Page 81 of The Wild Zone

I won’t lie. I was tempted to say Yes, please, and bring your largest siege weapons. But I couldn’t imagine the entire Ares cabin trying to sneak into the Wild Zone. And if they did, I couldn’t imagine they’d be able to help. Sending a dozen trigger-happy warriors into a monster-infested forest was more likely to get all of us killed, probably by one another. And if we found anything that needed to be kept secret, there was no chance of that with so many people involved.

I squared my shoulders. “We’ll be okay. But thanks for the information.”

Clarisse nodded. “Okay, then. Be careful.”

I stared at her. “That’s it? You’ll let us go?”

“This is the Ares cabin, kid. We don’t coddle. We don’t use guardrails. You want to risk your life? Good for you. Just be warned—if you die, I’ll have to kill you.” One corner of her mouth lifted in a smile.

It wasn’t unkind.

I gave her a half smile back. “Understood.”

Argus still wasn’t present at dinner, which I took as a personal insult. Best-case scenarios: He was up on Mount Olympus pleading for help, or he was rifling through dusty tomes looking for information the way he’d promised—the way Clarisse had actually done. More likely: He was hiding because he didn’t have any answers and he didn’t want to face me. And here I’d kept up my end of the bargain by having a “normal” day at camp.

After dinner, I was the first person in the kitchen for KP duty. I was already through half the dishes when the others started to arrive.

Harper’s eyes went wide. “How did you already get so much done?”

“I convinced some of your cabinmates to bring the dirty dishes down,” I said.

Harper frowned like he was trying to translate that statement from a foreign language. “You…convinced Aphrodite kids to help with kitchen chores? How? Bribery? Are you a charmspeaker now?”

“Nope,” I said. “I just explained to Olympia how the lava really opens up your facial pores. Great complement to her skin-care regimen.”

Zuri and Benny exchanged a look.

“That’s genius, actually,” said Benny.

I shrugged. “Well, nobody said we couldn’t outsource labor.”

As the others pulled on their fireproof gear and got to work, Zuri eyed me warily. We hadn’t spoken since the infirmary, and she was clearly still in a bad mood.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” she asked. “Got a hot date?”

“I do,” I said, lifting my chin. “With the Wild Omada, remember? We’re going back to the Wild Zone tonight.”

The silence that followed wasn’t exactly encouraging.

“Not to be negative,” Benny said, “but do we know any more than we did yesterday? I’ve had zero luck getting information.”

“Same,” Harper grumbled. “I admit I wasn’t on my A game….” He touched the thin scar on his lip. “But if we’re going into the Zone with no intel, personally I’d rather play Will He Eat This? with Lex. Last night, for example, I learned that he won’t eat a gallon of bacon grease. That smell is never gonna come out of my clothes.”

I held up a hand. “I have new information. Several things. The first”—I turned to Zuri—“involves a blue-and-orange feather.”

“That’s nothing new.” Zuri patted her hoodie’s front pocket, where she must have been keeping her feather. “I showed you that yesterday.”

“Except a second one was found”—I looked around at the others and lowered my voice—“near Silas’s panpipes, after he disappeared. Right on the border of the Wild Zone.”

Now I had everyone’s attention. Harper didn’t even seem to notice the lava dripping off a plate he was holding until a floor tile exploded with a loud POP!

“So something did take Silas,” Benny said.

“Seems like it,” I said. “Probably the same thing that took Grant.”

I waited for Zuri to speak up. The night before, she’d hinted pretty strongly that she knew what kind of monster we might be dealing with. But now she just continued rinsing dishes, her eyes smoldering almost as much as the lava.

“That’s not all,” I continued.