Bewitched || P. Jackson

𝕄y Brother...

Sets of couches and low tables were carted into the forum until it resembled a furniture showroom. Romans lounged in groups of ten or twenty, talking and laughing while wind spirits—aurae—swirled overhead, bringing an endless assortment of pizzas, sandwiches, chips, cold drinks, and fresh-baked cookies.

Drifting through the crowd were purple ghosts—Lares—in togas and legionnaire armour. Around the edges of the feast, satyrs trotted from table to table, panhandling for food and spare change. Nicki had politely offered them a drachma from her back pocket, but they seemed more interested in dirt than her currency.

"Don't take it personally," Percy had whispered in her ear, wrapping his arm around her waist to guide her through the crowd. "They're really weird here."

A laugh bubbled through Nicki. "Now I know why you fit in so well." Percy poked her shoulder in offense but nothing other than laughter left his lips. He was too happy to even feign sadness.

In the nearby fields, the war elephant frolicked with Mrs O'Leary, and children played tag around the statues of Terminus that lined the city limits.

The whole scene was so familiar yet so completely alien that it gave Nicki vertigo. Something bubbled in her stomach as her forest-green eyes darted from the children to Percy and back again.

Reyna and a few of her officers (including the blond kid Octavian, freshly back from burning a teddy bear for the gods) sat with Nicki and the Greeks. Percy joined them with his two new friends, Frank and Hazel.

As a tornado of food platters settled onto the table, Percy leaned over and whispered, "I want to show you around New Rome. Just you and me. The place is incredible."

She swallowed back a wave of something. "Really?"

"I've been thinking," he said nervously. "I had this idea—" He stopped as Reyna called a toast to friendship.

After introductions all around, the Romans and Greeks began exchanging stories. Jason explained how he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood without his memory, and how he'd gone on a quest with Nicki, Ethan, Piper, and Leo to rescue the goddess Hera (or Juno, take your pick—she was equally annoying in Greek or Roman) from imprisonment at the Wolf House in northern California.

Ethan rested his chin on his hand, waving a half-eaten cookie in excitement. "You would've loved it!" His comment was directed at Percy. "It was very pow-pow, boom-boom! Jason talks too much. He was trying to— I dunno— have therapy? Talk about his feelings with the monsters, you would've been all kick ass now, ask questions later."

"I don't recall you doing much ass-kicking," Jason stated, biting back a smile. Something about Ethan relaxed him, like a kindred spirit. "I, however, died for the cause." He held his hands out across the table so Nicki could excitedly high-five it.

"Impossible!" Octavian interrupted, not appreciating the sidetracking. "That's our most sacred place. If the giants had imprisoned a goddess there—"

"They would've destroyed her," Piper said. "And blamed it on the Greeks, and started a war between the camps. Now, be quiet and let Jason finish." Octavian opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Nicki really loved Piper's charmspeak.

"So," Jason continued, "that's how we found out about the earth goddess Gaea. She's still half asleep, but she's the one freeing the monsters from Tartarus and raising the giants. Porphyrion, the big leader dude we fought at the Wolf House: he said he was retreating to the ancient lands—Greece itself. He plans on awakening Gaea and destroying the gods by...what did he call it? Pulling up their roots."

"Like a big tree." Nicki nodded thoughtfully.

Percy patted his girlfriend's shoulder. "Gaea's been busy over here, too. We had our own encounter with Queen Dirt Face." Percy recounted his side of the story. He talked about waking up at the Wolf House with no memories except for one name.