“Tasty!” shrieked a trog in the back. “Tasty pit vipers!”
Several other trogs screeched and growled in agreement.
“But a five-lined skink,” Screech-Bling said, “is a delicacy we seldom see.”
“My gift to you,” Nico said. “A peace offering in hope of friendship.”
Screech-Bling took the skink in his long-fingered, pointy-clawed hands.
