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Chapter Text

“You’re angry with me.”

I’ll tell you one thing—when an immortal goddess suddenly appeared in your cabin in the earliest hours of the morning claiming that you were angry with her, it was probably best to stay silent and let her speak. This is what I did, but the only reason no words came out of my mouth was because I didn’t trust myself to not say something that would get me incinerated where I sat. Instead, I focused my gaze on a spot somewhere above Lady Artemis’s left shoulder, counting the seconds before she spoke again. I wondered if Ares was hovering somewhere nearby, making me feel such intense waves of fury that I genuinely contemplated attacking her with Riptide. But I didn’t want to be turned into an elk or deer or whatever else, and I knew it would do nothing. The damage had already been done. 

“I think your anger might be misdirected,” she said finally. I thought about how stupid it would have looked to anyone else—me, sitting sullenly on my bed while a girl who looked way younger than me stood before me, lecturing me like she was a mother. I thought of a dozen things to say to her in that moment, and still I kept my mouth shut. “Perseus, I didn’t make the choice.”

“Why did you let her die?” I asked her. “Zoё. You could have saved her life, ignored what she said. You could have let her live.”

“Let her live?” Artemis asked, tilting her head to the side. “She was at peace with her decision. She lived for millenia, boy. How many can even hope to achieve that before they die?”

“You needed your lieutenant.”

“I have my lieutenant.”

I shook my head violently. “Annabeth wasn’t thinking clearly! She doesn’t really want to be your lieutenant. She made that choice because she felt like she had to do something extreme after her older siblings deserted her—”

“And you know her so well?” Artemis asked, crossing her arms. “You, you foolish boy, you think you know everything about the girl?”

“And you think you do?” I snapped back, no longer caring if I got burned or morphed into an animal. It was like the mention of Annabeth had snapped whatever restraints I had on myself. 

Artemis scoffed. “The only person who knows Annabeth is Annabeth. The only person who has to justify or explain Annabeth’s decision is Annabeth. Don’t you think she would agree?”

“Annabeth didn’t know what she was doing,” I said weakly.

“She’s a child of Athena. She always knows.”

“What are you even doing here?” I asked. “Since when do gods just show up in camp, huh?”
Something in Artemis’s eyes seemed to glimmer. “I excuse the way you speak to me only because I know of the ordeal you’ve been through and the favor you’ve done to the gods.”

“I haven’t done you any favors,” I responded sullenly.

“The Ophiotaurus is safe. Your judgment allowed it to make it to Olympus before Zeus’s girl turned. You helped me reach my family. Such deeds aren’t small ones.” I felt another dull ache in my gut; I had been so distraught over Annabeth’s decision that I hadn’t even started thinking about Thalia. I couldn’t think of anything to say in that moment.

“Why must anyone die?” Artemis mused, and took a seat on the edge of the fountain in the cabin. “Zoё would have had to die anyway, no?” I thought I heard Artemis’s breath catch on the name like it was a stone stuck in her throat.

“Zoё was my friend,” I choked out. It was true, even though my reasons for wanting her to be alive weren’t entirely to do with her. “And she—she didn’t deserve to die then. Not like that. Not at the hand of her dad.”

“It was prophesied.”

You guys and your stupid prophecies, I wanted to say. “Bad things happen regardless of prophecies,” I said. “So why would anyone want to make those bad things happen for sure?”

“The promise of death is the only thing that gives life meaning,” Artemis sighed, and I felt a sudden burst of frustration, feeling like we were now having two different conversations. “The promise of death makes it easier to retain our humanity. That’s why my Hunters’ immortality is conditional.” She closed her eyes. “Thalia would have made a good lieutenant.”

My eyes twitched. I could feel the ocean roaring in my ears. I was building up the courage to scream at Artemis to get out of my cabin, but by the time the world had quieted and I was coming back to my senses, she was already halfway out the door. “Tell Chiron that some of my Hunters will remain at Camp Half Blood. I want them to be involved as you demigods decide what to do next.”

“Which Hunters?” I asked, but Artemis was already gone.

That night, my dream was more like a memory. I was back on Mount Othrys, listening to Atlas scream under the weight of his familiar burden. I was paralyzed, watching Thalia hold the point of her spear to Luke’s throat. 

“Well?” he asked. His voice shook slightly.

“Don’t kill him!” Annabeth shrieked, and I felt a touch of annoyance at the desperation in her tone. I was about to glance at Artemis, but she had already ran to Zoё. My muscles still ached from holding the sky, and everything was deathly silent to me in that exact moment except my breath rattling in my throat.

“He’s a traitor,” Thalia spat. Exactly! “A traitor!”

“We’ll bring Luke back,” Annabeth pleaded. I looked at her indignantly. “To Olympus. He… he’ll be useful.”

“Is that really what you want, Thalia?” Luke asked, his dark curls hanging in his eyes. Thalia’s knuckles were white. “To go back to Olympus in triumph? To please your dad?” His hands twitched as if he longed to reach out to her. “Thalia… don’t you remember anything you and I talked about? All those years I thought I’d lost you—” Luke blinked, and I was shocked to see tears in his eyes. I looked and Annabeth and the raw despair on her face felt like a sucker punch. Luke exhaled sharply, bringing my attention back to him. “I never forgot about it, Thalia. I never forgot you and I never forgot what you wanted.”

“For them to pay.” Her voice was suddenly very small. “For them to regret what they did to us.”

Tears were flowing freely down Luke’s face. “My war isn’t with you. Or even with Percy,” he added, looking at me for a second before looking back to Thalia. “It’s only ever been with the people that let this happen to us. To you.”

I swallowed, feeling as though I was witnessing an intensely private moment. Even Annabeth looked a little stunned, as if she was just now coming to terms with everything Luke and Thalia had shared before she had ever joined them. 

If her mind had been a bit clearer then maybe she would have figured out what was going to happen—but for once, she was on the same page as I was. And we seemed to realize at the same moment that something had gone seriously wrong, like a classic record scratch moment. I felt almost the same way I did on the beach with Ares, feeling Kronos’s dark presence pass over me. By the time Annabeth and I—slow and weak and beaten up—tried to run towards Thalia and Luke, Thalia had already dropped her spear on the ground and had placed her hands in Luke’s. In between one moment and the next, they simply blinked out of existence, leaving only a faint gold aura behind. 

Annabeth had fallen to her knees. Looking at her face, I thought she was going to start screaming her head off, but she just remained terrifyingly silent except for the sound of her heaving breaths. 

“Annabeth?” I choked out. She didn’t seem to hear me, so I reached out to touch her shoulder. But before my fingers made contact, the dream ended and my eyes snapped open to the side of Grover standing over me.

“Oh, man. I’m so sorry—I didn’t think I’d wake you!”

“Where’s Chiron?” I asked, sitting up and squinting against the morning light. “I need to find Chiron.”

“Well, he’s. He’s—um—well—”

I started to sit up and Grover unceremoniously pushed me back down. “Hey!” I protested. “This is serious. I have to find Chiron.”

“Well, he’s busy,” Grover said hastily. 

“Okay, but where is he?” I asked, rolling over to the other side of the bed so Grover wouldn’t block my path, but he scrambled over to me in record time. 

“He’s getting some new campers situated! Super busy. Super time consuming. See him later!”

“New campers?” I mumbled groggily, then it clicked. “The Hunters.” I was surprised by how my tone made the Hunters sound like a curse.

“Percy—”

“Is she here?”

Grover’s eyes darted around the room before coming back to me. “I don’t know.”

“Grover.”

He came to stand directly in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Percy, you’re going to have to be calm about this.”

“That’s actually making me want to not be calm at all, Grover.”

Grover sighed. “Annabeth isn’t here… yet. I overheard one of the Hunters saying she’d come back to camp after she gets some preliminary time with Artemis. Like an orientation.”

An orientation to what? Immortality? Abandoning your best friends? “Do you know when?”

“No, Percy, I don’t. But no matter when it is… you need to think clearly, you know? I know this is really hard, okay? She’s one of my best friends, too.”

“That’s not—”

“The same?” Grover interrupts. “Yeah, I know. Trust me, I probably know better than you do.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I snapped.

He ignored this comment. “Try not to be mad at her, okay? Luke and Thalia… they meant the world to her. And losing Luke was hard enough to begin with but losing Thalia twice? I mean…” he shook his head. “Just—promise me you’ll try not to be furious with her, okay. They were everything to her.”

And what about me? Didn’t I mean anything to her? “Fine,” I muttered.

I could tell Grover didn’t believe me. “Or… maybe it’s best if you just—ignore her?”

“Even better,” I said sullenly.

“Oh, who am I kidding? I know you can’t do that,” Grover sighed, taking a seat next to me.

“She abandoned us!” I exclaimed.

“She’s coming back to camp, though!”

I blinked back tears and suddenly felt embarrassed. That’s not what I meant. 

Grover went silent, and I just then remembered that he knew exactly what I was feeling. He put his hand on my shoulder again. “I mean—whatever happens, you’ll be okay, you know? You’ll figure out what to do and what to say. Eventually.”

“There’s no time,” I muttered, and got to my feet. “Even if I did have anything to say to Annabeth—and I don’t, by the way—there wouldn’t be time. Luke is out there. Nico is out there! There are three whole prophecy kids just running loose right now.” I shook my head. “And one of them is on Kronos’s side.”

“Thalia isn’t siding with Kronos, necessarily,” Grover replied, shifting uncomfortably. “She’s with Luke.”

“And that’s not the same to you?”

He pursed his lips. “No offense, Percy, but the three of us knew Luke a little better than you did.”

“Who cares?” I asked. “He still betrayed the camp! How could anything else matter?”

Grover seemed too dejected to argue with me. “Promise you’ll try not to be mad.”

I swallowed. “Sure. Alright.”

He got up and walked towards the door. “You better get ready for breakfast.”

“Okay,” I said quietly, looking away from him.

“She didn’t abandon the camp. I—we know Annabeth. She’ll fight with us towards the end.” Before I could think of anything to say in response to that, he was gone.

Chapter Text

I’d like to tell you that I spent the rest of the day being productive and helping out with all the war planning. Unfortunately, what I actually did was sulk and be miserable all day. Even Silena, who was famously impossible to annoy, lost her patience with me when I was helping feed the pegasi with her.

“How long are you going to be like this?” she snapped after my fifth or sixth ‘whatever’ while she directed me on what to do. “Like, what is wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me!” I replied, alarmed. “I’m great!”

She bit her lip, and then understanding passed over her face. “This is about Annabeth joining the Hunters, isn’t it?”

“No!” I said immediately.

Silena tilted her head to the side. “Yeah, okay. Because you’re totally alright with that, right?”

“Definitely,” I told her. “Annabeth knows what she’s doing.”

“I don’t think anyone who joins the Hunters knows what they’re doing,” Silena muttered sullenly. “To swear off love forever…” She shook her head before she could go off on one of her tangents about love. “Anyway—I think I get it now.”

“Get what?”

She rolls her eyes at me. “You like her.”

“I—what? Uh, no. No. Why would you even say that?”

“Why else would you be so depressed about her joining the Hunters?”

“I’m not depressed about that!” I protested. “A lot of bad things happened on this quest, okay?”

Silena was quiet for a moment. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool.”

We worked in uncomfortable silence for a while. “You know, Percy… you can always talk to me. If you need to.” 

Silena and I weren’t really close like that and probably wouldn’t ever be, but I still appreciated the sentiment. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, sure.” She checked the antique watch on her wrist. “We should probably be heading to the Big House for the counselor meeting now.”

I had totally forgotten about that, and felt a brief moment of panic before remembering that Annabeth wouldn’t be there as the Athena cabin head counselor. I couldn’t really tell whether the thought made me feel relieved or upset. However, by the time Silena and I had reached the Big House, I was starting to feel more relieved about not having to see Annabeth. I don’t know what I’d do if I saw her. I remembered with a sudden burst of pain what it had been like to talk to Bianca after she’d joined the Hunters—how she had this weird glow around her, and the thought that she would be looking the exact same long after I’d died. I didn’t know if I’d be able to take it if I had the same sort of interaction with Annabeth. I wasn’t exactly sure what my future had looked like, but I never imagined that a single part of it wouldn’t include her. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even notice that Silena had stopped dead in the doorway to the meeting room, and I walked right into her. I was about to apologize just as I was leaning to the side to see who was in the room, and I was startled by how packed it was. Everyone seemed to turn towards me in unison—Chiron, the Stolls, Malcolm, Katie, some random Ares kid ( where was Clarisse?), and all the other counselors. Even weirder, they all wore these identical expressions of panic. “What…” My eyes went down the line of people before they landed on her.

Most signs of Annabeth’s ordeal had disappeared in a matter of days. She looked taller, stronger, and healthier than she used to even in the best of times—I figured she’d probably be up to my nose or even the base of my forehead now if we stood toe to toe. And her dark eyes seemed a thousand times shinier than ever. She was glowing from the inside; she looked more like a goddess than Artemis had, and I’d seen her pretty recently. I could have stood there looking at Annabeth for ages, but my eyes drifted upward to the strands of white that spread through one of her braids, almost as though lightning had struck that specific area.

“And now we can begin!” Chiron said suddenly, his voice a little too loud and a little too strained. “Silena, Percy, why don’t you two take a seat?”

