¹On This Spring Day, percy jackson & the olympians

009.

ON THIS SPRING DAY
━━━━━ chapter nine

━━━━━ VIOLET THOUGHT THEY had lost the spider until Tyson heard a faint pinging sound. They made a few turns, backtracked a few times, and eventually found the spider banging its tiny head on a metal door.

               The door looked like one of those old-fashioned submarine hatches—oval, with metal rivets around the edges and a wheel for a doorknob. Where the portal should've been was a big brass plaque, green with age, with a Greek Êta inscribed in the middle.

               They all looked at each other.

               "Ready to meet Hephaestus?" Grover said nervously.

               "No," Percy admitted.

               "Yes!" Tyson said gleefully, and he turned the wheel.

               As soon as the door opened, the spider scuttled inside with Tyson right behind it. The rest of us followed, not quite as lively. The gigantic pit in Violet's stomach only grew the further she walked inside, anxious to meet another god.

               The room was enormous. It looked like a mechanic's garage, with several hydraulic lifts. Some had cars on them, but others had stranger things: a bronze hippalektryon with its horse head off and a bunch of wires hanging out of its rooster tail, a metal lion that seemed to be hooked up to a battery charger, and a Greek war chariot made entirely of flames. Violet thought for a moment how much Connor and Travis would love the chariot, knowing the havoc they would cause driving it.

               Smaller projects cluttered a dozen worktables. Tools hung along the walls. Each had its own outline on a peg board, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. The hammer was over the screwdriver place. The staple gun was where the hacksaw was supposed to go. It reminded Violet so much of Cabin Nine. Inherited family traits, she figured.

               Under the nearest hydraulic lift, which was holding a '98 Toyota Corolla, a pair of legs stuck out—the lower half of a huge man in grubby grey overalls and shoes even bigger than Tyson's. One leg was in a metal brace.

               The spider scuttled straight under the car, and the sounds of banging suddenly stopped.

               "Well, well," a deep voice boomed from under the Corolla. "What have we here?"

               The mechanic pushed out on a back trolley and sat up.

               Violet had seen Hephaestus once before on Olympus, so she thought she was prepared to see him again. She wasn't. For many reasons. One; her grandmother, Aphrodite, ( though Violet was to never call the goddess Grandmother ) had cheated on Hephaestus and sired Eros, Violet's father. So, that made Violet Hephaestus's step-granddaughter, and walking proof of Aphrodite's cheating in a weird way. So, she wasn't stoked to meet him for that alone. She didn't know just how vindictive the God of Forges was going to be, if he even noticed at all.

               Two; she wasn't sure when it had started, but resentment had started to build. Violet knew exactly what the culprit was; the defective model of Talos back in the junkyard. Hephaestus hadn't done anything to Violet personally, but if only he hadn't made the defective model of Talos, then Bianca would've never had to try and deactivate it, and Violet wouldn't have summoned that cloud of gloom.

               And, well ... Violet didn't like to judge people based on appearance. It wasn't kind ( and she didn't want to play into that horrible stereotype of being superficial as a daughter of love ) and it wasn't fair to them. But Hephaestus's appearance made her gulp.