These Lifeless Things || p. jackson

XVIII. Do Not Try This At Home

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT: they came across a sphynx who asked a lot of easy questions. Instead of letting it go and taking the easy route, Annabeth started a fight and they trapped the sphinx in her own room.

After running a bit more, the spider started banging its tiny head on a metal door. It 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 Ȇta inscribed in the middle.

They all looked at each other.

"Ready to meet Hephaestus?" Grover said nervously.

"No," Cecelia said.

"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 them followed, not quite as anxious.

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 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.

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.

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 gray pants 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 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. Xiao had seen Hephaestus once before, briefly on Olympus, but his appearance still made her blink. She supposed he'd cleaned up for the meeting, or used magic to make his form seem a little less hideous. Here in his own workshop, he apparently didn't care how he looked.

He work a jumpsuit smeared with oil and grime. Hephaestus, was embroidered over the chest pocket. His leg creaked and clicked in its metal brace as he stood, and his left shoulder was lower than his right, so he seemed to be leaning even when he was standing up straight. His head was misshapen and bulging. He wore a permanent scowl. His black beard smoked and hissed. Every once in a while a small wildfire would erupt in his whiskers then die out. His hands were the size of catcher's mitts, but he handled the spider with amazing skill. He disassembled it in two seconds, then put it back together.

"There," he muttered to himself. "Much better."

The spider did a happy flip in his palm, shot a metallic web at the ceiling, and went swinging away.

Hephaestus glowered up at them. "I didn't make you, did I?"

"Uh," Annabeth said, "no, sir."

"Good," the god grumbled. "Shoddy workmanship. Except for the arm, of course." He narrowed his eyes at Xiao. "Did I make that for you?"

"Yes, my lord," she said.

"Right. You're mostly half-bloods then, right. Could be automatons, of course, but probably not."

"We've met, sir," Percy told him.

"Have we?" the god asked absently. Xiao got the feeling he didn't care one way or the other. He was just trying to figure out how their jaws worked, whether it was a hinge or a lever or what. "Well then, if I didn't smash you to a pulp the first time we met, I suppose I won't have to do it now."