The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

girl’s face was milky pale, with dark almond-shaped eyes and pouty lips. She looked maybe fifteen, about Leo’s age, and sure she was pretty, but with that angry expression on her face she reminded Leo of every popular girl in every school he’d ever attended – the ones who made fun of him, gossiped a lot, thought they were
so
superior and basically did everything they could to make his life miserable.
    Leo disliked her instantly.
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ he said. ‘I just fell out of the sky. I constructed a helicopter in midair, burst into flames halfway down, crash-landed and barely survived. But by all means – let’s talk about your dining table!’
    He snatched up a half-melted goblet. ‘Who puts a diningtable on the beach where innocent demigods can crash into it? Who
does
that?’
    The girl clenched her fists. Leo was pretty sure she was going to march down the crater and punch him in the face. Instead she looked up at the sky.
    ‘REALLY?’ she screamed at the empty blue. ‘You want to make my curse even
worse
? Zeus! Hephaestus! Hermes! Have you no shame?’
    ‘Uh …’ Leo noticed that she’d just picked three gods to blame, and one of them was his dad. He figured that wasn’t a good sign. ‘I doubt they’re listening. You know, the whole split-personality thing –’
    ‘Show yourself!’ the girl yelled at the sky, completely ignoring Leo. ‘It’s not bad enough I am exiled? It’s not bad enough you take away the few
good
heroes I’m allowed to meet? You think it’s funny to send me this – this charbroiled runt of a boy to ruin my tranquillity? This is NOT FUNNY! Take him back!’
    ‘Hey, Sunshine,’ Leo said. ‘I’m right here, you know.’
    She growled like a cornered animal. ‘Do
not
call me Sunshine! Get out of that hole and come with me
now
so I can get you off my island!’
    ‘Well, since you asked so nicely …’
    Leo didn’t know what the crazy girl was so worked up about, but he didn’t really care. If she could help him leave this island, that was totally fine by him. He clutched his charred sphere and climbed out of the crater. When he reached the top, the girl was already marching down the shoreline. He jogged to catch up.
    She gestured in disgust at the burning wreckage. ‘This was a pristine beach! Look at it now.’
    ‘Yeah, my bad,’ Leo muttered. ‘I should’ve crashed on one of the other islands. Oh, wait – there aren’t any!’
    She snarled and kept walking along the edge of the water. Leo caught a whiff of cinnamon – maybe her perfume? Not that he cared. Her hair swayed down her back in a mesmerizing kind of way, which of course he didn’t care about either.
    He scanned the sea. Just like he’d seen during his fall, there were no landmasses or ships all the way to the horizon. Looking inland, he saw grassy hills dotted with trees. A footpath wound through a grove of cedars. Leo wondered where it led: probably to the girl’s secret lair, where she roasted her enemies so she could eat them at her dining table on the beach.
    He was so busy thinking about that he didn’t notice when the girl stopped. He ran into her.
    ‘Gah!’ She turned and grabbed his arms to keep from falling in the surf. Her hands were strong, as though she worked with them for a living. Back at camp, the girls in the Hephaestus cabin had had strong hands like that, but she didn’t look like a Hephaestus kid.
    She glared at him, her dark almond eyes only a few inches from his. Her cinnamon smell reminded him of his
abuela
’s apartment. Man, he hadn’t thought about that place in years.
    The girl pushed him away. ‘All right. This spot is good. Now tell me you want to leave.’
    ‘What?’ Leo’s brain was still kind of muddled from the crash-landing. He wasn’t sure he had heard her right.
    ‘Do you want to
leave
?’ she demanded. ‘Surely you’ve got somewhere to go!’
    ‘Uh … yeah. My friends are in trouble. I need to get back to my ship and –’
    ‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘Just say,
I want to leave Ogygia.
’
    ‘Uh, okay.’ Leo wasn’t sure why, but her tone kind of hurt … which was stupid, since he didn’t care what this girl thought. ‘I want to leave – whatever you said.’
    ‘Oh-gee-gee-ah.’ The girl pronounced it slowly, as if Leo were five years old.
    ‘I want to leave Oh-gee-gee-ah,’ he said.
    She exhaled, clearly relieved. ‘Good. In a moment, a magical raft will appear. It will take you wherever you want to