Page 65 of The Ferryman’s Rest Inn & Grogshop

“I didn’t expect you to come with her,” Meg said.

“I wasn’t going to,” Stheno replied, “but look at her. It would have been like kicking a puppy.” Stheno gave Meg a look of disgust. “I’m here for her, not you.”

Meg nodded. “Understood.” She studied me a moment, looking for the sources of the blood. When she got to my shoulder, her gaze jumped to the other three before coming back to me. “Where’s your pack?”

“Oh.” Don’t cry. Don’t cry. “A soldier jumped onto Coco’s wing with me. Um, well, long story short, he went over the edge with my backpack in his hand.”

Coco gasped. “Your obol.”

I shook my head. “Everything was in my pack.”

“Alecto.” Meg turned to one of the other Furies. “Get her scent and search for her bag. She needs that obol and Artemis’s gift. She’s weak and injured.”

Alecto strode over, looking resentful. She gave me a quick sniff, gave a disgusted sneer, and then took off, flying low over the ground.

“A please wouldn’t have gone astray,” I told Meg, who rolled her eyes at me.

She pointed to a tunnel on the far wall of the cavern. “That way.”

As the killer birds had flown in the opposite direction, I was cool with that. Meg led the way with the third Fury, Tisiphone, bringing up the rear.

“We felt it when you entered the Underworld, and that was three days ago.” Meg gave Stheno a dirty look. “If someone hadn’t decided to piss off a goddess, I would have brought you straight here.”

I grabbed her arm in a panic. “It’s been three days? Oh no, Clive must…”

Meg nodded. “They’re all going nuts up there.”

“All?” Coco asked.

Meg glanced over her shoulder. “Apparently, your family figured out you’d left almost at once. They arrived the evening of the day you started the journey.”

Coco’s hand went to her stomach.

Bracken patted her shoulder. “Not to worry. They love you. That’s why they flew here so quickly.”

She thought about that and nodded, her expression clearing.

One of Bracken’s balls of light bobbed along with us, lighting our way. It didn’t take long, though, for us to fall back into our pattern of silently trudging through the tunnel. If my own reactions were anything to go by, I think we were all a little too traumatized to chitchat.

“Why did you ask her to come here?” Stheno asked, none too politely.

Jeez, I really was dragging. That should have been my first question.

Meg barely glanced over at Stheno. “I’ll let our master explain.”

Her master? Who the hell was— I grabbed her arm again. “Tell me you aren’t taking us to Hades,” I whispered.

Meg gave me a funny look. “Since when do you know Ancient Greek?”

I shrugged, then flinched in pain. Damn shoulder. “It was a divine gift from someone at the airport. I can understand and speak any language. It all seems like English to me, though. I can’t tell when people are changing languages.”

“How about now?” she asked.

“Ugh. Don’t do this again,” I moaned. “They did this to me in the car, everyone trying a new language with me. It all sounds like English.”

Tisiphone walked up beside Meg and looked around her at me. “You’re speaking a dialect that only exists here, a language only spoken by the Titans.” She glanced at Stheno. “Do you understand me?”

Stheno looked back blankly. “If you’re talking to me, use a language I know.”