BAD DREAMS?

Sure, why not!

I suffered a series of Instagram-boomerang nightmares – the same short scenes looped over and over: Luguselwa hurtling over a rooftop. The amphisbaena staring at me in bewilderment as two crossbow bolts pinned his necks to the wall. The Grey Sisters' eyeball flying into my lap and sticking there like it was coated in glue.

I tried to channel my dreams in a more peaceful direction – my favourite beach in Fiji, my old festival day in Athens, the gig I played with Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club in 1930. Nothing worked.

Instead, I found myself in Nero's throne room.

The loft space took up one whole floor of his tower. In every direction, glass walls looked out over the spires of Manhattan. In the centre of the room, on a marble dais, the emperor sprawled across a gaudy velvet couch throne. His purple satin pyjamas and tiger-striped bathrobe would've made Dionysus jealous. His crown of golden laurels sat askew on his head, which made me want to adjust the neck beard that wrapped around his chin like a strap.

To his left stood a line of young people; demigods, I assumed – adopted members of the imperial family like Meg had been. I counted eleven in all, arranged from tallest to shortest, their ages ranging from about eighteen to eight. They wore purple-trimmed togas over their motley assortment of street clothes, to indicate their royal status. Their expressions were a case study in the results of Nero's abusive parenting style. The youngest seemed struck with wonder, fear and hero worship. The slightly older ones looked broken and traumatized, their eyes hollow. The adolescents showed a range of anger, resentment and selfloathing, all bottled up and carefully not directed at Nero. The oldest teens looked like mini-Neros: cynical, hard, cruel junior sociopaths.

I could not imagine Meg McCaffrey in that assembly. And yet I couldn't stop wondering where she would fall in the line of horrific expressions.

Two Germani lumbered into the throne room carrying a stretcher. On it lay the large, battered form of Luguselwa. They set her down at Nero's feet, and she let out a miserable groan. At least she was still alive.

'The hunter returns empty-handed,' Nero sneered. 'Plan B it is, then. A forty-eight-hour ultimatum seems reasonable.' He turned to his adopted children. 'Lucius, double security at the storage vats. Aemillia, send out invitations. And order a cake. Something nice. It's not every day we get to destroy a city the size of New York.'

My dream-self plummeted through the tower into the depths of the earth.

I stood in a vast cavern. I knew I must be somewhere beneath Delphi, the seat of my most sacred Oracle, because the soup of volcanic fumes swirling around me smelled like nothing else in the world. I could hear my archnemesis, Python, somewhere in the darkness, dragging his immense body over the stone floor.

'You still do not see it.' His voice was a low rumble. 'Oh, Apollo, bless your tiny, inadequate brain. You charge around, knocking over pieces, but you never look at the whole board. A few hours, at most. That is all it will take once the last pawn falls. And you will do the hard work for me!'

His laughter was like an explosion sunk deep into stone, designed to bring down a hillside. Fear rolled over me until I could no longer breathe.

I woke feeling like I'd spent hours trying to squirm out of a stone cocoon. Every muscle in my body ached.

I wished I could just once wake up refreshed after a dream about getting seaweed wraps and pedicures with the Nine Muses. Oh, I missed our spa decades! But no. I got sneering emperors and giant laughing reptiles instead.

I sat up, woozy and blurry-eyed. I was lying in my old cot in the Me cabin. Sunlight streamed through the windows – morning light? Had I really slept that long? Snuggled up next to me, something warm and furry was growling and snuffling on my pillow. At first glance, I thought it might be a pit bull, though I was fairly sure I did not own a pit bull. Then it looked up, and I realized it was the disembodied head of a leopard.

One nanosecond later, I was standing at the opposite end of the cabin, screaming. It was the closest I'd come to teleporting since I'd lost my godly powers.

'Oh, you're awake!' My son Will emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam, his blond hair dripping wet and a towel around his waist. On his left pectoral was a stylized sun tattoo, which seemed unnecessary to me – as if he could be mistaken for anything but a child of the sun god.

He froze when he registered the panic in my eyes. 'What's wrong?'

GRR! said the leopard.

'Seymour?' Will marched over to my cot and picked up the leopard head – which at some point in the distant past had been taxidermied and stuck on a plaque, then liberated from a garage sale by Dionysus and granted new life. Normally, as I recalled, Seymour resided over the fireplace mantel in the Big House, which did not explain why he had been chewing on my pillow.

'What are you doing here?' Will demanded of the leopard. Then, to me: 'I swear I did not put him in your bed.'

'I did.' Dionysus materialized right next to me.

My tortured lungs could not manage another scream, but I leaped back an additional few inches.

Dionysus gave me his patented smirk. 'I thought you might like some company. I always sleep better with a teddy leopard.'

'Very kind.' I tried my best to kill him with eye daggers. 'But I prefer to sleep alone.'

'As you wish. Seymour, back to the Big House.' Dionysus snapped his fingers and the leopard head vanished from Will's hands.

'Well, then ...' Dionysus studied me. 'Feeling better after nineteen hours of sleep?' I realized I was wearing nothing but my underwear. With my pale, lumpy mortal form covered in bruises and scars, I looked less than ever like a god and more like a grub that had been prised from the soil with a stick.

