Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

[Undated entry, c.1958]

This is hell. I can't believe he did this to me. My voice, my freedom ...

I'm going to die here. I can't see any other end. Then again, I've never been able to see my own future.

Oh Cath. Why did you get on that plane?

[Undated entry, some time after the first]

Oh gods, it happened again. The first time, I thought it was just bad luck, demigods running into crap like we always do, but now ...

Something's drawing them here.

'Your voice will only lead people to their deaths,' Apollo told me. What if that's part of this curse as well?

[Undated entry, about a week after the last]

Someone else arrived today. It was—I can't even describe it. Messy. Awful. I'll have nightmares for months. And this is coming from a guy who got choke-slammed by the Lord of the Underworld as a kid.

[Undated entry, some time after the last]

I hate the monsters. They sit there, judging me with their red eyes. Sometimes I wish they'd just eat me and be done with it.

No. I don't mean that.

I hate all of this, but I ... I don't want to die.

Maybe what Apollo is really punishing me for is being a coward.

But the leucrotae ... every time I open my mouth, I have to hear them. Maybe I just won't speak ever again. I'll just write in here. That will work, right?

[Undated entry, about five days after the last]

I didn't even last a week. I tried to keep quiet when the last kid came by. Maybe they'd find a way out before the leucrotae cornered them. I don't know what the rest of the mansion's turned into. I haven't seen it since I got shut in here.

But I heard it all. The scream. The monsters snapping their jaws.

So I called out. I guess the leucrotae still have that bit of decency left in them. They let the kid find me. Oh gods, am I actually starting to defend them?

More likely they just prefer to eat at sunset.

If the kids are going to die anyway, I may as well give them time to get used to the idea. Help them in their final hours. Last rites, and all that, right?

Oh, who am I kidding. It's not for them. It's for me. They're my only company. My only link to the outside world.

If they're going to die anyway, is it so wrong to get something out of it?

[Undated entry, about fifteen years after the last]

Is it enough, Apollo? Have I been punished enough? It's been years. What happened to 'the end of the curse?' The safe—why hasn't anyone claimed it yet?

Oh gods. The safe.

What if it was all a lie? What if it's just here to lure everyone in? What if it's really to blame for everything?

Maybe I should look into it.

But ... I don't dare. Every psychic sense I possess assures me that if I try to break it open, what I'm going through now will be nothing compared to what would happen then.

Which means all I can do is watch kids break in, talk to them, and let them get eaten. How many have there been already? Two hundred? Three? I'm losing count. And they're always kids. I don't know if adult demigods just aren't susceptible to the draw of the treasure. Or maybe they're just wise enough to know not to poke their nose where it doesn't belong.

I'm not sure I gained all that much wisdom living to my ripe old age.

How long has it been? I need to start keeping better track of the dates.

June 21, 1978

I think that's the date, anyway. Gods, it's been twenty years. I need to organise my thoughts. I'm going crazy stewing in them. And damn Apollo if I'm going to sit with those monsters just to talk it out to myself. Maybe if I write out the whole story, I can make sense of my whole miserable life.

I guess I should start with Cath.

As far as I can remember, she was always different. Both of us were—we never really fit in at school, but that's the best thing about having a twin. Even if the other kids ostracised us, or called us names, we always had each other to rely on.

Mother said we were strange because of our father. We'd never met him as kids; Mother said he'd left before we were even born.

'But he Saw both of you.' She always said saw like it should be spelt with a capital S. 'He told me I would give birth to a pair of twins, a boy and a girl. And that you would be special, like him.'

If 'special' meant 'seeing strange things', then he was definitely right. Nobody ever believed us when we said the lunch lady had a scaly tail, or the librarian had one goat leg and one bronze. I probably would have thought I was crazy if Cath hadn't seen the exact same things.

But Cath didn't just see the weird things that were in front of us. She'd tell me about things that were going to happen, too, things that no one could possibly have known. And the amazing thing was, Cath's predictions always came true. When she told me I'd fail my math test (which I didn't want to believe), or that the cute girl in Social Studies would kiss me on the cheek next Tuesday (I wanted to believe that, but didn't quite dare), good or bad, it all happened.

It made a good game at first, listening to her predict next week's school lunch menu, or whether the Dodgers would make the Major League finals (if ten-year-olds could bet, we'd have made a fortune). She'd deliver her predictions, no matter how trivial, in a silly, faux-mystical voice that made me crack up. I'd ask her the most random, unpredictable stuff just to trip her up, but she got it right every time.

As we got older, her visions got darker. Car accidents and collapsing buildings and other things that made her blood drain from her face after Seeing them. I remember one day when we were eleven, she woke up crying.

'Something awful is going to happen,' she insisted.

'Maybe it was just a bad dream, I said. 'You've got to be wrong some time.'

Cath shook her head. 'It's never just a bad dream.'

It took a lot of coaxing before she told me what she'd seen: firebombs falling from the sky, ships exploding, an island consumed by flames. It seemed so fantastical, I convinced her it couldn't be a real vision. Something like that just couldn't happen.

Three days later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and our country was at war.

I never doubted her again after that.

Not long after we turned twelve, I knew she'd seen something really bad because she refused to tell me about it, however much I pleaded.

'If I say it, there's twice the chance it'll come true.'

'But maybe we can change it.'

'We can't.'

'How do you know?'

'I just do, Hal!' She stamped her foot. 'Stop bugging me.'

Three weeks later, Mother came home from the doctor and sat us down for a 'chat.' When she told us she had cancer and we had to go live with our gran, Cath's face was grim and pale, but not at all surprised. I knew then what she'd Seen.

I wouldn't talk to her for a month after that.

But on the day of our mother's funeral, I couldn't really stay mad at Cath. We were all each other had left. Gran was okay, but she was kind of absent. She didn't bake cookies, or sing, or tell us stories about our father like Mother had.

The funeral service was at our old house in Richmond. It had been a gift from our father before he 'left' Mother. (I never knew if this meant he was dead and had left it to her in his will, or if he was some rich jerk who'd fobbed her off with a mansion in lieu of child support.) Gran didn't want to live in what she called an 'unnecessarily extravagant house,' so she brought us back to her apartment in Washington D.C. Cath and I hated it there. The place was so tiny, we had to share a room with barely a foot of space between our beds. The walls were so thin, you could hear whenever the neighbours flushed the toilet.

We sat cross-legged on my childhood bed, not speaking. The room had been stripped this morning. We'd only been allowed to fill one tiny suitcase of stuff to bring to Gran's. Everything else was packed away in boxes. I guess she meant to sell them.

The door to our walk-in closet was ajar. I stared at the only thing left inside, a two-foot-square metal safe that no one could figure out how to open. As far as I could remember, it had always been in my room. Maybe Mother knew what was inside, but we'd never get to ask her now.

'Hal?' Cath looked at me with sad eyes. 'Are you still mad at me?'

