Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Demigod Files

time, you’ve got the nerve to welcome me?”
    I shifted uneasily, because talking that way to a god can get you blasted into dust bunnies. “Um, Nico—”
    “It’s all right,” Persephone said coldly. “We had a little family spat.”
    “Family spat?” Nico cried. “You turned me into a dandelion!”
    Persephone ignored her stepson. “As I was saying, demigods, I welcome you to my garden.”
    Thalia lowered her bow. “You sent the golden deer?”
    “And the hellhound,” the goddess admitted. “And the shadow that collected Nico. It was necessary to bring you together.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    Persephone regarded me, and I felt like cold little flowers were blooming in my stomach.
    “Lord Hades has a problem,” she said. “And if you know what’s good for you, you will help him.”
    We sat on a dark veranda overlooking the garden. Persephone’s handmaidens brought food and drink, which none of us touched. The handmaidens would’ve been pretty except for the fact that they were dead. They wore yellow dresses, with daisy and hemlock wreaths on their heads. Their eyes were hollow, and they spoke in the chittering batlike voices of shades.
    Persephone sat on a silver throne and studied us. “If this were spring, I would be able to greet you properly in the world above. Alas, in winter this is the best I can do.”
    She sounded bitter. After all these millennia, I guess she still resented living with Hades half the year. She looked so bleached and out of place, like an old photograph of springtime.
    She turned toward me as if reading my thoughts. “Hades is my husband and master, young one. I would do anything for him. But in this case I need your help, and quickly. It concerns Lord Hades’s sword.”
    Nico frowned. “My father doesn’t have a sword. He uses a staff in battle, and his helm of terror.”
    “He didn’t have a sword,” Persephone corrected.
    Thalia sat up. “He’s forging a new symbol of power? Without Zeus’s permission?”
    The goddess of springtime pointed. Above the table, an image flickered to life: skeletal weapon smiths worked over a forge of black flames, using hammers fashioned like metal skulls to beat a length of iron into a blade.
    “War with the Titans is almost upon us,” Persephone said. “My lord Hades must be ready.”
    “But Zeus and Poseidon would never allow Hades to forge a new weapon!” Thalia protested. “It would unbalance their power-sharing agreement.”
    Persephone shook her head. “You mean it would make Hades their equal? Believe me, daughter of Zeus, the Lord of the Dead has no designs against his brothers. He knew they would never understand, which is why he forged the blade in secret.”
    The image over the table shimmered. A zombie weapon smith raised the blade, still glowing hot. Something strange was set in the base—not a gem. More like . . .
    “Is that a key?” I asked.
    Nico made a gagging sound. “The keys of Hades?”
    “Wait,” Thalia said. “What are the keys of Hades?”
    Nico looked even paler than his stepmother. “Hades has a set of golden keys that can lock or unlock death. At least . . . that’s the legend.”
    “It is true,” Persephone said.
    “How do you lock and unlock death?” I asked.
    “The keys have the power to imprison a soul in the Underworld,” Persephone said. “Or to release it.”
    Nico swallowed. “If one of those keys has been set in the sword—”
    “The wielder can raise the dead,” Persephone said, “or slay any living thing and send its soul to the Underworld with a mere touch of the blade.”
    We were all silent. The shadowy fountain gurgled in the corner. Handmaidens floated around us, offering trays of fruit and candy that would keep us in the Underworld forever.
    “That’s a wicked sword,” I said at last.
    “It would make Hades unstoppable,” Thalia agreed.
    “So you see,” Persephone said, “why you must help get it back.”
    I stared at her. “Did you say get it back ?”
    Persephone’s eyes were beautiful and deadly serious, like poisonous blooms. “The blade was stolen when it was almost finished. I do not know how, but I suspect a demigod, some servant of Kronos. If the blade falls into the Titan lord’s hands—”
    Thalia shot to her feet. “You allowed the blade to be stolen! How stupid was that? Kronos probably has it by now!”
    Thalia’s arrows sprouted into long-stemmed roses. Her bow melted into a honeysuckle vine dotted with white and gold