“Took them?” I asked. “As in alive?”

“Oh, yeah.” Josephine’s grim tone made it sound as if death would’ve been preferable. “The emperor loves prisoners. He captured our guests, our griffins.”

A berry slipped out of Leo’s fingers. “Griffins? Uh…Hazel and Frank told me about griffins. They fought some in Alaska. Said they were like rabid hyenas with wings.”

Josephine smirked. “The small ones, the wild ones, can be, yeah. But we raise the best here. At least…we did. Our last mating pair disappeared about a month ago. Heloise and Abelard. We let them out to hunt—they have to do that to stay healthy. They never returned. For Georgina, that was the final insult.”

A bad feeling began to nag at me. Something beyond the obvious we’re talking about creepy things that might get me killed. The griffin nests in the niches above us. A distant memory about my sister’s followers. A comment Nero had made in my vision: that the New Hercules was obsessed with destroying the House of Nets, as if that were another name for the Waystation…I felt like someone’s shadow was falling over the dining table, someone I should know, perhaps someone I should be running away from.

Calypso unwrapped the napkin from her hand. “Your daughter,” she asked. “What happened to her?”

Neither Josephine nor Emmie responded. Agamethus bowed slightly, his bloody tunic glowing in various shades of nacho topping.

“It’s obvious,” I said into the silence. “The girl went to the Cave of Trophonius.”

Emmie looked past me to Agamethus, her eyes as sharp as arrow points. “Georgina got it into her head that the only way to save the Waystation and find the captives was to consult the Oracle. She’d always been drawn to the place. She didn’t fear it the way most people did. One night she slipped away. Agamethus helped her. We don’t know exactly how they got there—”

The ghost shook his Magic 8 Ball. He tossed it to Emmie, who frowned at the answer on the bottom.

“ ‘It was ordained,’” she read. “I don’t know what you mean, you old, dead fool, but she was just a child. Without the throne, you knew what would happen to her!”

“The throne?” Calypso asked.

Another memory bobbed to the surface of my eight-ball brain.

“Oh, gods,” I said. “The throne.”

Before I could say more, the entire hall shuddered. Plates and cups rattled on the dining table. Agamethus vanished in a flash of nacho orange. At the top of the barreled ceiling, the green and brown stained-glass panels darkened as if a cloud had blacked out the sun.

Josephine rose. “Waystation, what’s happening on the roof?”

As far as I could tell, the building didn’t respond. No bricks shot out of the wall. No doors banged open and shut in Morse code.

Emmie set the Magic 8 Ball on the table. “The rest of you, stay here. Jo and I will check it out.”

Calypso frowned. “But—”

“That’s an order,” Emmie said. “I’m not losing any more guests.”

“It can’t be Com—” Josephine stopped herself. “It can’t be him. Maybe Heloise and Abelard are back?”

“Maybe.” Emmie didn’t sound convinced. “But just in case…”

The two women moved quickly to a metal supply cabinet in the kitchen. Emmie grabbed her bow and quiver. Josephine pulled out an old-fashioned machine gun with a circular drum magazine between the two handles.

Leo nearly choked on his dessert. “Is that a tommy gun?”

Josephine patted the weapon affectionately. “This is Little Bertha. A reminder of my sordid past life. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. You all sit tight.”

With that comforting advice, our heavily armed hosts marched off to check the roof.

Lovebirds arguing

Trouble in Elysium?

I’ll just scrub these plates

THE ORDER TO sit tight seemed clear enough to me.

Leo and Calypso, however, decided that the least we could do was clean up the lunch dishes. (See my previous comment re: the dumbness of productivity.) I scrubbed. Calypso rinsed. Leo dried, which wasn’t even work for him, since all he had to do was heat his hands a little.

“So,” Calypso said, “what’s this throne Emmie mentioned?”

I scowled at my foamy stack of bread pans. “The Throne of Memory. It’s a chair carved by the goddess Mnemosyne herself.”

Leo leered at me over the top of a steaming salad plate. “You forgot the Throne of Memory? Isn’t that a mortal sin or something?”

“The only mortal sin,” I said, “would be failing to incinerate you as soon as I become a god again.”

“You could try,” Leo said. “But then how would you learn those secret scales on the Valdezinator?”

I accidentally sprayed myself in the face. “What secret scales?”

“Both of you, stop,” Calypso ordered. “Apollo, why is this Throne of Memory important?”

I wiped the water off my face. Talking about the Throne of Memory had jogged loose a few more pieces of information from my mind, but I didn’t like what I’d remembered.

“Before a petitioner went into the Cave of Trophonius,” I said, “he or she was supposed to drink from two magical springs: Forgetfulness and Memory.”

Leo picked up another plate. Steam curled from the porcelain. “Wouldn’t the two springs, like, cancel each other out?”

I shook my head. “Assuming the experience didn’t kill you, it would prepare your mind for the Oracle. You would then descend into the cave and experience…untold horrors.”

“Such as?” Calypso asked.

“I just said they were untold. I do know that Trophonius would fill your mind with bits of nightmarish verse that, if assembled properly, became a prophecy. Once you stumbled out of the cave—assuming you lived and weren’t driven permanently insane—the priests would sit you down on the Throne of Memory. The verses would come spilling out of your mouth. A priest would write them down, and voilà! There’s your prophecy. With any luck, your mind would return to normal.”

Leo whistled. “That is one messed-up Oracle. I like the singing trees better.”

I suppressed a shudder. Leo hadn’t been with me in the Grove of Dodona. He didn’t appreciate just how terrible those clashing voices were. But he had a point. There was a reason few people remembered the Cave of Trophonius. It wasn’t a place that got rave write-ups in the yearly “Hot Oracles to Visit Now” articles.

Calypso took a bread pan from me and began to wash it. She seemed to know what she was doing, though her hands were so lovely I couldn’t imagine she often did her own dishes. I would have to ask her which moisturizer she used.

“What if the petitioner couldn’t use the throne?” she asked.

Leo snickered. “Use the throne.”

Calypso glared at him.

“Sorry.” Leo tried to look serious, which for him was always a losing battle.

“If the petitioner couldn’t use the throne,” I said, “there would be no way to extract the bits of verse from his or her mind. The petitioner would be stuck with those horrors from the cave—forever.”