Hecate’s torches

Why? the ghosts asked. They didn’t like us. Their hostility tinged the air like sulfur. They knew Annabeth wasn’t Hecate—not a goddess to fear, just a teenager with borrowed torches. They crowded around, swirling, sniffing us, held at bay only by Gale’s anti-ghoul salve and Annabeth’s willpower. Their presence drained the strength from my limbs. I didn’t know how Annabeth could stand it.

Now they were disoriented and angry. I couldn’t blame them. Resting in peace wasn’t something that happened a lot in Manhattan. I get it, I thought. But we need your help. Follow Annabeth. Work for her. I wasn’t sure how helpful I was being. I was too distracted worrying about Annabeth, who must have been taking the brunt of the ghosts’ anger. The torches burned brighter, turning a deeper blue, almost violet. Annabeth’s arms trembled. “You okay?” I asked. “I—I’m good,” she managed. I wanted to believe her, but the smoky forms kept multiplying. The whole graveyard seemed to have risen—hundreds of souls from unmarked graves,

Annabeth straightened. She looked right into the sooty eyes of Peter Stuyvesant. “You will help us,” she commanded. “Follow me.” Stuyvesant’s dust particles churned with resentment. But I felt something else now, too: curiosity, cold amusement, a cruel desire to see how long Annabeth could hold herself together before she broke. His response hissed in my mind. Go on, then, girl. Annabeth turned and led us out of the graveyard.

One block. That’s how far we made it. Annabeth led us across 11th Street, then… We had just emerged onto 12th Street when Annabeth stumbled. I managed to catch her left arm and keep the torch from dropping. Grover did the same on her right. The ghosts surged toward us, then ebbed back when Annabeth regained her balance. I got the feeling they’d been about a half second away from feeding on our immortal souls. “I made a mistake,” Annabeth said. Her breathing was ragged. Her legs wobbled like she’d just climbed all the way to Olympus. “What can we do?” I asked. She shook her head. “I’m not…going to have…enough strength…to get there.”

“Let me take the torches,” I said.

“It’s okay.” I wrapped my hands over hers on the torch handles. “Let me help.” She loosened her grip and fell back into Grover’s arms. The ghosts whirled into an angry storm of dust and smoke, but I kept the torches aloft and channeled my best mental hellpuppy voice. NOPE! The spirits calmed. Or at least, they went back to their baseline level of homicidal rage. “You’re going to follow me to Gramercy Park,” I ordered. “And you’re going to like it.” For the first .00035th of a second, I felt pretty confident. The torches weren’t that heavy. The hissing voices and emotional onslaught from the dead weren’t that bad. But by the time we got to Third Avenue, I was starting to think Grover was right. I needed to work out more. The torches felt like anvils. I was running a serious deficit of muscles and stuff. Sweat poured down my back. I realized I wasn’t just carrying the torches—I was dragging an entire army of reluctant dead people behind me. They were making it as hard as they could, digging in their ghostly heels. Stuyvesant hovered nearby, watching me with amusement. And now this boy thinks he can control us. Watch me, Pete, I growled back.

Our strange procession staggered north. The torches became heavier. The flames scalded my forearms. Every so often, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a random new ghost crawling out of the sidewalk or emerging from a wall to join our parade. Great…for once, I was popular. I lost track of time. My vision blurred. I felt like I was turning to smoke, blending into the spirit mob until I was nothing but jumbled feelings and fuzzy memories. I was vaguely aware that Annabeth had jogged ahead to confer with Grover.

The thought distracted me. I tripped on a crack. The torches guttered. The ghosts swarmed me. “Percy!” Annabeth’s voice shocked me back into focus. I raised the torches higher. The ghosts retreated, whispering insults. Stuyvesant’s face was only a swirl of soot, but I was pretty sure he was leering at me. “That was close,” Annabeth said. “Just keep going. You’re doing great.” I staggered on as more and more spirits joined our procession. Traffic sounds became soft and damp like noises heard underwater. Pedestrians parted around us in slow motion, ignoring the torches and angry dead people.

“Percy, almost there,” Annabeth said. “Look.” We’d made it to the north end of Irving Place. Ahead of us stretched Gramercy Park West. On our left, only half a block away, rose the gray facade of the manse. I could do this. My legs were as heavy as cast iron, but a surge of anger gave me strength. Hecate didn’t reward hesitation? Fine. I growled—probably saying something really inappropriate in Hellhound—and marched straight ahead through the hallucinatory vision of Hecate. We made it to the mansion’s gate. Annabeth and Grover hurried to either side of me. They braced my arms, and together we lurched up the cranium-stone path. The torch flames guttered again, cooling to a dark red. Somehow, we made it to the front porch.

“Okay,” Annabeth said. “Together.” She put her arm around my waist. She reached out for the torch in my right hand. “Let me do the thinking,” she warned. “Gladly,” I croaked. She took the torch. Wow, that was a relief. Suddenly only the left side of my body felt like it was dissolving in acid. On my right I had Annabeth, which was much better. I put my free arm around her waist. We held each other tight. The torches blazed, heating up again to a bright blue flame. Annabeth faced our surly mob of followers. “Fix the house,” she said. “Then you’ll be free.” Behind us, the makeshift front door blasted open. The army of spirits rushed the front porch, parting around us like we were a rock in the rapids, and swept into the manse. “Oh,” Grover said in a small voice. “I’m sure that’s fine.” Annabeth and I managed to turn so we could watch the spirits’ progress. Fortunately, we’d had some practice doing three-legged races at camp. Miniature tornadoes swirled through the great room. The dead cleared the broken glass, repaired the furniture, and painted the walls with sheets of ghostly frost. Above us, more ghosts swept across the building’s facade, mending the cracked tombstones and replacing those that had fallen. “Percy,” Annabeth said weakly, “it’s going to work!” I tried to smile, but even lifting the corners of my mouth felt like too much effort. I stayed focused on the task: Fix the house. Otherwise, I let Annabeth do the thinking. The ghosts did all the heavy lifting, but it felt like they were draining the life force right out of me. The more they did, the more my legs shook. Only Stuyvesant remained aloof from the uproar. He probably considered himself above menial labor. He floated here and there, monitoring repairs, hissing orders in Dutch, and letting his home-jongens do all the work. Grover, Hecuba, and Gale stood in the front yard, stunned into silence. Nope, who must have sensed we needed support, padded behind us, wedged his head between Annabeth’s leg and mine, and rested his snout on my shoe. Honestly, that was the best cute-puppy assist I could have asked for. I don’t know how long the process took. Hours? Centuries? My sight dimmed. My brain wobbled in my skull like a gyroscope. Finally, Annabeth said, “It’s done.” The ghosts belched out of the house in a flood of gray ectoplasm and reassembled in the yard.

The dead were waiting, but I knew they were at the end of their patience. They felt no sense of accomplishment. They only wanted one thing: release. Also, revenge. Okay, they wanted two things. We needed to dismiss them quickly and send them back to their graves. “Ready?” Annabeth asked me. “One, two, three.” She started pulling in her torch. I did the same. The idea was simple: Do what Hecate had done. Cross the torches in front of us and hope the spirits turned to dust and went bye-bye. The problem was, my left arm rebelled. I had nothing left. No muscles. No stuff. Just bringing the torch toward my chest felt like trying to close a rusty airplane-hangar door with one hand. I took a breath, dug deep to find whatever remained of my strength, and gave it one last shot. “Percy?” Grover asked in alarm. “Percy!” Annabeth said. “Sorry…” I muttered. My last shot was a miss. Black spots danced in my eyes. I crumpled to my knees, and the torch fell out of my hand.

WotG ch.31-32