'Feeling great,' I grumbled.

'Excellent! Will, get him presentable. I'll see you both at breakfast.'

'Breakfast ...?' I said in a daze.

'Yes,' Dionysus said. 'It's the meal with pancakes. I do love pancakes.'

He disappeared in a grape-scented cloud of glitter.

'Such a show-off,' I muttered.

Will laughed. 'You really have changed.'

'I wish people would stop pointing that out.'

'It's a good thing.'

I looked down again at my battered body. 'If you say so. Do you have any clothing, or possibly a burlap sack I might borrow?'

Here's all you need to know about Will Solace: he had clothes waiting for me. On his last trip into town, he'd gone shopping specifically for things that might fit me.

'I figured you'd come back to camp eventually,' he said. 'I hoped you would, anyway. I wanted you to feel at home.'

It was enough to start me crying again. Gods, I was an emotional wreck. Will hadn't inherited his thoughtfulness from me. That was all his mother, Naomi, bless her kind heart.

I thought about giving Will a hug, but since we were clad in just underwear and a towel, respectively, that seemed awkward. He patted me on the shoulder instead.

'Go take a shower,' he advised. 'The others took an earlymorning hike –' he gestured at the empty bunks – 'but they'll be back soon. I'll wait for you.'

Once I was showered and dressed – in a fresh pair of jeans and a V-necked olive tee, both of which fit perfectly – Will re-bandaged my forehead. He gave me some aspirin for my aching everything. I was starting to feel almost human again – in a good way – when a conch horn sounded in the distance, calling the camp to breakfast.

On our way out of the cabin, we collided with Kayla and Austin, just returning from their hike with three younger campers in tow. More tears and hugs were exchanged.

'You've grown up!' Kayla gripped my shoulders with her archery-strong hands. The June sunlight made her freckles more pronounced. The green-tinted tips of her orange hair made me think of Halloween-pumpkin candy. 'You're two inches taller at least! Isn't he, Austin?'

'Definitely,' Austin agreed.

As a jazz musician, Austin was usually smooth and cool, but he gave me a serene smile like I'd just nailed a solo worthy of Ornette Coleman. His sleeveless orange camp tee showed off his dark arms. His cornrows were done in swirls like alien crop circles.

'It's not just the height,' he decided. 'It's the way you hold yourself ...'

'Ahem,' said one of the kids behind him.

'Oh, right. Sorry, guys!' Austin stepped aside. 'We got three new campers this year, Dad. I'm sure you remember your children Gracie and Jerry and Yan ... Guys, this is Apollo!'

Austin introduced them casually, like I know you don't have a clue who these three kids are that you sired and forgot about twelve or thirteen years ago, but don't worry, Dad, I got you.

Jerry was from London, Gracie from Idaho and Yan from Hong Kong. (When had I been in Hong Kong?) All three seemed stunned to meet me – but more in a you-have-to-bekidding-me way, not in a wow-cool sort of way. I muttered some apologies about being a terrible father. The newcomers exchanged glances and apparently decided, by silent agreement, to put me out of my misery.

'I'm famished,' Jerry said.

'Yeah,' Gracie said. 'Dining hall!'

And off we trekked like one big super-awkward family.

Campers from other cabins were also streaming towards the dining pavilion. I spotted Meg halfway up the hill, chatting excitedly with her siblings from the Demeter cabin. At her side trotted Peaches, her fruit-tree spirit companion. The little diapered fellow seemed quite happy, alternately flapping his leafy wings and grabbing Meg's leg to get her attention. We hadn't seen Peaches since Kentucky, as he tended to only show up in natural settings, or when Meg was in dire trouble, or when breakfast was about to be served.

Meg and I had been together so long, usually just the two of us, that I felt a pang in my heart watching her stroll along with a different set of friends. She looked so content without me. If I ever made it back to Mount Olympus, I wondered if she would decide to stay at Camp Half-Blood. I also wondered why the thought made me so sad.

After the horrors she'd suffered in Nero's Imperial Household, she deserved some peace.

That made me think about my dream of Luguselwa, battered and broken on a stretcher in front of Nero's throne. Perhaps I had more in common with the Gaul than I wanted to admit. Meg needed a better family, a better home than either Lu or I could give her. But that didn't make it any easier to contemplate letting her go.

Just ahead of us, a boy of about nine stumbled from the Ares cabin. His helmet had completely swallowed his head. He ran to catch up to his cabinmates, the point of his toolong sword tracing a serpentine line in the dirt behind him.

'The newbies all look so young,' Will murmured. 'Were we ever that young?'

Kayla and Austin nodded in agreement.

Yan grumbled. 'We newbies are right here .'

I wanted to tell them that they were all so young. Their lifespans were a blink of an eye compared to my four millennia. I should be wrapping them all in warm blankets and giving them cookies rather than expecting them to be heroes, slay monsters and buy me clothes.

On the other hand, Achilles hadn't even started shaving yet when he sailed off to the Trojan War. I'd watched so many young heroes march bravely to their deaths over the centuries ... Just thinking about it made me feel older than Kronos's teething ring.

