Daughter of Neptune, Book one

XVI

Leo pov

I wished the dragon hadn't landed on the toilets.

Of all the places to crush, a line of Porta-Potties would not have been my first choice. A dozen of the blue plastic boxes had been set up in the factory yard, and Festus had flattened them all. Fortunately, they hadn't been used in a long time, and the fireball from the crash incinerated most of the contents; but still, there were some pretty gross chemicals leaking out of the wreckage. Tori and I had to pick our way through and try not to breathe through our noses. Heavy snow was coming down, but the dragon's hide was still steaming hot. Of course, that didn't bother me.

After a few minute of climbing over Festus's inanimate body, I started to get irritated. The dragon looked perfectly fine. Yes, it had fallen out of the sky and landed with a big ka-boom, but its body wasn't even dented. The fireball had apparently come from built up gasses inside the toilet units, not from the dragon itself. Festus's wings were intact. Nothing seemed broken. There was no reason it should have stopped.

"Not my fault," I muttered. "Festus, you're making me look bad."

Then I opened the control panel on the dragon's head, and my heart sank. "Oh, Festus, what the heck?"

The wiring had frozen over. I knew it had been okay yesterday. I'd worked so hard to repair the corroded lines, but something had caused a flash freeze inside the dragon's skull, where it should've been too hot for ice to form. The ice had caused the wiring to overload and char the control disk. I couldn't see any reason that would've happened. Sure, the dragon was old, but still, it didn't make sense.

I could replace the wires. That wasn't the problem. But the charred control disk was not good. The Greek letters and pictures carved around the edges, which probably held all kinds of magic, were blurred and blackened.

The one piece of hard ware I couldn't replace--and it was damaged. Again.

I imagined my mom's voice: Most problems look worse than they are, mijo. Nothing is unfixable.

My mom could repair just about anything, but I was pretty sure she'd never worked on a fifty-year-old magic dragon.

I clenched my teeth and decided I had to try. I wasn't walking from Detroit to Chicago in a snowstorm, and I wasn't going to be responsible for stranding my friends.

"Right," I muttered, brushing the snow off my shoulders.

"Gimme a nylon bristle detail brush, some nitrile gloves, and a can of aerosol cleaning solvent."

The tool belt obliged. I couldn't help smiling as I pulled out the supplies. The belt's pockets did have limits. They wouldn't give me anything magic, like Jason's sword or Tori's weapons, or anything huge, like a chain saw. I tried asking for them. And if I asked for too many things at once, the belt needed a cool down time before it could work again. The more complicated the request, the longer the cool down. But anything small and simple like you might find around a workshop--all I had to do was ask.

I began cleaning of the control disk. While I worked, snow collected on the cooling dragon. I had to stop from time to time to, very carefully so Tori wouldn't see, summon fire and melt it away, but mostly I went autopilot mode, my hands working by themselves as my thoughts wandered.

I couldn't believe how stupid I'd acted back at Boreas's palace. I should've figured a family of winter gods would hate me on sight. Son of the fire god flying a fire-breathing dragon into an ice penthouse--yeah, maybe not the best move. Still, I hated feeling like a reject. Jason, Piper, and Tori got to visit the throne room. I got to wait in the lobby with Cal, demigod of hockey and major head injuries.