I noticed Grover and his hand on the empty seat beside him, and as I walked over towards him he did something weird with his eyebrows, reminding me of the promise I’d made this morning. I wanted to think I was mature enough to respect that promise, but the sight of Annabeth made me feel like I was back on Olympus, watching her make her choice. All the anger seemed to drain out of me at once, and I just felt like I’d eaten way too many of my mom’s pancakes before going on the Cyclone. 

And the worst part? She didn’t even seem to notice me. It’s not even like she was deliberately avoiding my gaze—her eyes just passed over me like I had been another chair in the room. And I was sitting there, my eyes probably bugging out in her direction, staring like the loser I was. 

The only person who knows Annabeth is Annabeth, I remembered Artemis saying. Still, it felt like the person sitting there was super disconnected from Annabeth. Annabeth, the real Annabeth, wouldn’t be so calm or impassive. Thalia and Luke had disappeared right in front of her eyes, and here she was, looking annoyingly serene. I almost wanted to shake her. 

Once Silena had taken a seat next to Beckendorf, Chiron rubbed his brow and addressed the room. “We are in a bit of a bad position right now.”

“That’s the nicest way you can put it,” Connor Stoll muttered. 

Chiron ignored him. “For the last few years, there’s been more talk of the Great Prophecy.”

I was still looking at Annabeth. Even the Hunters’ glow couldn’t hide the grayish tinge on her face now. 

“We suspected Percy was the hero in the prophecy,” Chiron continued, and every single head swiveled towards me as if I’d walked into a class fifteen minutes late. “Now we are forced to confront the reality that it may not be him. And if… if Thalia is the child of the prophecy, and she has chosen her side… it could mean the end of Olympus is upon us.”

The room erupted in questions and panic. “The end of Olympus?” Katie asked, sitting up, her eyes wide.

“What do you mean, the end of Olympus?” Beckendorf said, looking more alarmed and upset than I’d ever seen him. Silena was utterly silent, her face ashen as she fiddled with a silver bracelet on her wrist. 

“Hold on,” said Malcolm, “we don’t even know all the details. We don’t know the Great Prophecy. Maybe it’s time we all heard it.”

“It’s not time,” Annabeth snapped, and the sound of her voice startled me. I was almost happy to hear her when she finally focused all of her attention on me and said, very pointedly, “some of us aren’t ready to hear it yet.”

I scoffed and opened my mouth to speak, but Grover kicked my shins hard (goat shin kicks hurt a lot more than human shin kicks). I bit my tongue to keep from yelping.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to disagree with you on that, Annabeth,” Chiron sighed. “I am not happy with the idea of disclosing the contents of the Great Prophecy either, but the situation is far more dire now than I could have ever foreseen. If we aren’t all united in our knowledge, we could be fighting an uphill battle in the war for our lives.”

“Maybe Annabeth has a point, though,” Silena said quietly. “I mean—even if we’re all ready to hear it, it could just confuse us all more. That’s how prophecies are, right?”

“Maybe that’s a chance we have to take, Silena,” Beckendorf said, putting a hand on her arm. “It’s better to have something rather than nothing.”

She looked like she was about to throw up, and I couldn’t really blame her. She was now pushing her bracelet into her wrist so hard that I could see the little indentations it left on her skin. Beckendorf noticed and pushed her fingers away, and Chiron put his forehead in his hands. “Well,” he said, “someone must go retrieve the prophecy.”

There was an awkward pause. “I’ll do it,” I mumbled, but it sounded more like a question, like, I’ll do it…?

“I’m the only one who knows how to find the prophecy,” Annabeth said abruptly. “I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, well—maybe you should stay—” Grover started to say, but Annabeth got up and walked over to me, nearly dragging me out of my chair. And to be totally honest, I was so shocked by the sudden attention I was getting from her that I barely fought back. I expected one of the other head counselors to protest, but all they did was watch as Annabeth hauled me out of the room and up towards the attic.

I didn’t trust myself to speak. Annabeth just continued onward, having let go of my shirt just a few seconds after leaving the meeting room. I suspected she was also waiting for me to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything. I felt tongue-tied and stupid, and some of my anger was starting to return. 

The attic was as gross and unsettling as it had ever been, and I honestly couldn’t blame the Oracle for walking all the way down into the woods to give Zoё her prophecy. If I had to sit in this musty place all the time, I’d want to leave every once in a while, too.

Annabeth approached the mummy on the stool. I expected her to speak, but she just reached out and grabbed the cord around the mummy’s neck. She was standing on her toes, so she reached out to grab the mummy’s shoulder for support, which almost made me gag. Slowly, she reached into a pouch that hung on the cord and withdrew a small, rolled up piece of paper.

“That’s it?” I blurted. “Seriously? That’s where it’s been the whole time?”

“Yeah. Fate of the world, right here in this piece of paper.” Annabeth held it up and gave it a little shake without turning to look at me. “I read it when I was a kid… and it still scares me to death. I thought… I thought it would have been—”

“Me.” I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. “Well, I doubt you have to worry about it. Thalia’s sixteen now. It’s probably her.”

Annabeth turned to look at me. The attic dimmed the faint glow around her, and she looked nearly normal again. “I wouldn’t be so sure, Percy. Something about the words…” She squeezed her eyes shut.

“What is it?” I asked, feeling nervous.

She bit her lip. “I think… whoever the hero is, you’ll still be the one to…

“To what? Huh? To die?”

Annabeth shook her head, looking distraught. “I knew it wasn’t time! It’s not just you! None of us are ready to hear the prophecy.” She started to walk past me, but I grabbed her arm.

“Why do you care if I live or die anyway? You’ll outlive me no matter what happens!”

Her jaw dropped and her eyebrows knit together. “Are you serious, Percy?”

“Yeah, I’m serious,” I snapped. “You’re immortal , Annabeth, so why should any of this matter to you? It’s all just going to be a blink in your life a thousand years from now.”

She jerked her arm out of my grip, looking livid. “You—! You are such a jerk!”

“Oh, I’m the jerk?” I exclaimed as she continued to walk away from me.

She whirled around in the doorway. “Not just any jerk. A selfish jerk.”

“Don’t call me selfish,” I replied, hating that I sounded like a whiny little kid. “You’re the one that made the selfish choice.”

“Oh, did I?” she asked, and I could literally see her shaking with fury. “Please, Seaweed Brain, explain to me how my choice was selfish, since you know literally everything!”

“I…” I shook my head, feeling beyond frustrated. “You…”

“See! You can’t even give me a good answer. I knew what I was doing.”

“No, you didn’t,” I blurted, almost against my will.

“Percy Jackson—”

“Guys!” Our argument was interrupted by Grover bounding up the stairs, looking panicked. “Oh, thank goodness. Do you guys have it? The prophecy, I mean.”

“Yeah, we’ve got it,” Annabeth said, and walked down the stairs without another word. 

I made my way over to Grover, and he crossed his arms. “What happened? I heard yelling.”

“It was just a friendly discussion,” I muttered, walking past him to go down the stairs. “A friendly conversation among friends. Or whatever.”

Annabeth was already in her seat when Grover and I made it back into the meeting room.

“So?” asked Lee Fletcher, “what’s the prophecy?”

“We don’t know it yet,” Annabeth told him, and rolled the paper towards me without even looking at me. 

I scowled and snatched it off the table. Just as I was about to unroll the paper, Silena shot to her feet and ran out of the room. Some of the other counselors started to smirk, but Beckendorf turned a dark glare on them, and everyone immediately put on their straight faces, even a few expressions of shame. 

I unrolled the paper and sighed inwardly at how small the words were. “Um… a half blood of the eldest dogs—”

“Gods,” Annabeth mumbled.

I glared at her. “A half blood of the eldest gods… shall reach sixteen against all odds.”

“Okay, so Thalia turned sixteen a few days ago,” said Katie.

“And see the world in endless sleep…” I continued, “the hero’s soul, cursed blade shall—shall reap.” Riptide felt heavy in my pocket. “A single choice shall end his days.” I looked up to see Annabeth looking at me with a stricken expression. “Olympus to preserve or raze,” I finished.

“Well, ‘raise’ is a good thing, right?” asked Clarisse’s substitute from the Ares cabin. 

“Not ‘raise’,” said Malcolm. “Raze. R-A-Z-E.”

“Destroy,” Beckendorf said. Everyone glanced at him, and he shrugged. “Silena taught me. Good vocabulary.”

“Raze is not a good thing,” Connor said, unnecessarily.

“‘A single choice shall end his days’,” said Pollux, one of the Dionysus kids. “So even if Thalia is the half blood, that line can’t be talking about her, right?”

“Maybe it’s talking about, uh—” Grover began, then trailed off helplessly.

“Grandpa?” I said.

“Oh, ew,” Travis Stoll muttered.

“Yes, him! Maybe it’s the end of his days!” Grover said hopefully.

“Oh, please,” I said. “Prophecies are never that optimistic.” I glanced at Annabeth, and I could tell exactly who she thought that line was about. In fact, she was already looking at me the way one would look at a dead person in an open casket funeral.

“Well, maybe we should take a break for now,” Chiron said. “Annabeth, I’d like to meet with you and the other Athena campers to discuss—”

“Um, Chiron?” Malcolm said, looking uncomfortably. The air in the meeting room abruptly turned tense. “Annabeth’s not… the Athena head counselor anymore.”

“Oh…” Chiron seemed to be at a loss for words. The silence that had descended onto the meeting room was so awkward I felt like my skin was crawling. “Well, in that case, Malcolm—”

“Yeah, we’ll figure something out,” Malcolm said quickly, sparing Chiron the pain of prolonging the situation. Annabeth was studiously observing the table. 

“I suppose that’s it then,” said Chiron. “Best get going. I’ll be seeing you all again for dinner.” With that, everyone started to disperse and leave the room in clumps and pairs, Beckendorf being the first one to go—probably to find Silena.

“Grover,” I asked, before he could get up and leave. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, anything.”

I glanced around. “That line about a single choice ending some guy’s days. Do you think that could be about me?”

Grover pursed his lips and looked down. “I hope it isn’t, Percy.” I noticed that he hadn’t really given me a good answer.

“But it could be.”

He sighed. “It probably isn’t.”

I wished I could’ve had one night without dreams, but I’d never be so lucky. Tonight, I was on the Princess Andromeda, in the suite containing Kronos’s sarcophagus. A few feet away, Luke and Thalia sat shoulder to shoulder, deep in discussion.

“... Bessie’s out of the question,” Thalia was saying.

Luke pushed his curls out of his eyes. “Bessie?” he asked.

“Oh—that’s what Percy called it.”

Luke nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. “Sounds like him.” What was that supposed to mean?

“Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t have to kill it, Luke,” Thalia admitted, lacing her fingers together. “I—I understand what you want, but I want it to be as clean as possible. If we just go around spreading fear and killing people to get what we want… how are we better than our parents?”

Luke swallowed. “I get that, but… Thalia, we can’t just always play pacifist if we want to actually change anything.”

“Yeah, I know that.” She ran a hand through her hair. “So, what next?”

Luke bit his lip. “We need to move on camp.”

“What, attack them?”

Luke shifted. “Not exactly. But… we need people on our side. We only have one spy at camp right now, but it’s not enough.”

“Camp will be impossible to get into,” Thalia reminded him. “They’ll tighten the defenses now that we’re out here.”

Luke shook his head. “We don’t need to get into the camp from the outside. We have a way in. By Zeus’s Fist.”

“The Poop Pile?” Thalia asked, a laugh in her voice. I was shocked by how easily she was interacting with Luke. 

He smirked at her. “Yeah, that. I’ll tell you more about it later. But for now…” He turned and looked right at me. “I think we’ve discussed enough for now.” And before either of us could move, the dream was over.

Chapter Text

“Honestly, it looks normal to me,” said Grover. 

“Same pile of shit,” Travis said, peering over my shoulder.

Grover gasped beside me and looked upwards nervously. “Don’t say that, Travis!”

Travis scoffed. “Oh, come on. It’s not like I said it’s his pile of—”

“I know it doesn’t look like anything,” I cut in, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “But I swear this is what they were talking about in the dream. There’s some unguarded entrance to camp right here.”

“Come on, Percy,” Connor sighed skeptically, coming back into eyesight after walking in a circle around Zeus’s Fist. “It’s just solid rock all the way through, I think. How would anyone enter through there?”

“Maybe there’s some kind of… portal here?” Grover suggested.

“That would be so stupid,” I protested. “And highly unrealistic.”

“You know what’s highly unrealistic?” asked Grover, leaving my side to also walk around the pile. “Being the offspring of gods. But that happened anyway, right?” He trotted along for a minute, and I heard the rustle of the surrounding bushes after he moved through them. However, the rustling went abruptly silent. Connor and Travis glanced at each other with identical expressions of concern.

“Grover?” I asked. “You good?”

“You might want to come take a look at this, Percy,” I heard him say from behind the pile. I looked at the Stolls but they shook their heads and pointed at me. I rolled my eyes and went into the bushes.

Grover was kneeling on the ground, holding something in his hands that glimmered like holographic foil.

Hold on… it was holographic foil.

Wordlessly, he handed me a Mythomagic card.

“Nico,” I breathed. 

“If you’re right about this secret entrance,” Grover whispered, taking the card back from me, “then it makes sense with how Nico was able to disappear—”

“You think he escaped through here? I mean, how would he even know about it?” I asked with a frown.

Grover tucked the card into his inside jacket pocket. “Well… we’ve been observing this place for a while and have found nothing, so it doesn’t really make sense for Nico to just accidentally stumble on it, right?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re not suggesting—”

“I’m not suggesting anything!” Grover said hastily. “Except that I kinda am.”

