Havoc - Piper McLean

31: Dinner invitations

| dinner invitations |

—The sun was going down as they flew north over the Richmond Bridge, and Camilla couldn't believe the day had gone so quickly. Once again, nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly.

Piper and Leo had taken the pilot and the co-pilot seats and as much as Camilla trusted her friends, the occasional panicked looks on Leo's face were not helping her anxiety.

"Going okay?" Piper asked him. 

"Aces," he said. "So what's the Wolf House?"

Jason and Camilla knelt between their seats to join the conversation. "An abandoned mansion in the Sonoma Valley. A demigod built it—Jack London."

"He an actor?" Leo looked back momentarily which made Camilla want to smack him to look ahead while he piloted a fucking helicopter.

"Writer," She said. "Adventure stuff, right? Call of the Wild? White Fang?" 

"Yeah," Jason said. "He was a son of Mercury—I mean, Hermes. He was an adventurer, traveled the world. He was even a hobo for a while. Then he made a fortune writing. He bought a big ranch in the country and decided to build this huge mansion—the Wolf House."

"Named that 'cause he wrote about wolves?" Leo guessed.

"Partially," Jason said. "But the site, and the reason he wrote about wolves—he was dropping hints about his personal experience. There're a lot of holes in his life story—how he was born, who his dad was, why he wandered around so much—stuff you can only explain if you know he was a demigod."

The bay slipped behind them, and the helicopter continued north. Ahead of them, yellow hills rolled out as far as Camilla could see.

"So Jack London went to Camp Half-Blood," Leo guessed.

"No," Jason said. "No, he didn't."

"Jason," Camilla swallowed the lump in her throat, "you're freaking me out with the mysterious talk. Are you remembering your past or not?"

Camilla got that familiar itch under her skin, the way the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She had gotten the feeling at camp as well, this voice at the back of her head telling her she wasn't meant to be there. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong— Not Camp Half-blood.

"Pieces," Jason said. "Only pieces. None of it good. The Wolf House is on sacred ground. It's where London started his journey as a child—where he found out he was a demigod. That's why he returned there. He thought he could live there, claim that land, but it wasn't meant for him. The Wolf House was cursed. It burned in a fire a week before he and his wife were supposed to move in. A few years later, London died, and his ashes were buried on the site."

"So," Piper said, "how do you know all this?"

A shadow crossed Jason's face. Probably just a cloud, but Camilla could swear the shape looked like an eagle.

"I started my journey there too," Jason said. "It's a powerful place for demigods, a dangerous place. If Gaea can claim it, use its power to entomb Hera on the solstice and raise Porphyrion—that might be enough to awaken the earth goddess fully."

Camilla looked at Leo, because she wanted to distract herself from whatever that pit in her stomach meant. He still looked unsure, though he grabbed the joystick and guided the copter at full speed. He at least looked like he knew what he was doing.