I shook my head. 'Can you See what's going to happen to us?'

Her brow furrowed. 'I don't know. I ... I never see myself, you know.'

'Me, then. Because what happens for me will happen for you. We're sticking together after all.'

'I'm afraid, Hal. What if I see something awful?'

'Then I'll change it,' I promised. 'But I can't change things if I don't know what's going to happen. You have to try, Cath.'

She closed her eyes and clasped her hands together as though in prayer.

Then the strangest thing happened. A green mist swirled around Cath. She stood and her eyes flew open. She had pale green eyes like mine, but now they were glowing like a cat's. Green smoke billowed from her mouth.

'A half-blood of the eldest gods,' she said, 'shall reach sixteen against all odds.'

Cath's voice came out in a rasp, strong and harsh. She sounded even more ancient than Gran. I didn't understand what she was saying at all. Half-blood? Gods? What did this have to do with either of us?

But Cath—or whatever was speaking through her—wasn't done.

'And see the world in endless sleep
The hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap
A single choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze.'

Lightning arched outside the window, illuminating the statue of Robert E Lee that stood opposite our house. Thunder clapped overhead, so loud that I thought the window panes might shatter. The mist rushed out of Cath all at once and flooded the room with an eerie, mystical light. She collapsed to the ground.

'Cath!' Stunned, I was too late to catch her. I lifted her gently by the shoulders. She lay limply in my arms, but she was still breathing.

'Wow,' said a voice. 'That was some prophecy.'

I dropped Cath and spun around. Lounging against the door frame was a golden-haired teenager—and when I say golden, I don't just mean blond. His hair was literally glittering, like it had been made from actual gold filaments. Even his tanned skin sparkled like it had been dusted with gold.

'Who are you?' I demanded. Even as I asked the question, I got the sense that I should know this guy. Yet I was was pretty sure I'd never seen him before.

'The first time the spirit of Delphi takes hold is always disconcerting,' Golden Boy said. 'We should let her rest.'

He motioned for me to lay Cath on the bed. After I did, he crooked his finger at me like, come, let's go talk.

We went onto the hallway landing. I crossed my arms and stared at him. 'Are you gonna tell me who you are? And how you got in here?'

Golden Boy laughed. 'Surely you know me, son?'

It might have been a figure of speech—plenty of people in Virginia call any old kid 'son'—but I had the feeling this stranger meant it literally. Like I was really his son. But that was impossible. This kid couldn't be more than eighteen. I wasn't great at math, but even I could work out he couldn't be a parent of a twelve-year-old.

'Stop joking around. Who are you really?'

'Your father. The god Apollo.'

My first thought was that I must have heard him wrong. Maybe he'd said, 'your father took good photos,' or 'your first heather's appalling.' Sure, none of those sentences made sense, but neither did some sparkling boy in his late teens showing up out of nowhere and claiming he was my father and a god.

Wasn't Apollo one of those myths the ancient Greeks made up to explain how the sun moved across the sky?

My face must have reflected my confusion, because Apollo sighed. 'Perhaps this form isn't all that convincing. It's my favourite way to appear, but I guess it doesn't really scream, "Dad!"'

Suddenly, he seemed to age about twenty years. He was still as handsome as before, with finely chiselled features, but his skin turned more weather-beaten. Little crow's feet etched themselves into the corners of his eyes. They'd been shining too brightly for me to make out their actual colour before this, but now they dimmed into a pale green—the exact shade of Cath's and mine.

I tried to wrap my head around what I was seeing. Little things Mother had told us swam before me—'he seemed to be made of light; he was the most dazzling man I've ever seen.'

'You're ... you're a god,' I said stupidly.

'Yes.'

'But—but you can't be.' I struggled to find a good argument. 'If you're a god ... you would save Mother! Cath wouldn't be ...' I gestured to her prone form. 'And—and—the war, and stuff! How can you let all these crappy things happen?'

Apollo sighed. 'I'm sorry about your mother, Halcyon.'

I stepped back. I was pretty sure I hadn't told this guy my name, let alone my full name. I never introduced myself that way.

'But even if we are gods, it doesn't mean we can make everything peachy with a snap of our fingers,' Apollo continued. 'The laws of the universe still have to be followed. And death—death is an unshakeable law of Fate.'

I glanced at Cath. 'And my sister? What did you do to her? What was that thing you said, about the Delta spirit, or—'

'The spirit of Delphi,' he corrected. 'My Oracle.'

I didn't know much about ancient history or mythology, but I was pretty sure Oracle meant something to do with prophets and visions.

'You were born special, yourself and Catharine,' Apollo said. 'I warned your mother before you were born. I told her provisions needed to be made. I left her this house,' he waved his hands at the walls around us, 'so that you would have a safe place to grow up. A treasure lies within these walls, one that scares away the monsters of the outside world.'

'When you say monsters,' I said carefully, 'do you mean like Hitler, or the Japs?'

'No. The war ... well, that's a whole different story. I mean monsters like the creatures of Greek mythology. You've heard of the Chimera? The Minotaur?'

'Er, sort of.' Our mother had told us bedtime stories out of this huge compendium of Greek myths that she owned. But she'd never said they were real.

'Did Mother know who ... er—what you are?'

'Not entirely. Most mortals have trouble seeing through the Mist. It hides our world from their knowledge, so they wouldn't believe it even if they did see it. Their brains simply re-interpret it. Even demigods such as yourself are often fooled.'

'So the strange things we can see ... that's because we're—I'm a ...' Demigod. My head was still reeling. Half mortal. Half god. Half-blood. Me.

And the mysterious lines Cath had recited—a half-blood of the eldest gods. Did that meant there were children of other gods, too? Were there others like us?

'Partly,' Apollo said. 'But you have also been able to see more than most. You were born with the Sight, son.'

'But ... Cath's the one who can see the future, not me.'

Apollo nodded. 'The spirit of Delphi has chosen her. She is now the new Oracle. But you, my son, have the power to See as well. Your power differs from Catharine's, I believe—more localised, more specific. But it is just as dangerous. Maybe more.'

A chill went down my spine. 'Dangerous?'

Apollo waved his hands at Cath. 'A prophecy like that, falling from the blue without a request ... it is a warning from the Fates. A difficult future lies ahead. People—and gods—get angry when they learn of such things.'

'What does it mean?' I asked. 'All those things about a half-blood, and the world sleeping, and a single choice?'

Apollo shrugged. 'Who knows? Prophecies are never fully clear until they come to pass.'

'But ... if they don't say anything, why do people even bother with them?'

'Because we all want to think we can control the future.' Apollo looked closely at me. 'Wasn't that what you wanted your sister to do earlier?'

I didn't ask how he knew. My face went hot. 'That's ... different.'

'Is it? Catharine has already begun to understand, but you will need to learn this lesson, Hal. It is not always wise to peer purposefully into the looking glass of Fate, and even less so to speak of it freely,' Apollo warned.

