~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Dwarfs

{Leo}

"But there is some good news," Nico said. "The ghost I talked to explained how Hecate defeated Clytius in the first war. She used her torches to set his hair on fire. He burned to death. In other words, fire is his weakness."

   Everybody looked at Leo.

   "Oh," he said. "Okay."

   Jason nodded encouragingly, like this was great news—like he expected Leo to walk up to a towering mass of darkness, shoot a few fireballs, and solve all their problems. Leo didn't want to bring him down, but he could still hear Gaea's voice: He is the void that consumes all magic, the cold that consumes all fire, the silence that consumes all speech.

   Leo was pretty sure it would take more than a few matches to set that giant ablaze.

   "It's a good lead," Jason insisted. "At least we know how to kill the giant. And this sorceress... well, if Hecate believes Hazel can defeat her, then so do I."

   Hazel dropped her eyes. "Now we just have to reach the House of Hades, battle our way through Gaea's forces—"

   "Plus a bunch of ghosts," Nico added grimly. "The spirits in that temple may not be friendly."

   "—and find the Doors of Death," Kiara finished Hazel's sentence. "Assuming we can somehow arrive at the same time as Percy and Annabeth and rescue them."

   Frank swallowed a bite of pancake. "We can do it. We have to."

   Leo admired the big guy's optimism. He wished he shared it.

   "So, with this detour," Leo said, "I'm estimating four or five days to arrive at Epirus, assuming no delays for, you know, monster attacks and stuff."

   Jason smiled sourly. "Yeah. Those never happen."

   Leo looked at Hazel. "Hecate told you that Gaea was planning her big Wake Up party on August first, right? The Feast of Whatever?"

   "Spes," Hazel said. "The goddess of hope."

   Jason turned his fork. "Theoretically, that leaves us enough time. It's only July fifth. We should be able to close the Doors of Death, then find the giants' HQ and stop them from waking Gaea before August first."

   "Theoretically," Kiara agreed. "But I'd still like to know how we make our way through the House of Hades without going insane or dying."

   Nobody volunteered any ideas.

   Frank set down his pancake roll like it suddenly didn't taste so good. "It's July fifth. Oh, jeez, I hadn't even thought of that...."

   "Hey, man, it's cool," Leo said. "You're Canadian, right? I didn't expect you to get me an Independence Day present or anything... unless you wanted to."

   "It's not that. My grandmother... she always told me that seven was an unlucky number. It was a ghost number. And July is the seventh month."

   "Yeah, but..." Leo tapped his fingers nervously on the table. He realized he was doing the Morse code for I love you, the way he used to do with his mom, which would have been pretty embarrassing if his friends understood Morse code. "But that's just a coincidence, right?"

   Frank's expression didn't reassure him.

   "Back in China," Frank said, "in the old days, people called the seventh month the ghost month. That's when the spirit world and the human world were closest. The living and the dead could go back and forth. Tell me it's a coincidence we're searching for the Doors of Death during the ghost month."