The Tyrant's Tomb

“Oh, my gods, Thomas!” Lavinia shot back. “Naturally, you wouldn’t
understand! You never take off those boots!”
Thomas frowned at his standard-issue combat stompers. “What? They’ve
got good arch support.”
“Yeesh.” Lavinia turned to Meg. “We have to figure out a way to get
aboard that ship and rescue those shoes.”
“Nah.” Meg sucked a glob of relish off her thumb. “Way too dangerous.”
“But—”
“Lavinia,” I interrupted, “you can’t.”
She must have heard the fear and urgency in my voice. Over the past few
days, I had developed a strange fondness for Lavinia. I didn’t want to see her
charge into a slaughter, especially after my dream about those mortars
primed with Greek fire.
She ran her Star of David pendant back and forth on its chain. “You’ve
got new information? Dish.”
Before I could reply, a plate of food flew into my hands. The aurae had
decided I needed chicken fingers and fries. Lots of them. Either that or
they’d heard the word dish and taken it as an order.
A moment later, Hazel and the other Fifth Cohort centurion joined us—a
dark-haired young man with strange red stains around his mouth. Ah, yes.
Dakota, child of Bacchus.
“What’s going on?” Dakota asked.
“Lester has news.” Lavinia stared at me expectantly, as if I might be
withholding the location of Terpsichore’s magical tutu (which, for the
record, I hadn’t seen in centuries).
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure if this was the right forum for sharing
my dream. I should probably report it to the praetors first. But Hazel nodded
at me as if to say, Go on. I decided that was good enough.
I described what I’d seen—a top-of-the-line IKEA heavy mortar, fully
assembled, shooting a giant hamster ball of green flaming death that blew up
the Pacific Ocean. I explained that, apparently, the emperors had fifty such
mortars, one on each ship, which would be ready to obliterate Camp Jupiter
as soon as they took up positions in the bay.
Dakota’s face turned as red as his mouth. “I need more Kool-Aid.”
The fact that no goblets flew into his hand told me the aurae disagreed.
Lavinia looked like she’d been slapped with one of her mother’s ballet
slippers. Meg kept eating hot dogs as if they might be the last ones she