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Maggie knows she’s in for a lecture when she locks eyes with her big brother from across the room.
The house is absolutely packed. Multicolored lights sweep over the room, a song she can’t make out the words to booming through unseen speakers. She’s holding a half-empty cup of diet coke with just a splash or two of rum. The concoction sloshes up against the sides of her cup as she pushes her way through the crowd. People keep trying to stop her to talk to her. She just mumbles an excuse and continues on. It feels like it takes her hours to finally reach Ethan, but she’s never been good at keeping track of time.
“Hey,” she says, attempting an innocent smile. She has to shout to be heard over the music.
Ethan rolls his eyes. “What the hell are you doing here, Mags?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” she counters. She goes to take a sip of her drink, but he snatches her cup out of her hand.
“I’m here because I saw you on someone’s Insta story. Come on, let’s get some air.” He latches onto her shoulder and guides her outside. On the way, he tosses her drink into a trash can threatening to overflow with plastic cups and cans of cheap beer. They walk out the front door and take seats on the porch swing. As annoyed as Maggie is, she can’t help but appreciate the cool night air on her skin.
For a moment, neither of them speaks, just enjoy the breeze and the substantial decrease in volume. Then Ethan goes, “I’m guessing Mom and Dad don’t know you’re here.”
Maggie gasps. “Grandma Athena, is that you?” He elbows her in the ribs and she elbows him back before adding, “I didn’t even ask them if I could go. I know they’d say no so I didn’t bother. But come on, Eef. It’s Kira, she’s my best friend. I can’t just not go to her party.”
“Actually, you can,” he shoots back. “They’re going to be pissed when they find out.”
“Whatever,” she scoffs. “Yeah, I lied to them and snuck out but that’s what normal kids do. It’s just part of being a teenager.”
Ethan raises an eyebrow. “I’ve never snuck out.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you’re boring,” Maggie teases.
At first glance, Maggie and Ethan don’t look like siblings. Ethan has pitch-black hair and their mom’s stormy gray eyes while Maggie has dirty blonde hair and their dad’s sea-green eyes. But look a little closer and you’ll realize they have the same tan skin, the same troublemaker smirk, the same sharp jawline, the same unyielding loyalty. They’re clever, impulsive. They have a knack for getting into trouble and a talent for getting out of it. And they never talk about their family. Ever.
“I’m not boring,” Ethan protests. “I just...see the logic in following Mom and Dad’s rules.”
“Boring,” Maggie sing-songs. Her smile falters. “It’s not like I don’t get why they are the way that they are. It’s just...I just wanted to feel like a normal kid for one night.”
He frowns. “We’re normal...kind of.”
“Oh, please!” She rolls her eyes. “Normal kids get cars or cash for their 16th birthday. I got a sword. You got a spear. That’s not normal.”
“Yeah, well, normal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he argues. “I mean, has it ever crossed your mind that no one in that house can know what you really are?”
She crosses her arms over her chest and pointedly avoids his gaze. “Yeah, that’s kind of what I like about it.”
Ethan narrows his eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” she trails off. She can’t bring herself to say it out loud. It’s one thing to think about it. It’s another thing entirely to say it out loud, to speak the words on the tip of her tongue, and put them out into the world for all to hear and judge.
Maggie knows how lucky she is. She has two exceptionally loving and understanding parents, a wide array of aunts and uncles, and grandparents who would literally go to war for her. Sure, her childhood wasn’t exactly normal, but it was happy. She has so many good memories of spending the weekend with her Grandma Sally and Grandpa Paul, of sword fighting lessons with her dad, of playing Capture the Flag at Camp Half-Blood, of going shopping with her Aunts Estelle and Rachel, of hunting with her Aunts Thalia and Reyna, of visiting her Grandad Poseidon’s palace in Atlantis and going to concerts with her Aunt Piper and Uncle Leo. Oh, and the family reunions! Spending Thanksgiving with Uncle Grover and Aunt Juniper and hearing stories about her parents when they were just kids, going to Aunt Hazel and Uncle Frank’s place for Christmas, getting into trouble with her cousins, etc.,.
