Haunted || Leo Valdez

28 - Our Helicopter Is Snowball-ed (featuring Tia Callida the Psycho Babysitter)

"Going okay?"

Piper, Rebecca, and Jason joined Leo in the cockpit to check on him. He was automatically flipping the right switches, checking the altimeter, easing back on the stick, and flying straight. Rebecca seated herself in the copilot's seat, and Piper and Jason knelt between her and Leo.

"Aces," Leo said. "So what's the Wolf House?"

Jason knelt between their seats. "An abandoned mansion in the Sonoma Valley. A demigod built it—Jack London."

Leo frowned "He was an actor?"

"Writer," Piper said. "Adventure stuff, right? Call of the Wild? White Fang?"

"Yeah," Jason said. "He was a son of Mercury—I mean, Hermes. He was an adventurer, traveled the world. He was even a hobo for a while. Then he made a fortune writing. He bought a big ranch in the country and decided to build this huge mansion—the Wolf House."

"Named that 'cause he wrote about wolves?" Leo guessed.

"Partially," Jason said. "But the site, and the reason he wrote about wolves—he was dropping hints about his personal experience. There're a lot of holes in his life story—how he was born, who his dad was, why he wandered around so much—stuff you can only explain if you know he was a demigod."

The bay slipped behind them, and the helicopter continued north. Ahead of them, yellow hills rolled out as far as they could see.

"So Jack London went to Camp Half-Blood," Leo guessed.

"No," Jason said. "No, he didn't."

"Bro, you're freaking me out with the mysterious talk. Are you remembering your past or not?"

"Pieces," Jason said. "Only pieces. None of it good. The Wolf House is on sacred ground. It's where London started his journey as a child—where he found out he was a demigod. That's why he returned there. He thought he could live there, claim that land, but it wasn't meant for him. The Wolf House was cursed. It burned in a fire a week before he and his wife were supposed to move in. A few years later, London died, and his ashes were buried on the site."

"So," Piper said, "how do you know all this?"

A shadow crossed Jason's face. The shape looked like an eagle. He glanced at Rebecca, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. He remembered.

"I started my journey there too," Jason said. "It's a powerful place for demigods, a dangerous place. If Gaea can claim it, use its power to entomb Hera on the solstice and raise Porphyrion—that might be enough to awaken the earth goddess fully."

Leo frowned again, staring out into space. Rebecca knew by now he was letting his mind wander, letting himself doubt himself and blame himself for everything bad that had happened.

The helicopter shuddered. Rebecca sucked in her breath and tried not to panic. Luckily, Leo leveled out the chopper, and the creaking stopped.

"Thirty minutes out," he said. "If you want to get some rest, now's a good time."

Jason strapped himself into the back of the helicopter and passed out almost immediately. Piper, Rebecca, and Leo stayed wide-awake.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Leo said, "Your dad'll be fine, you know. Nobody's gonna mess with him with that crazy goat around."

Piper glanced over, and Rebecca was struck by how much she'd changed. Not just physically. Her presence was stronger. She seemed more ... here. At Wilderness School, she'd spent the semester trying not to be seen, hiding out in the back row of the classroom, the back of the bus, the corner of the lunchroom as far as possible from the loud kids. Now she would be impossible to miss. It didn't matter what she was wearing —you'd have to look at her. Rebecca felt proud to call her a friend.