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The cleaning harpies would eat Nico if they caught him outside his cabin after lights-out. That was what Travis had said, and Connor had added that they especially liked demigod liver.
Demigod, meaning Nico. Which was so weird. And cool! But also weird.
Anyway, he didn’t have to listen to Travis and Connor. They might be his head counselors, at least until his own godly parent claimed him--and I wouldn’t hold my breath, new kid, another camper had added without looking up from sharpening his sword--but they weren’t his sister. And it’s not like they made it especially hard for Nico to sneak out. Maybe they were hoping he’d get eaten by cleaning harpies and make a little more room in the overcrowded Hermes cabin.
The Artemis cabin glowed silver in the moonlight, making it easy to find. Nico was making his way past the banked campfire when he saw a girl sitting next to it. She was Nico’s age or maybe a little younger. It was hard to tell; she had the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up, and it hid her face.
“Why aren’t you in your cabin?” he said, although she could have asked him the same thing. “Aren’t you afraid of the cleaning harpies?”
“No,” said the girl. “And I don’t have a cabin here.”
“Oh . . . you’re one of them.” Little girl, way too self-possessed. Nico should have figured. “I thought the Hunters of Artemis weren’t supposed to talk to boys.”
The girl shrugged. “Maybe not, but I’m not a Hunter, and I’ll talk to anyone who wants to talk to me. Are you hungry? I’ve got panforte.”
“Pan-what?” But Nico suddenly realized that he was hungry. He sat down by the fire, and the girl broke off a wedge of her cake . . . thing and handed it to him. It was covered in powdered sugar, which stuck to Nico’s fingers. He took a bite. It was weird. Full of nuts, and he couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to be cake or candy, and . . . was that pepper?
Nico liked hamburgers, and french fries, and chocolate, and donuts. Normal stuff like that. This was . . . “It’s really good,” he said, and not just because Bianca had told him that he should always be polite when someone shared their food. It was really good, and it made his hands shake, and his throat close up like he was about to cry, and there was no reason he could figure for that. “Why is it so good?”
“Because no matter what else you forget, you can never forget the taste of home.” The girl looked up from beneath her hood and her fringe of brown hair, and Nico saw her eyes for the first time. They were full of flames, and there was nothing human in them.
Which was kind of scary. But also cool.
“I know who you are!” said Nico. “Your miniature’s back at the cabin with most of my stuff, but I’ve got your card here.” He took his Mythomagic deck out of his pocket--no way was he going to leave that in a cabin full of the kids of the god of thieves--rifled through it, found the right card and passed it over. “You don’t look much like that,” he admitted.
The girl laughed. “I could, though!” Nico blinked, and where the girl had been sitting a moment before was a woman with blood-red lips and hair. She still had the hood--it was red now too--but it was attached to some sort of gauzy drapey dress that plunged really low at the neckline.
She did look just like the Mythomagic card. Nico coughed and looked away. “I liked the other one better.”
“Me too,” said Hestia, and became a girl in jeans and a brown hoodie again. “I meant it when I said I’d talk to anyone who wants to talk to me. I don’t get a lot of takers. But I’m not surprised you stopped--your father never overlooks anyone either.”
Nico’s hands tightened on his knees. “You know my dad?”
“I know all the Olympians. They’re my family. But if you’re asking who it is--”
“You can’t tell me,” said Nico, scuffing his shoe in the dirt.
“I don’t need to tell you,” said Hestia. “The knowledge is in you. When you’re ready--you may not like it, but you’ll know.”
And that was all she was going to say, apparently. Nico nibbled his--what had Hestia called it?--panforte. After the first shock of unexpected familiarity, the shaky feeling it gave him wasn’t nearly so bad. He wondered if it would be too rude to ask for seconds. “What did you mean, the taste of home? Can you get panforte in D.C.?” Nico definitely wanted to know where he could score more of this stuff when there wasn’t a friendly goddess around to hand it out.
“Is D.C. your home?”
“Bianca says that’s where we used to live when our parents were alive.” Of course, at least one of their parents was not only still alive but actually immortal. He wondered how much else of what he knew wasn’t true . . . but Bianca wouldn’t lie to him. He didn’t want Hestia to think that. “I don’t think she remembers much either.”
“So where is home?” Hestia poked the fire with a stick, sending a shower of sparks upward. “Camp Half-Blood?”
Nico shook his head. “No offense!” he added. “It’s really cool. I mean, they say there’s a lava climbing wall and I’m gonna get to forge my own sword! But I just got here, and home is . . .” It should be more than just somewhere where you had a lot of fun, right? Otherwise the Lotus Hotel and Casino would be home, instead of a place that made Nico kind of queasy when he remembered it, like he’d eaten way too much candy. “ . . . Bianca,” he finished.
Hestia nodded like Nico hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. Which--she was a goddess, wasn’t she? “I’m sorry, Nico.”
Hestia was nice, but Nico didn’t want her sympathy. He opened his mouth to say something that probably would have been a bad idea--because goddess--but she was gone. There was only a wedge of panforte sitting on a cloth napkin next to the fire.
Nico wrapped it up carefully and slipped it onto his pocket before going on to the Artemis cabin. He bet Bianca would like it too.