'Why not? Why not, if I can tell what's going to happen? Wouldn't it be good to know?'

Apollo laughed, but it was a harsh, humourless sound. 'Because the future isn't a Roman road from A to Z. Do you know how many decisions, how many choices people make that go into producing a single outcome? What you see, what a prophecy says—that's just the end point. Even the choice to change the future may be the exact thing that causes that end to occur.'

He looked at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to nod in understanding. When I didn't, he sighed. 'I can see you're going to need help. Your sister—the Oracle will give her a modicum of protection now; the spirit will speak through her when approached, but otherwise, she will be relieved of the burden of Sight. But you, Hal—you will come into your own powers soon enough. You must learn to control them. To look only when it is unavoidable. And never to speak of what you see.'

'I don't have any powers.'

'You will,' Apollo promised. 'You were born with them. A gift and a curse. But listen. There's a place for kids like you and Cath.'

'Like us? You mean, who can see the future and everything?'

Apollo shook his head. 'Demigods. Some of my other children go there, and kids of other Olympians ... you would have ended up there at some point anyway, but under the circumstances ... I shall ask them to send a protector for you right away.'

'A protector? Like a bodyguard? What kind of place is this?' I wondered if it was some mental institution, and this had been a set-up all along to get me committed. Though heck, the way things were going, maybe I did belong in the nuthouse. Maybe this was all just one big hallucination.

'A summer camp,' Apollo said. 'Camp Half-Blood.' He looked at Cath, still lying on my bed, and his expression softened. 'She will make a fine Camp Oracle. I shall have to tell Chiron to make the proper arrangements.'

'Who's Chiron?'

'You'll find out soon enough. The important thing is, a satyr will be here to pick you up tomorrow. Get yourself and your sister ready.' He pulled a pair of shades from his pocket and put them on, such that he looked like some bizarre rock star. 'I gotta go. Look away when I start to glow, or you'll burn up.'

'I'll what?'

'Oh, and one more thing—tell no one what your sister has said. The gods aren't gonna be happy with this one. They're already mad about what the current sons of the Big Three are getting up to. I need to find a good way to break this one to Dad.'

With this cryptic comment, he glowed so bright that I was sure the blackout curtains wouldn't hide it. I averted my gaze like he'd warned me to. When I looked again, he was gone.

+++

I won't go into the details of everything we did at camp, because I'd run out of space in this book before I even got through a month. Anyway, none of it was really important.

Cath and I settled into camp life, and for a while, everything was great. We learnt archery and first aid and music (all important skills our dad valued, apparently). I rough-housed with my new friends in cabin seven (our 'siblings', weird as it was to think about), roasted marshmallows at the nightly campfires, and got in trouble for replacing the campfire songs with off-colour lyrics.

Unlike at school, no one thought we were weird. Our cabin mates had strange powers, too. Sarah Yong could hit a moving target with an arrow from half a mile away. Martin Salazar could play any musical instrument you gave him, even if he'd never seen it before. It seemed Apollo had a whole host of godly skills to pass on.

But no one else had the gift of prophecy. Cath's status as the Oracle easily made her one of the most popular kids at camp. The only way to obtain a quest was to get a prophecy from her, so everyone wanted to be on her good side, even though she insisted that she wasn't really the one doling them out.

Just like Apollo had promised, I started to get glimpses of the future as well. When I took my friends' hands and concentrated hard, images flickered before my eyes like a telephone call with bad reception. Our friends thought it was funny when I did this, but no one ever believed the stuff I told them.

'Come off it, Hal,' they'd say. 'Cath's the Oracle, not you.'

Sometimes we couldn't tell if what I predicted had happened. I saw that Sarah would get trapped in a time warp on her quest ('Avoid anything with the word "Lotus" at all cost,' I told her. 'Especially hotels and casinos.'); but we couldn't be sure if she did or not, since she never returned.

Even when little things did come true, the others insisted it was a coincidence—'Anyone could have guessed that Eric would capsize his canoe; he does it twice a week!'

And sometimes I was wrong. I prophesied that Martin would get a windfall, but by the end of the month, all that happened was he lost big time in the (secret) camp betting pool. After that, the other kids started to call me Hoaxer Hal.

'I believe you,' Cath assured me. 'You'll get the hang of it.'

'I can't even figure out your prophecy.' I pulled out the little scrap of paper where I'd scribbled the six lines she'd spouted at the start of summer—the six lines that had started all of this.

'Maybe that's for the better,' Cath said with a shiver. 'I don't think it's a good prophecy. I can't explain it, but something tells me it'll end badly.'

She held up a little embroidered pouch she was making for Arts and Crafts. 'What do you think?'

'Fancy.' I tucked the scrap paper into the pouch. 'Now you have something to keep it in.'

All the same, I took a break from reading futures. Maybe Apollo was wrong. Maybe I didn't have the gift.

It wasn't until fall came around that I started using my powers again.

It started with a dream.

In it, I was standing on a vast, muddy field. It looked like one of those pictures from somewhere in the middle of the country—Kansas, maybe, where there's so much nothing that the land and sky goes on forever. Only these farmlands were overrun by tents and makeshift battle stations. A few flags had been jammed into the earth. They were bright red, with hand-painted swastikas—the Nazi symbol.

The sun was creeping up over the horizon, where mountain peaks dotted the far distance. In its glow, an invading army was marching towards the Nazi camp. At its head were two men dressed in army fatigues and camouflage like the others, but they were clearly different from the regular men. One of them carried a shiny bayonet—a rifle with a sharp point on one end that looked like it could be used for gutting fish. Or ... I didn't want to think about what else it could gut. Unlike the ones his comrades carried, this soldier's bayonet was made of pure bronze, like the weapons in our camp armoury.

The other man had a golden flute strung across his back. No, not a flute. It had only two holes on the bottom. My musical training from the summer helped me identify it: a golden pipe. He raised it to his mouth. The moment he started to play, the army surged forward into the Nazi camp.

I won't describe the fighting; I don't particularly want to relive it. It was like a scene from one of those pre-film shorts, images from the war in Europe they played at the pictures before the actual movie started. Cath and I weren't supposed to see them, but we'd snuck in once. The images had given us nightmares for weeks. Seeing it up close and personal, in full colour, was much worse.

The army pushed forward, chasing the Nazis across a wide river. As soon as they crossed the bridge, the waters rose to demolish it. The German soldiers were swept away in a sudden flood.

I tried not to gag. The waters were reddish-brown. Even in a dream, I could smell the nauseating stench of blood and metal.

The chasing army cheered. The piper lowered his golden pipe.

'The tide turns,' he said, turning to face the commander with the bronze bayonet.

I gasped. With red war paint over his chiselled features, he looked slightly different from the last time I'd seen him, but there was no mistaken the handsome face of Apollo. My dad.

'I could have handled it alone, Father,' Apollo told the commander. 'You didn't have to come.'

