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“Oh.” Johan’s shoulders slumped, tugging down his pectoral eyebrows and giving him a sad expression. “That’s all right. I’m brewing a pot of Earl Grey if anyone would like to join me.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Will said in a small voice.

Before things could devolve into an awkward conversation about cream and sugar, Hazel interceded. “Johan, this is Nico, and this is Will. Would you bring the others outside to meet them?”

The blemmyae perked up, clearly delighted to have a job. “I’d love to! Be right back!” He turned and lumbered inside.

Hazel turned to Nico and Will. “So…what do you think so far?”

Will seemed to shake himself out of a trance. “Johan’s nice.”

Arielle snorted, painting with even more fury. Her fiery hair glowed brighter.

“I meaneveryoneseems nice,” Will corrected himself.

Hazel grimaced. Nico had only been at the Mythic Dojo Casa House a few minutes, and he was already beginning to understand why Hazel felt like she was in over her head.

“Before the others come out,” she said, “just so you’re prepared—”

Too late.

A short, stout, greenish creature tumbled out of the doorway. It was the size and shape of a human toddler, with rolls of baby fat on its arms and legs and a face that would have been adorable if not for the fangs. It wore only a purple diaper/loincloth (perhaps hand-knitted by Asterion), and leafy green wings protruded from its back. A strange cloud of brown dust swirled around it.

Nico sneezed. Then he began to cough, trying to hack up whatever had just invaded his lungs.

The toddler creature growled. “Oh, so you’re allergic to me, is that it?”

His voice was not at all like a toddler’s. He sounded like a sixty-year-old man who’d spent his life smoking and eating gravel.

“Quinoa, be nice,” chided Hazel.

Quinoa waddled up to Nico. The creature’s hair was a densely packed field of purple-and-white flowers. His face was pockmarked with…zits? No, Nico realized. Those were seeds.

“ ‘Be nice,’ she says,” Quinoa grumbled. “Okay, fine. Hello, demigods. Are you here to reap me? Chop me into a salad?”

“You’re akarpos!” Will said delightedly. “I didn’t know quinoa evenhadgrain spirits!”

Quinoa sneered. “Oh, now he rubs it in! I suppose you’ll tell me I’m ‘not technically a grain.’ ” He made sarcastic air quotes around the words. “Call me apseudo-grain, like all the other karpoi do. Why you think I ran away, huh? They told me to stay with my relatives, talk to the spinach plants. You ever tried talking to a spinach plant? Don’t bother! They got nothing to say!”

Nico blinked. At the moment, he felt very much like a spinach plant. “Um…”

“Quinoa,” Hazel interrupted, “I told you to be nice. Will and Nico are here to help you.”

“And I’m definitely not going to eat you.” Nico rubbed his runny nose on the sleeve of his jacket. “Apparently, I’m allergic.”

Quinoa narrowed his luminous green eyes. “Why should we trust you?”

“Because,” Arielle interjected, “Hazel is asking us to.” She dropped her paintbrush into her bucket, marched over to Quinoa, and picked him up, cradling him against her side like a proper baby. “Also, if they try to reap you, I will reap them first.”

She definitely meant that literally. Together, they reminded Nico of a Raphael painting he’d seen once in Florence—the Madonna and child—except with more fangs, flames, and chlorophyll.

“No one is going to reap anyone,” Nico promised. “Er, are there any more of you coming, or—”

As if on cue, Johan’s voice drifted from inside. “No one is going to laugh at you,” he was saying. “They are nice!”

Something squawked in reply…. Then Johan reemerged with a cup of tea. At his feet stood the smallest griffin in the known universe.

Nico couldn’t control the grin that broke out on his face. He loved griffins, and this one wasbeyondcute. It had the sleek black body of a panther cub, salt-and-pepper wings tucked against its back, and a snow-white raptor’s head with a bright yellow beak like a bald eagle’s.