“I am not the average Demigod.”

“Are you sure Zeus is the only one with a penchant for an ego?” I muttered. “You’re talking in circles. Will he be fine or not?”

“I don’t know. The odds seem evenly split.”

“Well…I mean, we have to help. What if he’s rusty with his magic against so many people? What if he doesn’t escape? Hell, what if he does escape? Then what? His whole life has been turned upside down. This is our fault. We have to fix this.”

“Fixing this will mean taking on another Demigod. A strong Demigod.”

“Would you stop stalling? All we do anymore is take on Demigods, it feels like. I made a promise. Let’s go!”

“Sounds good. Follow Amber. Just in case Demigod Flora rats me out to the Chester officials, we’ll go around their checkpoint. We will not be heading to the house. We’ll meet up in the cabin in the woods and go from there.”

The cabin had been another property Kieran had purchased in the area. A moment later, Amber pulled ahead, going another half-mile before she could turn around.

“They got here just one day after we did,” Mordecai said as we cut off an oncoming car to pull into traffic. The honk nearly drowned out his words. “Careful, Lexi.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”

“All those SUVs must’ve been bought in advance, but not far enough in advance for them to get all the same kind,” Daisy said, nodding as she continued to lean toward the front.

“They had one SUV just for supplies, Kieran said, which means they expect to be in the wilderness,” Mordecai said, and it was clear the kids were treating this as a sort of high-stakes training session. “They expect to hunt for their prey. They know more than just a generalized location.”

“Could Harding have told other people?” Daisy asked me. “He seems like a dirty player. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“I wouldn’t either. He likes to watch me in action,” I replied, having already considered the matter. “But he is tied to that pocket watch. I know he is. Besides, I can hear spirits, but there is only one of me, and Demigod Flora doesn’t have any Hades hard hitters on her team. It can’t be Harding.”

“Well then, it is someone that is in deep with Kieran,” Daisy said. “None of the secretaries have oaths. Red and Bria don’t. Aubri—she’s a snoop. She’s always listening for gossip. Mordecai and I don’t.”

“Jerry,” Mordecai said softly. “For the first week or so he still didn’t have a blood oath, but he was always around.”

I shook my head as our SUV train turned off onto a small road following a cliff face on one side. “Why would he double-cross us when he’d have to deal with the fallout?”

“Yeah, true.” Daisy chewed her lip. “Red and Bria don’t necessarily have to deal with the fallout, though. Not if they are still double agents.”

“There is no way Bria is double-dealing,” I said. “We’ve been through too much.”

“Maybe she’s just giving you the shove she always thinks you’ll need?” Mordecai said, and goosebumps spread across my skin.

We turned off another road, and then another, turning onto a seemingly barely used dirt road. My ability to think about the problem evaporated as I caught sight of the swiftly moving river directly ahead of us. “What in the holy—”

Amber slowed to a crawl before venturing in, the Bronco’s front right end lifting as it encountered a submerged rock and then splashed down into the water. The front bumper bobbed as the current lifted the vehicle. In a moment, the chassis lowered again, the water pulling back from the Bronco and then lifting over the top in an arc before touching down on the other side again.

“Why can’t he just stop it from flowing for a few minutes? Why does he have to make it go over our heads?” I whispered, nearing the glistening riverbed. “What if he passes out or loses his grip? We’ll be swept along.”

The larger rocks rolled out of the way, Jerry helping out, leaving big holes in their wake. I followed Amber with trepidation, never having off-roaded in my life. The tire instantly found one of those holes, and I screamed, making both of the kids jump. The car crawled out with steady pressure on the gas, then the underside scraped something hard.

“Please keep going. Please keep going,” I urged the Jeep.

The other wheel dipped, and the Jeep tilted forward wildly, as if we were on a ride in an amusement park. The forward right wheel clipped the side of a rock Jerry hadn’t moved, and we slipped sideways, the rock battering the underside of the Jeep. The top corner bit into the stream of water overhead, showering us.

“I can’t see!” I hollered.

“Use your wipers, Lexi,” Mordecai yelled, clutching the dash. “It’s just like rain.”

“It is a freaking river, not rain,” I muttered, fumbling with the wipers. The Jeep dipped into another hole. Water sloshed off the windshield. “I can take on a freaking Demigod in the middle of the night, and I’ll run to the aid of a perfect stranger against another Demigod, but driving through a river is not my idea of awesome. Why couldn’t we take the road like normal people?”

My grumbling got me the rest of the way across the riverbed. I urged the Jeep up the small incline and onto a mostly grown-over set of tracks leading into the trees. Either that riverbed dried up at certain times, or someone had bigger balls than I did, because there was no way I could have made the crossing without Kieran.

After another half-hour of taking back roads that were increasingly easy to traverse, we emerged onto a small highway nestled into the thick canopy of the mountains—sugar maples, beeches, hemlocks, and tulip poplars all struggling for a place in the sun. Below, ferns and ivy tangled together in the brush, creating a few little patches of brightly colored flowers to help decorate the beautiful tableau.

“What can Demigods of Zeus do?” I asked Daisy as we drove.

“They’ll also be able to manipulate lightning, of course,” she said, sitting back and looking upward, thinking. “They can either throw it from their hands or, for more power, use the sky. Kieran can combat their ability by messing with the weather, although Zeus’s descendants are likely more experienced with storms. They can mimic people’s voices and apply glamor to look like other people, so watch for mannerisms—”

“I can just use the soul,” I said.

“Right, yeah. Nice. You can get around one of their most sneaky magics. They can also force land creatures to shift or stay shifted unless the creature is strong enough and can resist. Watch yourself, Mordecai. You probably have the power to resist, but not the experience. They won’t have any power over your shifted form, in any case, so it is probably only an issue for people like Thane. Hopefully he’s strong enough to resist.”

“I’m sure he’s trained for it,” Mordecai said.

“We’ll know soon enough, I guess,” she murmured.

I bit my lip, remembering Thane on the mountain. Or even Thane in training. When he went Berserk, he was never a fun time.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Big schlong, big ego, very brave, and a distinct rivalry with Poseidon and Hades. Zeus thinks he’s the best, and while he’s a little more powerful than his brothers, it’s offset by his tendency to think with his big schlong instead of the thing between his ears. That trait has been passed down in his lineage, and it goes for the ladies, too. Big lady schlong. It shows in their attitude.”