I took a moment to really think about it. “I don’t know, man. I know for a fact that Nico and his sister had no involvement with any of this before we found them, and I highly doubt anything happened to make him turn while we were gone. And—come on, Grover. The kid’s ten.”

“But in the dream, you said there was a spy,” he reminded me.

“Yeah, and it’s not him,” I insisted. 

“Fine, even if he isn’t at the moment, he’s still a half blood of the eldest gods that’s just running loose. They’ve got Thalia, but—if I’m being honest—Thalia’s not really on Kronos’s side. She’s on Luke’s side, and I don’t think that’s hard to tell. Anyone could find out about Nico’s father, and then they’ll be looking for him. They’ll be looking for as many opportunities to fulfill the prophecy as possible. They would have tried to turn you, too, if you weren’t so clearly devoted to the gods.”

“I am not devoted to the gods,” I responded vehemently. I felt this oddly uncomfortable feeling, like what I felt whenever I’d heard Luke talk about everything he’d done and why he’d done it. Part of me had agreed; even two years ago, with considerably less wisdom, I’d understood him, and I hated to admit it, but I wasn’t entirely sure why I hadn’t joined him.

For Dad, I reminded myself. Because no matter what, you’re loyal enough to Dad that you don’t want him and his family to be destroyed.

Was that enough, though?

“We need to find him,” Grover went on. “We need to keep him safe at camp.”

I shook my head. “He doesn’t want to be anywhere near me. I can’t blame him.”

Grover tugged nervously on one of his curls. “That’s a really dumb reason to let a kid as young as him die or get corrupted by Kronos.”

“Guys?” one of the Stolls called. “Everything good back there?”

“Yeah, we’re fine, we’re just trying something!” I yelled back, then turned back to Grover, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Fine, I see your point, but we’re still starting with like, no information. We can’t find any sort of entrance, and we don’t know that Nico’s disappearance is even related to this.”

Grover patted his jacket. “I think this is pretty good evidence, Percy.” He glanced up at the rocks. “Come on, let’s go. I don’t want Travis and Connor to worry. We’ll talk more on the way back.” We both stood and walked back to the brothers, who were playing chopsticks.

“So, did you find anything?” Connor asked, not taking his eyes off of his brother’s fingers.

“Nope,” I told them dejectedly.

“Not yet,” Grover added encouragingly. “Come on, let’s go back. Thanks for coming, but maybe we should get some other people to take a look.”

The four of us started to make our way back to the cabins, and Grover and I walked a bit behind Connor and Travis, who were still playing their game. 

“You can’t tell anyone else,” Grover began, glancing from side to side. I guess we had to worry about the trees here, too. Once he was satisfied that there were no dryads nearby, he looked back at me. “You know how Clarisse has been MIA?”

“Yeah, dude, I was wondering about that!”

“Well, Chiron sent her on a super secret mission to investigate… something. I don’t know what it is. Anyway, she came back while we were on Olympus for the solstice and has been holed up in the Big House ever since.” My eyes widened and I opened my mouth to say something, but Grover held up a hand and stopped me. “Hold on, that’s not even it. I was talking to some dryads a day or so back, and I overheard—I overheard one of them mentioning that Clarisse was found by Zeus’s Fist.”

“Found?” I repeated. “Is she okay?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Grover admitted. “But I’m thinking… if there’s something weird going on in that area, Clarisse might know something about it. Besides, think about the timing. She was there on the night of the solstice. We get back the next day, we talk to Nico, he runs away into the woods and disappears.”

“Wait, I think I get what you’re saying,” I said. “Maybe the ‘entrance’ is something that only works sometimes and doesn’t at other times?”

“Exactly, yeah,” Grover agreed, nodding emphatically. “At least, that would be a really good explanation for why we didn’t find anything today while still sticking to the story that Nico found the alleged secret entrance and went through there to get out of camp.”

“Okay, great! So we have to talk to Clarisse.”

“Who’s been in the Big House for days. And Percy, as far as anyone else knows, Clarisse isn’t even back from her mission yet, and I think Chiron wants to keep it that way. I think she’s staying in the restricted area of the Big House.”

“Well, shoot,” I sighed. “How are we supposed to talk to her, then?”

“We can get you in,” said Connor from up ahead.

We stopped dead in our tracks. “Um… what?”

Travis and Connor turned around to walk towards us. “We can get you into the locked area. We’ve gotten in tons of times.”

“Uh, we don’t want to do that!” Grover told them, looking nervously at me. He was such a bad liar it was almost physically painful, but I was also too loyal to him to not play along.

“Yeah, I don’t know what you guys are talking about.” My voice cracked spectacularly on the last word. 

Travis rolled his eyes. “Please. We have really good hearing. More importantly, we’re great at getting into places we shouldn’t be.”

“More importantly,” added Connor, “we can keep our mouths shut about stuff.”

“Even more importantly, we already knew about Clarisse,” Travis finished. “Connor and I were sneaking out of camp to get some chips for Malcolm and we saw her and—we saw her going into the Big House.”

“Her and what?” I asked, at the same time Grover said, “was she okay?”

“She was fine,” Connor told me. “At least, it looked like it? She was walking on her own, but dead silent. Dryads were escorting her, Chiron was in front of her—shit, we almost got caught sneaking out because so many people were up—and they were all trying to talk to her but she couldn’t speak. I had no idea what was up with her.”

“And what?” I repeated.

Travis glanced at his brother in warning. Connor seemed to think for a moment, chewing nervously on his bottom lip. “And Chris Rodriguez was with her,” he added, and Travis huffed, putting his face in his hands.

“Chris Rodriguez?” I asked, feeling winded. “Last I saw him, he was—”

“On Luke’s ship,” Grover finished.

Travis scowled. I’d never seen him look so angry. Connor put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Travis doesn’t want me to talk about it.”

“He’s a traitor,” Travis spat. “Him and Luke. They’re all goddamn traitors.”

Connor squeezed his shoulder. “Anyway… Chris was on this stretcher-type thing. I couldn’t really tell what exactly was wrong with him in the dark, but he definitely wasn’t conscious.”

I was quiet for a minute. “You can get us to Clarisse?” I asked finally.

Travis looked uncomfortable, both he and Connor nodded. 

“Okay,” I sighed with a relieved glance at Grover. “That’s a good place to start.”

That night, I was buzzing with nervous anticipation. After dinner, I grabbed a heavier jacket from my cabin and walked aimlessly around camp, though I avoided the Artemis cabin where the Hunters were staying. I wondered if Annabeth missed staying in the Athena cabin. In all honesty, I had half a mind to tell her about what Grover and I were going to do with the Stolls tonight; it felt wrong to be doing these things without her. But her priorities had shifted significantly. Away from me.

I shook my head, feeling annoyed with myself. Maybe she was right about me being selfish. Ever since the solstice, I’d only been able to think about her decision in terms of me and how it had affected me. However, I couldn’t really make sense of why she would have wanted to make this decision. It seemed out of character for her, even as a response to Thalia’s betrayal. Still, I tried to remember what Artemis had told me about how only Annabeth needed to know her motives.

It wasn’t fair, though. I thought I was going to lose her, and just when I thought I wouldn’t, I had anyway. She was my—she was my best friend. And I thought I was her best friend. And immortality was this giant, gaping pit that separated us, and I knew it wasn’t something we’d ever really be able to cross. She was going to outlive me, watch me grow older and have my own life while she stayed exactly the same… forever. That thought was never going to leave my mind, and I had a feeling it wouldn’t leave her mind either. 

I mean, how could it? Annabeth was super smart. She’d never let herself forget the facts. And her immortality and my mortality was like, a capital F Fact.

I wandered to the edge of the strawberry field. Even in the middle of winter, there were strawberries growing there. I stood there for a few minutes before I heard someone walking up to me.

“What are you doing here?”

I froze. “Are you following me, Annabeth?” I asked, and I wanted to sound annoyed, but my voice shook slightly when I said her name.

“Actually, I am,” she said. She was a few feet behind me, and made no move to come closer. “You’ve just been walking in circles since dinner, and I was… intrigued.”

I turned to look at her. “Why did you come back from Olympus so early?”

“Early?”

I shrugged, not quite meeting her gaze. “I thought Artemis would keep you longer. Being a lieutenant must be pretty complicated, right?”

She put her hands in her pockets. “It’s not that complicated. Besides—I needed to be here. Camp is where things are actually in motion.”

“And Artemis was okay with that?”

She shrugged. “More or less. The thing is, I don’t really even feel like a lieutenant. I’m the Hunt’s newest member, and everyone treats me more like that than Artemis’s second in command.” Annabeth blinked. “I don’t know why I’m talking about it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry I called you a selfish jerk,” she whispered.

I closed my eyes. For the trillionth time, I was thinking about the solstice. 

“I shall have a new lieutenant,” Artemis had said, “if she will accept it.”

I had been paralyzed, my tongue sitting in my mouth like a dead weight. I hadn’t even been able to form the word ‘no’. 

Annabeth. Daughter of Athena. Will you join the Hunt?

She’d said yes. Why did she say yes?

“Why did you do it?” I burst out. “I… I’ve been trying to figure it out for ages, but I can’t.”

Annabeth bit her lip. “I…”

I realized suddenly that I had stepped closer to her without even being conscious of it. She had her stupid glow. If I focused a bit, I might have been able to count her eyelashes.

“Hey!” Connor Stoll ran up to us and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Percy!” He glanced sideways. “Hi, Annabeth.” He looked back at me. “It’s time to do our thing.”

“Hold on,” Annabeth said, frowning, and our moment was officially broken. “What thing?”

Connor widened his eyes at me in a you didn’t tell her? look. I swallowed and shook my head. He closed his eyes in frustration and said, “well, best get going!”

“Wait,” Annabeth said firmly, putting her hands on her hips. “What’s the thing?” She looked expectantly at me.

I wanted to tell her, I really did. I even thought Connor would have been okay with it. But there was something about her now that was totally unfamiliar and wrong that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “It’s none of your business,” I told her, and immediately felt guilty at the sight of the hurt that flashed in her eyes. But instead of apologizing, I just took one look at Connor before the two of us started to jog towards the Big House.   

Chapter Text

Sneaking into the Big House was way easier than I thought it would be. There was a concealed door in the wall facing in the direction of the strawberry fields, so we jumped the fence of the wraparound porch. Connor, Travis, and Grover all landed almost silently—I, of course, landed with a loud thud that made them all look at me in fury (Grover’s expression was closer to panic). We stood there frozen for a few minutes to make sure no one had heard me before the Stolls began to move. Even though they walked normally, their footsteps made absolutely no sound—it must have been some Hermes kid thing. Grover followed them and motioned for me to stay behind him. I watched them step and skip over certain floorboards—probably the creaky ones—and I tried to imitate them.   

For all my other abilities, I was still the least stealthy person I knew. Maybe Poseidon should have picked up the power of stealth along with oceans and earthquakes and whatever. I wanted to keep my head up to see if Annabeth had followed us, but if I looked up, I’d definitely step on a floorboard loud enough to wake up the whole camp. Luckily, we didn’t have to go too far before Travis stopped by the wall and started to run his hand over it. He did this for a while before pausing and motioning to Connor with his other hand. Connor nodded and reached for his camp necklace, where I noticed something shiny hanging on it. I realized that it was just a plain paper clip, but Travis took it with a look of satisfaction before bending it in a way I was sure would cause it to break. But it didn’t, and he inserted the paper clip into a crack in the wall I hadn’t even noticed.

“Do you guys always keep a supply of paper clips on you?” I whispered to Connor, who watched his older brother closely.

“Just the one,” he whispered back. “It’s magic. Gift from Hermes. It never breaks, and can always be bent into what we need.”

Magic paper clip. I guess I could understand why the Stolls would be excited about a paper clip, but what if they accidentally used it on actual paper and never found it again? Seemed pretty impractical to me. “It’s kind of like your pen,” Connor went on.

“Oh, yeah, for sure.”

“Got it,” Travis whispered to us, and pushed on the door that I hadn’t seen before. It swung open with the smallest creak, causing us all to wince. After a moment, we all started to shuffle through the doorway. I was the last to go in, and before I did, I looked back out into the night. I wanted to wait a few minutes to see if Annabeth was somewhere near here, but Grover tugged on my shirt to pull me inside, and I quietly closed the door behind me.

The Big House seemed totally deserted as we crept through the halls. I was strangely reminded of going through the Princess Andromeda with Annabeth and Tyson, and I hated to say that I was getting the same eerie feeling here. Several times it felt like someone had been following me, but I turned around to see no one there. Finally, we had stopped somewhere one floor below the attic, and I was feeling more jumpy than ever. 

“How do you know she’s here?” Grover asked.

“Well, we were feeling a little nosy after we saw her get taken in here,” Connor replied. “So we snuck in and explored the area a little. I remember hearing her voice in this hallway, but we couldn’t look further because Chiron was up and about. Travis, do you remember where it is?”

“I think it was here,” Travis whispered back, stopping by a door. He pulled The Paper Clip out again and pushed it into the door lock as Grover and I watched nervously.