Father. That meant the commander was ...

The bronze bayonet shimmered. Overlaid on top of it was a different image: a massive, jagged stick that crackled with electricity.

A lightning bolt. Only one god wielded that particular weapon.

Zeus studied Apollo. 'Like you handled Troy?'

Apollo turned the colour of his war paint. 'You'll never let me live that one down, will you?'

'You should have known better than to bet against Athena.'

Apollo opened his mouth to protest, then seemed to think the better of it.

'At any rate,' Zeus said, 'this is only one small victory. The sons of Hades are out of hand. We cannot let this happen again. And with the Great Prophecy your Oracle pronounced at the solstice—'

'Yeah, about that ...' Apollo twirled his pipe. 'I was thinking about the best way to tell ...'

Zeus made a scoffing noise, like he couldn't believe how dim-witted Apollo was. 'It rang through Olympus the moment it was made. You'd know that, if you hadn't been so pre-occupied with coddling your children.'

'It is just another prophecy, my lord. It may not come true for years and years.'

'No?'

'None of you have children under the age of sixteen. And if you guys really stop having, uh, you know, dalliances ...'

'Oh?' Zeus's voice grew low and dangerous. 'Our pact was a sham! We vowed on the Styx that we would have no more mortal children, but Hades deceived us.'

Apollo scratched his head. 'How? If you invoked Styx—' he shuddered, 'Hades is subject to her T&C's as much as the rest of us.'

'He already has more children. Two with the same mortal woman, in fact. A detail that he so conveniently hid when we made this pact.'

'Twins?'

'No.'

They paused to consider this. Both gods seemed half-sceptical, half-coveting, as though they could barely believe the possibility of staying with a mortal that long, but were simultaneously wondering what it would be like.

'At any rate,' Zeus continued, 'I believe the eldest of the children is twelve, or maybe thirteen. Should she turn sixteen ...'

Apollo's face went pale. They both stared into the mist-clad battlefield, like they were imagining the terrible future come to pass. Or they might actually be seeing in play out in the mist.

'You didn't tell him about this prophecy, did you?'

'No,' said Zeus. 'Regardless, children of Hades are always dangerous. We cannot allow the prophecy to centre on one of them. I must act at once to prevent it.' His fingers tightened over his lightning bolt, as though itching to send it crashing into some poor, unsuspecting mortal.

Over the battlefield, the mist began to clear. The sound of moaning filled the air—the piteous death knell of a thousand fallen soldiers.

Zeus and Apollo disappeared. I was alone in the field of the dead and dying. Bodies stretched in all directions, an endless parade of corpses.

My stomach heaved. I doubled over and threw up.

I woke up still retching. Cath stood over me with a candle, a wet washcloth in her hands. She must have been dabbing more forehead with it. I could feel the moisture over my brows.

'Are you okay? What happened?'

It took a while to find my voice. My skin was cold and clammy.

'The prophecy—your prophecy—it means ... the gods are going to ...' I couldn't stop shivering.

Cath drew away. Her fingers trembled as she set the candle on our bed stand.

I took a deep breath and told her what I'd seen in my dream, though I left out the gory details of the fighting.

'So Zeus is going to find these kids. I think he's going to kill them.'

Cath wrung the washcloth. In the flickering candlelight, it looked like it was dripping blood.

'That's not what worries me,' she said.

'You're not worried that the king of the gods is going after some innocent kids?'

'No! I mean, yes, I don't like that any more than you do. But I'm also worried that Zeus is trying to control the prophecy. That's not good. Prophecies aren't meant to be controlled.'

'What do you mean? What's the point of a prophecy, if we can't use the information?'

'That's exactly it. I talked to Chiron at camp. I asked him why I could never remember what the spirit of Delphi says through me. He said that it was to protect me. So no one could possibly ask me to explain it to them.' She sighed. 'A prophecy isn't like a road map, Hal. It's more like a picture of the destination. And that's not good or bad. The road you take to get there makes it so. And whatever you choose ... well, the Fates weave different paths based on our choices.'

'But see, that's what I'm saying! Can't we choose to make it turn out the way we want? The way that helps the most people?'

'Chiron said a lot of times heroes make prophecies come true in the worst way because they try and avoid the bad stuff in it.'

'Okay, fine, so we don't try and control the prophecy. But if Zeus is ...'

Cath nodded grimly. 'We need to stop Zeus from doing it. But ... I don't know what we can do. We don't know who these children are. How are we supposed to warn them?'

'I have an idea,' I said. 'It's time for me to try my powers again.'

Cath looked at me for a long time. Finally, she said, 'Okay,' and held out her hands. I took them. For the first time in months, I concentrated on the future.

The vision was solid and firm this time. In it, I was standing in the lobby of a hotel. I recognised it as the one on F and Seventh. It was only several blocks away from Gran's place. A couple of times, Cath and I had dared each other to run in to touch the smooth marble balustrade on the stairs without being seen by the doorman.

A family of three was checking in at the counter: a mom with two children, one boy and one girl. The girl was maybe my age, the boy a little younger. They had pale, delicate faces with olive skin and long lashes—classic continental features. Their mother spoke English with a lilting accent, as though she were singing her words rather than speaking them.

The concierge looked at them with barely disguised disgust. He seemed reluctant to check them in.

'Is there a problem?' A man in a black trench coat turned up. He was so tall, his head nearly swept the chandelier hanging over the lobby. His coat got my attention immediately. It was swirling with ghostly faces, as tortured as the ones I'd seen in my nightmare of the war. They wailed silently, as though screaming for release.

No one else noticed this. The concierge gulped, but it was probably because Mr Trench Coat was towering over him like a lethal assassin from a spy movie.

'No, not at all, sir. Welcome to the Hotel Monaco, ma'am. Here's your room key.'

He handed over a burnished silver key. The woman took it with a small, tight smile. 'Thank you.' She turned to Mr Trench Coat and her smile widened into a proper one. 'Thank you, my love.'

His expression softened with he looked at her. Black fire burned in his eyes, but it glowed warmer, like hearth fire rather than hell fire. It wasn't hard to guess who this man was. And it was pretty disconcerting to hear someone call the Lord of the Underworld 'my love.'

'You will be safe here,' Hades promised his girlfriend. 'And Bianca and Nico will be safer away from Europe, too. The western seat of power lies here now. The war will not last forever. My brothers seek to end it, and though I would not tell them, I agree. Adolf and Benito have taken things too far.'

I pulled out of the vision. My hands were shaking.

Cath squeezed my fingers. 'Are you okay?'

I nodded. 'I found them. The kids. They're here—in D.C., I mean.' It couldn't be a coincidence that they were in the same city as Cath and me. This had to be a sign. We must be destined to find them and warn them.

Getting into the Hotel Monaco was easy enough. Finding someone staying there was a different matter. We couldn't just waltz up to the concierge and ask for the children of Hades. Even though I knew their names, they would have been checked in under their mother's. In the end, Cath and I took turns haunting the place each day after school, hoping one of the family would appear in the lobby.

