Page 80 of The Wild Zone

Then, instead of wresting the scythe out of my grasp, she elbowed me in the face—just the kind of dirty move I should have expected. I tottered around, trying to regain my balance, while Clarisse sprinted away and grabbed her spear. The other campers cheered, but she silenced them with a wave of her hand.

We repositioned ourselves, shifting our weight from foot to foot, each looking for an advantage.

“I’m telling you,” I said between gritted teeth, tasting blood in my mouth, “so you don’t raise an alarm that we’ve gone missing.” I arced my scythe to one side, but she blocked it. “Unless we don’t come back by morning. Then maybe an alarm would be good.”

I swung my scythe overhead, but in the middle of my upswing, Clarisse jabbed her spear into the ground and used it the way a pole-vaulter would—except instead of flying over a crossbar, she kicked me hard in the stomach. I flailed backward, losing my balance and my scythe. My head hit the ground.

When my vision cleared, I saw Clarisse standing over me, the point of her spear pressed against my throat. Our match was over.

I blinked up at her. “Congratulations. You going to kill me now?”

She snorted. “Tempting.”

She held out her hand. I stared at it for a moment but then took it and let her help me to my feet. Some of our cabinmates booed.

Clarisse frowned at them. “You losers could learn a few things from Kim. Did you see that killer instinct? That’s what I’m talking about. Now get back to sparring!”

As the Ares kids grumbled and paired off again, Clarisse faced me and chin-pointed toward the armory. She led me just out of earshot.

“You can try your plan,” she said, “but if you’re taking your newbie friends with you, that’s not going to be enough. You’ll need backup.”

I smiled tightly. “You and your goons want to come along and shoot arrows at us again?”

“Funny,” she grumbled. “I’m not offering out of kindness. There’s something weird going on in the Wild Zone—I mean, even weirder than I realized. After you told me about that little invisibility ring of yours, I did some digging.”

She glanced in the direction of the Big House. “There’s an old register of magic items in the attic. All the stuff that’s been brought back to camp from quests, going back, like, a hundred years. It hasn’t been kept up the past few decades. I don’t even know if Chiron remembers it exists….”

“And?” I prompted.

“And I skimmed through it for anything about your ring.”

I’m not sure what surprised me more—that Clarisse had done something to help me, or that she had looked through an old book for information. She didn’t strike me as much of a researcher.

“About fifty years ago,” she continued, “a kid named Ian Fairbanks brought back a ring from a gorgon’s lair in the White Mountains. Supposedly, the ring could turn you invisible, but it had…side effects.”

“Side effects,” I echoed.

Clarisse shrugged. “The entry didn’t elaborate. Here’s the thing, though. Usually, a demigod either gets to keep a magic item from a quest, or it goes into the attic for safekeeping. This ring was marked as too dangerous for use. But it didn’t wind up in the attic.”

“So where did it go?”

“The entry just said Chiron.”

My gut felt queasy, and I didn’t think it was just from Clarisse’s kick. I remembered what Argus had said. Only Chiron entered the Wild Zone, and only a couple of times a century. This kid Ian had found his cursed item about fifty years ago….

I pulled the ring from my pocket. It glinted in the sunlight as if to say Everything is fine! Just a beautiful piece of jewelry! Try me!

“Could it be a different ring?” I asked without much conviction.

“ ‘Description: Silver with sapphires,’ ” Clarisse quoted.

“Shoot,” I said. “But if this thing was too dangerous to store in the attic, why would Chiron just toss it into the Wild Zone? Anybody could stumble over it there.”

Clarisse pursed her lips. “I don’t know. Unless he was very sure it would never be retrieved. For instance, if it was being guarded…”

I swallowed back the taste of blood. “By what?”

“That’s the million-drachma question,” Clarisse agreed. “And, Katie? Once I knew what to look for, I saw quite a few magic items marked the same way in the register: Too dangerous—Chiron. I think there’s more out there in the woods. I don’t know why. I don’t know what Chiron was thinking. But are you sure you don’t want backup?”