Zeus would probably make me the minor god of canapés. Annabeth would be so mad.
I shook off that thought.
Somewhere below in the mortal world, church bells were chiming, marking the hour of eight o’clock. That was an ungodly early hour for brunch, so I figured it was exactly when the gods would have it. I had to hurry. I took off down the path, leaping over gaps in the stone bridge and praying I could get the chalice to Ganymede before Zeus called for a round of demigod-tear mimosas.
Sprinting to Mount Olympus sounded cool and heroic, until I got halfway there and realized I still had like a quarter mile to run with a bowling-ball chalice. By the time I reached the other end of the bridge, I was sweating and gasping. I imagined somewhere Gary was laughing at me and reminiscing about how, when he was a kid, they ran barefoot uphill five miles to Olympus and they liked it.
Twice, I stopped to catch my breath, hugging the side of the road while a group of Olympus-dwellers passed by. I wasn’t sure what they were—minor gods? nature spirits?—but they didn’t seem to notice me. They just drifted past in their shiny golden robes, tittering and chatting in ancient Greek and basically looking like they lived inside a permanent “supernatural beauty” camera filter.
Annabeth’s cap must have been doing its job. I was either invisible to the locals or appeared too unimportant to mess with. That was good, because the longer I wore the hat, the worse the itchy sensation got. My skin felt like it was baking into crispy pork rind. I wondered how Annabeth dealt with this, and also whether Olympus had any pharmacies that sold cortisone cream.
At least the Olympian streets weren’t busy. A couple of chariots were in line at the drive-through window of Sagittarius Coffee. A Hephaestus-made steampunk rhinoceros thing was trundling along the street, power-washing the cobblestones with blasts of steam from its snout. In the park gazebo, a sign read OPEN MIC HOT POETRY WITH ERATO! TONIGHT ONLY! But at the moment, the gardens were empty except for a few pigeons. （Because yes, even Mount Olympus has pigeons.）
I followed Grover’s directions to the side entrance of Zeus’s palace: Left at the big white oak tree, follow the bed of lilies until I found the two poplar trees. Take a right and look for the wall of jasmine. When your best friend is a satyr, you learn a lot about trees and plants. That’s how they see the world, so it’s also how they give directions.
The chalice helped, pulling me along ever more insistently the closer we got to Ganymede. At least, I hoped that was where it was leading me, and not to the nearest godly high school cafeteria so I could top off everyone’s beverages.
I ended up in an alley at the base of a tall cliff. Far above rose the foundations of an enormous white palace—Chez Zeus, I presumed. Sure enough, the wall in front of me was covered with flowering jasmine, except for a small door inlaid with fancy bronze designs. Even the alleys are high-class on Mount Olympus.
I did the shave and a haircut knock.
The door creaked open. The woman who poked her head out had a hairdo like a tornado funnel. Her eyes were gray and stormy, her face ageless, her scent like oncoming rain. She couldn’t have been more clearly a cloud nymph if she’d had a name tag that said HELLO! MY NAME IS CLOUD NYMPH.
“Naomi?” I guessed.
“You brought donuts?” she asked.
“Oh, um . . . no.”
“You smell like mochi donuts.”
“That’s because . . . Never mind. I’m actually a friend of Maron’s.”
She snorted. “No, you’re not. Maron doesn’t have friends.”
“True. But I am a friend of Grover Underwood’s. He said—”
“Come in.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the kitchen.
I’m not sure what I expected in a godly kitchen. If I’m being honest, I’d never considered whether the gods even had kitchens. I mean, they could snap their fingers and create anything they wanted. Why go to the fuss of having someone cook for you?
Now, as I looked at all the nymphs rushing from oven to stovetop, pulling cloud-stuff out of the air and mixing it into their soups and pies like strands of cotton candy, I realized that the gods would want servants fussing around, making things for them, the same way they liked it when mortals burned offerings. It was all about being noticed, attended, catered to. Gods ate the spotlight more than they ate nectar and ambrosia. Of course they would insist things be done the hard way.
About twenty nymphs were at work, all wearing white aprons, with black nets around their billowy hair. Their legs were just wisps of cloud, probably so they could move faster. Their nebulous dresses were stained with various soups, broths, and glazes, so they looked like colorful sunsets.