It was on my watch that our surveillance finally paid off. Hades came through the hotel's revolving doors, dressed exactly as he'd been in my dream, with the black trench coat that shimmered with tortured faces. At first, I was so stunned to see him in person that I froze, almost forgetting why I was even there.

Then I gulped. I'd been hoping to run into the kids or their mother. I mean, sure, they'd probably think I was crazy, but they'd be less intimidating to approach than the god of the Underworld himself.

I hung back as Hades strode across the lobby. Maybe I should wait and see if the mother and children came out on their own. They'd have to eventually, right?

Cath's voice came to me: 'If we get to Hades himself, that's probably better. If anyone could actually do something about it, like hide the children, it'd be him.'

Here he was. And he was heading for the stairs. In a second, he'd disappear, and I'd have missed our chance.

I took a deep breath and ran forward. I didn't quite dare grab his coat—what if I touched one of those ghoulish, straining faces?—but I waved my hands so that he'd be sure to see me.

'Sir! Sir! I have to talk to you!'

Hades gaped at me. If he hadn't been so terrifying, I might have found it funny. When the Lord of the Dead got over his surprise at being accosted by a twelve-year-old, he said, 'Begone, mortal. You would not address me at all if you knew who I am.'

'I do know who you are!' I said. 'And I need to warn you—it's about your children, Bianca and Nico.'

Hades moved so quickly, it stole my breath. One blink and he had me backed up against the wall. He wasn't actually touching me, but there was an invisible force that repelled me from him when he advanced.

'What did you say?'

My voice was a squeak. 'They're going to be killed, if you don't—'

I probably should have led with something else. In my defence, I was struggling to keep my lunch down.

'You dare to threaten my children?' Hades lifted his hand as if to slap me.

'No, I'm just trying to warn you! I've seen—'

Hades formed a tight fist with his hand. The air itself seemed to tighten around my throat, forming a stranglehold that cut off my voice. I choked, struggling for breath, and clutched at my throat, trying to pull the ghostly fingers away.

'Stop!' Cath yelled. She must have been watching from outside, because she appeared out of nowhere and tackled Hades. I wanted to scream, NO! but it was hard to convey the warning through my eyes when they were watering from the lack of air.

Hades turned. He raised his hand, possibly to smite her, but the wave of energy that filled the room washed over her with no effect that I could see.

'Leave him alone,' Cath insisted. 'He's not threatening you. He's trying to help.'

'Who are you?' Hades demanded. 'Why does my power not affect you?'

Cath straightened. When she replied, her voice took on a resounding quality—not the raspy cackle of the Delphic spirit, but not her usual soft lilt either.

'I am the Oracle of Delphi,' she said. 'Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo.' Green mist swirled around her. It settled like a cloak on her shoulders, then subsided.

Hades looked taken aback. He stumbled away from us. The invisible hand released me. I clutched my throat, gasping and coughing.

'You are the Oracle,' Hades said. He stared at Cath as though he meant to bore holes in her with his blazing eyes.

Only the briefest flicker of her eyes towards me betrayed Cath's nervousness. 'Yes.'

'Speaker of this ... prophecy.'

'Yes.'

'And it speak of—my children?'

Cath shook her head. 'Not specifically, sir. It mentions a half-blood of the three eldest gods. But Zeus thinks it means your kids. Your younger kids, that is.' She hesitated, then undid the pouch she wore around her neck, the one she’d put the written down prophecy in. She unrolled my tiny scrap of paper and handed it to Hades.

Hades's eyes blazed over the six fateful lines. I thought he was going to burn the paper, but he just dropped it at Cath's feet.

'I will consider what you have said, Oracle. And you will leave now. Do not come anywhere near my children.'

He erupted into a column of blue flame and disappeared, leaving the hotel carpet smoking where he'd been standing.

'That went well.' Cath knelt to pick up the prophecy.

I rubbed at my throat. 'I hope that's the end of it.'

Unfortunately, it wasn't.

A week later, we were on our way home from school when an explosion rocked the streets. People screamed. Air raid sirens blared.

Cath and I exchanged looks. Two blocks away, black smoke curled from a cluster of buildings that included the Hotel Monaco. I knew the same thought was running through our heads: Zeus had struck.

'I'm going to see what's happened,' Cath said.

'I'll go with you.'

'No, you can't!' Cath shook her head fervently. 'If Hades is there—he told us not to go near them again. You saw what he did to you last time.'

My hands reached involuntarily for my throat. I could feel the ghostly stranglehold around my neck.

'But he told you to stay away, too.'

Cath looked grim. 'He can't hurt me, remember? Protection of Delphi and all.'

'But ...'

'It'll be okay. Wait here.'

I paced the block while she was gone. Several times, I thought of going after her, but the memory of Hades's rage, that horrible, choking sensation—it terrified me. How much worse would Hades torture me when he found out the threat had come to pass? I guess, looking back, it was pretty cowardly of me to hang back while Cath went into the breach, but she'd been protected before. Surely, I thought, surely she would be okay.

And then I heard the scream. It was terrible, a long, drawn-out cry that was Cath's and at the same time not. It didn't belong to this world. It ripped through my ears and sent me falling into a whirlpool of images ...

I saw Hades bent over the limp body of his girlfriend, cursing at the skies. I saw a plane tumbling from the air in a fiery blaze. I saw a pair of demigods sprinting from a burning mansion. I saw a pine tree on a windy hill, and a golden coffin in a black mausoleum. A giant throne room. Blood. So much blood, spreading across the ground in an ocean of red.

The screams stopped, and I was running so fast, I thought my lungs would burst.

I found her alone in the rubble, looking completely shell-shocked.

'Cath!' I grabbed her shoulders. 'What happened?'

Cath blinked at me slowly, coming out of a trance. At first I thought it'd be like her prophecies, where she wouldn't remember a word she'd uttered. Then she said, 'He—he cursed me.'

'What? I thought you said he couldn't—'

'Well, not me exactly. I don't think I'm cursed. I don't think he gives two hoot about me. It's more like ... the Oracle. He said—he swore that I'd never—well, the Oracle would never have another host. That as long as his children were cursed by my prophecy, she would languish inside me even after I withered and died.'

'What does that mean?'

Cath's voice sounded too tired, as though she'd already withered under Hades's curse. 'I don't know. He can't kill me. He said so himself. I guess I just have to be the Oracle forever.'

'Maybe we can fix this. You said it lasts as long as his children are cursed, right? If we work out the Great Prophecy, maybe we can un-curse them, and then you'll be free, too!'

'No!' Cath said sharply. 'We've done enough working things out. Don't you see, Hal? That's what started this whole thing. You asked me to look, and the Oracle and her prophecy found me.'

Guilt settled lumpily in my throat. 'But that wasn't our fault. You can't control the Oracle. Maybe she was already going to find you.'

