Read Online The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan - Free Book Online

and explosives? Sweet! Arts & crafts sessions where you could make sculptures with chain saws and blowtorches? Leo was like, Sign me up! The woods were stocked with dangerous monsters, and no one should ever go in there alone? Nice! And the camp was overflowing with fine-looking girls. Leo didn’t quite understand the whole related-to-the-gods business, but he hoped that didn’t mean he was cousins with all these ladies. That would suck. At the very least, he wanted to check out those underwater girls in the lake again. They were definitely worth drowning for.
    Will showed him the cabins, the dining pavilion, and the sword arena.
    “Do I get a sword?” Leo asked.
    Will glanced at him like he found the idea disturbing. “You’ll probably make your own, seeing as how you’re in Cabin Nine.”
    “Yeah, what’s up with that? Vulcan?”
    “Usually we don’t call the gods by their Roman names,” Will said. “The original names are Greek. Your dad is Hephaestus.”
    “Festus?” Leo had heard somebody say that before, but he was still dismayed. “Sounds like the god of cowboys.”
    “ He- phaestus,” Will corrected. “God of blacksmiths and fire.”
    Leo had heard that too, but he was trying not to think about it. The god of fire … seriously? Considering what had happened to his mom, that seemed like a sick joke.
    “So the flaming hammer over my head,” Leo said. “Good thing, or bad thing?”
    Will took a while to answer. “You were claimed almost immediately. That’s usually good.”
    “But that Rainbow Pony dude, Butch—he mentioned a curse.”
    “Ah … look, it’s nothing. Since Cabin Nine’s last head counselor died—”
    “Died? Like, painfully?”
    “I ought to let your bunkmates tell you about it.”
    “Yeah, where are my home dawgs? Shouldn’t their counselor be giving me the VIP tour?”
    “He, um, can’t. You’ll see why.” Will forged ahead before Leo could ask anything else.
    “Curses and death,” Leo said to himself. “This just gets better and better.”
    He was halfway across the green when he spotted his old babysitter. And she was not the kind of person he expected to see at a demigod camp.
    Leo froze in his tracks.
    “What’s wrong?” Will asked.
    Tía Callida— Auntie Callida. That’s what she’d called herself, but Leo hadn’t seen her since he was five years old. She was just standing there, in the shadow of a big white cabin at the end of the green, watching him. She wore her black linen widow’s dress, with a black shawl pulled over her hair. Her face hadn’t changed—leathery skin, piercing dark eyes. Her withered hands were like claws. She looked ancient, but no different than Leo remembered.
    “That old lady …” Leo said. “What’s she doing here?”
    Will tried to follow his gaze. “What old lady?”
    “Dude, the old lady. The one in black. How many old ladies do you see over there?”
    Will frowned. “I think you’ve had a long day, Leo. The Mist could still be playing tricks on your mind. How about we head straight to your cabin now?”
    Leo wanted to protest, but when he looked back toward the big white cabin, Tía Callida was gone. He was sure she’d been there, almost as if thinking about his mom had summoned Callida back from the past.
    And that wasn’t good, because Tía Callida had tried to kill him.
    “Just messing with you, man.” Leo pulled some gears and levers from his pockets and started fiddling with them to calm his nerves. He couldn’t have everybody at camp thinking he was crazy. At least, not crazier than he really was.
    “Let’s go see Cabin Nine,” he said. “I’m in the mood for a good curse.”
    From the outside, the Hephaestus cabin looked like an oversize RV with shiny metal walls and metal-slatted windows. The entrance was like a bank vault door, circular and several feet thick. It opened with lots of brass gears turning and hydraulic pistons blowing smoke.
    Leo whistled. “They got a steampunk theme going