But it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it’s pop quizzes from Mom on the old stories and monsters, sometimes it’s spitting blood because she refuses to go down without a fight. Sometimes it’s training instead of playing, sometimes it’s scrapes and bruises she can’t explain to her mortal friends. Sometimes it’s turning down offers to hang out and feeling her friends drifting farther and farther away, sometimes it’s waking up in the middle of the night to her mom screaming bloody murder. Sometimes it’s looking in the mirror and wondering if she’ll ever be good enough.
“Come on, Mags,” Ethan says softly. “Talk to me.”
She sighs. “It means, here, in the mortal world, we’re just Ethan and Maggie, the kids of an architect and a marine biologist. But there, in New Rome, in the demigod world, we’re Ethan and Maggie Jackson, the kids of two of the greatest heroes of the 21st century. Have you ever thought about how by the time our parents were our age, they’d already saved the world like a million times? I feel guilty as hell about it, but I like being just Maggie. I like being defined by my actions rather than who my parents are. I like people paying attention to me for me and not to see if I inherited my dad’s powers and my mom’s intellect. I love Mom and Dad, but sometimes it’s exhausting being their daughter. I mean, we’re named after two people who died to save the world. That’s a fuck ton of pressure!”
She’s close to tears now. There’s a tightness in her chest that refuses to dissipate. All she can think about is how lackluster she is. The way she sees it, she didn’t inherit much from her parents aside from their looks. She can’t manipulate water the way Dad can. She’s not half the battle strategist Mom is. They tell her all the time that she’s all the best parts of them, but obviously, she isn’t because, at the end of the day, there is nothing special about her. She’s just another legacy, too mortal for the demigod world and too part-god for the mortal world.
“Technically, Uncle Magnus is undead,” Ethan points out. She pokes her tongue out at him. He chuckles but quickly grows somber. “But I get it. Like, I’m scared of getting into a serious relationship because I know I can’t exactly bring them home to meet the ‘rents, not to mention the danger they’d be in. And yeah, sometimes I can’t sleep because I’m so busy wondering if I’m doing enough. But we can’t compare ourselves to them. They lived in different times, and they did all that they did so we wouldn’t have to go through what they went through.”
Maggie groans and rests her head in the palms of her hands. “I know, I know. I just...I can’t turn it off. There’s just this little voice in the back of my head telling me I’m a failure, a disappointment, that I’m not…” Her voice cracks. “That I’m not worthy of being their daughter.”
Ethan doesn’t say anything, just wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his side. She returns the hug wholeheartedly and buries her face in his chest. Her muffled sobs are just barely audible over the noise emanating from inside the house. He rubs her back and stares at the string of cars parked at the curb. They sit there for a while. Maggie cries and Ethan comforts her. Occasionally, someone passes them while either entering or exiting the house, but for the most part, all partygoers pay the two no mind.
Eventually, Maggie’s sobs turn to sniffles, and then she stops crying altogether. Still, they stay in each other’s arms as the world continues on around them. She could’ve stayed there forever, in her brother’s arms, in that moment of warmth and understanding. She wonders if anyone will ever know her as well as Ethan does. Sometimes she feels less like he’s a year older than her and more like he’s her twin. Like they’re two halves of a whole. She knows that even if the entire world turned against her, she’d always have him.
But all moments have to come to an end, and for Ethan and Maggie, the end of their brother-sister bonding sesh comes in the form of a blood-curdling scream.
Instantly, they both jump to their feet. Others are running away, sprinting out of the house as if their lives depend on it, but the Jackson siblings aren’t like other kids. They don’t flee to safety. They run towards the source of the scream.
As they push through the crowd, Ethan glances at Maggie. “You have your pen?”
“Of course,” she says. She grips his hand like a lifeline, an attempt to not get separated in the havoc. “You have your ring?”
“Always,” he replies. They come to a stop out on the patio. Kira Tran, the host of the party, is lying on the ground beside the pool in a puddle of her own blood. A couple of other kids are on the ground too, all with various injuries and none moving. Maggie says a quick silent prayer to Apollo that they’re not dead, just unconscious.
She scans the backyard for the source of the commotion but sees nothing. She and Ethan stand back to back as they draw their respective weapons; Ethan, his spear called Point Break, Maggie, her sword that had once belonged to her father, Riptide.
“Do you see anything?” she asks.
“Nope,” he huffs.