'Exactly. We can't control the Fates. This is it, Hal. No more reading the future.'

'You're the Oracle. How are you going to get away from it?'

Cath's shoulders slumped. 'I've got no choice. But you do. Promise me you won't speak of the future to me again.'

I watched Cath carefully that next summer for any sign that Hades's curse was coming to fruition, but she seemed okay. She continued to deliver her prophecies when campers needed a quest, channelling the spirit of Delphi and recalling none of it. I found it spooky, the green smoke and raspy, old-woman voice coming from my twelve-year-old sister, but eventually, I got used to it.

I tried not to use my own powers overtly, but it became clear that the things I had already seen really did have truth to them.

On our first summer back, Martin Salazar greeted us with a sour, 'Oh, it's you.'

'Are you okay?'

'Leave me alone,' he muttered.

'His mom died,' Chiron told us. 'Left him a fortune, but ...'

A windfall, I thought, my stomach turning over. It had seemed like an innocent, happy future at the time, but now ...

Our lives fell into a predictable pattern. Each summer, we returned to Camp Half-Blood, where we'd train with our friends and Cath would pronounce her prophecies. For years, it seemed like everything would be okay after all. It was only when ten years had passed that Chiron started to get worried. When Cath and I turned twenty-two, Chiron called us into his office for a serious chat.

'We've never had an Oracle over the age of twenty-one before,' he said. 'The spirit of Delphi prefers virgin maidens, you see.'

'Well,' Cath said, rubbing a medicine pouch with my written scrap of her Great Prophecy. She wore it around her neck all the time. I couldn't understand it. I knew she hated that prophecy, after the misfortune it had brought, and she refused to talk about it to anyone, even Chiron. Yet she wouldn't be parted from it. Maybe she was afraid someone would find it and learn what it said. 'Well, what a way to make me feel old.'

'You're still young and beautiful, my dear,' Chiron assured her. 'And that is what troubles me. You should have the chance to go out into the world. Fall in love. Get married.'

Cath shrugged. 'I'm okay staying here. I like camp. And I can work as a counsellor. Or a strawberry girl for the new director.' She cracked a grin. The camp had just gotten a new director, fresh from Olympus. Rumour was he'd gotten expelled for chasing a wood nymph that Zeus had his eye on, and now had to serve 100 years of exile at Camp Half-Blood.

'That's not funny,' I complained.

Cath made a halo over her head. 'I mean picking strawberries in the new fields, of course.'

Chiron cleared his throat. 'What about you, Hal? Surely you don't want to spend your life as a summer camp counsellor. It should be safe for you to leave and make a life in the mortal world now.'

I hadn't really thought about it, but Chiron was right. As much as I liked camp, it wasn't exactly the ideal career choice. Besides, I was getting tired of knowing things about people's futures that I could never talk about. Maybe in the mortal world, my powers would start to fade.

So I left Camp Half-Blood and moved back to D.C. Gran had passed on by then, but I got a job as a concert violinist and part-time music teacher. Some of those lessons at camp had paid off ... or maybe Apollo had left me a more useful skill than fortune-telling after all. I did well enough to get myself a place in Bethesda, far from downtown Washington and the rebuilt Hotel Monaco.

Cath visited in the spring and fall, when things got quiet at camp. She seemed content to continue her role as resident Oracle. She'd bring me fresh strawberries—they grew in all seasons, keeping the camp in trade all year round. I relished her visits, but they made me worry. She always seemed tired, her movements too slow, like she was swimming in gravy.

'It's just the mortal world,' she said. 'It feels like I'm too far from a power source. Maybe ... maybe I shouldn't come quite so often.'

Her visits lessened. Five years after I'd left camp, we were seeing each other only once a year, sometimes less.

Then one summer, right in the middle of a violin lesson, Cath's face appeared in the polished surface of my fiddle.

'What the—?'

My student screamed and fainted.

Cath didn't even apologise for the intrusion, or her bad timing. That should have been my first sign that something was up.

'I need to see you,' she said, plucking at the pouch around her neck. Sixteen years, and she still hadn't broken that nervous habit.

'I'm in the middle of a ...' I sighed and shook my head at my passed-out student. 'Let me just get her sorted, and I'll get back to—'

'No. I need to see you. I need—I need you to read my future.'

I stared at her, stunned. Even before Hades had cursed her, Cath had never been particularly keen to see what lay in store. For sixteen years, she'd assiduously declared that she just didn't want to know what she'd said in her prophecies. What could have happened to make her change her mind?

'Can't you—can't you prophesy for yourself?'

Cath paced back and forth in the Iris message, twisting her pouch round and round on its leather cord. 'I tried to book a flight to D.C.,' she said, not answering my question. 'They're full up at the moment, but I'm waitlisted. As soon as a space opens up this week—well, I'll see you in D.C.'

'Did something happen, Cath? A vision, or—oh gods, it wasn't Hades, was it? Did he—'

Cath shook her head. 'I'll tell you when we meet. I have to go now.'

She vanished, leaving me staring at my own reflection in the violin's surface.

Fortunately, but the time my music student's mom arrived to pick her up, she'd forgotten about seeing Cath's face in the violin and was satisfied with my explanation that she'd been overcome by the summer heat. I shook her hand when she left, concentrating discreetly, and noted with relief that all her future seemed to hold was a good night's sleep and no further damage the next morning.

Then I thought about Cath. Not only had she asked me to do the one thing I'd promised long ago I wouldn't try with her, she was coming here. In the middle of summer, when camp was in full swing. It had to be really important if she was even considering leaving camp at a time when she was most in demand as the Oracle.

If I left now and drove through the night, I could be in Long Island by morning.

I didn't particularly want to drive overnight across three states, but if Cath needed me ... Even though we'd drifted apart in the last couple of years, she was still my twin.

I got in the car.

In retrospect, the accident—well, near-accident—was probably my fault. By the time I reached Brooklyn, I was pretty much on autopilot. So when the bronze knife came flying out of nowhere into my windscreen, it was a full, long second before I hit the brakes.

The girl appeared seconds later, leaping onto the bonnet of my car.

'Sacred cattle of Apollo!'

She rolled off my bonnet. Her knife clattered to the ground next to her. I got out to check on her, just in time to hear a shrill, 'Get down!'

It had been years since I'd done any monster-fighting, but my reflexes were still sharp. I hit the pavement, next to the girl, as something sharp flew over my head. Something large and scaly, with way too many teeth in its fearsome beak.

The girl sat up and dusted herself off, apparently unharmed from her crash with my car. I guess I must have braked just enough. She was maybe fifteen, with choppy, light brown hair, brilliant blue eyes, and a fierce scowl.

'What is that?' I squinted at the creature, which had soared to the other side of the motorway, carried by its momentum. It had bright red scales on its underbelly and bulbous eyes popping out of its over-large head. Greyish-white feathers covered its back and wings, which extended at least six feet across and ended in sharp hooks like a bat's.

