TERRIFIED . . . annabeth chase

sixty two.

NATURALLY, THE SITUATION was worse than Val expected.

  It wouldn't have been any more predictable otherwise.

  Peering through the olive bushes at the top of the rise, she saw what looked like an out-of-control zombie frat party.

  The ruins themselves weren't that impressive: a few stone walls, a weed-choked central courtyard, a dead-end stairwell chiselled into the rock. Some plywood sheets covered a pit and a metal scaffold supported a cracked archway.

  But superimposed over the ruins was another layer of reality – a spectral mirage of the palace as it must have appeared in its heyday. Whitewashed stucco walls lined with balconies rose three stories high. Columned porticoes faced the central atrium, which had a huge fountain and bronze braziers. At a dozen banquet tables, ghouls laughed and ate and pushed one another around.

About two hundred were milling about, chasing spectral serving girls, smashing plates and cups, and basically making a nuisance of themselves.

  Most looked like Lares from Camp Jupiter – transparent purple wraiths in tunics and sandals. A few revellers had decayed bodies with grey flesh, matted clumps of hair and nasty wounds. Others seemed to be regular living mortals – some in togas, some in modern business suits or army fatigues. Val even spotted one guy in a purple Camp Jupiter T-shirt and Roman legionnaire armour.

  In the centre of the atrium, a grey-skinned ghoul in a tattered Greek tunic paraded through the crowd, holding a marble bust over his head like a sports trophy. The other ghosts cheered and slapped him on the back. As the ghoul got closer, Val noticed that he had an arrow in his throat, the feathered shaft sprouting from his Adam's apple. Even more disturbing: the bust he was holding . . . was that Zeus?

  It was hard to be sure. Most Greek god statues looked similar.

  "Our next offering!" the ghoul shouted, his voice buzzing from the arrow in his throat. "Let us feed the Earth Mother!"

  The partiers yelled and pounded their cups. The ghoul made his way to the central fountain. The crowd parted, and Val realized the fountain wasn't filled with water. From the three-foot-tall pedestal, a geyser of sand spewed upward, arcing into an umbrella-shaped curtain of white particles before spilling into the circular basin.

  The ghoul heaved the marble bust into the fountain. As soon as Zeus's head passed through the shower of sand, the marble disintegrated like it was going through a wood chipper. The sand glittered gold, the colour of ichor – godly blood. Then the entire mountain rumbled with a muffled BOOM, as if belching after a meal.

  The dead partygoers roared with approval.

  "Any more statues?" the ghoul shouted to the crowd. "No? Then I guess we'll have to wait for some real gods to sacrifice!"

  His comrades laughed and applauded as the ghoul plopped himself down at the nearest feast table.

"Ghosts," Val mumbled, sticking out her bottom lip absentmindedly. "That's a lot of them."

  Jason clenched his walking stick. "That guy just disintegrated my dad. Who does he think he is?"

  "I'm guessing that's Antinous," said Annabeth, "one of the suitors' leaders. If I remember right, it was Odysseus who shot him through the neck with that arrow."

  Piper winced. "You'd think that would keep a guy down. What about all the others? Why are there so many?"

  "I don't know," Val said. "Newer recruits for Gaia, I guess. Some must've come back to life before we closed the Doors of Death. Some are just spirits."