After the relatively ordered meals of the Twelfth Legion at Camp Jupiter, breakfast at the dining pavilion was quite a shock. Counsellors tried to explain the seating rules (such as they were) while returning campers jockeyed for spots next to their friends, and the newbies tried not to kill themselves or each other with their new weapons. Dryads wove through the crowd with platters of food, satyrs trotting behind them and stealing bites. Honeysuckle vines bloomed on the Greek columns, filling the air with perfume.

At the sacrificial fire, demigods took turns scraping parts of their meals into the flames as offerings to the gods – corn flakes, bacon, toast, yogurt. (Yogurt?) A steady plume of smoke rolled into the heavens. As a former god, I appreciated the sentiment, but I also wondered whether the smell of burning yogurt was worth the air pollution.

Will offered me a seat next to him, then passed me a goblet of orange juice.

'Thank you,' I managed. 'But where's, uh ...?'

I scanned the crowd for Nico di Angelo, remembering how he normally sat at Will's table, regardless of cabin rules.

'Up there,' Will said, apparently guessing my thoughts.

The son of Hades sat next to Dionysus at the head table. The god's plate was piled high with pancakes. Nico's was empty. They seemed an odd pair, sitting together, but they appeared to be in a deep and serious conversation. Dionysus rarely tolerated demigods at his table. If he was giving Nico such undivided attention, something must be seriously wrong.

I remembered what Mr D had said yesterday, just before I passed out. '"That boy has had too much bad news already",' I repeated, then frowned at Will. 'What did that mean?'

Will picked at the wrapper of his bran muffin. 'It's complicated. Nico sensed Jason's death weeks ago. It sent him into a rage.'

'I'm so sorry ...'

'It's not your fault,' Will assured me. 'When you got here, you just confirmed what Nico already knew. The thing is ... Nico lost his sister Bianca a few years back. He spent a long time raging about that. He wanted to go into the Underworld to retrieve her, which ... I guess, as a son of Hades, he's really not supposed to do. Anyway, he was finally starting to come to terms with her death. Then he learned about Jason, the first person he really considered a friend. It triggered a lot of stuff for him. Nico has travelled to the deepest parts of the Underworld, even down in Tartarus. The fact that he came through it in one piece is a miracle.'

'With his sanity intact,' I agreed. Then I looked again at Dionysus, god of madness, who seemed to be giving Nico advice. 'Oh ...'

'Yeah,' Will agreed, his face drawn with worry. 'They've been eating most meals together, though Nico doesn't eat much these days. Nico has been having ... I guess you'd call it post-traumatic stress disorder. He gets flashbacks. He has waking dreams. Dionysus is trying to help him make sense of it all. The worst part is the voices.'

A dryad slammed a plate of huevos rancheros in front of me, almost making me jump out of my jeans. She smirked and walked off, looking quite pleased with herself.

'Voices?' I asked Will.

Will turned up his palms. 'Nico won't tell me much. Just ... someone in Tartarus keeps calling his name. Someone needs his help. It's been all I could do to stop him from storming down into the Underworld by himself. I told him: talk to Dionysus first. Figure out what's real and what's not. Then, if he has to go ... we'll go together.'

A rivulet of cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. I couldn't imagine Will in the Underworld – a place with no sunshine, no healing, no kindness.

'I hope it doesn't come to that,' I said.

Will nodded. 'Maybe if we can take down Nero – maybe that will give Nico something else to focus on for a while, assuming we can help you.'

Kayla had been listening quietly, but now she leaned in. 'Yeah, Meg was telling us about this prophecy you got. The Tower of Nero and all that. If there's a battle, we want in.'

Austin wagged a breakfast sausage at me. 'Word.'

Their willingness to help made me feel grateful. If I had to go to war, I would want Kayla's bow at my side. Will's healing skill might keep me alive, despite my best efforts to get killed. Austin could terrify our enemies with diminished minor riffs on his saxophone.

On the other hand, I remembered Luguselwa's warning about Nero's readiness. He wanted us to attack. A full frontal assault would be suicide. I would not let my children come to harm, even if my only other option was to trust Lu's crazy plan and surrender myself to the emperor.

A forty-eight-hour ultimatum, Nero had said in my dream. Then he would burn down New York.

Gods, why wasn't there an option C on this multiplechoice test?

Clink, clink, clink.

Dionysus rose at the head table, a glass and spoon in his hands. The dining pavilion fell silent. Demigods turned and waited for morning announcements. I recalled Chiron having much more trouble getting everyone's attention. Then again, Chiron didn't have the power to turn the entire assembly into bunches of grapes.

'Mr A and Will Solace, report to the head table,' Dionysus said.

The campers waited for more.

'That's all,' Mr D said. 'Honestly, do I need to tell you how to eat breakfast? Carry on!'

The campers resumed their normal happy chaos. Will and I picked up our plates.

'Good luck,' Kayla said. 'I have a feeling you'll need it.'

We went to join Dionysus and Nico at the International Head-table of Pancakes.