By the time the lock clicked, my heart was pounding with anticipation. Thankfully this door made no sound as it opened, but that also meant the people inside didn’t hear us. The room was a minimally furnished bedroom, and I saw Clarisse’s familiar curls from behind. She was on a stool by the small bed, leaning forward speaking in soft tones. I felt like I was seeing something that I shouldn’t (I mean, that actually was true), because it felt like an utterly different side of Clarisse. I’d never heard her sound so nice or so sad. It was honestly a little gross, like how some other mortal kids had said they’d felt whenever they saw their parents kissing or something. I was genuinely thinking about sneaking out of the room and one look at Grover’s face told me he was thinking the same thing, but I heard a boy gasp from behind her and she stiffened. “What, Chris?” she asked. “What do you see?” So Chris Rodriguez was lying in the bed. When he didn’t respond for a minute, she sighed. “You’re not in there anymore, okay? You’re here. With me.”

“The—the—the door,” Chris rasped out. “The door is—open.”

Now all four of us were about to abandon this and run out, but Clarisse was turning and saying, “the door isn’t op—” when she saw us. It took less than a second for her shocked expression to turn into one of fury. “What the hell are you assholes doing in here?” she hissed, then glanced back at Chris. “Actually, you know what?” She slipped off of her stool and walked towards us. “Get out. We talk outside.”

No one argued with her. As we came out of the room, I looked back at Chris, who seemed motionless again. I was the last one to join the group (again) and the door shut behind me. I looked at Grover, who was standing right next to me. “Did you close the door?” I whispered to him.

“No, I thought you did—”

“How did you guys even get here?” Clarisse asked, crossing her arms. “Were you guys even looking for me?” She looked at all of our faces. “Wait, have you guys been spying on me?”

Grover and I shook our heads vigorously. 

“We didn’t spy,” Connor told her. “We were observing.”

“Oh, and you observed this exact room?” Clarisse whisper-yelled, grabbing the collar of Connor’s shirt.

“We needed to ask you about something,” I said hastily, as Travis grabbed Connor’s shoulders and yanked him out of her grip. I was surprised she didn’t fight back, but I was a little concerned about all her attention being on me now. “We… we want to know what’s going on by Zeus’s Fist.”

Her face drained of color. “I’m sorry?”

I looked around the hallway before looking back at her. “We… I think there might be a way into camp around that area. A secret that no one here knows about. A way into camp that… Luke knows about.” His name hung over us like a dark cloud, and to me it felt like the temperature in the hallway seemed to drop a couple of degrees. Talking about Luke felt almost as bad as talking about Kronos.

Clarisse covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were glassy with unshed tears. 

“Oh, man,” I said, feeling intensely uncomfortable. “Clarisse, I—”

“I can’t,” she breathed, then cleared her throat and shook her head. “You know who sent me on this mission? Chiron. That means, you little jackass, that whatever I know stays between him and me. Got it?”

“You’re unbelievable,” I told her. “Luke could attack the camp! Don’t you think people should know?”

“It’s not my call,” she snapped. “So maybe you should take it up with Chiron. Oh, wait, you can’t, because you’re actually not even supposed to know about me being here!”

“You can’t be okay with it, though,” Grover said in a small voice. “You care about camp. You actually want no one to know about the danger that could be so close to us?”

Clarisse rubbed the back of her neck and said, “Honestly, Grover, if it were up to me I’d have a rotating patrol by Zeus’s Fist at all times of the day—”

“So there is something there,” Travis said triumphantly.

“Well, you dirtbags wouldn’t be here if you actually thought there wasn’t, huh?” she asked, scowling at him. “There is definitely something going on but Chiron doesn’t want people to know yet, and it’s not something I like to discuss.”

“Does it have anything to do with Chris?” I asked.

Clarisse looked at me in a way that made me almost dead sure she was going to hit me in the face. But to my surprise, she just closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “This conversation is over,” she declared. “Get out before anyone sees you.” With that, she opened the door to the bedroom and slipped back inside.

Grover glanced sideways at me. “So your dreams make sense.”

That was a statement I hated to hear. “Yeah,” I sighed. “Yeah, they do.”

I could barely see Grover in the darkness of my cabin after I let him in. “I have a really bad thought,” I told him.

“Me, too,” he responded. “You go first.”

“I think it’s safe to say there is an entrance by Zeus’s fist,” I started, sitting down on my bed as I undid my shoelaces. “And it’s also safe to say that Luke knows about it.”

“Right.”

“And if Luke knows about it, and Nico used that entrance to escape camp—what if Luke already has both Thalia and Nico with him?”

Grover was silent for a while. “That is a bad thought,” he said finally.

“What’s yours?”

He exhaled softly. “Percy, I think we were being spied on.”

“I thought so, too,” I admitted. “I think it was just because we weren’t supposed to be there and it was the general vibe of the place—”

“No, Percy, I don’t mean the vibe of the place. I actually think we were followed.”

I blinked. “I mean, I—none of us saw anyone!”

“Exactly! What could that mean?”

My heart dropped. “No.”

Grover shrugged. “She’s definitely nosy enough. And she has a hat that makes her invisible. Like, what would you do in that situation?”

I groaned and put my face in my hands. “What if she tells Chiron?”

Grover’s jacket rustled as he shook his head vigorously. “She won’t. She’s definitely smart enough to understand why she shouldn’t.”

Even though I knew that, I was starting to get really worried about something else. If Annabeth had been with us the whole time, totally invisible, and she heard about the entrance at Zeus’s Fist, what if she tried to find it? Even more, what if she somehow figured it out? This might look like a perfect opportunity to try and go after Thalia and Luke, and that would be all kinds of bad. It was just dumb, and not something I’d typically think Annabeth would do, but this was Thalia and Luke we were talking about. I refused to believe she was ready to let any of it go. I mean, even since he deserted camp she’s always talked about him like he would change somehow. And after getting Thalia back, who was to say she wouldn’t take the same route with her? Though the thought made me feel weirdly unpleasant, I understood. Thalia and Luke took care of her when no one else would—how would she just sit silently and let those two people turn against and away from her? And it wouldn’t matter to her that she was Artemis’s lieutenant now—despite everything, Thalia and Luke meant the world. In fact, she’d probably spin it into something that Artemis would be perfectly okay with her doing.

“Percy?” Grover asked.

“I think I need to sleep,” I mumbled. “We can talk about this again tomorrow.”

If you wanted me to be totally honest, I was kind of scared of the prospect of talking to Annabeth. But I had this pressing need to be reassured that she wasn’t going to do anything stupid, so I found myself standing in front of the Artemis cabin that evening. I was about to step up onto the porch when the door swung open to reveal a girl who looked about ten or eleven, frowning deeply at me. “If you take another step the porch is going to catapult you fifty feet away,” she told me solemnly. 

No fair. I thought only the Hephaestus cabin was allowed to be booby-trapped (to let the campers practice their skills, according to Beckendorf). “I just want to talk to Annabeth.”

The girl huffed. “You mean our lieutenant? The second in command to Lady Artemis?”

“That’s the one,” I told her, trying not to sound annoyed.

“Well, maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you. Maybe I don’t want to talk to you,” the girl added, stepping back into the cabin, and she was just about to close the door when Annabeth appeared behind her. 

“Virginia? Who—” She noticed me. “Oh. You can go inside. I can talk to him.”

Virginia glared at me before going inside, and Annabeth crossed the porch to come stand in front of me.

“You didn’t get catapulted,” I noticed.

“Catapulted? What are you talking about?” Annabeth asked, glancing back at the porch. Why did she come and stand so close to me?

“Um… that girl told me if I stepped on the porch it would catapult me,” I told her, looking at my shoes.

“That’s made up,” Annabeth stated. “She was just trying to get you to leave. Girls rule and boys drool or something like that.”

“Right,” I muttered. “Uh—”

“What are you doing here?” she blurted, then pursed her lips. “Sorry, were you about to tell me?”

“Yeah.” I forced myself to meet her dark eyes. The sun was setting, and even the watery light of that through the clouds cast a better glow on her than being a Hunter ever would. “When are you going to rejoin Artemis?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “I really don’t want to start with you again, Percy—”

“I’m not trying to fight!” I said quickly. “I’m just asking. Seriously.”

She crossed her arms. “Okay, um… I’m not really sure yet. Artemis wanted us here to scope out the camp’s progress with moving forward, but nothing’s really in motion yet. Besides, I don’t need to stay much longer. I got what I needed.”

Well, that certainly didn’t sound good. “Like what? What do you mean?”

She seemed slightly surprised that I asked. “Oh, I mean, like, coming back here before… before I started this new part of my life.” Annabeth sounded timid, almost like she was expecting me to get upset with her again. “I needed to be here and spend enough time here so that I would—be okay with moving on,” she added haltingly.

“I get it,” I told her, though I honestly didn’t. “So, what, you’ll be gone in like, two to three days?”

She tilted her head. “I guess? Why are you asking?”

“I’m just wondering,” I lied. “Anyway… nice seeing you. Say goodbye before you leave, yeah?” I walked away before she could respond, feeling frustrated. I still wasn’t sure anything could stop her from going after Thalia and Luke if she really wanted to.

Hold on… why did I even care? It was her life, and Annabeth could make her own choices. I never did like how much she seemed to hold on to Luke even after he betrayed us, but how could it possibly be my problem now? Her joining the Hunters made it impractical for me to stay hung up on anything she did. 

I wanted to care. I really did. But if I did, I would probably go crazy. I looked out into the distance and realized that New Year's Eve was just a couple days away. The solstice was barely a week ago, but it felt like I’d lived a thousand lifetimes since I first got to California. I had missed Christmas with my mom. I was tired, frustrated, and honestly super depressed; all things considered, there was only one place I wanted to be for the rest of winter break until school started again.    

I took one last look at the Artemis cabin. Annabeth had gone back inside, and I wondered how old I’d be when I saw her again. I stood there for a few minutes before making my way to the Big House to tell Chiron I was going home.

Chapter Text

When spring break arrived about three months after the solstice, I considered going back to camp. I admittedly had no real reason to, and my mom wanted me to stay and spend more time with the new guy she was dating. I wouldn’t have minded—I really liked Paul—but over the past few weeks I had come to regret leaving camp with so many loose ends. 

“Not many people are going to be there anyway,” my mom had told me over breakfast one morning. “Annabeth’s not year-round anymore, is she?” I still hadn’t told her about what had happened on the solstice, but I was running out of excuses for why Annabeth wasn’t emailing or sending postcards like she occasionally used to before. 

“I know,” I had told her, “but maybe it would be nice to check in? We don’t live that far away.”

“I don’t know what I’d tell Paul, honey.”

This argument was good enough to halt the conversation for a few days. But it was now the first Sunday after school had been let out, and I still wasn’t sure what to do. And the truth was, camp would always remind me of Annabeth, and I wasn’t sure whether that made me want to go more or less. Then, of course, there was the matter of Zeus’s Fist to worry about. I think I would have heard by now if something bad had happened, right?

On impulse, I decided to risk a five minute phone call to Chiron. He picked up on the third ring. “Sally?”

“It’s me, Chiron,” I told him, leaning against the wall.

“Oh! Percy. Why… are you calling?”

I didn’t waste any time. “Is camp okay?”

“Why, did you see something?” That wasn’t really an acceptable answer.

“I was just wondering!” I replied indignantly. “I want to know that everything is okay there.”

Chiron didn’t sound convinced, but he said, “Yes, Percy, things are alright. Not very eventful, but they’re alright.”

“So… it would be okay if I came to camp?”

He was silent for a minute. “It’s always alright, but may I ask—why?”

“I miss it there,” I told him. 

“Percy, I only want you to come if your mother is okay with it and she knows about it.”

I felt guilty for a second. I knew my mom would understand (eventually), but she had really wanted me to get to know Paul. Besides, what would she tell him?

“Okay, Chiron,” I said finally. “Thanks.” I suspected he was about to say something else, but I hung up before I could hear his concerned tones. 

“Hey, Mom?” I called into the apartment. “I’m going on a walk!”

My mom came into the hallway. “You know what ‘taking a walk’ meant when I was fourteen?”

“Oh, my god, Mom, I’m not going to smoke weed on the fire escape.”

She put her hands on her hips. “That was a very specific answer, Perseus,” she said, but she ruffled my hair as she walked into the kitchen. She returned with a sticky note and held it out in front of my face. “Are you feeling generous enough to get some groceries for me once you’ve smoked it up?”

“Mooooom.”

“You’re useless,” my mom told me as she took the sticky note away, but she was smiling at me in a way that felt like she was hugging me. As I walked out of the apartment, I sincerely wished I’d actually make it back home that night.

Here’s the thing about New York City—I consider it to be mine, you know? I rarely expect to see people I know, let alone run into them. Yet today was the day for it to happen, and the person was not someone I wanted to see. 

You see, I’d spotted the red hair first. It was like a stop sign in a sea of people, but it didn’t really alert me then. Tons of people in Manhattan had red hair. But after the red hair, I noticed the freckles, and then the green eyes, and then I knew I was in trouble. You’ll say, Percy, you’re just describing a really broad group of people! Sure, it might sound like that, but trust me. I knew this girl, and the thought of her still freaked me out. In fact, seeing her freaked me out so bad that I literally thought about turning around and walking in the opposite direction, but it was far too crowded to do that. She was standing stationary at the inner edge of the sidewalk, leaning against a wall and reading some MoMA brochure, so my only hope was to keep walking and pray she wouldn’t notice me.

By the way, when I pray for something to happen, the exact opposite thing happens. I don’t know why I ever did that. Anyway, I saw her head jerk up as soon as I walked past and she reached out with a freakishly long arm and pulled me towards her, causing some people in my path to curse at me and her. I thought about jerking out of her grip and making a run for it, but something about her gaze was paralyzing.

