“Um—”
“Which you would only do after you’ve gotten what you wanted,” he guessed, “and I’d have to take your word for it.”
“Well . . .” I gripped the staff tighter. This was not going the way I wanted. I wondered if I’d have better luck riding the rapids back to Yonkers. “I mean, I’m happy to try.”
“How did that work out with the Hudson and the East Rivers?” he asked, sweet as acid. “Are they all nice and clean now?”
“Oh. I mean . . . no, but they’re harder to clean. They’re a lot bigger than you.”
Wrong thing to say. Elisson’s eyes narrowed. “I see. You find me small. Inconsequential. Even though there’s a six-month waiting list to get into my vinyasa flow class.”
Up on the ledge, Annabeth was digging through her backpack, no doubt looking for something that might bail me out of the situation she’d been so confident I could handle. I imagined her drawing her knife and yelling Kowabunga! as she jumped onto Elisson’s back. As much as I would’ve enjoyed seeing that, I didn’t want to see the consequences when she faced the wrath of the sarcastic man-bun god.
I tried to think of another solution, which wasn’t easy with my pounding headache. In the future, I’d have to remember not to crack my skull until after I was done using the brain inside it.
“There has to be something,” I pleaded. “Maybe a visit to Poseidon’s palace? He’s constructing this amazing infinity pool. You could do your . . . flow-class thing overlooking the continental shelf. Like, with whales.”
This sounded like a sweet deal to me, because whales are cool. But apparently, whale yoga was not a fad Elisson was into.
“I’m afraid not.” His smile turned a few degrees colder than his water. “But I do have a way you can make it up to me.”
I nodded eagerly, which made my vision blur. “Anything, sure.”
“Anything? Perfect. I’ve always wondered how long it would take a son of Poseidon to drown. Let’s find out!”
The river surged over me like a wall of liquid bricks.
I wished Elisson would make up his mind.
Throw me out of the water. Drag me into the water. Pummel me with sarcasm. There were so many interesting ways to kill me, he couldn’t decide.
To be clear, I’m not an easy person to drown. But when there’s a river god tossing me around at the bottom of his grotto, flushing gunk through my nostrils and mouth, it’s like trying to breathe in a sandstorm. I was blind and disoriented, slamming into rocks, unable to concentrate.
And that made me angry.
Demigod powers can be weird. Back when I was ten or eleven, things just happened, and I didn’t understand why. Fountains would come alive. Toilets would explode. Controlling water was something I did instinctively, only when I was scared or angry—kind of like the Hulk, except with plumbing. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to control my powers, more or less. Now I can make your lawn sprinklers explode on command. （I rent myself out for kids’ birthday parties. Call me.）
But despite my better control, there are still moments when my power gets away from me. It’s kind of like if you think, Oh, I’m too mature to cry like a little kid, and then you see a movie about a cute puppy that gets lost, and you start bawling. Or you think you’ve got your temper under control, then you get a bad grade and throw a world-class tantrum, so your skateboard ends up sticking out of your bedroom wall, impaling your favorite Jimi Hendrix poster. These are purely hypothetical examples, of course.
Anyway, that’s what happened at the bottom of Elisson’s pool. As I was tossed around, flipped, and pummeled like laundry on a heavy-duty cycle, my control crumbled. I was a scared kid again, screaming for the big bad world to leave me alone. My rage exploded.
And so did the river. It blasted away from me in every direction, putting me at ground zero of the detonation—curled up alone in a bubble of air, howling so loudly I could hear myself even over the roar of the torrent. Some part of me had reached outward . . . not just into the pool, but to the source of the river, deep down in the Underworld or maybe Yonkers, and I had pulled it up by its roots. Millions of metric tons of water roared through the cavern, flooding the pool, scouring the cliffs, surging over the riverbanks, and probably surprising a whole bunch of snakes bathing downstream.
At last, the water crashed back around me, settling into its normal flow again.
I was trembling, strung out, and terrified by what I’d done. I don’t know how long it took me to regain my senses. Seconds? Minutes? As the silt cleared, I looked up and had one clear thought: Annabeth. If I had accidentally washed her into the Atlantic, I would never forgive myself.