Page 1 of The Court of the Dead
“Breathe, Nico.”
Nico sat across from Dionysus, who smelled strangely of cinnamon rolls. The son of Hades tried not to let that distract him. He breathed in deeply, filling his chest so full of the icy air rolling off Long Island Sound that he thought he might burst. Then he exhaled slowly and opened his eyes.
Mr. D’s curls rippled in the breeze. He and Nico were both sitting on yoga mats on Fireworks Beach, and the sun was close to setting. The cold didn’t bother Nico much—his black bomber jacket was warm enough. But Mr. D had on a bright pink parka, a matching beanie with a pom-pom on top, and thick ski gloves. Nico thought it was overkill. Did gods even feel cold? But he also knew that Mr. D would seize any opportunity to wear the most garish outfits imaginable.
Nico was uncomfortable for a different reason: these sessions with the camp director were soawkward. After Nico and his boyfriend, Will, returned from Tartarus nearly three months ago, Mr. D had expressed interest in starting “something akin to what humans calltherapy” at Camp Half-Blood. Nico had approved of the idea because he knew that when demigods first arrived at camp, they often needed help facing the new reality of their lives. He remembered what that had been like all too well.
Yet this was not how he had imagined “therapy.” The breathing exercises seemed pointless. Mr. D had asked Nico to keep a journal of his daily emotions, but it hadn’t stuck. The god often exhorted Nico to “live in the present,” which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him. He wasn’t a time traveler, just a shadow-traveler.
Still, Nicowastrying to take this seriously. He fixed his eyes on Mr. D’s hot-pink outfit, which should have been enough to keep anyone’s attention in the present. Then he heard a rustling nearby and glanced to his left.
At the top of the closest sand dune, a tiny army of puffy dark beings peeked out from behind the tall grass. The Cocoa Puffs.
Nico could tell the cacodemons were trying to be quiet, but since they were personifications of Nico’s inner struggles and trauma, they didn’t do “stealth” very well. They also hated to be separated from him.
Mr. D was still practicing his breath work. His eyes were closed. Maybe he wouldn’t notice them….
Dionysus cleared his throat. “Nico,” he said, “why are they here?”
Busted.
“Would you prefer they wander around the cabins?” Nico asked. “Maybe give random flashbacks to all our new campers?”
Mr. D frowned. “Hmm. Perhaps not. I’m still adjusting to the presence of these Chaos Puffs of yours.”
Nico waved at the cacodemons to come on over. They bounded and rolled down the dune like inkblots escaped from a Rorschach test, making little yipping sounds like “Yay! Yay! Yay!” as they crowded around Nico.
In truth, Nico and Will were still adjusting to their presence, too. A couple of months ago, Fear had given Will a panic attack just by brushing against his ankle. Anger had wandered through a grove of nature spirits and caused a fistfight between two normally peaceful mulberry bushes.
As they got more comfortable existing outside Nico’s body, the Cocoa Puffs were triggering relevant emotions in anyone they encountered. Mr. D thought it might be their way of connecting with other living beings as they explored further and further. “Perhaps this is how the little blobs communicate.”
Little blobs?Some of them had antlers! Legs! Glowing eyes! How dare he call them blobs!
Actually, Sadnessdidlook like a blob as it rolled up Nico’s shoe and onto his knee. He ran his hand over its back and marveled at its impossible softness, like a pillow made of smoke. Then the wave of emotion hit: a surge of sadness, complete with memories of his sister Bianca fading away and his mother dissipating into darkness.
He pulled his hand away, and the images vanished.
Mr. D uncrossed his legs. “I see we’re done for today. You’re not paying attention anymore.” He stood and began rolling up his yoga mat. “For our future sessions, I’m going to institute a no-Puffs rule.”
“Fine.” Nico rose, spilling half a dozen cacodemons from his lap. “Maybe I’ll train them to perform for a traveling circus instead.”
“Have you ever actually seen a traveling circus, Nico? You’d fit right in.”
The demigod rolled his eyes. “Please. They couldn’t handle me.”
The two began their walk back to camp, the Cocoa Puffs yipping and bouncing along behind them.
As they crested the dunes, Mr. D cleared his throat. “Nico, I know these lessons are challenging for you. You’re not used to being still.”
“Being still is overrated.”
“Hmph. Imagine howIfeel being trapped in this place.” The god gestured at the valley spread out before them.
Camp Half-Blood never failed to take Nico’s breath away. Even now, in the dead of winter, the fields were lush and green. The marble Greek buildings—dining pavilion, amphitheater, arena—gleamed white in the sunset. Nestled in a clearing in the woods, the campers’ cabins made a wide rectangle around a central green, where the firepit blazed cheerfully. If you had to be “trapped” somewhere as a god, forced to work off a century of community service for disobeying Zeus’s orders, being the director of Camp Half-Blood seemed like a pretty good gig. But Nico knew better than to say that to Dionysus.
The god brushed a speck of sand off his ski parka.
“My point being,” he continued, “I do think you’re making progress. I just want to make sure you’re better trained before we start teaching the other campers how to deal with stress, flashbacks, fear. Every exercise I show you has a point, I promise.”