“You,” she said finally.

“I think you have the wrong person,” I told her cheerfully. I was slowly prying my arm out of her hand, but she tightened her fingers.

“You tried to stab me,” she continues, tucking her brochure into the back pocket of her pants with her other hand. “With a sword. And you said your name was something stupid.”

“My name’s not Something Stupid.”

“Shut up. You’re… oh, yeah. You’re Percy Gotta-go.”

I huffed, frustrated. “Yes, I’m him. And I thought you lived—”

“Lived where, genius? Inside the dam?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not surprised at all. You sure look like you’re from New York.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She moved her fingers from my arm to my wrist. 

“Oh…” I started to mumble, but she pulled hard, dragging me in the direction of a cafe a few feet away. “Um, didn’t anyone teach you not to drag random strangers around?”

She looked back, frowning. “Well, we aren’t exactly strangers, are we?”

“You don’t even know my last name!” I protested as we entered the cafe. She unceremoniously pushed me into a booth seat before sitting down opposite me.

“It’s Gotta-go, isn’t it?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Haha.” I moved to get up, but she held her hand up so suddenly I stopped in my tracks.

“Listen, Mr. Gotta-go. Our interaction at the dam has been bothering me for months. And when things bother me, I rarely get answers. Except now. Isn’t this a pleasant surprise?”

“I don’t know about pleasant,” I muttered, rubbing my wrist.

She ignored this. “Do you remember my name?”

“No,” I lied.

She snorted. “You’re a terrible liar. You know my name, but I’ll play your game. I’m Rachel. Elizabeth Dare, I mean.”

“And I’m Percy,” I sighed. After a second of her staring expectantly, I rolled my eyes. “Percy Jackson.”

She put her hand on her mouth. “You know what, I know you.”

I was suddenly on high alert. “Really?” My pen felt heavy in my pocket.

Rachel waved her hand. “Oh, my god, yeah! I saw you on TV a bunch of times! And your stepdad, too!”

“Ex-stepdad,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. He owned that electronics store or something, right?”

“Or something.”

“Yeah, yeah. And, oh, my god, you were a fugitive, right?”

“Technically—”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I knew you looked familiar when I saw you at the dam! Oh, my god, were you the one that blew up the Arch or am I thinking of some other domestic terrorist?”

I frowned, leaning forward. “I don’t know if domestic terrorist is the right thing to say here—”

“I don’t know either,” Rachel told me, tucking her red hair behind her ears. “There’s something weird going on, and I want you to tell me what it is.”

“Um…” I was silent before snapping my fingers. “There… is… nothing… weird… about… me.”

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked in disgust, swatting my hand out of her face. “You tried that shit at the dam, too. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I don’t think it’s working. Besides, you cannot convince me nothing’s up. I saw your sword and those skellies and everything.”

“No, you didn’t.”

She waved her finger in my face. “Don’t gaslight me, Jackson.”

Now it was my turn to swat her hand out of my face. “Fine! You saw my sword and some skeletons, but trust me, you can’t get involved.” I was hoping to leave it at that and I got up, but Rachel stopped me again, this time with her words.

“I’ve been having dreams,” she blurted, before my legs were fully out of the booth. 

Slowly, I turned around. “About what?”

She shrugged. “Nothing I can make sense of. Giant statues? A metal dragon? I don’t know. Some dark and curly haired guy with a nasty scar on his face and these weird, gold eyes. A girl with a streak of white in her hair—”

I almost fell over myself trying to get back into the booth. “And?”

She tilted her head. “And… you, I think? When you were a kid? There was some giant fork hologram over your head.”

“Trident,” I corrected her. “What about—what about that girl? With the white streak in her hair? Where did you see her?”

Rachel leaned back and crossed her arms. “You know these are just dreams, right? They don’t mean anything.”

“Yeah, whatever. Tell me about the girl. Please,” I added.

Rachel raised her eyebrows and rubbed her forehead. “I don’t really remember that well? She was just at this weird summer camp type place with weird looking cabins.”

“What was she wearing?”

“What are you, NYPD? She was wearing an orange t-shirt. Like, hideously orange.”

I sighed, putting my chin in my hands. Definitely an older memory…

“What about the dark haired guy?” I asked. It sounded like Luke, but the gold eyes were throwing me off. “What was he up to?”

“I think… sitting on a couch? Talking to some girl wearing all black?”

I leaned towards Rachel. “When did you have this dream?”

She closed her eyes, thinking for a moment. “Um… the night after the Hoover Dam incident, I think.”

I inhaled sharply. It sounded like she’d had the same dream about Luke and Thalia that I did—but she seemed to have had it before me. 

“They’re just dreams,” she repeated, but she sounded uncertain. “Right?”

What was I supposed to tell her? No? “They are just dreams,” I said after a moment.

Rachel frowned at me. “You’re lying. But I don't know what else could possibly be the truth.” She put her chin in her hands. “Have you read Dune?”

“No…?”

“Oh, never mind,” she said, looking disappointed. “I was going to ask you if you thought I might have some kind of Paul Atreides situation going on.”

No, but you might have the gift of prophecy. Could you be a demigod?

“Do you know who both of your parents are?” I asked suddenly.

Rachel sat all the way up, her lips parted. “What? I—yes, of course I do.”

“They’re your biological parents?” I pushed.

“Unfortunately, yes. What’s that got to do with anything?”

Even weirder. Maybe she’s like Mom? But that wouldn’t explain the prophetic dreams. “Nothing,” I told her, and I got up for real this time. “Great meeting you.” She didn’t stop me as I started to walk away even though I kind of wanted her to, so I turned and asked, “who’s Paul Atreides?”

She waved her hand dejectedly. “We don’t have enough time for that question.” She pulled a pad of sticky notes out of her back pocket and scribbled what seemed to be a phone number on it before sliding the note to me. I thought about just leaving, but I walked back and picked up the sticky note before leaving wordlessly instead of a proper goodbye.

My mom ultimately let me visit camp on two conditions—Paul would drop me off and pick me up, and I could only stay there for one night. I thought this was just a way of asking for Paul’s car to be blown up or disintegrated or eaten, but we managed to make it to Half Blood Hill without any incident. It should have been comforting, but I couldn’t help but think the only reason things were quiet was that all of the main monsters were biding their time on Luke’s ship—or worse, somewhere near the secret entrance to camp. 

“Well, kid, this is the place,” Paul told me. “I’m coming here same time tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” I grabbed my backpack from the back, keeping my eyes on Thalia’s tree in the distance. I saw the vague silhouette of a person leaning against it. “Hey, Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“Who is Paul Atreides?”

Paul suddenly looked elated. “Well, he’s only the guy my parents named me after! He’s a famous character from a super old sci-fi book.”

“Well, yeah, Sand Dune or something. I know that. But what was his thing?”

“His thing?” Paul asked, scratching his chin. “Oh, man. Well… he had a lot of things, kid. But being able to see the future would be a pretty big one if I had to pick one.”

I frowned, not saying anything. Rachel had to be kidding, right? First of all, her dreams were probably coincidences because she was a mortal, and even if they weren’t, there’s no way she figured out that they’re actually real and actually visions of the future.

“Percy?” Paul said, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Why do you ask?”

“A friend mentioned it,” I told him before getting out of the car. “Thanks for bringing me!”

“Anything for you, Percy. Be safe, Muad’dib!”

“What’s Muad’dib?” I asked. Paul just laughed and drove away, leaving me to trek up the hill to whoever was by the tree. I saw after a minute that it was Silena, who hadn’t seemed to notice me yet. She looked, in that moment, several years older than she had just a few months ago, and there was a steely sort of anger in her eyes that reminded me that she was a demigod, too, and one of the better fighters in the Aphrodite cabin. I’d also heard some rumor that she could make you do whatever you wanted just with the power of her voice, and I felt like I was realizing only then how scary she could be. But she finally saw me and smiled, and I wondered why I had suddenly felt so scared of her. It was only Silena, and Silena never really wanted to hurt anyone, even if she knew she could. 

“What brings you back here?” she asked when I came closer.

“Just visiting, I guess,” I told her. “What about you? I thought you were summer-only.”

“Just visiting,” she echoed back to me. “Let’s walk back to camp together.” She ruffled my hair and we crossed the boundary line. It was one of the warmer days of this time of year, and the air smelled fresh and sweet. “She’s not here, you know,” Silena told me.

I decided that playing dumb wouldn’t do me any favors. “Yeah… I figured she probably wouldn’t be.”

“She hasn’t even been back since… since she left last time, shortly after you did.” Silena was quiet for a while. “Do you ever wonder what she’s up to?”

“No,” I lied. “Not at all.”

We kept walking and I was looking everywhere, trying to take in the sight of camp. It felt just as weird as it did when I was here in the height of winter, like I’d never be able to adjust to camp unless it wasn’t a hot summer day. 

“Hey, do you mind if you head up to the Big House alone?” Silena said suddenly. I turned to see her rubbing her wrist. “I just remembered there’s something in my cabin I have to take care of.”

“Um, sure,” I told her, and she just smiled and jogged further into camp. I was about to cross the next tree line when I heard a voice from behind me hiss, “Percy!”

I whirled around, immediately reaching for Riptide. It took me a second, but I finally found the source of a voice. It was an Iris-Message, almost blending into the pine trees. Once I recognized the face, I almost dropped Riptide.

“Thalia?” I asked incredulously. “What—what the hell?”

“I’m not here to talk about me, and I’m not going to tell you anything about where I am,” Thalia said in hushed tones. That made me so mad I wanted to sever the connection, but a nagging voice in the back of my mind told me not to. “Listen. Do you know where Annabeth is?”

“Like you care,” I spat acidically. “Does your buddy Luke know you’re talking to me?”

“Percy!” She jerked her arms as if she wanted to reach through and shake my shoulders. “Luke has a… source on Olympus saying that Artemis needs to find a new lieutenant urgently. That must mean something happened to Annabeth, right?”

My heart sank all the way to my feet. “You’re tricking me.”

Thalia suddenly looked really upset. “I wouldn’t trick you.”

“Yeah, well, Luke would, and you’re with him.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Find out what happened to her. Please.”

“You do it!” I hissed. “I’m not doing anything for you guys. Ever.” I uncapped Riptide and slashed through the connection, breathing heavily.

I still felt out of breath when I made it into camp, and slightly nauseated from anxiety. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that Thalia and Luke were just a couple of evil liars and that I wouldn’t have to find out anything about Annabeth, but there was another feeling— what if Thalia was right? What if something has happened to Annabeth?

I mean, I wasn’t even supposed to care! Thalia and Annabeth were both my friends, and they both abandoned me. 

What if Annabeth is dead? 

I squeezed my eyes shut. She couldn’t be dead, she was the best fighter ever. She was smart. She couldn’t be dead. She wasn’t dead, and she wouldn’t be dead until centuries after I died. Oh, yeah, that was a thought. That's what I tried to keep in mind. I didn’t matter to her at all, so why should I go around on a whim trying to see if she was okay? Besides, Thalia was no longer trustworthy. She chose her side.

Still, I couldn’t deny that she cared about Annabeth. Maybe I’d be unconvinced with Luke, but Thalia definitely cared. And I honestly thought that she cared about her too much to use her as a weapon against me. 

What if something bad happened to Annabeth?

I didn’t think I would rest until I found out.

Chapter Text

I wanted to say that I really enjoyed being back at camp, but the message from Thalia played over and over in my brain. The rational part of me was sure that she was playing some kind of trick on me, no doubt Luke’s idea; I mean, did she really expect me to believe that Annabeth had done something in just a few months for Artemis to be looking for a new lieutenant? I mean, Artemis had to be more patient than that. I’m not saying that Zoё was a bad lieutenant by any means, but there’s no way she didn’t mess up or end up in danger over the course of two thousand years, especially in the first few months (or even years). No, it didn’t make any sense to me at all, so why was I so freaked out over it?

I guess there was the thing about Hunters dying in battle—like Zoё and Bianca had, I thought with a dull ache—but it couldn’t have happened so soon. 

No way. Annabeth was far too good at keeping herself safe and alive.

Thinking about all this upset me so much that I could barely bring myself to eat any of the delicious dinner. I ended up burning it all; half of it for my dad, half of it for Athena with a prayer to keep Annabeth safe (I tried to ignore the voice telling me it might be too late). After burning my first plate, I went back to my table and stared at nothing, occasionally picking at the mac and cheese that had appeared on my plate almost against my will, as if it was trying to cheer me up. After a few moments, someone came and sat down on the opposite side of the table, and I looked up to see that it was Silena.

“Hi,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be at the Aphrodite table?”

“The rules aren’t so strictly enforced in the off season,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m just a little worried, Percy. You’re not eating.”

“I’m not hungry,” I told her sullenly. It felt like a conversation toddler-me had with my mom a billion times.

Silena ran a hand through her hair. “Okay, fine, let me ask you something. Why are you here? Like, genuinely.”

I pursed my lips and sighed. “Um… do you know about the… thing at Zeus’s Fist?”

Silena’s lips parted silently and she sat up straight. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Clarisse told me—but how do you know?”

“That’s not important,” I said hastily. “But I was freaked out about that, and I wanted to come and make sure nothing had happened.”

Silena crossed her arms. “That’s all?”

