Trials of Apollo 5

was a police baton. She clicked a button on the side and it blossomed into an
umbrella. Naturally, it was just big enough for Lu and Meg.
I sighed. “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”
“Yep,” Meg agreed.
I pulled my backpack over my head, which effectively stopped 0.003
percent of the rain from hitting my face. My clothes were plastered to my
skin. My heart slowed and sped up at random, as if it couldn’t decide whether
to be exhausted or terrified.
“What now?” I asked.
“We find someplace to regroup,” said Lu.
I eyed the nearest dumpster. “With all the real estate Nero controls in
Manhattan, you don’t have one secret base we could use?”
Lu’s laugh was the only dry thing in that alley. “I told you, Nero monitors
all public security cameras in New York. How closely do you think he
monitors his own properties? You want to risk it?”
I hated that she had a point.
I wanted to trust Luguselwa, because Meg trusted her. I recognized that
Lu had saved us on the train. Also, the amphisbaena’s last line of prophecy
tumbled around in my head: On Nero’s own your lives do now depend.
That could refer to Lu, which meant she might be trustworthy.
On the other hand, Lu had killed the amphisbaena. For all I knew, if he
had lived a few more minutes, he might have spouted another bit of iambic
pentameter: Not Lu. Not Lu. Don’t ever trust the Gaul.
“So if you’re on our side,” I said, “why all the pretending on the train?
Why kill that amphisbaena? Why the charade about escorting us to the
bathroom?”
Lu grunted. “First of all, I’m on Meg’s side. Don’t much care about you.”
Meg smirked. “That’s a good point.”
“As for the monster…” Lu shrugged. “It was a monster. It’ll regenerate in
Tartarus eventually. No great loss.”
I suspected Mr. Snake’s wife might disagree with that. Then again, not
too long ago, I had regarded demigods in much the same way that Lu
regarded the amphisbaena.
“As for the playacting,” she said, “if I’d turned on my comrades, I ran the
risk of you two getting killed, me getting killed, or one of my men escaping
and reporting back to Nero. I would have been outed as a traitor.”
“But they all got away,” I protested. “They’ll all report back to Nero