The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

just a few minutes – he was
that
good – but it felt like hours.
    Jason didn’t show. Maybe he was still tangled at the Neptune fountain or scouring the streets looking for Leo. No one else from the ship came to help. Probably it was taking them a long time to get all those pink rubber bands out of Coach Hedge’s hair.
    That meant Leo had only himself, his bag of junk food and a few highly improvised weapons made from sugar and toothpaste. Oh, and the Archimedes sphere. That was kind of important. He hoped he hadn’t ruined it by filling it with chemical powder.
    He ran to the tower and found the entrance. He started up the winding stairs inside, only to be stopped at a ticket booth by some caretaker who yelled at him in Italian.
    ‘Seriously?’ Leo asked. ‘Look, man, you’ve got dwarfs in your belfry. I’m the exterminator.’ He held up his can of bug spray. ‘See? Exterminator
Molto Buono.
Squirt, squirt. Ahhh!’ He pantomimed a dwarf melting in terror, which for some reason the Italian didn’t seem to understand.
    The guy just held out his palm for money.
    ‘Dang, man,’ Leo grumbled, ‘I just spent all my cash on homemade explosives and whatnot.’ He dug around in hisgrocery bag. ‘Don’t suppose you’d accept … uh … whatever these are?’
    Leo held up a yellow-and-red bag of junk food called Fonzies. He assumed they were some kind of potato chips. To his surprise, the caretaker shrugged and took the bag. ‘
Avanti!
’
    Leo kept climbing, but he made a mental note to stock up on Fonzies. Apparently they were better than cash in Italy.
    The stairs went on and on and on. The whole tower seemed to be nothing but an excuse to build a staircase.
    He stopped on a landing and slumped against a narrow barred window, trying to catch his breath. He was sweating like crazy, and his heart thumped against his ribs. Stupid Kerkopes. Leo figured that as soon as he reached the top they would jump away before he could use his weapons, but he had to try.
    He kept climbing.
    Finally, his legs feeling like overcooked noodles, he reached the top.
    The room was about the size of a broom closet, with barred windows on all four walls. Shoved in the corners were sacks of treasure, shiny goodies spilling all over the floor. Leo spotted Piper’s knife, an old leather-bound book, a few interesting-looking mechanical devices and enough gold to give Hazel’s horse a stomachache.
    At first, he thought the dwarfs had left. Then he looked up. Akmon and Passalos were hanging upside down from the rafters by their chimp feet, playing antigravity poker. When they saw Leo, they threw their cards like confetti and broke out in applause.
    ‘I told you he’d do it!’ Akmon shrieked in delight.
    Passalos shrugged and took off one of his gold watches and handed it to his brother. ‘You win. I didn’t think he was that dumb.’
    They both dropped to the floor. Akmon was wearing Leo’s tool belt – he was so close that Leo had to resist the urge to lunge for it.
    Passalos straightened his cowboy hat and kicked open the grate on the nearest window. ‘What should we make him climb next, brother? The dome of San Luca?’
    Leo wanted to throttle the dwarfs, but he forced a smile. ‘Oh, that sounds fun! But, before you guys go, you forgot something shiny.’
    ‘Impossible!’ Akmon scowled. ‘We were very thorough.’
    ‘You sure?’ Leo held up his grocery bag.
    The dwarfs inched closer. As Leo had hoped, their curiosity was so strong that they couldn’t resist.
    ‘Look.’ Leo brought out his first weapon – a lump of dried chemicals wrapped in aluminium foil – and lit it with his hand.
    He knew enough to turn away when it popped, but the dwarfs were staring right at it. Toothpaste, sugar and bug spray weren’t as good as Apollo’s music, but they made a pretty decent flash-bang.
    The Kerkopes wailed, clawing at their eyes. They stumbled towards the window, but Leo set off his homemade firecrackers – snapping them around the dwarfs’ bare feet to keep them off balance. Then, for good measure, Leo turned the dial on his Archimedes sphere, which unleashed a plume of foul white fog that filled the room.
    Leo wasn’t bothered by smoke. Being immune to fire, he’d stood in smoky bonfires, endured dragon breath and cleaned out blazing forges plenty of times. While the dwarfs were hacking and wheezing, he grabbed his tool belt from Akmon, calmly summoned some bungee cords and tied up the dwarfs.
    ‘My