To be honest, I really wanted to tell her about Thalia’s message. But looking into Silena’s eyes now, I genuinely had a feeling in the back of my mind telling me that it would be a serious mistake. For reasons I honestly couldn’t understand, I knew it would be a bad idea to confess this to her. So I settled for something that was sort of true, and said, “I was kind of hoping Annabeth might be here.”

She nodded, looking sympathetic. “I know. Either way… the, um, thing at Zeus’s Fist is all covered. Clarisse and I are handling it.”

“Clarisse is here? I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s with—she’s busy,” Silena told me haltingly. “Anyway… I should get going. I’ll see you around.” She stood up and walked back to the Aphrodite table, which was empty except for one other girl. I went back to my mac and cheese and made a decision—I would go back to Zeus’s Fist tonight.

I figured I’d be kind of awful at the whole stealth and hiding routine, so I decided to try some manipulation (as if I was any better than that). I walked right up to a couple of armed Hephaestus kids standing by the Fist, and they probably would’ve impaled me if they didn’t look so surprised to see me. “Um, what are you doing here?” one of them asked.

“I’m joining you on patrol,” I said.

“You know?” the other one asked me.

“Yeah, Clarisse told me all about it,” I said, waving my hand. This was partly true.

“You don’t have any weapons,” guard #1 said.

“Um, yes I do,” I said, brandishing my pen at them.

“You and your magic pen,” guard #2 muttered.

“What about armor?” asked guard #1.
“Uh, I don’t need it?”

They looked at each other. “I’m starting to think you’re not supposed to be on patrol,” one said.

“No, no! Trust me, I am. I’m just a little unprepared because it was like, a last minute thing. You know?” My voice was about an octave higher than usual.

The guys look unconvinced. “Um…”

“Listen, anyway,” I continued quickly, before they could say anything else, “you see anything weird around here?”

Guard #2 rubbed the back of his neck. “Well… I guess now that you mention it…”

“Dude,” the other guard said warningly.

“Go on!” I said, hoping I was putting on a persuasive grin.

“Let me tell him,” Guard #2 said to guard #1. “Jackson’s a senior counselor.”

“Yeah, of a cabin with a population of like, one. Also he's, what, eleven years old?”

“Fourteen,” I snapped, then immediately tried to smile again. “Honest mistake, I get it.”

Guard #1 looked uncomfortable, but he shut his mouth. Guard #2 looked at me with a solemn expression. “We couldn’t figure out where the hell they came from, but the other night, there was a sudden pack of cerastes. Just out of freaking nowhere, in camp! God, we’re so lucky we were switching shifts at the time, because it took four whole campers to take down just a few of them.”

“What are cerastes?” I asked stupidly.

“Horny snakes,” guard #2 said in a hushed whisper.

“What—?”

“Snakes with horns, genius,” guard #1 hissed. 

I frowned. “I thought those were like, real, regular animals.”

“Those are horned vipers, apparently,” guard #1 said. “But these cerastes are a different thing entirely. Their horns are way sharper, they’re impossible to find because they can bury themselves anywhere, and the way they move…” He shuddered slightly. “These things are like, literally spineless. They’ll bend themselves in the craziest, most insane ways to try and get out of your reach just so they can appear behind you and kill you.”

“It was taken care of, obviously,” guard #2 said. “Monsters are monsters—whatever. But dude, Zeus’s fist is barely half a mile from the main camp area, and there are monsters right freaking here. As if that wasn’t concerning enough, we can’t seem to figure out where exactly the freaky creatures are coming from. And campers are sparse right now—it’s kind of hard to stay on top of patrol consistently. There times where this place is totally unguarded—”

“Very rare, though,” guard #1 said, a warning note in his town.

I got the message pretty clearly, and felt kind of offended. “I’m not some kind of spy, you know.”

“Don’t take it personally, man,” guard #1 said, still alert but slightly less aggressive. “After what that Zeus girl did… I mean, you never know, right?”

“I guess not,” I replied quietly.

“Anyway,” guard #1 said, shifting from one foot to another. “Honestly, we aren’t stupid, and we know you’re not on patrol. I mean, we also know that you’re not really up to some super shady stuff, which is why we let you hang out for so long, but… you should probably go.”

I couldn’t even think of a good argument to that, so I kind of just mumbled a goodbye to both of them and shuffled off. I didn’t feel like taking the winding path back and I knew the general direction of camp, so I just went through the treeline, wandering through the woods. Despite the new issues with the monsters appearing by Zeus’s Fist, I couldn’t shake the feeling of safety I’d always had in these woods, and that made me feel inexplicably furious. This place was a safe haven for so many people—who would be sick enough to try and ruin that? 

I sighed to myself as I walked. Sometimes having an unpleasant answer to a question was worse than not having an answer at all.

I could almost see the outline of the cabins through the trees when I heard a twig snap behind me. I had Riptide out in about two seconds, but even the glow of the sword couldn’t illuminate much of what was around me. 

So much for feeling safe, I thought.

It was weird—if it was a monster, it would’ve attacked me by now. What was going on?

“Hello?” I asked like an idiot.

I saw a flash of the Yankees logo and my heart rate shot all the way up before I could even register that, in just one second, Annabeth had suddenly materialized in front of me. 

“I—um—uh.” I had such a way with words.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she whispered. “Can you drop the sword, please?”

I’m sure she meant for me to put the cap back on it, but I literally just opened my fist and let it fall to the forest floor. I was sure she was going to make a comment about it, but instead she rushed forward and hugged me.

She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive!

I jerked myself out of her embrace. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She looked shocked. “Me? What are you doing here? You’re not even a year-round camper!”

“You’re not even a camper at all!” I snapped at her. “Shouldn’t you be off with your precious Lady Artemis?”

She took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. “She sent me to do a job, okay?”

“Oh, yeah, well you must be doing a pretty bad job, because she’s already looking for a new lieutenant!”

“No, she’s just saying that because—wait, how do you know about that?” Annabeth asked me, crossing her arms.

I took a step back. “Um, I hear things.”

“What, on Olympus?” she hissed. “There’s no way you heard it, so tell me; who the hell told you?”

“None of your business.”

“Percy Jackson…” she said in a low whisper.

“Don’t you Percy Jackson me,” I muttered. “We’re not like that. Not anymore.”

All the fight seemed to go out of her. “You’re still mad.”

“I’m not mad,” I replied. “What reason could I possibly have to be mad? And god, what are you even doing here? Like actually?”

“None of your business.”

“Fine. I’m going,” I told her. I picked up Riptide and capped it and started to walk away.

“Wait!” Annabeth said. I thought I heard a note of desperation in her voice, but I was probably just imagining it. “Percy… I had—a theory. About how things from the outside could get into camp.”

I stood still with my back to her, not saying anything, but not leaving either.

“It’s a wild guess,” she continued. “But if I’m right… it could be really bad.” Naturally. “Have you heard of the Labyrinth?”

“Isn’t that a movie?” I blurted, turning back to her.

Annabeth rolled her eyes, a familiar yet strangely comforting sight. “That’s Pan’s Labyrinth. And not Grover’s Pan—”

“Okay, yeah, I get it. Labyrinth. What about it?”

She pursed her lips. “Nothing about it… yet. I’m not even sure if it exists in the Western world but if it does, it would connect the entire United States and let you get in anywhere, at any time.”

I inhaled sharply. “That is… not good.”

“No, it’s not. And if that’s the case, we can trace a path right back to the source of the monsters… Luke.” 

I suddenly felt as though we had two very different thoughts about this. “Annabeth,” I said warningly. “You’re not thinking about trying to find him, are you?”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Um… no,” she said, but it didn’t convince me. “Not him. But Thalia… she’s confused. We can still help them.”

“Thalia,” I said firmly. “We can still help Thalia.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

“That’s not the way to do it, though,” I implored. “If this Labyrinth thing is real, I’m betting it’s extremely dangerous. And you think—you think you can just find her and convince her to switch sides all by yourself? I mean, that’s not really what Artemis is even asking you to do is it?”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed, looking uncomfortable. “She just wants me to find out whether the Labyrinth exists, but she doesn’t want it to be public knowledge in case some of the minor gods are thinking about turning against Zeus—and I think some of them already have—so she sent me alone to try and run basic surveillance before we move forward; but to throw people off she’s telling Olympus that she’s sent me on some crazy initiation mission that I probably won’t survive, and she needs a backup in case things go wrong. Which is weird and it makes me think that she actually thinks something bad is going to happen to me.”

I was honestly shocked that Annabeth was giving me this much information, which showed how scared and anxious she was about the whole thing. But we were no longer best friends, and it wasn’t my job to comfort her.

“Something bad is going to happen to you if you try to go after Luke,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

Annabeth frowned. “Percy, I thought you’d understand.”

“I understand it just fine. If the Labyrinth is real and you go into it alone thinking you can change Luke—because I know you’re not just thinking about going for Thalia—you’re going to get killed in some awful, nasty way, and Artemis will have been proved right. And it’s not even gonna matter, because it’ll just be half a blink in her stupid, eternal life.”

“Percy—” 

“I am leaving, for real this time,” I told her. “Don’t do anything stupid.” It kind of hurt my heart to say that to her, because she was always the one saying that to me. And for the most part, I’d at least try to listen to her, but in her case, I knew she had already made up her mind.

I actually forced myself to get out of bed early the following morning so I could go wait by the Big House. Clarisse would have to come out eventually, and she did, around 7:30 in the morning. She seemed so preoccupied and upset that she didn’t immediately notice me, and I almost felt bad for what I was about to do. But I did it anyway—I yelled her name as she passed me, and she actually jumped.

“What the hell do you want?” she snapped, walking over to me so quickly that I almost turned and ran away. “And why are you here?”

“Chiron sent you to see whether the Labyrinth was real, right?” It might have been a far shot, but if Annabeth’s suspicions were right, then Clarisse was the best person to confirm it for me.

Her eyes practically fell out of her head. “Who told you?”

“No one had to tell me,” I lied. “I figured it out.”

She scoffed. “You?” 

I tried not to take offense to that. “Come on, Clarisse. Can you really deny it now?”

Her eyes darted around before she answered me. “Percy, I am being dead fucking serious right now—this is extremely dangerous stuff. Even for us.”

“It is real?”

She crossed her arms and inhaled, her breath shaking slightly. “I think so. But knowing that it’s real isn’t much of an answer at all, trust me. It just brings up more questions.”

“Well—! God, why isn’t this a bigger deal, then?” I squeaked, running my hands through my hair agitatedly. “I mean—”

“Hey, hey, HEY!” She grabbed my shoulders and gave them a violent shake. “Listen, you little freak. You’re not even supposed to know about this, let alone make it obvious to someone who doesn’t that something is wrong, okay?”

“Should it not be obvious?” I asked, aghast.

“No…” She exhaled softly. “I feel… paranoid. I feel like there’s a spy at camp.” I felt nauseated, and I didn’t even have the heart to tell her she was right. “And Chiron is worried about it too. Besides,” she continued, retracting her vice-like grip on my now aching shoulders, “it’s not like, a permanent thing. Yet.”

“Huh?”

She rubbed her chin, thinking for a second. “The secret doorway in and out of camp opens and closes seemingly at random. We haven’t been able to figure out a pattern of when it happens… but we have noticed that every time it opens, something comes out, and we’re starting to suspect that it’s opening for longer and longer periods of time. One day, it might open and then… it might never close again.”

My heart sank at the realization. “Okay.”

“It’s spaced out enough that we’re not really freaking out yet, but we are trying to figure out ways to close it, or something. Either way… we have to make sure that not many people know about it. And under no circumstance should anyone else find out that anyone at Camp Half Blood knows. Got it?”

It didn’t even initially occur to me that she was threatening me, but her expression gave it away after a second. “I got it,” I told her.

“No, really. You can’t even tell Annabeth.”

“I don’t talk to Annabeth anymore,” I said reflexively. 

“Well, if you start again, don’t tell her this. Trust no one. It’s risky enough that you know, but…”

“But what?”

Her features contorted into a minor snarl. “Don’t you dare tell anyone I said this, but as useless as I think you are, I know you’re not a traitor. And do not prove me wrong.”

“I won’t.” I was surprised by my own sincerity. “You can trust me, Clarisse.”

She sniffed disdainfully. “Yeah, whatever. And you get the hell out of my sight.” She started to walk away, but turned back to add an afterthought. “Remember what I said, Jackson. Because if you don’t do what I say, it’s not going to end in me beating the shit out of you. It’s going to end with all of us dead before we even had time to defend ourselves. Remember that.” 

Chapter Text

“You look nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” I lied.    

Rachel shook her head and rubbed her forehead. “In the two weeks we’ve been hanging out, you’ve been holding this thing back that you really want to tell me, and now you’re finally going to tell me. I get why you’d be a little nervous.”

“I just—you’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

“I already think you’re crazy,” she muttered, sipping her Sprite. “It can’t get worse, trust me.”

I exhaled and rubbed my chin, glancing around the restaurant. I mean, it was New York. No one could overhear me and genuinely have much concern about what I was saying.

“You know the Greek gods?” I asked her.

“Yeah.”

“Well…” Why not just come out and say it? “One of them is my father.”

I waited for a dramatic reaction, but Rachel just raised an eyebrow. “If you’re gonna stall, at least come up with a better thing to say.” I just put my chin in my hand and stared at her until she put her cup down. “Hold on,” she said. “Are you actually trying to convince me that like, Zeus is your dad?”

“Not him,” I said in a hushed whisper.

“Ha, okay, what, Poseidon?”

I nodded.

