Daughter of Neptune, Book one

XXVI

Piper's pov

I woke up cold and shivering.

I had the worst dream about an old guy with donkey ears chasing me around and shouting,

"Oh, god." My teeth chattered. "He turned me to gold!"

"You're okay now." Jason leaned over and tucked a warm blanket around me, but I still felt as cold as a Boread.

I blinked, trying to figure out where they were. Next to me, a campfire blazed, turning the air sharp with smoke. Firelight flickered against rock walls. We were in a shallow cave, but it didn't offer much protection. Outside, the wind howled. Snow blew sideways. It might've been day or night. The storm made it too dark to tell.

"L-L-Leo?" I managed.

"Present and un-gold-ified." Leo was also wrapped in blankets. He didn't look great, but better than I felt. "I got the precious metal treatment too," he said. "But I came out of it faster. Dunno why. We had to dunk you in the river to get you back completely. Tried to dry you off, but...it's really, really cold."

"You've got hypothermia," Jason said. "We risked as much nectar as we could. Coach Hedge did a little nature magic—"

"Sports medicine." The coach's ugly face loomed over her "Kind of a hobby of mine. Your breath might smell like wild mushrooms and Gatorade for a few days, but it'll pass. You probably won't die. Probably."

"Thanks," I said weakly. "How did you beat Midas? And where's Tori?" Jason told me the story, putting most of it down to luck.

"Tori is over there, passed out." Jason said. She was leaning on a wall, white as a sheet from the cold with a blanket over her and shivering.

The coach snorted. "Kid's being modest. You should've seen him. Hi-yah! Slice! Boom with lightning!"

"Coach, you didn't even see it," Jason said. "You were outside eating the lawn."

But the satyr was just warming up. "Then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. Afterward, I told him, 'Kid, I'm proud of you! If you could just work on your upper body strength—'"

"Coach," said Jason.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up, please."

"Sure." The coach sat down at the fire and started chewing his cudgel.

Jason put his hand on my forehead and checked my temperature. "Leo, can you stroke the fire?"

"On it." Leo summoned a baseball-sized clump of flames and lobbed it into the campfire.

"Do I look that bad?" I shivered.

"Nah," Jason said.

"You're a terrible liar," I said. "Where are we?"

"Pikes Peak," Jason said. "Colorado."

"But that's, what—five hundred miles from Omaha?"

"Something like that," Jason agreed. "I harnessed the storm spirits to bring us this far.  They didn't like it—went a little faster than I wanted, almost crashed us into the mountainside before I could get them back in the bag. I'm not going to be trying that again."