‘As of this moment,’ Sadie growled, ‘my brother’s name is Punching Bag. Seems he hasn’t been telling me everything.’
‘Ah.’ Annabeth had to fight the urge to scoot away from her new friend. She feared those glowing angry hieroglyphs might explode. ‘Awkward. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ Sadie said. ‘I’ll rather enjoy bashing my brother’s face in. But first tell me everything – about yourself, demigods, Greeks and whatever it might have to do with our evil canine friend here.’
Annabeth told her what she could.
Usually she wasn’t so quick to trust, but she’d had a lot of experience reading people. She liked Sadie immediately: the combat boots, the purple highlights, the attitude … In Annabeth’s experience, untrustworthy people weren’t so up-front about wanting to bash someone’s face in. They certainly didn’t help an unconscious stranger and offer a healing potion.
Annabeth described Camp Half-Blood. She recounted some of her adventures battling gods and giants and Titans. She explained how she’d spotted the two-headed lion-wolf-crab at the West Fourth Street station and decided to follow it.
‘So here I am,’ Annabeth summed up.
Sadie’s mouth quivered. She looked as if she might start yelling or crying. Instead, she broke down in a fit of the giggles.
Annabeth frowned. ‘Did I say something funny?’
‘No, no …’ Sadie snorted. ‘Well … it is a bit funny. I mean, we’re sitting on the beach talking about Greek gods. And a camp for demigods, and –’
‘It’s all true!’
‘Oh, I believe you. It’s too ridiculous not to be true. It’s just that each time my world gets stranger, I think: Right. We’re at maximum oddness now. At least I know the full extent of it. First, I find out my brother and I are descended from the pharaohs and have magic powers. All right. No problem. Then I find out my dead father has merged his soul with Osiris and become the lord of the dead. Brilliant! Why not? Then my uncle takes over the House of Life and oversees hundreds of magicians around the world. Then my boyfriend turns out to be a hybrid magician boy/immortal god of funerals. And all the while I’m thinking, Of course! Keep calm and carry on! I’ve adjusted! And then you come along on a random Thursday, la-di-da, and say, Oh, by the way, Egyptian gods are just one small part of the cosmic absurdity. We’ve also got the Greeks to worry about! Hooray!’
Annabeth couldn’t follow everything Sadie had said – a funeral god boyfriend? – but she had to admit that giggling about it was healthier than curling into a ball and sobbing.
‘Okay,’ she admitted. ‘It all sounds a little crazy, but I guess it makes sense. My teacher Chiron … for years he’s been telling me that ancient gods are immortal because they’re part of the fabric of civilization. If Greek gods can stick around all these millennia, why not the Egyptians?’
‘The more the merrier,’ Sadie agreed. ‘But, erm, what about this little doggie?’ She picked up a tiny seashell and bounced it off the head of the Labrador monster, which snarled in irritation. ‘One minute it’s sitting on the table in our library – a harmless artefact, a stone fragment from some statue, we think. The next minute it comes to life and breaks out of Brooklyn House. It shreds our magical wards, ploughs through Felix’s penguins and shrugs off my spells like they’re nothing.’
‘Penguins?’ Annabeth shook her head. ‘No. Forget I asked.’
She studied the dog creature as it strained against its bonds. Red Greek letters and hieroglyphs swirled around it as if trying to form new symbols – a message Annabeth could almost read.
‘Will those ropes hold?’ she asked. ‘They look like they’re weakening.’
‘No worries,’ Sadie assured her. ‘Those ropes have held gods before. And not small gods, mind you. Extra-large ones.’
‘Um, okay. So you said the dog was part of a statue. Any idea what statue?’
‘None.’ Sadie shrugged. ‘Cleo, our librarian, was just researching that question when Fido here woke up.’
‘But it has to be connected to the other monster – the wolf and the lion heads. I got the impression they’d just come to life, too. They’d fused together and weren’t used to working as a team. They got on that train searching for something – probably this dog.’
Sadie fiddled with her silver pendant. ‘A monster with three heads: a lion, a wolf and a dog. All sticking out of … what was that conical thing? A shell? A torch?’