by Rick Riordan
“Oh…man,” said Sam, wiping his forehead. “We gotta dance!” He took a deep breath and started flailing wildly. He glanced at me, and I did my best to mirror him. I felt ridiculous, but five minutes later, we had four dollars in change sitting in Sam’s new hat.
He smiled at me. “We…did it! Let’s…go.”
GO TO PRESERVATION HALL
WARNING! You’re about to spoil a great story by not making a choice! Page back, then click one of the links to advance the story. Otherwise, the next section may not make any sense to you.
I racked my brain, trying to come up with something I could do. I was sure that if I tried to sing or dance, we would end up owing money. I thought back to all of the street performers I’d seen over the years: break dancers, magicians, guitarists, mimes…none of which was something I could do. “Maybe I could juggle?” I said.
Sam wrinkled his nose like he smelled sewage. “Can you do it without dropping the balls?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never tried. How hard can it be?”
“Um, hard,” said Sam.
“Well, maybe people will appreciate the effort,” I said. “I honestly don’t know what else I could do.”
Sam cocked his head and looked at me curiously for a moment. “You know what?” he said. “It’s worth a try.” He led us down to Jackson Square. The main park area, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, was enormous and perfectly landscaped. A gothic-looking cathedral towered over everything, just behind a green-tinged statue of Andrew Jackson (he waved his hat at us). The stretch of sidewalk to the left of the main square was littered with small folding tables where psychics and tarot card readers sat. Artists had leaned paintings against the fence to attract passersby. Sam looked around, then pointed to an empty spot near some brightly painted canvases. “I’ll be over there,” he said. “If anything goes wrong, or the cops come, I’ll sing, um, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ That’ll be our time-to-go cue.”
“Okay,” I said. “Good luck.”
“You need it more than I do,” he said, then he took off his new hat and gave it to me. As he clopped over, I tucked the hat under my arm and looked around for something to juggle. About halfway down the block, I saw a man selling fruit from a cart: apples, melons, limes, coconuts. I used the rest of the change in my pocket to buy three limes (apples and melons seemed too big) and hefted them as I walked to the corner.
I placed the hat and one of the limes on the ground in front of me, then tossed one of the fruits into the air and caught it. Easy. I did that a few times, then I did it with two, tossing them gently from hand to hand. It felt strangely simple, like the limes were almost moving in slow motion. Maybe this demigod thing was good for something.…
I picked up the third lime and started slowly. Toss one piece of fruit from the right hand into the air, then the lime from the left, then the third lime from the right hand while catching the second. Rinse. Repeat. I dropped the fruit a few times, but then I managed to get through one rotation without dropping.
Then two.
Soon, I was keeping it going for ten or twenty seconds at a time…then longer.
“Juggling!” I shouted, unable to keep the smile off my face. “Come and get your juggling!”
A kid in a stained Cirque du Soleil shirt walked up and watched me for a few seconds until I dropped one of the limes. He picked it up and handed it back to me, so I started again. I juggled and juggled and he started clapping. A few other people stopped to check me out, and I said, “Money helps!” They laughed and put some change into my hat.
I got into the zone, getting better and better as the minutes flew by. Each lime seemed to hover in the air, allowing me more than enough time to grab it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that bills were piling up in my hat. By the time I heard Sam singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” at the top of his lungs, it was literally overflowing with money.
I gave the limes to a couple of gaping kids, scooped up all the cash, and ran over to Sam. He was insanely sweaty. “It’s…time…to…go…” he panted. “Did…we…do…it?”
I started counting, putting each dollar into the hat. “…eighty-four…eighty-five…eighty-six…eighty-seven! Sam, we killed it! We made eighty-seven dollars!” I shouted, then hugged him, immediately regretting it as his wet goat scent clung to me.
“Come…on,” he gasped. “We…only…have…fifteen…minutes.…”
I laughed and shoved all of the bills into my pockets. “If this demigod gig doesn’t work out, maybe we can take our show on the road.”
GO TO PRESERVATION HALL
WARNING! You’re about to spoil a great story by not making a choice! Page back, then click one of the links to advance the story. Otherwise, the next section may not make any sense to you.
We sprinted over to Preservation Hall and purchased two tickets with minutes to spare. The place was tiny, with bare wooden walls, dim lighting, and minimal seating. A large crowd was already packed in, and Sam and I made our way to the front of the room.
A lone musician, a woman with dark hair flowing down her back, was tapping out a rhythm on a tall conga drum. Her gray eyes locked with mine and she smiled. An electric current ran up my spine.
“Sam, you see that woman?”
The band filtered in just then, blocking our view of her. When the musicians moved aside, she was gone, but her drum remained. Except…
“Look!”
A fog seemed to lift from around the conga, revealing an earthenware container of roughly the same shape and size. The tuning lugs had morphed into two handles. A solid clay lid, not a thin drum skin, covered the top.
“The pithos! It was hidden by the Mist!” Sam said. “Should we grab it and go?”
We couldn’t claim it yet, because the band had started to play. I’d never listened to live jazz before and thought the music was amazing. The little boy sitting next to me had a different opinion. He clapped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. The boy’s father caught my eye and shrugged. “Guess not everyone is a music lover.”
