The Cult of Dionysus

Callida

I'm a mess. My head spins. Just last night, I'd dreamed of Leo and Calypso, riding into the sunset. I'd woken up irritated. Then I had a work meeting, which calmed my nerves. After that, I taught a particularly fun axe-throwing lesson, then I'd tended to my garden. All in all, not a bad morning. But of course, something had to happen.

I take Leo by the arm and lead him down the hall, walking slowly as to not hurt his back any more. He links his arm tightly in mine, and I try to ignore the fact that he's trembling.

"So... you, like, run this place?" He asks as we walk.

"Yeah." I nod.

"How?" He asks. "I mean, this building is all yours?"

"Technically, it's my dad's." I admit. "I can't own a building. I'm sixteen."

"Right." He nods. "So, uh, he pays for everything and you run the place?"

"Uh, no." I feel my face redden. "I pay for everything."

"What?"

We reach the elevator, and I scan my keycard. The buttons for the upper floors illuminate, their labels appearing beside them with a soft orange light. I press the button for the third floor. Bunks, MedBay.

"Long story." I tell him.

"And, all those traps outside..."

I can't help but laugh a little. "Yeah, I took some inspiration from our old friend donkey-ears."

"You designed them?"

"Some of them." I explain. "Gio did the others."

"Who's Gio?"

I feel like I could explode. There's so much I want to tell him about my adventures these past seven months. I want to tell him about my new friends and my new life and all the cool stuff I've designed. I want to introduce him to my campers and give him a tour of the compound and laugh and joke like we used to. But there's this big wall up in my heart that I had to put up. I needed to be okay without him, and I managed to do so, but it involved a lot of sleepless nights convincing myself I hate him, that he's scum, and that he's lower than Tartarus.

"Um, one of my campers."

"One of your campers." He repeats, sounding dazed. "Sorry, just...hard to wrap my head around."

"I know." I nod. "I've had to wrap my head around a lot of stuff too lately."

"I'm going to keep saying sorry. Eventually, you'll have to forgive me. We're Calli and Leo."

My heart pangs, but I keep my cool. "I doubt it."

The doors open to the third floor. A couple demigods are milling about, but most of them are either up in the observation room or out scouting or running errands.

I stop at Shelby's room, which she shares with Amber and another girl named Sheila. "Hey, Shelbs. Can I get your help?"

She stands from her bunk, where she'd been studying up on her Latin. "Sure."

I walk with her and Leo, who has fallen silent in her presence. She sits him down in the MedBay, which I've designed to look like an elementary school nurse's office. The walls are splattered with a mix of smiley-face posters and "How bad is your pain?" charts.

She removes Leo's shirt to get a better look at the damage. I stand in the doorway and try not to think about the night before Leo died.

I do feel bad for him. While Shelby is a good healer, she doesn't have the most delicate hands. She's kind of a rough person overall. She gets right to the point (maybe because she's an archer), and doesn't sugarcoat her words or her feelings. And she definitely isn't gentle when you're in pain.