“I thought she was married to somebody,” I said.
“Hephaestus.”
“What’s your point?” he asked. “Oh.” I suddenly felt the need to change the subject.
“So how do we get in?”
“Maia!” Grover’s shoes sprouted wings.
He flew over the fence, did an unintended somersault in midair, then stumbled to a landing on the opposite side. He dusted off his jeans, as if he’d planned the whole thing. “You guys coming?”
Annabeth and I had to climb the old-fashioned way, holding down the barbed wire for each other as we crawled over the top.
The shadows grew long as we walked through the park, checking out the attractions. There was Ankle Biter Island, Head Over Wedgie, and Dude, Where’s My Swimsuit?
No monsters came to get us. Nothing made the slightest noise.
We found a souvenir shop that had been left open. Merchandise still lined the shelves: snow globes, pencils, postcards, and racks of—
“Clothes,” Annabeth said. “Fresh clothes.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you can’t just—”
“Watch me.”
She snatched an entire row of stuff off the racks and disappeared into the changing room. A few minutes later she came out in Waterland flower-print shorts, a big red Waterland T-shirt, and commemorative Waterland surf shoes. A Waterland backpack was slung over her shoulder, obviously stuffed with more goodies.
“What the heck.” Grover shrugged. Soon, all three of us were decked out like walking advertisements for the defunct theme park.
We continued searching for the Tunnel of Love. I got the feeling that the whole park was holding its breath. “So Ares and Aphrodite,” I said, to keep my mind off the growing dark, “they have a thing going?”
“That’s old gossip, Percy,” Annabeth told me. “Three-thousand-year-old gossip.”
“What about Aphrodite’s husband?”
“Well, you know,” she said. “Hephaestus. The blacksmith. He was crippled when he was a baby, thrown off Mount Olympus by Zeus. So he isn’t exactly handsome. Clever with his hands, and all, but Aphrodite isn’t into brains and talent, you know?”
“She likes bikers.”
“Whatever.”
“Hephaestus knows?”
“Oh sure,” Annabeth said. “He caught them together once. I mean, literally caught them, in a golden net, and invited all the gods to come and laugh at them. Hephaestus is always trying to embarrass them. That’s why they meet in out-of-the-way places, like…”
She stopped, looking straight ahead. “Like that.”
In front of us was an empty pool that would’ve been awesome for skateboarding. It was at least fifty yards across and shaped like a bowl.
Around the rim, a dozen bronze statues of Cupid stood guard with wings spread and bows ready to fire. On the opposite side from us, a tunnel opened up, probably where the water flowed into when the pool was full. The sign above it read, THRILL RIDE O’ LOVE: THIS IS NOT YOUR PARENTS’ TUNNEL OF LOVE!
Grover crept toward the edge. “Guys, look.”
Marooned at the bottom of the pool was a pink-and-white two-seater boat with a canopy over the top and little hearts painted all over it. In the left seat, glinting in the fading light, was Ares’s shield, a polished circle of bronze.
“This is too easy,” I said. “So we just walk down there and get it?”
Annabeth ran her fingers along the base of the nearest Cupid statue.
“There’s a Greek letter carved here,” she said. “Eta. I wonder…”
“Grover,” I said, “you smell any monsters?”
He sniffed the wind. “Nothing.”
“Nothing—like, in-the-Arch-and-you-didn’t-smell-Echidna nothing, or really nothing?”
Grover looked hurt. “I told you, that was underground.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going down there.”
“I’ll go with you.” Grover didn’t sound too enthusiastic, but I got the feeling he was trying to make up for what had happened in St. Louis.
“No,” I told him. “I want you to stay up top with the flying shoes. You’re the Red Baron, a flying ace, remember? I’ll be counting on you for backup, in case something goes wrong.”
Grover puffed up his chest a little. “Sure. But what could go wrong?”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling. Annabeth, come with me—”
“Are you kidding?” She looked at me as if I’d just dropped from the moon. Her cheeks were bright red.
“What’s the problem now?” I demanded.
“Me, go with you to the…the ‘Thrill Ride of Love’? How embarrassing is that? What if somebody saw me?”
“Who’s going to see you?” But my face was burning now, too. Leave it to a girl to make everything complicated. “Fine,” I told her. “I’ll do it myself.” But when I started down the side of the pool, she followed me, muttering about how boys always messed things up.
We reached the boat. The shield was propped on one seat, and next to it was a lady’s silk scarf. I tried to imagine Ares and Aphrodite here, a couple of gods meeting in a junked-out amusement-park ride. Why? Then I noticed something I hadn’t seen from up top: mirrors all the way around the rim of the pool, facing this spot. We could see ourselves no matter which direction we looked. That must be it. While Ares and Aphrodite were smooching with each other they could look at their favorite people: themselves.
I picked up the scarf. It shimmered pink, and the perfume was indescribable—rose, or mountain laurel. Something good. I smiled, a little dreamy, and was about to rub the scarf against my cheek when Annabeth ripped it out of my hand and stuffed it in her pocket. “Oh, no you don’t. Stay away from that love magic.”
“What?”
“Just get the shield, Seaweed Brain, and let’s get out of here.”
The moment I touched the shield, I knew we were in trouble. My hand broke through something that had been connecting it to the dashboard. A cobweb, I thought, but then I looked at a strand of it on my palm and saw it was some kind of metal filament, so fine it was almost invisible. A trip wire.
“Wait,” Annabeth said.
“Too late.”
“There’s another Greek letter on the side of the boat, another Eta. This is a trap.”
Noise erupted all around us, of a million gears grinding, as if the whole pool were turning into one giant machine.
Grover yelled, “Guys!”
Up on the rim, the Cupid statues were drawing their bows into firing position. Before I could suggest taking cover, they shot, but not at us. They fired at each other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk. Then smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the main strands, making a net.
“We have to get out,” I said.
“Duh!” Annabeth said.
I grabbed the shield and we ran, but going up the slope of the pool was not as easy as going down.
“Come on!” Grover shouted.
He was trying to hold open a section of the net for us, but wherever he touched it, the golden threads started to wrap around his hands.