Page 20 of Wrath of the Triple Goddess

I knelt by the stairs and picked up a tuft of hair. “This looks like goat fur. And this pink stuff…”

Annabeth came up next to me. She had a stronger stomach than I did. She dabbed her finger in the sticky liquid and sniffed it. “Strawberry.”

We ran for the kitchen.

The place looked like the set ofTheGreat Chainsaw Bake Offseason finale. Hecate’s bubbling pots had been swept off the stove, splattering magical stew everywhere—painting the cabinets, encrusting the appliances, streaking the ceiling with multicolored chunks and goo. It smelled just as bad as it sounds.

Some of the goo must have been acidic. It steamed as it ate through the floor tiles. The refrigerator looked like someone had taken a wrecking ball to it. The oven door was ripped off its hinges. Vials and beakers from Hecate’s cabinets had been disgorged and shattered.

And lying in the middle of all this chaos was a mountain of hairy flesh, snoring with gusto, its two massive shaggy legs propped against the kitchen island, its moose-size hooves pointing toward the ceiling.

I edged backward. “What is that?”

“It’s…” Annabeth made a strangled yelp. “Oh, gods, Grover!”

I must have heard her wrong. Grover didn’t come in XXXL size. He didn’t shake buildings when he snored, and he would never disrespect a kitchen full of food like this.

But when I stood alongside Fur Mountain, I realized that shreds of Grover’s shirt clung to its shoulders. Its body was enormous and almost entirely goatish, but if I squinted and used my imagination, I could almost make out Grover’s face—incredibly overinflated, as if he’d had the worst allergic reaction ever.

“Wh-what do we do?” I stammered.

I hoped Annabeth had a plan. Children of Athena always had a plan. But she looked as bewildered as I felt.

“Maybe we should get him to camp,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like…”

Fur Mountain groaned. His gut rumbled, and though it was ten times louder than usual, I recognized the warning sound.

“Hit the deck!” I ducked and covered as Fur Mountain unleashed the Belch Heard’Round the World.

A strawberry-scented shock wave rolled across the kitchen, rattling appliances and knocking over the few beakers that hadn’t yet been broken. When I dared to look back up, Grover’s body had deflated to near-normal size. His upper half was mostly human again. His face popped back into shape like an anti-dent car hood, but he still seemed to be out cold.

Annabeth staggered to the nearest sink. She filled a cup and threw cold water in Grover’s face.

“BLAHHHHHH!” Grover’s eyes fluttered open. He tried to sit up, yelped in pain, and lay down again. “My head. Why is everything so bright? Why—?”

He tented his hands over his mouth. His eyes widened. “Oh, no.”

Then he curled into a fetal position and began to cry.

“Hey, man…” I patted his shoulder. I couldn’t tell him everything was okay. Clearly it wasn’t. But I tried my best. “We’re here for you. Do you remember what happened?”

“The milkshake,” he whimpered.

I locked eyes with Annabeth. I’d kind of guessed, given the strawberry scent of this apocalyptic wasteland. Still…I had to fight the urge to yell,DUDE, YOU HAD ONE JOB!First, that wasn’t true. We’d left Grover in charge of an entire haunted house, and I’d known in the depths of my worst-case-scenario heart that the milkshake experiment was going to be a problem. Second, Grover already felt terrible enough.

“I didn’t mean to,” he sobbed. “I was moving it to the freezer like I was supposed to. Then the lid popped open, and that aroma…The next thing I knew…”

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Annabeth said, taking his arm.

“No, the pets!” Grover yelped. “Check the pets!”

Annabeth cursed. I hadn’t thought of the pets either, but with the front doors busted open…Did that count as letting them out? I prayed Grover had left their leashes on so they would still be spellbound to stay in the house.

We left Grover and raced through the mansion, calling out for Gale and Hecuba. Maybe Hecuba was taking a nap. Maybe Gale was attacking her chicken carcasses. But I remembered how grumpy they’d looked when Hecate had talked about their accessories being ensorcelled to keep them inside, and how much they loved their walks.

No luck on the first floor. We bounded upstairs. The second floor seemed to have been spared any damage from Grover’s Goat Hulk rampage, but there was no sign of the pets.

Annabeth ran to check the back rooms.

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