The band finished its set forty-five minutes later. I’d hoped to sneak on stage and get the pithos while the audience filed out. But the musicians lingered, chatting with a few fans.
“Now what?” Sam whispered.
“We try the direct approach.” I moved to the trumpet player, an older man who had been introduced as Lou Garoo. He had a patchy beard, bushy hair, and a long nose. “Excuse me, sir, but is that pith—er, conga for sale?”
“Nope.” Lou’s voice was deep and husky, almost a growl.
My heart sank as I searched my mind for ideas.
Then he said, “But could be I’d trade ya something for it.”
“Anything!”
He nodded at Sam. “I got a liking for your hat.”
“My hat?” Sam turned to me. “He wants my nub hat?”
“Sensible design, those slits,” Lou said. “Works for mules and other…creatures…who might need a little extra room up top. Next full moon, a hat like that could fit me just right.” He grinned, and suddenly his face looked less human and more…canine. Like the Big Bad Wolf.
“Lou Garoo.” I gulped. Loups-garoux. “You’re a—a—”
“Friend. Let’s leave it at that.” He combed his fingers (with the longest fingernails I’d ever seen) through his hair. “So, we have a deal? Hat for pith—er, conga?”
“Deal.” Sam handed over his nub hat, we grabbed the pithos, and the two of us shot out of there before we became doggie treats.
On visit number two to Saint Louis Cemetery Number One—after hours this time—we crouched behind a tomb, the pithos between us. I had just unzipped my backpack to get my dual action toothbrush—it turned into a sword and prevented tooth decay—when I heard the sound of brick scraping against brick. I risked a peek. A shadowy form moved swiftly through the gloom and disappeared.
“Something’s out there,” I hissed.
“Where?”
Sam and I whirled around.
A seven-foot-tall man leaned casually against a crypt. He was dressed in a tight-fitting pinstriped suit, purple vest, and white shirt. A top hat perched on his head and a smoking cigar dangled from his mouth. His face was painted to look like a skull. He wore sunglasses with one lens missing.
One thing was instantly obvious: no way was he going to fit into our pithos.
The Mormo’s lips peeled back in a ghastly grin.
“Look at its teeth,” Sam whimpered.
There were only four, two upper and two lower, shaped like snake fangs and oozing venom. “Let me guess,” he said, his voice raspy and low. “You want me to get into your little clay pot.”
“Uh, just for a second?” said Sam.
The Mormo cackled, apparently genuinely amused. “You demigods. Not only will I never, ever get into your silly pithos, I am highly doubtful that you’ll even get the chance to try and make me.”
I pulled out my toothbrush, flicked the bristles, and it transformed into a Celestial bronze sword. “No?” I said.
“Nope,” said the Mormo, and lazily snapped his fingers.
“Zane!” shouted Sam, and I spun around to find a horde of ghosts moving toward me. I’d forgotten the Mormo could summon them. Their leader, a thick-necked woman with a hatchet in one hand and a decapitated chicken in the other, flew at me. I doubted she could do much damage with the chicken. The hatchet, though? I didn’t wait to find out. I sliced my sword straight through her vaporous form. She vanished with a shriek and the stench of sulfur.
Sam yelled my name again. While I’d been playing chicken with the Chicken Lady, the other specters had closed in around him.
“Duck!” I cried.
He dropped just as I swung my blade in a swooping, neck-high arc. The ghosts winked out one after another.
“Man, that smells bad!” Sam waved his hand in front of his nose.
The Mormo strode into the clearing and slow-clapped sarcastically. “Well-played. Let’s see what else you can handle.”
I charged forward with my sword raised, piercing his leg to the bone. The Mormo howled. I thrust again—but this time, I hit nothing. A split second before I struck, he flickered from solid to gas.
“Huh. Nice trick.”
“If you like that, you’ll love this.” The Mormo snapped his fingers.
Several vaults burst open. Skeletal remains, some with meat still clinging to the bones, clattered out and assembled themselves into semi-humans. In the distance, I spotted more ghosts floating toward us.
Sam picked up a piece of wood and swung it in a large circle. We attacked together. The bone people we knocked apart stayed down, but more kept coming. “There’s too many of them!” Sam cried as we backed away, slicing and dicing for our lives. “Maybe we should run for it?”
A low rumble shook the graveyard, and Sam groaned as five enormous spirits materialized on our left. “More?” he bleated. But they were uninterested in us and advanced slowly on the pithos, which we’d left behind a few crypts over.
These demons’ legs were thick red-brown pillars of lumpy clay. Three held hammers; their faces were patchworks of pottery shards. Scorch marks covered the torso and face of the fourth, who clutched a blazing torch. The last, inexplicably, wore a chef’s hat on top of his misshapen head.
“Smash?” one of the hammer dudes queried.
“Destroy!” agreed the second.
“Shatter,” the third added.
“The Demons Karaoke,” Sam groaned. “Forgot about them.”
“We can’t let them destroy the pithos,” I said.
“No way we can take these guys,” said Sam in a high-pitched voice.
