“Wow,” I mumbled, watching the coins form into a pretty yet totally worthless mound of glittering gold. “This must be what a slot machine feels like. Jackpot.”
“Hush,” Samyaza said, spreading the coins into a circle around him. He muttered his incantations, the sweetness of the celestial language threading its way through my ears, through the corners of my mind. The coins lifted into orbit, spinning with Samyaza as their axis.
Artemis looked on with her arms folded, frowning. “Looks about the same to me. I think? What do I know.”
“Not quite,” Sam said, tracing a circle with his finger around a group of coins that looked very much like every other. “There. You see that? This is California. And here, that’s Valero. That wasn’t there the other day.”
I tried to stare at what he was pointing at specifically, but couldn’t make it out. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s another nephilim in town.” Samyaza frowned. “And considering how you had Dionysus spread rumors about looking for one in Valero, I’d say the Hunger is going to be very curious about this one.”
Didn’t Rani and Royce let slip about more nephilim in Valero? My blood ran ice cold, my mouth dry when I spoke again. “Where are they, exactly? Can you tell?”
“Hand me the map,” Samyaza said, taking it from Apollo, unfolding it and studying it. His eyes went huge, then quickly darkened, the glyphs on his skin shining bright. “You’re not going to like this. The nephilim is near the meat locker Apollo identified. Near, if not already in it.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I said. The coin that Samyaza had indicated was still glowing, its gold untarnished and bright. But for how much longer? “We need to attack and save them. Right now.”
“Is that going to be a good idea?” Florian said. “We can’t attack by day. People will see. The normals, I mean.”
“We can’t afford to wait,” I said. “We have to go, now.”
“No arguments here,” Samyaza said, dismissing the coins, sending them tumbling to the ground, tinkling like fallen stars.
“Ook,” Priscilla said, frowning, a staff brandished in each of her huge hands. “Ook, ook.”
Artemis shook her head. “I know you want to help, sweetie, but not this time. We can’t afford to have you out in broad daylight. There’s going to be enough problems as it is, depending on whether Mason punches their HQ into rubble or sets it on fire.”
I glowered at her, but I couldn’t fault her for reading my mind. Priscilla, however, was pissed. She shook her staves above her head, screeching and shrieking in Artemis’s face. Artemis yelled right back. The argument would have escalated in volume and violence if it weren’t for the roaring in the distance. Priscilla stopped, her head poking this way and that, listening.
“What the fuck is that?” Artemis said, softly so she could hear.
Something was thundering through the underbrush. Something big, and probably angry. I lowered my hands, ready to conjure a sword and shield. Artemis drew her bow from out of thin air, and Priscilla pounded the butts of her staves into the earth, ready to fire. The roaring grew louder, coming to a head as a golden convertible shot out of the bushes in an explosion of leaves and twigs.
“Apollo,” Artemis snapped. “Quit with the dramatics.”
Apollo just laughed.
“Oh, shit,” I said, recognizing the car, its gleaming golden chassis, the flaming wheels. “It’s your chariot.”
“My sweet, sweet baby,” Apollo said, stepping up to the car and patting it on the hood.
“Beautiful muscle car,” Samyaza said, nodding approvingly.
“What?” Florian said. “That’s clearly a four-wheel drive.”
Apollo grinned and slapped the top of his car. “It’s different for everybody. You see what you want to see. Me, personally? I see it as the best way to travel.” He thumped the roof again, and the doors opened all at once. Apollo hopped into the driver’s seat, one hand gripping the steering wheel. “Get in, losers.”
Priscilla dropped her staves and folded her arms, huffing as she turned her nose up at the rest of us. Artemis patted her on the hand, only to be rebuffed.
“The next time this happens, if it’s at night, you can come,” Artemis said kindly. “I promise. We can work better by moonlight. Hey, if any of the Hunger bastards survive, maybe I’ll bring one home for you as a punching bag.”
Priscilla scoffed again at the joke, but I caught her cracking a tiny smile.
“Hold the fort for us, Priscilla,” I said. “We need you to protect Paradise.”
She thumped her chest with renewed pride. “Ook.”
“Also, could you check in on Box? I don’t think we should take him for this one. Maybe feed him if we’re not back for dinner?”
Priscilla scowled at me, then lifted a single finger. Rude.
“Shotgun,” Artemis yelled, sitting down next to her brother.
Florian, Sam, and I piled dutifully into Apollo’s car, the inside of it somehow more spacious than it looked on the outside. I shifted in my seat, quietly enjoying the odd warmth of the golden leather interiors against my skin. I’d been in Apollo’s chariot in the past, once when he’d given me a lift, back in Humpuck. The flaming wheels were just special effects installed by Hephaestus as a custom feature, nothing actually destructive. Apollo turned them off anyway, because like he said, you don’t just go cruising down Santa Monica or whatever with your tires actually on fire.
It was a pretty smooth ride, considering the potential power the chariot held as, theoretically, the very thing that drew the sun across the sky. Maybe that was all hyperbole, anyway, just fancy stories the ancients told each other, a way to explain the cycle of day and night. But the way that Apollo and Artemis had strapped themselves in so tightly was slightly worrying. And they were suddenly wearing matching sunglasses,
