The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

you –’
    Leo jumped, dropping his wires. ‘Bronze bulls, girl! Don’t sneak up on me like that!’
    She was wearing red today – Leo’s favourite colour. That was completely irrelevant. She looked really good in red. Also irrelevant.
    ‘I wasn’t
sneaking
,’ she said. ‘I was bringing you these.’
    She showed him the clothes that were folded over her arm: a new pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, an army fatigue jacket … wait, those were
his
clothes, except that they couldn’t be. His original army jacket had burned up months ago. He hadn’t been
wearing
it when he landed on Ogygia. But the clothes Calypso held looked exactly like the clothes he’d been wearing the first day he’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood – except these looked bigger, resized to fit him better.
    ‘How?’ he asked.
    Calypso set the clothes at his feet and backed away as if he were a dangerous beast. ‘I do have a little magic, you know. You keep burning through the clothes I give you, so I thought I would weave something less flammable.’
    ‘These won’t burn?’ He picked up the jeans, but they felt just like normal denim.
    ‘They are completely fireproof,’ Calypso promised. ‘They’llstay clean and expand to fit you, should you ever become less scrawny.’
    ‘Thanks.’ He meant it to sound sarcastic, but he was honestly impressed. Leo could make a lot of things, but an inflammable, self-cleaning outfit wasn’t one of them. ‘So … you made an exact replica of my favourite outfit. Did you, like, google me or something?’
    She frowned. ‘I don’t know that word.’
    ‘You looked me up,’ he said. ‘Almost like you had some interest in me.’
    She wrinkled her nose. ‘I have an interest in not making you a new set of clothes every other day. I have an interest in you not smelling so bad and walking around my island in smouldering rags.’
    ‘Oh, yeah.’ Leo grinned. ‘You’re really warming up to me.’
    Her face got even redder. ‘You are the most insufferable person I have ever met! I was only returning a favour. You fixed my fountain.’
    ‘That?’ Leo laughed. The problem had been so simple he’d almost forgotten about it. One of the bronze satyrs had been turned sideways and the water pressure was off, so it started making an annoying ticking sound, jiggling up and down and spewing water over the rim of the pool. He’d pulled out a couple of tools and fixed it in about two minutes. ‘That was no big deal. I don’t like it when things don’t work right.’
    ‘And the curtains across the cave entrance?’
    ‘The rod wasn’t level.’
    ‘And my gardening tools?’
    ‘Look, I just sharpened the shears. Cutting vines with adull blade is dangerous. And the pruners needed to be oiled at the hinge, and –’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ Calypso said, in a pretty good imitation of his voice. ‘You’re really warming up to me.’
    For once, Leo was speechless. Calypso’s eyes glittered. He knew she was making fun of him, but somehow it didn’t feel mean.
    She pointed at his worktable. ‘What are you building?’
    ‘Oh.’ He looked at the bronze mirror, which he’d just finished wiring up to the Archimedes sphere. In the screen’s polished surface, his own reflection surprised him. His hair had grown out longer and curlier. His face was thinner and more chiselled, maybe because he hadn’t been eating. His eyes were dark and a little ferocious when he wasn’t smiling – kind of a Tarzan look, if Tarzan came in extra-small Latino. He couldn’t blame Calypso for backing away from him.
    ‘Uh, it’s a seeing device,’ he said. ‘We found one like this in Rome, in the workshop of Archimedes. If I can make it work, maybe I can find out what’s going on with my friends.’
    Calypso shook her head. ‘That’s impossible. This island is hidden, cut off from the world by strong magic. Time doesn’t even flow the same here.’
    ‘Well, you’ve got to have some kind of outside contact. How did you find out that I used to wear an army jacket?’
    She twisted her hair as if the question made her uncomfortable. ‘Seeing the past is simple magic. Seeing the present or the future – that is not.’
    ‘Yeah, well,’ Leo said. ‘Watch and learn, Sunshine. I just connect these last two wires, and –’
    The bronze plate sparked. Smoke billowed from the sphere. A flash fire raced up Leo’s sleeve. He pulled off his shirt, threw it down and stomped on it.
    He could tell Calypso was trying not to