Page 71 of The Court of the Dead
No answer.
“Deion?” Will tried. “Savannah? Yazan?”
Nothing.
Nico drew his Stygian blade. He locked eyes with Hazel, who nodded back.Ready.
It wasn’t easy to look intimidating with a Cocoa Puff nested in your hair, but Hazel managed. She clenched her fists and took a deep breath. Her face was steely with determination. Her amber eyes locked onto something across the room—something Nico could not see.
“There you are,” she growled. “Halt!”
The command rolled across the archive like a shock wave, almost knocking Nico off his feet. The light grew brighter, banishing shadows, making everything in the room look sharp and freshly created. The Cocoa Puffs continued to bounce about, snarling and growling. Nico could feel his demigod awareness buzzing into overdrive, his senses heightened to new levels, but when he followed Hazel’s gaze, he still saw nothing. Will looked equally mystified.
Without warning, Hazel drew her Imperial gold spatha. She lunged forward so quickly Nico had to stumble out of her way. With her free hand, she grabbed…something, then pushed it against the far wall, her blade held horizontally at throat level.
“No more games,” Hazel demanded. “Show yourself.”
A woman flickered into a view. At least, she looked like a human woman. She wore a multi-pocketed sackcloth dress, cinched at the waist with a length of rope. Her feet were dirty and bare, her hair a wild mass of black. Her features were like those of a feral cat—bright angry eyes, dilated pupils, flared nostrils, and bared teeth that looked both too sharp and too numerous. The edge of Hazel’s sword pressed against her windpipe.
The woman hissed. In one hand, she held a black iron staff. In the other, she gripped the tied-off mouth of a burlap sack.
Maybe shewasrelated to La Befana, the Christmas witch. But if that sack was full of presents, Nico suspected they’d been stolen from children after this lady had knocked them unconscious.
“Who are you?” Hazel said. “What do you want?”
The woman snarled, struggling against Hazel’s grip, but the Imperial gold blade dug deeper into her throat, breaking the skin. With a noxious hiss, golden fluid dribbled from the wound—ichor, the blood of the gods.
“Oh, Hazel, Hazel.” The woman didn’t look older than her mid-thirties, but her voice was gravelly and ancient, the way it had sounded the night before through the tessera. “You know exactly what I’m doing,” she croaked. “I’m taking out the trash. And you are tonight’s pickup!”
Nico advanced, his own sword raised. “Where did you take the others? What have you done with our friends?”
“Friends?”The woman cackled. “They are not your friends, Nico di Angelo. They’re monsters. Criminals. They have been charged, sentenced, and”—she paused, clearly relishing Nico’s look of anguish—“punished.”
Nico’s jaw trembled. Anger might have been upstairs with Frank, but Nico felt like he’d just swallowed the cacodemon whole. “What does that mean? Talk!”
Instead, she spat in Hazel’s face.
Hazel barely reacted, but it was enough to loosen her grip. The woman pushed Hazel away, howled, and swung her staff. Hazel just managed to parry the strike. Orcus screeched and flew at the intruder. Johan lumbered into battle. Will raised his hand and summoned a flash of light so brilliant the woman winced and looked away—but it wasn’t enough.
She swept her staff in a wide arc. It didn’t connect with anyone, but Orcus, Johan, and Will all went flying backward, crashing into the back wall.
“Will!” Nico yelled, but he couldn’t run to him. He couldn’t leave Hazel alone against this witch. He stood his ground.
The intruder looked at Nico with amusement. She glanced at Hazel and rattled her burlap sack, which sounded like it was half-full of copper pots.
“Into my bag you go, Praetor Levesque,” she said. “I’m not normally a murderous god, but if you won’t be a good girl, I will happily kill everyone here.”
“NO!” Nico charged and swung his blade. The woman raised her staff, but the Stygian iron edge cut clean through it. The sword met the side of the woman’s neck….
And what happened next, Nico couldn’t quite process, no matter how heightened his senses were. With no gush of ichor, no obvious cut, no gore of any kind, the woman’s head disconnected from her body. It spiraled upward, but then, instead of falling, it floated in place, hovering just above her left shoulder.
“Oh, dear!” The head laughed with glee. “Whatever shall I do?”
Her body joined the charade, waving its arms frantically and running in a circle. The mythics and demigods watched, frozen in horror. Even the Cocoa Puffs didn’t seem sure of how to feel.
“Well then,” said the woman’s head, her mouth twisting into a sneer, “I suppose we’ll go with murdering—”
“STOP!” The god Terminus flash-banged into existence, placing himself between the intruder and Hazel.
