Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods(57)

His expression changed from surprise to relief to terrified pleading in less time than it would’ve taken him to pour a drink. His eyes said, Oh, thank the gods! I gestured at him to come to the kitchen.

He shuffled to one side, but immediately Zeus reached back and grabbed his wrist. “Stay, Ganymede. I want you to hear this! Then you can pour our drinks and we’ll have a nice toast.”

Nobody remarked on the obvious fact that the cupbearer didn’t have his cup. I suppose, being a servant, he was even more invisible than I was in my borrowed hat.

Ganymede looked in my direction again. Help!

“I thought,” Zeus told the group, “that I would honor our dear mother, Rhea, with a special story about her.”

“Oh, baby, you don’t have to,” Rhea said.

The other gods wore pained smiles as if they agreed that Zeus really didn’t have to.

“So, one time,” Zeus began, “back when I was just a lad and the rest of you were rolling around in Kronos’s stomach . . .”

At that moment, two horrible things became clear to me. First, I would have to listen to this story. Second, if Ganymede could not come to the chalice, I would have to bring the chalice to Ganymede.





I will now sing the praises of pastry carts.

Not only can they transport tasty baked goods to the vicinity of your face, they can also be covered with tablecloths that hide a lower shelf perfect for crouching on when you’re a demigod who needs to sneak into a brunch. Yes, I know that’s a cliché—I got the idea from old TV shows—but hey, you’ve got to do what works.

The only tough part was convincing Barbara, my new best friend and dryad server, to push me as close to Ganymede as possible.

Her price?

“I want to meet Annabeth Chase,” she said. “I want a selfie and an autograph.”

“I— Really?”

“She’s my hero!” Barbara said.

“No, I get that. She’s my hero, too. It’s just . . .” I decided not to elaborate. I’d been prepared for Barbara to demand something much more difficult, like a personal quest or a box of gold-foil collectors’ edition Mythomagic cards. “I can definitely arrange a meet and greet.”

“Deal!” she said cheerfully. “But if you’re discovered, I have no idea who you are or how you got under the cart, and I will scream, ‘Demigod! Kill him!’ Cool?”

“I would expect nothing less.”

So I curled up under the cart with the chalice of immortality in my lap, hidden behind a white tablecloth embroidered with lightning bolts, as Barbara wheeled me into the dining room.

“Anyway,” Zeus was saying, “there I was, surrounded by angry llamas. . . . Well, you can imagine!”

“My dear,” said Hera, “there were no llamas in ancient Greece.”

“Well, there were in Crete!” Zeus growled. “I don’t know, maybe Kronos decided we couldn’t have nice things and he sent them all to Peru, but at the time, wow! Llamas everywhere! As I was saying, I was all alone. No Amalthea. No Kouretes. Just me in my diapers, a mere mewling babe, if you can picture it—”

“I can picture it, Dad,” Athena said dryly.

The cart creaked and wobbled. I was so close to the dining table I could smell wet lion fur. I didn’t dare look, but I figured I must be getting close to Ganymede.

Just a few more feet . . .

“Stop that!” Zeus snapped.

The cart stopped.

“I’m telling a story here, Barbara!”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

There was a long pause. I imagined all the gods staring at the cart, wondering why it seemed so heavily laden and why it was creaking more than usual. I waited for Barbara to yell Demigod! Kill him!

Finally, Zeus grunted. “Where was I?”

“Crete,” Hermes said. “Surrounded by llamas.”

“Right, so . . .”

I had trouble keeping track of the story. Partly, my heart was hammering too loudly. And partly, I just didn’t want to keep track of the story.

Zeus rambled on, trying to build sympathy for his poor baby self all alone on Crete. I doubted his audience was feeling the suspense since (spoiler) he was immortal, so the possibility of him getting killed by llamas was quite low. Nevertheless, I hoped everyone had stopped looking at the pastry cart. I risked lifting the bottom of the tablecloth.

I had a great view of Zeus’s sandaled feet. Did he polish those toenails or what?

Focus, Percy.

Ganymede stood on the other side of Zeus—only ten feet away, but still too far to slip him the chalice, especially since there was a lightning god between us. I tried to look up to see Ganymede’s face, but my angle wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t tell if he knew I was there or if he was too busy sweating Greek fire to notice.

I wondered if I could crawl from the cart to under the table, past all those immaculately groomed godly feet, without getting noticed. Probably not. Then I glanced to my right and locked eyes with the lion.

Well, that was super. He looked sleepy and surprised, like he was wondering if he was still dreaming or if the pastry cart really had a human head on the bottom shelf.

Probably the worst thing I could have done was to continue staring at him. So that’s what I did. He had pretty gold eyes. I’ve never been much of a cat person, but I could see the appeal of that big fuzzy face resting on giant fluffy paws, except for the fact that the face had fangs and the paws had claws.