She hears it before she sees it. There’s a low growl and then a pair of red eyes stare her down from the shadows. Before she can point the eyes out to her brother, a giant fucking lion pokes its head out into the light. Blood drips from its maw. It bares its teeth at the two legacies, emitting another low growl. Something moves behind it and then it emerges fully from the shadows, revealing the menacing lion head has a goat’s body and a ten-foot-long serpent tail.
“Chimera?” Ethan guesses, turning to face it fully.
Maggie scoffs. “Gee, what gave it away, genius?”
The Chimera glowers at them, its snake tail hissing. Then it rears back and roars, shooting a pillar of fire into the air.
Ethan takes a deep, shaky breath. “Okay, Chimera. Originally defeated by the Greek hero Bellerophon when he jammed a lead ball into its mouth. Got any lead balls on you?”
“Left ‘em in my other pants,” she deadpans. “Didn’t Dad go up against a Chimera?”
“Yep,” he confirms. “He got poisoned and had to jump out of a hole in the St. Louis Arch and into a river.”
Her eyes widen. “Wait, so he lost?”
“Yep,” Ethan says.
“So what the fuck do we do?” Maggie exclaims.
Ethan shrugs. “Avoid the snake’s bite, try not to get roasted, and kill it...somehow.”
“Great,” she sighs. “Fucking fantastic.”
The Chimera suddenly sprints toward them. They jump aside, going in opposite directions.
“I have an idea!” Maggie shouts. “Cover me!”
She runs down the steps of the patio and around to the other side of the pool. Ethan decides to trust her and attempts to distract the Chimera from chasing after his sister without getting himself killed. He rolls out of the way of another pillar of fire that singes his jacket sleeve and crashes into some of the patio furniture. He scrambles to his feet and tries to make a break toward where Maggie stands, staring intently at the water in the pool, but the serpent tail is too quick for him and sinks its venomous fangs into his ankle. He cries out in pain and Maggie looks up from the pool.
At the sight of her brother on the ground in clear agony and the Chimera preparing to take another bite out of him, her heart drops into her stomach. Feeling like she’s about to be sick, she hollers, “Here kitty, kitty!”
The Chimera whips around to face her. It roars fire at her, clearly not a fan of its newly appointed nickname. It bounds down the patio steps and lowers on its haunches like it’s about to pounce. Her hands are shaking. She has a plan, but it has a pretty high chance of failing. After all, this has never worked for her before. What is she thinking? She’s going to get herself and her brother killed with this dumb plan.
She takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she’s the daughter of Percy and Annabeth Jackson, granddaughter of Poseidon, Athena, and Sally Jackson-Blofis, goddaughter of Hazel and Frank Zhang. She can do this.
It all happens so fast. The Chimera leaps into the air. Maggie tosses Riptide aside and whispers a prayer to Grandad Poseidon. The Chimera’s just about cleared the width of the pool and she’s preparing for her untimely demise and then she feels it. A tug in the pit of her stomach. She raises her hand and the pool water shoots into the air, wrapping around the Chimera and pulling it down into the depths. The Chimera tries to surface, but she balls her hands into fists and constricts the water surrounding it, pushing it back down and leaving it unable to fight back.
She clenches her fists tighter. She can’t be sure whether it’s the water pressure or the lack of oxygen. She just knows that, in under a minute, the Chimera is nothing but dust. The exhaustion hits her like a tidal wave. She falls to her knees, but she’s not finished. She unclenches her fists, the tug in the pit of her stomach lessening, and forces herself to get to her feet. She can hear sirens in the distance as she walks back around the pool to where her brother lay, writhing on the ground as the poison traveled through his system. Ignoring the fatigue weighing down her eyelids, she scoops Ethan up into her arms and half-carries, half-drags him to the edge of the pool. She throws him in and watches him sink to the bottom before succumbing to the land of dreams.
*
After everything that went down, Maggie had expected to wake up in a hospital bed, not her own bedroom.
Her dad is passed out at her bedside, curled up in her desk chair. He’s drooling in his sleep. She crinkles her nose. So that’s where Ethan got that from. She sits up and looks around her room. It’s about the same as she left it, save for the half-full glass of nectar on her bedside tide and her dad. Her door is slightly ajar, providing a sliver of light. She runs her fingers through her hair and realizes someone had changed her into her pajamas.