She pursed her lips. “No,” is all she said after a moment.

“Yes.”

“No. Are you out of your mind? Do you do drugs or something? I’m as imaginative as the next, but that’s crazy. Like, that’s total BS.”

A drop of water shot out of my cup and right into the space between her eyes. She wiped it away, frowning. “Did you just spit at me or something?”

I pressed my lips together and put my hands on the table, and an even bigger drop of water came out of the cup and splattered on her cheek. Rachel didn’t even wipe it away this time, just staring blankly at me. It was only after I hit her with another water droplet that she covered her face. “Okay, fine, fine! I get it! Stop doing that.” She slowly moved her hands away so I could see her again. “You are doing that, right?”

“Yeah.”

She put her face in her hands again. “Wow. Okay. Um. So that’s it? Poseidon is your dad? Can I meet him or something?”

I almost laughed, but I had to remember that Rachel was about where I had been a few years ago, and I recalled that it wasn’t the most satisfying place to be. “Greek gods aren’t really… present in their kids’ lives. Like at all.”

She snorted. “Maybe my parents are Greek gods then.” She noticed my nervous expression and shook her head. “Anyway—how do you know that he’s your dad if he’s not involved in your life at all? Like, the waterbending or whatever, I guess, but how is it confirmed?”

“I’ve met him,” I said uncomfortably. I’m glad that the expression that crossed Rachel’s face in response was understanding, and she knew I didn’t want to elaborate. “Okay, I see. What else? You’re a … demigod? Is that the term? What else?” 

Even the cafe was starting to feel concerningly small. “Let’s leave,” I said. “We should take a walk.”

We were halfway into Central Park by the time I had finished telling her, well, everything. She was silent for a moment before she veered off the sidewalk and sat down hard on the grass. 

“Rachel?” I asked, coming off the path to stand in front of her.

“I needed to sit down,” she said impassively. She put her chin in her hands, clearly thinking hard about something. 

“What is it?”

She looked up at me, and for the first time since we started this conversation, she looked afraid and upset. “That means—my dreams… weren’t just dreams, right? But I’m normal. So why am I having these dreams?”

I knelt in front of her, pulling at the grass absentmindedly. “I wish I could answer that, but I honestly can’t. But whatever it is—it makes me feel like you’re meant to be a part of this. My world, I guess.”

As if the act was contagious, Rachel started pulling at the grass, too. “Is that why you told me? You trust me because you have a feeling I’m supposed to know about it anyway?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

She stopped pulling the grass. “It’s not just that. You’re lonely and you feel abandoned, and you wanted to tell the nearest person that would have even a slight chance of getting it. But I’d think it would be your mom, or Grover. Why me?”

I felt slightly uncomfortable. “Well, because—they already know about this stuff and… we’re friends…?”

She huffed. “I’m only friends with you because I pity you for not having many others.” I rolled my eyes, but I noticed that she didn’t deny being my friend. 

I sat down in front of her, and drew my knees up to my chest. “I’m also super stressed about the secret entrance to camp thing, and I just—couldn’t keep it all down. I mean, I’ve told other people about that, but they are just so sure that everything will be okay. We’ll notice the signs on time, we’ll be well defended—but if there’s anything I know about being a demigod, it’s that we always have the absolute worst luck. And it’s not just small, trivial things, it’s a matter of life and death. I feel like we’re already fighting an uphill battle.”

“Well, it’s been the off-season for almost 4 months. If Luke and his people haven’t done anything yet, then I’d probably have to guess nothing will happen until the summer.”

“That seems too good to be true! The camp will be better defended in the summer, so why would he wait?”

Rachel shook her head. “It’s not about defense and offense, Percy. To you, more campers means better defense. To him, I’m sure more campers means more targets he can take out at once.”

I swallowed nervously. I hadn’t even thought about it like that. 

“Look,” she said, “I don’t think this guy underestimates the power of a demigod because he is one. So, he definitely sees every single camper as a threat to whatever agenda he has. However, he probably thinks he’s got something even stronger than them, and he wants to wait until he’s got everyone in the same spot to use that thing.”

I was completely silent, pulling furiously at the grass, covering my fingertips in dirt. 

“Well, that other person is looking into it, right? Artemis’s servant—”

“Lieutenant. And yeah, she’s looking into it. But I’m worried about… how much she’ll be able to do.”

Rachel also pulled her knees up to her chest and thought for a minute. “Hey, she’s the one that went on other quests with you, right? Are you two friends, then?”

“No,” I said immediately. “Sort of, but not that close. She’s an acquaintance.”

“Okay. Well… I don’t know, dude. That’s a bad situation.”

“No kidding.”

“Also… isn’t it bad for you to be telling me? Not to sound selfish or anything, but doesn’t this put me in danger?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m hoping that won’t happen because you’re…”

“Mortal,” she finished. 

“Yeah.”

She let out a low whistle. “You’re sure you’re not schizophrenic? Absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“Okay, well… thanks for telling me. For trusting me.”

I just shrugged my shoulders noncommittally. 

“I have some homework,” she said after a few minutes of slightly awkward silence. “I’ll catch you later?” 

I nodded. “See you.”

Mom and Paul were cooking something when I got home. "Hey, kid. How was it with Rachel?” my mother asked as I took my shoes off by the door. 

“It was nice,” I said impassively.

“Spending a lot of time with Rachel, huh?” Paul said, lightly elbowing my mom.

“Don’t tease him,” she said, but she was smiling at me. 

I just kind of shrugged and sat down. “What are you guys making?”

“Well, we’re trying to make paella. Not sure it’s going perfectly well, though,” my mom told me. 

“Hey, by the way, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Paul said to me, turning around and leaning against the countertop. “So… you’re starting high school this fall, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I talked to a couple of people at Goode and, well, they’d be happy to give you a spot.”

Instinctively, my mom and I glanced at each other. Paul didn’t really know what things were like when it came to me and schools. I mean, I’d already caused more than a few unfortunate incidents at public schools all around the city—now was I supposed to destroy a prestigious New York private school? I felt uncomfortable and nervous at the thought of it, which Paul clearly picked up because he held up a hand in defense. “Listen, you totally don’t have to. But you should think about it. It’s a really great place, I promise.”

Oh, I’m sure. But the school wouldn’t be the problem.

“Yeah, I’d like to think about it a little,” I said. My mom pursed her lips in a way that told me the upcoming conversation about it was going to be a tense one.

“I’m glad to hear it! Sally, don’t you think it’s a good idea to consider?”

“Of course, honey,” she told him with a smile, tucking her hair behind her ears, which she only did when she was nervous or embarrassed. “We’ll get back to you on it. But for now, we should focus on not burning this food.”

“Right,” Paul chuckled, turning back to the stove.

“Percy, honey, go freshen up and get ready for dinner. Actually, take out a few plates for us before you go?”

I did as I was told and went to my bedroom after to get stuff for a shower. I could hear Mom and Paul’s laughter drifting through the apartment and felt bad—they had a great thing going here, but if something happened to Goode because of me, then it would be hard to hide who I truly was from him. And that could mess up everything. I mean, I had messed up everything a few times before, but Mom was really, really happy with Paul. When he wasn’t around, she talked about him in the same way she used to talk about my dad when I was younger. She loved Paul, and sometimes I felt like she loved him more than she ever loved Poseidon. How could she not? Even I loved him, because he was a solid, dependable guy, and he actually treated me like I was his kid a lot of the time. I really liked that about him, and despite all the other things that were going down in my life, my time with my mom and Paul felt calm and normal, like some peace in a normal little family. That kind of thing was such a luxury to me, after Gabe and the times when it had just been me and Mom. Going to Goode might end up being good for us—but it was way more likely that it would just lead to me screwing up the only good family I’ve ever had.

That night, after Paul had left, I went into my mom’s room to say goodnight. She had on her reading glasses and was flipping through the pages of a thick book that I couldn’t read the title of. “Hey,” I said, coming to sit at the foot of the bed.

My mom put her book aside to reach forward and ruffle my hair. “Hi, honey. You’re sleeping now?”

“Yeah. Well, I wanted to talk first.”

She inhaled and leaned back, fiddling nervously with the strings of her old NYU sweatshirt. “Percy—”

“I don’t think I should go,” I said hastily. “It’s just not a great idea, you know? You know how it is. And if something happens, it’ll be easier to explain it with a public school instead of a private school Paul teaches at.”

My mom took her glasses off. “What if… Paul would understand? If we told him the truth?”

“Um…”

“Look, I know it freaks you out. I get it. But—things are getting kind of serious between us. We have talked about moving in together. Like, him moving in with us, since it’s closer to Goode anyway. And… I really love him.”

Her tone was almost pleading, and it made me feel like a jerk. “Oh, Mom, I’d never ask you to give that up for my sake! I mean, that’s kind of the whole reason why I want to just go to a public school instead.”

“Percy, that just means we’re avoiding telling him the truth. And if things move in the direction I believe both me and Paul want it to—then he’ll have to know eventually. And my point is… maybe that won’t be such a bad thing.”

“Okay, well, even with that, if I go and something happens, Paul will get blamed because he’s the guy that’s sticking up for me, right?”

“I don’t know,” my mom said tiredly. “What if nothing happens at all?”

I scoffed. “You know that’s not how it works. Not for me.”

My mom looked really sad all of a sudden, so I decided to back off. “What do you think I should do?” I asked, more quietly.

“Well… at the end of the day I’m just a mom. I see a great opportunity for my baby to get a good education, and that sort of thing is really important to me, so part of me wants you to go.”

“I’m not smart enough for private school,” I added helplessly.

“You are smart,” she said. “Now, don’t let it go to your head, obviously, but you are. And sure, you’ve done a shit job in school—”

“Mom!” I spluttered, half laughing.

“But a lot of the time, it’s because you didn’t have the right resources available, you know? A lot of schools are still a little behind on adjusting to different circumstances, like your dyslexia and ADHD. They just tell you to get medicated, and I haven’t done that to you because I know those things are functional and important parts of your mind. Every kid needs different kinds of support in a school, and maybe you didn’t get that in a lot of places. So what? It doesn’t mean you aren’t smart. I know you. I know how quickly you figure things out… sometimes.” She laughed to herself. “In some cases, your grades just aren’t a good way of telling, because I know that if you had more help and resources in school that allowed you to learn properly even with what you have, you would’ve aced those classes. And the thing about these private schools, they’re a lot better about implementing the 504 plans than a lot of public schools are in this city. I think that here, you might get a chance to really shine and be in a good learning environment.

“That being said,” she continued, putting a bookmark in her book and setting it on her bedside table, “private school kids are tricky. And, of course… there’s your logic about having something bad happen, which is perfectly reasonable. So what I’m really trying to say is that I don’t really know. I wish I did, and I’ll definitely keep thinking about it, but Percy, there are pros and cons to both. And at the end of the day, I think the decision should be yours.”

I was silent for a while. “You think I’m smart?” I asked quietly.

“Sometimes,” my mom said with a smile. “Smart enough to be able to make the right decision here, too. And if something bad does happen, honey, that’s really not something you should ever blame yourself for. It’s not your fault.”

“These monsters wouldn’t show up if not for me,” I replied.

“Well, you aren’t calling them, are you?”

“Technically—”

“Are you?”

I huffed. “I guess not.”

My mom nodded. “I get what you’re saying about public schools—that would definitely be safer, I can’t disagree. It would be safer in a lot of aspects. But you should understand; I don’t just see you as a demigod, Percy. Sometimes I look at you and I see a normal boy—god, someone in this world has to, right? I look at you, and I’m one of the few people that doesn’t always immediately think about camp and quests and imminent doom and danger; I think about your education, your future, your general safety, your happiness. You’re a kid, honey. And you’re a kid first and a demigod second. I try to compensate for all the people in the world that will never realize it, but I want you to know it, too, okay?”

“Sometimes I feel like being a demigod is the only important thing about me,” I said softly. “Like that’s the only thing that matters.”

“It is a very important thing about you. It’s a big part of who you are, that’s true. But it’s not all you are, and as your mom, I want you to remember that. You’re a kid that still loves Spider Man and loves to skate and a kid that’s good at basketball and a kid that makes the best grilled cheese in the world and a kid that loves blue food and a kid that gets my groceries when I’m busy. You’re a small part of the city and the world, sure, but you’re an important part, and it’s not just because you’re a demigod.”

I smiled a little. “I never really thought about it like that before.”

“I know. And that’s what I’m here for, right?” My mom took her glasses off and set them on top of her closed book. “Now, leave me alone. I want to sleep.”

I got off the bed. “Okay. Thanks for talking to me, Mom.”

“Anytime, honey. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“I love you, too. And yeah,” I said with a nod, before going back to my room.

“So if I gave you a book in Ancient Greek, could you read it?”

“I mean, I guess. Not super well, though?”

Rachel scoffed and rolled her eyes. “So you can’t read English or Greek! It’s just regular dyslexia then.”

“Well, I can read Ancient Greek without having to learn it!” I replied defensively.

“Okay, well, we’re going to test that claim in the library this summer then,” Rachel muttered. 

“Not Homer,” I said immediately.

“How do you do homework then?” Rachel asked, jerking her chin towards my textbook. We were sitting in Central Park and were doing work for school, all of our stuff spread out around a weirdly nice picnic blanket Rachel brought.

“I’m dyslexic, not blind,” I reminded her. “I just kind of… figure it out eventually.”

She nodded, turning back to her sketchbook.

“Art class?” I asked.

