That left only Zeus and me.

My father coughed into his fist. “I know you think your punishment was harsh, Apollo.”

I did not answer. I tried my best to keep my expression polite and neutral.

“But you must understand,” Zeus continued, “only you could have overthrown Python. Only you could have freed the Oracles. And you did it, as I expected. The suffering, the pain along the way…regrettable, but necessary. You have done me proud.”

Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let’s be honest: some fathers don’t deserve that. Some aren’t capable of it.

I suppose I could have raged at him and called him bad names. We were alone. He probably expected it. Given his awkward self-consciousness at the moment, he might even have let me get away with it unpunished.

But it would not have changed him. It would not have made anything different between us.

You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him. Meg could never have changed Nero, any more than I could change Zeus. I could only try to be different than him. Better. More…human. And to limit the time I spent around him to as little as possible.

I nodded. “I understand, Father.”

Zeus seemed to understand that what I understood was not perhaps the same thing he understood, but he accepted the gesture, I suppose because he had little choice.

“Very well. So…welcome home.”

I rose from my throne. “Thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

I dissolved into golden light. There were several other places I’d rather be, and I intended to visit them all.

AS A GOD, I COULD SPLIT MYSELF INTO multiple parts. I could exist in many different places at once.

Because of this, I can’t tell you with absolute certainty which of the following encounters came first. Read them in any order you like. I was determined to see all my friends again, no matter where they were, and give them equal attention at roughly the same time.

First, though, I must mention my horses. No judgment, please. I had missed them. Because they were immortal, they did not need sustenance to survive. Nor did they absolutely have to make their daily journey through the sky in order to keep the sun going, thanks to all the other solar gods out there, still powering the movements of the cosmos, and that other thing called astrophysics. Still, I worried that my horses hadn’t been fed or taken out for exercise in at least six months, perhaps a whole year, which tended to make them grumpy. For reasons I shouldn’t have to explain, you don’t want your sun being pulled across the sky by grumpy horses.

I materialized at the entrance of the sun palace and found that my valets had abandoned their posts. This happens when you don’t pay them their gold drachma every day. I could barely push open the front door because months of mail had been shoved through the slot. Bills. Ad circulars. Credit card offers. Appeals for charities like Godwill and Dryads Without Borders. I suppose Hermes found it amusing to deliver me so much snail mail. I would have to have a talk with that guy.

I also hadn’t put a stop to my automatic deliveries from the Amazons, so the portico was piled high with shipping boxes filled with toothpaste, laundry detergent, guitar strings, reams of blank tablature, and coconut-scented suntan lotion.

Inside, the palace had reverted to its old Helios smell, as it did every time I was gone for an extended period. Its former owner had baked the place with the scent of Titan: pungent and saccharine, slightly reminiscent of Axe body spray. I’d have to open some windows and burn some sage.

A layer of dust had accumulated on my golden throne. Some jokers had written WASH ME on the back of the chair. Stupid venti, probably.

In the stables, my horses were glad to see me. They kicked at their stalls, blew fire, and whinnied indignantly, as if to say, Where the Hades have you been?

I fed them their favorite gilded straw, then filled their nectar trough. I gave them each a good brushing and whispered sweet nothings in their ears until they stopped kicking me in the groin, which I took as a sign that they forgave me.

It felt good to do something so routine—something I’d done millions of times before. (Taking care of horses, I mean. Not getting kicked in the groin.) I still didn’t feel like my old self. I didn’t really want to feel like my old self. But being in my stables felt much more comfortable and familiar than being on Olympus.

I split myself into separate Apollos and sent one of me on my daily ride across the sky. I was determined to give the world a regular day, to show everyone that I was back at the reins and feeling good. No solar flares, no droughts or wildfires today. Just Apollo being Apollo.

I hoped that this part of me would serve as my steady rudder, my grounding force, while I visited my other stops.

The welcome I received at Camp Half-Blood was uproarious and beautiful.

“LESTER!” the campers chanted. “LESTER!”

“LESTER?!”

“LESTER!”

I had chosen to appear in my old Papadopoulos form. Why not my glowing perfect god bod? Or one of the Bangtan Boys, or Paul McCartney circa 1965? After complaining for so many months about my flabby, acne-spotted Lester meat sack, I now found that I felt at home in that form. When I’d first met Meg, she had assured me that Lester’s appearance was perfectly normal. At the time, the notion had horrified me. Now I found it reassuring.

“Hello!” I cried, accepting group hugs that threatened to deteriorate into stampedes. “Yes, it’s me! Yep, I made it back to Olympus!”

Only two weeks had passed, but the newbie campers who had seemed so young and awkward when I first arrived now carried themselves like demigod veterans. Going through a major battle (sorry, “field trip”) will do that to you. Chiron looked enormously proud of his trainees—and of me, as if I were one of them.

“You did well, Apollo,” he said, gripping my shoulder like the affectionate father I’d never had. “You are always welcome here at camp.”

Ugly weeping would not have been appropriate for a major Olympian god, so that’s exactly what I did.

Kayla, Austin, and I hugged each other and wept some more. I had to keep my godly powers firmly under control, or my joy and relief might have exploded in a firestorm of happiness and obliterated the whole valley.

I asked about Meg, but they told me she had already left. She’d gone back to Palm Springs, to her father’s old home, with Luguselwa and her foster siblings from Nero’s Imperial Household. The idea of Meg handling that volatile group of demigods with only the help of LuBeard the Pirate made me uneasy.

“Is she well?” I asked Austin.

He hesitated. “Yeah. I mean…” His eyes were haunted, as if remembering the many things we’d all seen and done in Nero’s tower. “You know. She will be.”

I set aside my worries for the moment and continued making rounds among my friends. If they felt nervous that I was a god again, they hid it well. As for me, I made a conscious effort to stay cool, not to grow twenty feet tall or burst into golden flames every time I saw someone I liked.

I found Dionysus sitting glumly on the porch of the Big House, sipping a Diet Coke. I sat down across from him at the pinochle table.