Book Cult (New and Improved)

Leo XVII

"Leo XVII," Demeter read out loud.

Leo was totally buzzing.

'Buzzing?' Hestia mouthed to Hermes with a confused look on her face.

'I'll tell you later.' Hermes mouthed back.

The expression on everyone's faces when he the dragon into camp? Priceless! He thought his cabin mates were going to bust a lug nut.

Everyone, except his siblings and father, stared at Leo with confusion.

"Lug nut?" Percy asked him.

"No thanks." Leo said, not looking up as he continued writing.

The son of Poseidon made a face. "Um..."

"It's a type of nut used to attach a vehicle's wheel to its axel." Hephaestus explained.

Festus had been awesome too. He hadn't blowtorched a single cabin or eaten any satyrs,

"You sound like you expected him to do that." Grover shuddered.

Leo set the notepad to the side and began to untie his shoes.

even if he dribbled a little oil from his ear.

"See? I told you it was just a little!" Leo grinned, kicking off his shoes.

Okay, a lot of oil.

Figures. the son of Hephaestus rolled his eyes before searching through his tool belt.

"First rule of lying: Never admit your lying!" Travis sighed. "Com'on man, that's Lying 101."

Leo could work on that later.

"Shouldn't you do it now?" Thalia asked the boy.

"No, it would take too long to fix." Leo pulled out some tools and a handful of battery packs. "I'll do some repairs on our next stop."

How long will that be? she couldn't help but wonder with a frown.

...He could tell them when he came back.

If I come back, part of him thought.

Hephaestus's grip on his screwdriver tightened.

Nah, he'd come back.

The grip loosened slightly as he continued tinkering.

...Besides, he had a fire-breathing, only slightly leaky dragon on his side. What could go wrong?

"Well, you just jinxed it now." Chris sighed, half-expecting a random monster to appear afterwards.

"When you're demigod, anything can go wrong." Percy said. "It sorta comes with the title."

Well the control disk could bust, the bad part of him suggested. Festus could eat you.

Okay, so maybe the dragon wasn't quite as fixed as Leo might have let on.

Aphrodite and Thalia tensed.

"It'll be okay," Leo said before muttering. "Geez. You guys gotta learn to trust me more on these things."

...Hey, they were under the time limit!

"Still pretty risky." Katie pointed out.

"Don't have much of a choice." Nyssa sighed. "They have three days to save Hera."