The Tyrant's Tomb

gleamed under an LED magnifying lamp. At its side stood a workstation
with four humming electric steel-needle guns connected to ink hoses.
I myself had never gotten a tattoo. When I was a god, if I wanted some
ink on my skin, I could simply will it into being. But this setup reminded me
of something Hephaestus might try—a lunatic experiment in godly dentistry,
perhaps.
In the back corner, a ladder led to a second-level balcony similar to the
one in the main room. Two sleeping areas had been created up there: one a
harpy’s nest of straw, cloth, and shredded paper; the other a sort of cardboard
fort made of old appliance boxes. I decided not to inquire.
Pacing behind the tattoo chair was Ella herself, mumbling as if having an
internal argument.
Aristophanes, who had followed us inside, began shadowing the harpy,
trying to butt his head against Ella’s leathery bird legs. Every so often, one
of her rust-colored feathers fluttered away and Aristophanes pounced on it.
Ella ignored the cat completely. They seemed like a match made in Elysium.
“Fire…” Ella muttered. “Fire with…something, something…something
bridge. Twice something, something…Hmm.”
She seemed agitated, though I gathered that was her natural state. From
what little I knew, Percy, Hazel, and Frank had discovered Ella living in
Portland, Oregon’s main library, subsisting on food scraps and nesting in
discarded novels. Somehow, at some point, the harpy had chanced across
copies of the Sibylline Books, three volumes that had been thought lost
forever in a fire toward the end of the Roman Empire. (Discovering a copy
would’ve been like finding an unknown Bessie Smith recording, or a pristine
Batman No. 1 from 1940, except more…er, prophecy-ish.)
With her photographic but disjointed memory, Ella was now the sole
source of those old prophecies. Percy, Hazel, and Frank had brought her to
Camp Jupiter, where she could live in safety and hopefully re-create the lost
books with the help of Tyson, her doting boyfriend. (Cyclops-friend?
Interspecies significant other?)
Past that, Ella was an enigma wrapped in red feathers wrapped in a linen
shift.
“No, no, no.” She ran one hand through her luxurious swirls of red hair,
ruffling it so vigorously I was afraid she might give her scalp lacerations.
“Not enough words. ‘Words, words, words.’ Hamlet, act two, scene two.”