'A roc,' said the girl. 'Wait—you can see it?'

'I'm guessing you're a demigod,' I said drily.

The monster bird came back in for a second dive. I cursed inwardly, wishing I'd thought to pack a bow, or even a sword. It had been years since I'd faced a monster; I'd gotten sloppy.

'Demigod? Nope,' said the girl. 'Only my parents. My mom—' She grunted and slapped off an incoming attack from the roc with her satchel. It ripped down the middle, scattering sheet music everywhere.

'Son of a Gorgon! My audition scores!'

Music! I might not have a weapon, but my violin was in the passenger seat. Wasn't there something about mythological birds being defeated by music?

I flung open the car door and leaned across the driver's seat. As soon as I'd snatched up my bow and fiddle, I played the first tune that came to mind—a Vivaldi concerto.

The roc went berserk. It howled and clawed at its own head. It writhed on the ground, shedding feathers over the grit road.

My comrade-in-arms took her chance. She stabbed the monster in the head with her dagger, right between its bulging eyes. The roc crumpled to ash.

My fellow monster-slayer wiped her dagger carefully on the hem of her t-shirt. 'Thanks. That was unexpected.'

I put down my violin. 'It's been a while since I've done this. But don't monsters usually go after demigods?'

'I guess all bets are off when both your parents are demigods.' The girl shrugged. 'My mom comes from a crazy long line of them. It's like the gods just kept coming back to our family or something.'

'And you all survived?'

The girl traced a finger over the hilt of her dagger. Maybe it was an insensitive question, since she wasn't past her treacherous teens yet. I knew that as a demigod who'd made it into my twenties, I was something of a rarity. Once you got there, life was pretty normal—barring crazy half-demigods (did that make her a quarter-blood?) jumping into your car, I guess—but making it to age twenty was the hard part. Many of my old friends ... well, I still don't like to think too much about that.

I changed the subject. 'So, uh, you go to Camp Half-Blood?'

'Not this year. I really want to get into music school, so I stopped to focus on that. I have an audition at the School of Music in D.C. tonight. I was on my way to the airport when ...' She waved her hand at the scattered sheet music and sighed. 'I guess it's a good thing I left early. I still have an hour. If I make it to JFK in twenty minutes, I should still make my flight.' She looked at me hopefully.

'Uh, sure. I can give you a lift.' It wasn't too long a detour. I could still make it to camp by mid-morning. A long crack ran down my windscreen where her dagger had hit it, but it would live. Anyway, I figured I owed her, after nearly running her down.

'Thanks!' She gathered up her sheet music and stuffed them back into her ripped bag. 'I'm Jenny, by the way.'

'Hal.'

I shook her hand. To my horror, I felt the old premonition take hold. The vision came in a flash: a blaring alarm. A stalled engine. A plane crashed into the tarmac and went up in flames.

Jenny must have sensed my apprehension. She pulled her hand out of my grip. 'What is it?'

I had to steady myself against the car door. It had been ages since I'd had this clear a vision. The message was obvious—Jenny was headed for a bad accident in her future. The flight she was rushing to catch would never make it to Washington Airport. It was fated to go down.

Since the destruction of the Hotel Monaco, I'd spent years keeping silent about anything I saw, quelling my desire to do good with fear of retribution from the gods. Most of the time, I convinced myself there wasn't anything I could do. But there was no clearer case than this of an obvious action I could take. I couldn't stop that flight from going down—but Jenny didn't have to be on it.

Cath had asked me to use my powers to help her. If I couldn't even help this girl, how could I help my sister?

'This is going to sound really strange,' I said, 'but hear my out, okay?'

I gave her the brief run-down of my history, my power, and the glimpse of the future I had seen for her.

Jenny pursed her lips. I wondered if she would call me a liar and a charlatan, like so many kids at camp had before. Finally, she said, 'Like Cassandra of Troy.'

'What?'

'The Seer. You know, the one who predicted the downfall of Troy, only nobody believed her.'

'You have to believe me. That flight isn't safe for you. I'm trying to save you.'

Jenny clenched her dagger. I wondered if she meant to attack me, but she just stared long and hard into the blade, as though trying to see the future I had described in its shiny surface.

'Okay. I believe you. I—my dagger brought me to you for a reason.'

This seemed to me a strange reason, but I guess as long as she believed me, I shouldn't care why.

'I can still help you,' I promised. 'I need to go to camp to find my sister, but after that—I live in Washington. I can drive you there.'

Jenny looked at her dagger again. 'Okay,' she said finally. 'I'm probably crazy to do this. But I trust you.'

Chiron was astonished when I pulled up at the camp border.

'Cath didn't tell you she called me,' I guessed.

'She did,' he said, clopping his back hooves nervously. 'But she said she was going to visit you.'

'She said the flights were full—waitlist only. I figured she wouldn't find one before I could drive up, so I came to fetch her. Why? Isn't she here?'

'She went to the airport an hour ago,' Chiron said. 'She wanted to be there in case a seat popped up.'

Jenny gasped. I looked at her, confused. Then it hit me.

I don't think I'd ever driven so fast in my life. We tore down the Interstate, not bothering with the airport. It was already past the flight's scheduled take-off. And I knew, I just knew Cath wouldn't be there. I could feel it in my bones.

She was on that plane. The same plane I'd entreated Jenny not to take.

I wasn't even sure why I was speeding home. In my heart, I knew I was already too late. But something kept my foot on the gas pedal.

Jenny sat next to me, her face pale. Her fingers gripped the hilt of her dagger so hard, her knuckles turned white. We didn't speak the whole way south.

Someone beat us to the wreckage. When I saw him kneeling amidst the charred remains of the aircraft, a splash of gold against the ashy debris, my heart spiked. Maybe he had worked a miracle.

But the flare of hope was short-lived. When you have a twin, it's like being on a permanent telephone network. There's always a buzz, a dial tone even if no one's talking on it.

My line was dead.

Jenny made a strangled noise. 'That's what—I would have—' She turned to me with wide, watery eyes.

'You'd better go.' My words came out harsher than I intended.

Jenny dabbed at her eyes and fumbled for the handle of the car door.

'It's not your fault,' I said more gently. 'But you'd still better go.' I clenched my fists. 'I mean, I've got a bone to pick with a god. I don't think it's safe for you to hang around.'

Jenny grabbed my hand. 'Then take this.' She pressed her dagger into my hand, hilt-first. 'It's been in my family for ages. My mother told me it would always protect its owner.'

I gawked at it, momentarily distracted. 'It nearly got you run over.'

She shook her head. 'It led me to you. And you—you saved me. I want you to have it.'

Numbly, I took the dagger. Jenny squeezed my hand and then she opened the door and was gone.

I sat frozen in my seat for half a minute, then I stowed the dagger in my pocket and walked out to Apollo on wooden legs.

