Leo fiddled with his copper wires. He felt like an intruder. He shouldn’t be listening to this, but it also made him feel like he was getting to know Jason for the first time—like maybe being here now made up for those four months at Wilderness School, when Leo had just imagined they’d had a friendship.
“How did you guys get separated?” he asked.
Thalia squeezed her brother’s hand. “If I’d known you were alive … gods, things would’ve been so different. But when you were two, Mom packed us in the car for a family vacation. We drove up north, toward the wine country, to this park she wanted to show us. I remember thinking it was strange because Mom never took us anywhere, and she was acting super nervous. I was holding your hand, walking you toward this big building in the middle of the park, and …” She took a shaky breath. “Mom told me to go back to the car and get the picnic basket. I didn’t want to leave you alone with her, but it was only for a few minutes. When I came back … Mom was kneeling on the stone steps, hugging herself and crying. She said—she said you were gone. She said Hera claimed you and you were as good as dead. I didn’t know what she’d done. I was afraid she’d completely lost her mind. I ran all over the place looking for you, but you’d just vanished. She had to drag me away, kicking and screaming. For the next few days I was hysterical. I don’t remember everything, but I called the police on Mom and they questioned her for a long time. Afterward, we fought. She told me I’d betrayed her, that I should support her, like she was the only one who mattered. Finally I couldn’t stand it. Your disappearance was the last straw. I ran away from home, and I never went back, not even when Mom died a few years ago. I thought you were gone forever. I never told anyone about you—not even Annabeth or Luke, my two best friends. It was just too painful.”
“Chiron knew.” Jason’s voice sounded far away. “When I got to camp, he took one look at me and said, ‘You should be dead.’”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Thalia insisted. “I never told him.”
“Hey,” Leo said. “Important thing is you’ve got each other now, right? You two are lucky.”
Thalia nodded. “Leo’s right. Look at you. You’re my age. You’ve grown up.”
“But where have I been?” Jason said. “How could I be missing all that time? And the Roman stuff …”
Thalia frowned. “The Roman stuff?”
“Your brother speaks Latin,” Leo said. “He calls gods by their Roman names, and he’s got tattoos.” Leo pointed out the marks on Jason’s arm. Then he gave Thalia the rundown about the other weird stuff that had happened: Boreas turning into Aquilon, Lycaon calling Jason a “child of Rome,” and the wolves backing off when Jason spoke Latin to them.
Thalia plucked her bowstring. “Latin. Zeus sometimes spoke Latin, the second time he stayed with Mom. Like I said, he seemed different, more formal.”
“You think he was in his Roman aspect?” Jason asked. “And that’s why I think of myself as a child of Jupiter?”
“Possibly,” Thalia said. “I’ve never heard of something like that happening, but it might explain why you think in Roman terms, why you can speak Latin rather than Ancient Greek. That would make you unique. Still, it doesn’t explain how you’ve survived without Camp Half-Blood. A child of Zeus, or Jupiter, or whatever you want to call him—you would’ve been hounded by monsters. If you were on your own, you should’ve died years ago. I know I wouldn’t have been able to survive without friends. You would’ve needed training, a safe haven—”
“He wasn’t alone,” Leo blurted out. “We’ve heard about others like him.”
Thalia looked at him strangely. “What do you mean?”
Leo told her about the slashed-up purple shirt in Medea’s department store, and the story the Cyclopes told about the child of Mercury who spoke Latin.
“Isn’t there anywhere else for demigods?” Leo asked. “I mean besides Camp Half-Blood? Maybe some crazy Latin teacher has been abducting children of the gods or something, making them think like Romans.”
As soon as he said it, Leo realized how stupid the idea sounded. Thalia’s dazzling blue eyes studied him intently, making him feel like a suspect in a lineup.
“I’ve been all over the country,” Thalia mused. “I’ve never seen evidence of a crazy Latin teacher, or demigods in purple shirts. Still …” Her voice trailed off, like she’d just had a troubling thought.
“What?” Jason asked.
Thalia shook her head. “I’ll have to talk to the goddess. Maybe Artemis will guide us.”
“She’s still talking to you?” Jason asked. “Most of the gods have gone silent.”
“Artemis follows her own rules,” Thalia said. “She has to be careful not to let Zeus know, but she thinks Zeus is being ridiculous closing Olympus. She’s the one who set us on the trail of Lycaon. She said we’d find a lead to a missing friend of ours.”
“Percy Jackson,” Leo guessed. “The guy Annabeth is looking for.”
Thalia nodded, her face full of concern.
Leo wondered if anyone had ever looked that worried all the times he’d disappeared. He kind of doubted it.
“So what would Lycaon have to do with it?” Leo asked. “And how does it connect to us?”
“We need to find out soon,” Thalia admitted. “If your deadline is tomorrow, we’re wasting time. Aeolus could tell you—”
The white wolf appeared again at the doorway and yipped insistently.
“I have to get moving.” Thalia stood. “Otherwise I’ll lose the other Hunters’ trail. First, though, I’ll take you to Aeolus’s palace.”