The door opens a little wider and Mom slips in. Her eyes widen in surprise when she realizes Maggie is awake and sitting up. A smile overtakes Mom’s whole face and she sits on the foot of her bed. “Hey, peanut. How are you feeling?”
Ugh. Peanut. She’d been born a few weeks ahead of schedule, meaning she was pretty tiny even for a baby. Apparently, her dad had remarked that she was “practically the size of a peanut!” and the nickname has unfortunately stuck. Normally, she’d protest the continued use of ‘peanut’ as a nickname for her, but she’s too out of it for that.
Instead, she asks, “Who changed me?”
“Me and Aunt Piper,” Mom answers with a chuckle.
Maggie’s eyes light up. “Aunt Piper’s here?” Last she’d heard, Aunt Piper had gone to Paris for some kind of business trip.
“Yes, and you can see her after you drink your nectar,” Mom says. Maggie wastes no time in grabbing the glass off her nightstand and downing it. To her, nectar tastes like Grandma Sally’s blue chocolate chip cookies, her absolute favorite growing up.
When she’s done, Mom takes the glass from her and lays a hand on Maggie’s knee. “You know, you gave us all quite the scare.”
“I’m sorry,” Maggie whispers. Damn it. She’s about to start crying again. “I shouldn’t have snuck out.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s not exactly what I meant,” Mom admits. “Controlling that water...it took a lot out of you. There was a moment where we...we thought you might not wake up.”
Maggie tries to process that. She’d known manipulating the pool water would be risky, but she hadn’t considered it would kill her. She knows she should say something like, “I’m sorry for scaring you” or “I love you,” but instead she goes, “Is Ethan okay? And what happened with Kira?”
“Ethan’s fine,” Mom assures her. “Kira’s gonna need some time to heal, but she’ll be okay too. The other kids...weren’t so lucky.”
Maggie feels sick to her stomach. Two kids. Two kids died because she wasn’t fast enough. Because she wasn’t good enough. Two kids. Two families lost a child because of her.
“It’s not your fault,” Mom murmurs as if reading her daughter’s mind. “The girl bled out in seconds and the boy...there was nothing you could’ve done for him. You should be proud, peanut. You almost single-handedly slew a Chimera. Not even your dad managed that.”
At that, Dad snorts in his sleep. Mom watches him fondly. Maggie manages a smile. She’s always known that her parents are soulmates. Well, pretty much every kid thinks their parents are soulmates, but it’s actually true in Maggie’s case. There’s nothing her parents wouldn’t do for each other or their kids. She can only hope to someday find a girl who loves her like her parents love each other.
Mom’s voice cuts through the silence. “You up for going downstairs?”
“Yeah,” Maggie says softly. They shake Dad awake and the three of them go downstairs where Ethan, Aunt Piper, Uncle Leo, Aunt Hazel, Uncle Frank, Uncles Nico and Will, and her namesake, Uncle Magnus, are waiting for them. They greet her like a hero and she realizes with a start that maybe she is. After all, she did slay a Chimera, save Ethan’s life, and potentially others’ lives.
For a second, she wonders why none of her cousins are here, and then she looks at the clock and sees it’s almost 12 am. They’re probably all asleep like any sane person should be at this time of night. Uncle Leo talks them all into getting delivery. There are a few places open this late in New Rome and thus a debate ensues on what they should order.
It takes almost nine minutes, but they finally settle on Italian. Aunt Piper pays for it all, as always. Maggie takes down almost an entire pizza by herself. She hadn’t realized how draining using her powers would be. As they eat, she regales her family with the tale of how she conquered the Chimera, Ethan chiming in every now and then.
“I didn’t even know you could control water!” Uncle Leo exclaims.
“Neither did I,” Maggie confesses.
Aunt Hazel frowns. “Wait, so what were you going to do if that didn’t work?”
“I don’t know. Die, probably,” Maggie says with a shrug.
Uncle Leo doubles over laughing. She vaguely registers Dad telling her about how the rest of the family is going to come and visit. From across the room, she locks eyes with Ethan. He smirks and mouths, “Worthy.”
She rolls her eyes, but her heart has never felt so full.