'I warned you.' He didn't thunder like Hades had, or even raise his voice, but it boomed through my ears all the same. 'I told you never to speak of what you saw.'

'But ...' My stomach turned over. My throat felt just like when Hades had tried to silence me, all those years ago. 'But you're a god. If you knew—why didn't you stop it from happening? Why didn't you save her?'

'I told you before—this is not how prophecy works! Your choices, when you claim the future, they narrow it such that no other option is possible.' Apollo laid Cath on the ground. 'Sixteen years ago, you made a misguided choice to reveal a prophecy I explicitly warned you not to speak of. Yet you did not learn from that mistake.'

Cath's body was encased in green light. It formed a thin layer over her skin, like luminescent cling wrap. I guess it had protected her from becoming an ash spot like the other passengers on the doomed plane, but this wasn't much comfort. Her spirit, her soul—whatever it was that made her Cath—that was gone. This thing that lingered, it was an otherworldly aura that didn't belong to her, the same way the Oracle of Delphi's voice wasn't Cath's.

'My Oracle remains in her body. Lord Hades's curse has come full circle.' Apollo's voice was full of bitterness. 'The spirit of Delphi will be trapped until the curse is broken.'

'You don't care about Cath. Only your stupid, precious Oracle.' My words tasted bitter, like I'd just had my mouth washed out with soap, the way Gran had done the first time she'd heard me swear. 'Well, I'm glad she's stuck. Cath doesn't deserve to be forgotten and thrown aside just because you were done with her!'

I didn't know how I dared to speak that way to a god. Maybe the death of someone I loved gave me courage. Not that it did any good. Cath was gone, and raging at Apollo wouldn't bring her back.

Apollo clapped his hands. Cath's body glowed with the light of the Oracle. With a thunderous boom, she disappeared.

'What have you done with her?' I demanded.

'I sent her home,' Apollo said grimly. 'And now—it is time for you to go home as well.' His fingers closed over my wrist. There was a blinding flash, like we'd been encased in lightning. When my vision cleared, I was home—but not the home I knew.

He'd brought me to my childhood home, the Virginian mansion I hadn't seen since I was twelve. My bedroom was exactly as I'd left it sixteen years ago. The window overlooking the traffic circle and the memorial statue of General Lee. The twin beds on either side of the room where Cath and I had whispered to each other at night when we couldn't sleep. The old, broken kitchenette Cath had begged Mother to let her play house with when we were eight. The door to the walk-in closet was ajar, revealing the safe that could never be opened.

Apollo stood by the door, his arms crossed. His voice was soft and deadly. 'You wished to impersonate an Oracle? To speak of the future?'

'I'm not an Oracle,' I said. 'I never asked to—'

'No,' Apollo said coldly. 'No, you are not.'

He raised his hands. Instantly, my clothes changed. My button-down shirt and cotton pants turned hard and slimy. I was in a suit that shimmered like snake scales.

'The skin of the treacherous Python himself,' Apollo said. 'The guard of the Oracle of Delphi. I had to slay him to free the Oracle. Now, thanks to you, she is trapped again.'

I ran a tentative finger down one sleeve and nearly gagged. It had the exact, nauseating texture of snake skin.

'So, what, I have to wear this for punishment? How long?'

Apollo gave a bitter laugh. 'Did you think that you would be let off that easily?'

My skin crawled. Or maybe it was the Python skin.

Lightning flashed and thunder crackled outside, just like on the day of the funeral, when Cath had given her first prophecy. The curtains whipped across the window, shutting off the outside world. The floor shook. Bars sprung up across the room, between my bed and Cath's.

The door slammed shut. I ran to it and tugged on the handle. It didn't budge.

I stared at Apollo in wide-eyed terror. His eyes were like the sun in winter, harsh and blinding in its light. 'Wh-what are you doing?'

The truth crashed down on me. The snake skin suit wasn't enough. To punish me for speaking out, for saving Jenny and condemning Cath—or more likely, for hastening the curse on his Oracle—Apollo was going to trap me here.

'But why ... what are the bars for?'

In response, the sound of castanets rang out like gunshots. Something clattered up the stairs outside, pounding down the hallway with galloping footsteps. There was a loud whump as the creature slammed up against my locked door.

'Apollo! Father!'

I choked. They were my words, but no sound escaped my mouth. Instead, my voice issued from the other side of the wall.

A moment later, the wall beyond the bars caved in. A pair of monsters the size of panthers crashed onto Cath's old bed, smashing it to bits. They prowled the floor like predators in a zoo enclosure, eyeing me malevolently with glowing red eyes that stared out of a protruding, hyena-like snout. I backed away from the bars, bumping up against the frame of my walk-in closet. My foot stubbed painfully against the safe on the ground.

Was this it? Would I end up as dinner to these monsters? Except why cage me in when Apollo could just feed me to them directly?

As if reading my mind, Apollo said, 'The leucrotae will not eat you. But they need to feed regularly on human flesh. They will lure their prey with your voice—to remind you how your voice led others to their deaths.'

One of the leucrotae peeled back its jaw and snapped it to produce the clacking, castanet noise I'd heard earlier. I let out a whimper, but again, the sound didn't come from me. It issued bizarrely from the leucrota, like it was a bad ventriloquist and I was the puppet.

I fell to my knees. The horror of it made Hades's punishments seem like a gentle reprimand. My arms hit the safe with a loud clang.

Apollo turned. The blazing light of his eyes softened slightly. He looked slightly stunned, as though the enormity of what he'd just done was starting to hit him. I thought he might backtrack then, lift the curse and proclaim that I'd been punished enough. I certainly felt this was enough of a scare to keep me from ever revealing the tiniest snippet of the future.

But he just looked at the safe and said, 'The treasure inside was hidden a long time ago. It waits for its rightful owner to claim it. When that happens, you will have a chance to set things right. Perhaps by then you will have learned why the future should remain a mystery. If you can do this, then that will be the day your curse comes to an end.'

And with that, he left me alone to face my horrific prison and the fate he had condemned me to.

+++

That was twenty years ago. I've lost track of how many demigods have since been led to my prison—demigods I hastened to their deaths. The leucrotae and I, we have reached a grudging, hateful symbiosis. Without them, I cannot stay alive. Without me—well, okay, maybe it isn't symbiosis so much as parasitism. I'm sure they would continue to pick off demigods who wander into my mansion in search of the treasure.

Despite its draw, no one has been able to claim the purported treasure. A good many died even before the leucrotae could get to them, felled by the curse on the safe handle. I've started to hide it away. Call me selfish, but at least having the company of my victims for a little while is better than sitting with their corpses until the bars rise at sunset for the leucrotae feeding frenzy.

I have tried my best to understand my father's words. For a long time, I was so angry with him, I rebelled against everything he said. I read the future for every demigod who strayed across my path. But it ended in the jaws of the leucrotae, every single time. I can never change it.

Perhaps that is what I am meant to learn: that the future is immutable.