orenda [leo valdez]

lxxvii. Hitting People with Dirty Rags

❝when i wake up in the morning, i am thinking of you.

when i go to sleep, i am thinking of you.

and all those hours in between, i think of us.❞

△△△

They gathered at the window and peered down. The emperor was nowhere to be seen. Some of their friends stood in the roundabout below, gazing up at us with confused expressions.

"A little warning, perhaps?" Jimmy called.

He had run out of enemies to electrocute. He and Hunter Kowalski now stood unscathed in the middle of a mosaic of fallen glass shards.

"Where's Commodus?" Apollo asked.

Hunter shrugged. "We didn't see him."

"What do you mean?" Apollo demanded. "He literally just flew out this window."

"No," Leo corrected. "He Lityerses-ly flew out the window. Am I right? Those were some sweet moves, man."

Kira frowned, squeezing her eyes shut as she remembered what Lit did to her. She realized that Leo didn't know that he was the one that had done it. It was probably best that it stayed that way.

Lit nodded. "Thanks."

The two bumped fists as if they hadn't spent the last few days talking about how much they wanted to kill each other.

"Well," Thalia said. "I guess we should do a sweep of the neighborhood. If Commodus is still out there..." She gazed down South Illinois Street. "Wait, is that Meg?"

Rounding the corner were three karpoi, holding Meg McCaffrey aloft as if she were bodysurfing.

"The Throne of Memory," Apollo told Emmie. "We need it now!"

They met the karpoi in the building's front foyer. One of the Peacheses had retrieved the Arrow of Dodona from under the Mercedes's driver's seat and now carried it in his teeth like a pirate's accessory. He offered it to Apollo. He slipped the arrow back into his quiver.

Josephine and Leo rushed in from a side room, carrying between them an old backpack—the Throne of Memory. They placed it in the center of a still-smoldering Persian rug.

The peach babies carefully lowered Meg into the seat.

"Calypso," Apollo said. "Notepad?"

"Got it!" She brandished her small legal tablet and pencil.

Apollo knelt next to Meg. A few feet on the other side of him, Kira knelt as well, worried for her old friend. Her skin was too blue, her breath too ragged. Apollo placed his hands on the sides of her face and checked her eyes. Her pupils were pinpoints. Her consciousness seemed to be withdrawing, getting smaller and smaller.