Somewhere nearby, I heard the Mormo cackle. Now I understood his confidence—we were facing five massive demons, a horde of weapon-wielding ghosts, and about forty slow-moving zombies.
That’s it. We’re goners. It’s over.
Sam looked at me, panicked, and dropped his stick. “You have to save us,” he said.
“Me? What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”
“No,” said Sam, frantically, “I mean you have to call on your parent to help us. You have to use your power!” The demons moved even closer. I could see their teeth, could hear the hissing of the zombies, could feel the wind from the ghosts.
“I don’t have any powers,” I said. “You’ve known me my whole life! I couldn’t even tie my shoes until last year!”
“You do,” insisted Sam. “Every demigod has some piece of their parent’s power. You just need to manifest it. Now listen carefully: Some gods derive their powers from outside of themselves—the earth, the wind, the waters—while other gods get their powers from their insides—their minds, their social skills, their feelings. Which one feels closer to you? ”
“But—”
“Now,” he said.
Select a choice:
INTERNAL
EXTERNAL
WARNING! You’re about to spoil a great story by not making a choice! Page back, then click one of the links to advance the story. Otherwise, the next section may not make any sense to you.
“Inside,” I blurted.
Sam nodded, then took a step closer.
I stared at him. “What?”
He put both hands on my shoulders and rubbed gently. “Take a deep breath. Relax. Now go ahead.”
“Go ahead with what?”
“Manifest your power, call on your parent. I don’t know exactly how it works, I’m not a demigod, but it usually looks like a deep breath and then some sort of zen focused concentration stuff.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Zombies and ghosts were coming in droves now. I hadn’t seen this many brain-dead bullies since we started middle school. Sam just stared at me anxiously. The demons snuffled and moved even closer.
I inhaled and focused my energy inward, calling on my parent—whoever it was—to help, to give me power. I opened my eyes and looked around. All I saw was a frantic satyr and an army of the undead. I bit my lip and focused even harder, my knuckles turning white around the hilt of the sword…and then I felt it—something deep inside my chest, something that may have always been there.
The answer.
“Sam, what’s our main advantage over these guys?”
“Uh, we’re alive?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Speed. And we don’t need to kill them, right? All we’re trying to do is capture the Mormo.”
“Okay…” he said.
“So we split up and run to opposite sides of the cemetery. Half will follow me, half will follow you. We meet back in the middle in five minutes, and that’ll buy us enough time to get the Mormo into the pithos.”
“I don’t know if—”
“On three. One. Two. Three!” Before my lazy satyr friend could object, I sprinted to my right, easily weaving between the dimwitted zombies and the unfocused ghosts. I’d realized the obvious: the undead were only dangerous if you tried to fight them, or were standing still. We didn’t need to do either.
The enormous karaoke demons trudged in my direction as I ran toward the far side, darting in between towering mausoleums. The moon was full and bright, the zombies slow and doddering. I got to the fence at the edge of the property and turned around to see at least forty zombies moving toward me, a good sixty-five yards away. The demons were even farther back, and the ghosts flitted about, confused. The Mormo was around here somewhere, but if he waited just a bit longer, we could confront him as two against one instead of two against a million.
Two solid minutes went by until the horde was almost on me, and then I jogged in a looping semicircle around them, back to the spot where I’d left Sam. About thirty seconds later, Sam trotted up, huffing and puffing.
I smiled and leaned against the nearest mausoleum. We were alone in the alley.
“Look!” said Sam. He pointed at the tomb I was leaning against. It was covere
d with chalk X’s. “It’s Marie’s,” Sam crowed, stopping abruptly as a mist began to ooze from the wall. I leaped back.
We watched in awe as the mist coalesced into the translucent form of a dark-skinned woman wearing a turban. She peered at us, then spoke with an indistinguishable lilting accent. “You requested my favor with the Mormo?”
“Yes. Yes!” I couldn’t believe the X trick had actually worked. “Can you help us capture him?”
“I’m afraid all I can offer is my advice. For years I was able to keep the Mormo at bay, but he is relentless. The zombies and ghosts will keep coming, and eventually, you will be overwhelmed. Your only hope is to neutralize him.”
“We have the pithos…” I offered.
“Ah, yes. But how are you going to get him inside it? For that, you need an object of power.”
“A what?” I asked.
“An object of power,” she repeated. “I tried many during my time on Earth, but none was strong enough to entrap the Mormo.”
“They’re back!” shouted Sam, pointing to two approaching skeletons.
“Wait, I just thought of something!” I reached into my pocket and removed the wooden ring we’d found under the bridge in Austin. I held it out to Marie Laveau.
The spirit smiled. “Ah, yes. That just might work.” She began to fade into the above-ground tomb. “Good luck…”
“Hold on!” I called after her. “What do we—”
But she was gone.
“What does the ring do?” shouted Sam, as he kept his eyes on another half-animated corpse.
I stared at the ring. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, put it on!” shouted Sam, scanning the graveyard wildly as four more undead trundled toward us, their tattered clothes and clumps of skin dragging along the ground. “They’re almost here! Come on!”
We took cover behind a crumbling tomb cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Sam dropped a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I patted it and turned to give him a smile.
