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I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailorsscreaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a straitjacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.
    ‘Would you like to test me, child?’ he said quietly.
    ‘No. No, sir.’
    The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. ‘I believe I win.’
    ‘Not quite, Mr D,’ Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, ‘The game goes to me.’
    I thought Mr D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.
    ‘I’m tired,’ Mr D said. ‘I believe I’ll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk,
again,
about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment.’
    Grover’s face beaded with sweat. ‘Y-yes, sir.’
    Mr D turned to me. ‘Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners.’
    He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.
    ‘Will Grover be okay?’ I asked Chiron.
    Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. ‘Old Dionysus isn’t really mad. He just hates his job. He’s been… ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can’t standwaiting another century before he’s allowed to go back to Olympus.’
    ‘Mount Olympus,’ I said. ‘You’re telling me there really is a palace there?’
    ‘Well now, there’s Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there’s the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It’s still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do.’
    ‘You mean the Greek gods are here? Like… in
America?’
    ‘Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘Come now, Percy. What you call “Western civilization”. Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know – or as I hope you know, since you passed my course – the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps – Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on – but the same forces, the same gods.’
    ‘And then they died.’
    ‘Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved,to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they’ve ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not – and believe me, plenty of people weren’t very fond of Rome, either – America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are
here.’
    It was all too much, especially the fact that
I
seemed to be included in Chiron’s
we,
as if I