Death God Alliance

Chapter 6

Sadie wasn't sure which was worse: Bast telling them what she had seen while spying on the First Nome, or her and Carter confessing to Bast what had happened in her absence.

"Please let me make sure that I understand this right," Bast almost purred, but there was a very dangerous edge to her voice. "You ventured back into Manhattan, after being told only to go there in emergencies-"

"It was an emergency," Sadie interjected. "We were kind of running for our lives."

"-and drug a random demigod into your duel with two House of Life magicians. A random demigod who just happened to be the son of Hades, Lord of the Greek Underworld. And after he passed out, you brought said demigod here, into your own home, and allowing him past all the protection spells that your uncle fortified this house with?"

"We didn't know he was a demigod," said Carter, sounding much too cowed. Sadie wished that her brother would show some backbone, even though she felt about how he sounded. But it was never good to let anyone see you feeling guilty. "Let alone the son of Hades. We thought he was a magician like us."

"The corpse that he summoned to fight for him didn't give you any clues?" demanded Bast.

"Why would it have?" asked Sadie, doing her best to sound flippant. "Zia told us some magicians have affinities for necromancy."

"Necromancy doesn't work like that," said Bast angrily. "Not on decomposing, unprepared corpses. And reanimation doesn't work on corpses that have brains in their heads at all! The only thing a magician might have been able to use that body for was as a medium to speak with the dead. Not as his personal bodyguard!"

Sadie shrugged. "I guess we've seen too many mummy movies. Hollywood makes it seem like we should be expecting something like in The Mummy Returns."

"Perhaps you forgot the part where those reanimations had been mummified!" returned Bast. "As in properly prepared for necromancy."

"We didn't know," said Carter. "We're sorry, Bast, but we really thought he was just a necromancer."

"Just a necromancer?" Bast's eyes flashed with a dangerous light, and Sadie had the feeling that necromancers weren't looked upon much more kindly than modern grave robbers.

"What did you want us to do?" asked Sadie, propping her feet up on the patio table and leaning back in her chair. "Pin a thank you note to his shirt and leave him there for the House of Life to take in? Yeah. Because that would be a great way to repay him."

"No worse than kidnapping him!"

"We didn't kidnap him!" protested Carter. "That was all a misunderstanding. I mean, he had a god stuck in his head and had no idea what was going on. He wasn't even awake at all the first four days, and when he woke up the first time it was only for ten minutes! No, not even that long!"

Bast looked disgusted. "And the next time he awoke he found that he was trapped in his room, and so he contacted one of his demigod friends to come to his rescue!"

"Actually, Percy's my cousin." The voice came from right behind Sadie and made her jump about five feet in the air. Her chair clattered as she turned around as quickly as she could. Bast hissed and drew her knives and Carter got to his feet as well. Standing about three feet away with their backs to the balcony's rails stood Death Boy Nico di Angelo, and his trusty sidekick Percy the Pegasus Riding Sword Freak.

"Uh, hi," said Carter sounding rather dim. "Welcome back?"

"Ugh," said Bast, "I don't know which is worse. The fact that he's Hades' spawn or that he's hosting that flea ridden dog."