“I’m drawing you with a hand growing out of the back of your head.”

“Ew, why?” I exclaimed, but that sounded cool, so I tried to lean over to see what she was drawing, but she held the book to her chest.

“I’m not done!” she said. “And I was bored.”

“Am I a good subject?” I asked.

“No, you’re really ugly. But drawing ugly people is a challenge, and I love a challenge!” 

I rolled my eyes and turned away. I could hear the gentle glide of her pencil against the paper a few seconds later. 

“Do you know where you’re going to high school yet?” she asked after a moment.

“Um, I don’t know. Last week my mom’s boyfriend said he could get me a spot at Goode because he’s an English teacher there—”

“Goode!?” Rachel yelped, which startled me. “I’m going to Goode…”

I heard something in her tone. “Okay… is there a problem if I go to Goode?”

“Of course not, you idiot,” she told me, setting her sketchbook down. “You just don’t… seem like the private school type.”

“Oh, wow. And I thought you were above classism, Rachel.”

“Not because of that, genius!” she snapped, her ears turning red. “It’s just… you’re too nice to be at a private school. That’s what I meant.”

I was pretty sure my ears were red, too. “Well, that’s probably not true, but I might still be a little nicer than most of the people there.”

“Trust me. I’ve been going to private schools my whole life. You’re way nicer than almost everyone. Also, Goode has a uniform.” She looked pointedly at the dirt on my jeans.

“Wow, again with the classism,” I said, feigning sadness. “And I was thinking that I could stay friends with a rich girl after all.”

“Shut up!” she said. “I’m not being classist. In fact, if you ended up there, it would be total nepotism—”

I lunged forward and grabbed her sketchbook before she could finish her sentence, causing her to huff frustratedly. “It’s not done.”

My cheeks felt warm looking at the drawing of myself. Rachel was insanely talented—she had sketched me sitting in a seat across a booth of a small cafe; the way she would’ve seen me the first time we really talked after running into each other in New York. I had my face in one hand and was looking kind of annoyed, and I was really impressed by how well she had been able to draw me. It wasn’t perfectly realistic, almost cartoon like, but she had gotten the shape of my nose and even the faint freckles under my eyes. Behind my head, there were fingers sketched more lightly, almost as an afterthought. 

“It’s really good,” I said finally, handing it back to her. “I’m more handsome in real life, though.”

“Oh, please. I’m being really generous here,” she muttered as she picked up her pencil and began to draw again. 

“Right.” I went back to my homework. 

“I guess it might be nice to know someone at Goode,” she said after a while. “I mean, a lot of people from my middle school are going there, but—well, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Will you go?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “It’s… a complicated situation.”

“What, you think you’ll blow up that school, too? Hold on, were you the one that torched the gym in that Tribeca middle school—”

“Yeah, yeah. And yeah, obviously I’m a little worried about that happening.”

“Well… I’m good at spotting these… creatures. Maybe it would help to have me around,” Rachel suggested.

“That never helps,” I said reflexively, but I couldn’t help but admit that I was thinking a lot about that. With Rachel there, was it possible that I might actually have a good, uneventful year?

Well. I guess my decision just got a little more complicated.

Chapter Text

“Stop messing with it,” Paul told me.

“It feels weird,” I said, rubbing the collar of my blazer. “Do I absolutely have to wear this? Like I have to?”

“You’re the one that had a last minute change of heart about whether you wanted to come or not, kid,” he said to me, but he was smiling. “Besides, there’s still time to back out. And you don’t even have to feel bad about wasting money on the uniform.”

“How am I full-ride to Goode anyway?” I asked, frowning. “I thought staff only got a lower tuition rate for—family members.”

“I’m tenured,” Paul said, as if I was supposed to know what that meant. He kept a hand on my back as we walked into the building which I’m sure he meant to be a comforting gesture, but it just made me feel worse considering the fact that I was almost dead sure that something would go wrong during orientation. God, why did I change my mind about coming here? It wouldn’t have felt as bad to torch a beaten up public school.

I caught a glimpse of shining red hair in the stunningly clean gym (I mean, did they never use it?) and turned to Paul. “I saw Rachel.”

Paul patted my shoulder. “Okay, go talk to her. I have to go sit with the other faculty members anyway.”

I got more than a few disgusted looks as I pushed through the crowd of perfectly groomed teenagers. I tried to save myself with a few ‘excuse me’s and ‘sorry’s and even a ‘pardon me’ since it sounded snobby enough, but that didn’t have an effect on anyone. By the time I reached Rachel I had just about run out of politeness.

“Well, you look like a freak,” she said, eyeing me in my uniform.

“So do you,” I said, but it was nowhere near the truth. Her hair seemed ten times glossier than normal, with her bangs pinned back with little clips in the shape of stars. There were no marker stains to be found on anything she wore, and her shoes were perfectly polished. She looked as uncomfortable as I felt, but I had to admit she looked nice. She did clean up very well. Me on the other hand…

“You look fine,” she said, her tone less harsh. She reached up to flick a lock of my hair away from my forehead, but kept it in between her fingers instead. “Wait, did you get gray hairs early?”

I leaned out of her grip, feeling a lump rising in my throat. “It’s from when I held… you know.”

“Oh, I remember,” she said fascinatedly. “I don’t know how I never noticed.”

“You’re not the best at total awareness, Dare,” I said, trying to sound upbeat, but the memory was making me feel sick. Did Annabeth still have hers? Was there still one thing we shared?

“Well, sorry I don’t spend my time gazing at your hair. I try to spend as little time as possible looking at you so I don’t damage my eyes too much.”

I couldn’t come up with a good response, so I just rolled my eyes at her. We stood in semi-comfortable silence for a while. “God, I can’t wait for this to be over so I can take this stupid uniform off.”

“Yeah, and then you’ll have to wear it every day for a year,” Rachel muttered.

I shuddered. “Don’t remind me.” I was feeling really nervous, and the previous mention of my gray streak wasn’t doing me any favors.

Rachel saw this, but she kind of misunderstood. “Hey,” she said, sounding more serious than ever and slightly concerned now, “you’re going to be fine.” She reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “It won’t be so bad here.”

I just nodded. In these situations, where everything felt unnecessarily overwhelming, my mom taught me to start counting things. But looking at the other kids made me even more nervous, so I started to count the freckles on Rachel’s face. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until she waved her hand in front of my face. “Hey, buddy. Are you good?”

I looked away, embarrassed. “Doing great.”

“Pull yourself together,” she said, giving my shoulder a little shake. “It’s just orientation. What’s next, you passing out in the middle of first period?”

I wanted to say something, but someone I believed to be the principal started speaking, and the gym fell quiet with practiced ease. I just settled for flicking her cheek, causing her to bring one of her mary janes down onto my toes hard. I glared at her, but decided I should at least try to act like I cared about the orientation. But the principal apparently loved to talk, because she went on for so long that Rachel and I called a truce to play thumb war at waist level, earning us a few more dirty looks from the kids around us. Finally, people were put into tour groups based on where they were standing, so Rachel and I were together. A couple of cheerleaders were grouping tour groups as they walked out of the gym with bored expressions, but one of them, a girl with pin straight blonde hair that fell almost to her waist and eyes that were borderline freakish in their blueness noticed me and immediately adopted an expression I didn’t like. She looked almost… hungry? She elbowed the other cheerleader, a beautiful African American girl with spiral curls, who also put on the same face when they saw me. We were stalled in a line while the teachers tried to figure out how to get 50 kids through a tiny door, and my heart sank when I noticed them walking towards me. I glanced nervously at Rachel, but she was busy inspecting her nails.

“Welcome to Goode, fish,” said the blonde one in a husky voice. “You’re going to love it. What’s your name?”

“Fish?” I asked dumbly.

“Freshman, dummy,” said the other girl with a tinkling laugh. Their names were embroidered on their purple and white uniforms, but so small that I couldn’t make them out. “Name?”

Beside me, Rachel let out a choked noise and grabbed the back of my blazer. The cheerleaders ignored her. “Um, Percy,” I told them.

The cheerleaders looked at each other, almost gleeful. “Percy Jackson… oh, we’ve been waiting for you.”

Big uh-oh. That was definitively not a normal thing to say, like at all. I was about to say something back when the line started moving forward, and I accidentally bumped my leg into the black girl’s leg. There was a resounding clang when I did it, like I’d hit a flagpole or something. The sound was loud enough to make Rachel flinch beside me. 

“Watch it, fish,” the cheerleader said, leaning so close to me that I could smell her rose perfume and… manure? It was also close enough for me to read her name, Kelli, before we moved forward.

Rachel still clung to me. “Um. Rachel?” I glanced down at her, and saw that she was deathly pale. “What happened?”

She slowly turned her head to me, looking utterly terrified. “The cheerleaders,” she whispered.

“Yeah, prosthetic legs are getting like, super realistic, right?” I said, but I knew something was seriously wrong with them, and not just from Rachel’s expression. She shook her head frantically and took a deep breath to collect herself before dropping her hand. “Did you see them? Really see them?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, starting to feel a bit panicked.

Rachel turned to look behind us before shaking her head. “I can’t say here. I shouldn’t.”

We walked quietly for a while before Rachel noticed a door that was slightly ajar and pulled me into the room behind it. It was the band room, and she dragged me all the way to the percussion section before pushing me to my knees. She crouched in front of me. “You told me—no matter what I am, you know one thing, and it’s that I can see through the… the Mist. Right?”

“Yes…?” Why was she bringing this up now?

“They—”

There was the distinct sound of the door slamming shut, and we both peeked over the bongos to see who was in the room. Rachel gagged and clutched her stomach, looking faintly green.

“Found them, Tammi,” Kelli said with a toothy grin.

“Rachel…?” I muttered under their breath. “What do they look like?” 

She was too scared to reply, so I tried to see for myself, but I just couldn’t. In fact, Kelli, who was inching closer to the percussion section, was starting to look more beautiful by the second. She looked a little similar to Annabeth, now that I really thought about it…

“Don’t,” Rachel choked out. Don’t what? 

“Don’t listen to your little friend,” said Tammi, the blonde one. “She’s mortal. She means nothing. Come closer, Percy. Come here.”

Almost against my will, I stood all the way up. I felt a hand hovering near me and after a second I heard a sound so familiar that it snapped me back into reality—the small click and whoosh of my pen being uncapped and transformed. I looked down and saw Rachel, regular old Rachel, holding my glowing sword. I immediately felt kind of annoyed about it and reached out and grabbed it from her, and she looked more than happy to no longer be holding it.

“Do you really need that?” Tammi said sweetly, only a few feet away from me now and getting closer. “How about a kiss instead?”

Rachel grabbed my arm. “She wants to bite you! Look at her!”

But all I could see was a frighteningly pretty girl, so I just squeezed my eyes shut and raised my sword and pushed it forward until the tip made contact with Tammi’s chest. I heard her snarl and jump back, clearly displeased with the feeling of my sword. “This is our school, half-blood,” she spat, and I heard Rachel inhale sharply behind me. “We’ll feed on whomever we choose.”

Rachel shook my arm violently, pleading, “ look, you idiot!”

I opened my eyes just in time to see Tammi change. Her skin whitened until it was nearly translucent and her eyes went bloodred—every single part of it. Her teeth started to elongate into fangs at the same time her legs morphed; one into a bronze version of a regular leg and one into a donkey’s leg. Rachel was shaking like a leaf behind me. 

“What—” I started to say.

“We are empousai,” Kelli said with a smile, still looking normal. “Servants of Hecate.”

“We exist to feed on the blood of men,” Tammi continued, starting to creep forward again. She was so terrifying to look at that I genuinely feel like I couldn’t move. “And I’m sure your blood will taste very good.” Just as she jumped forward, I felt Rachel pry my sword out my hands and swing it so hard she almost fell sideways into the bongos. As awful as her technique was, my blade cut through Tammi’s uniform and the skin beneath, making her explode into dust with an unearthly shriek. There was dust all over Rachel’s uniform, and she looked like she was going to vomit.

Kelli screamed, even louder than Tammi had. Oh, that was definitely going to get some attention. “You killed her, you filthy mortal!” She started to change into something resembling Tammi but about ten times scarier. “I don’t kill girls,” she spat, with rage radiating off of her in venomous waves, “but I’ll make an exception for you!”

Rachel shoved Riptide back into my hands. “Your turn,” she squeaked.

Kelli cackled. “Oh, little hero. I am the senior empousa. No hero has bested me in a thousand years.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “Famous last words.” I lunged forward to strike her, but she was a whole lot faster than Tammi and dodged with ease, rolling away into a set of trombones. She hissed like a cat and started to scan the room for Rachel, who was scrambling away from the fight. I rushed to put myself between her and Kelli.

Kelli hissed like a feral cat before smiling again. “Oh, you don’t even know, do you? Soon, your pretty little camp in flames, your friends made slaves to the Lord of Time, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It would be merciful to end your life now, before you have to see that.”

Suddenly, we hear voices approaching the bandroom, the cheerful tones of a tour guide talking about the school’s arts program. 

“Good,” Kelli snarled, and lifted a giant tuba with one hand before throwing it. Rachel and I ducked, but Kelli wasn’t aiming for us—the tuba hit the window with the loudest noise I’ve ever heard and shattered the glass.

“Percy!” Kelli said, in mock fear. She looked like a cheerleader again. “What are you doing? Why did you throw that?”

I realized with belated terror that the voices outside the band room had died down.

She advanced towards me again, knocking clarinets and flutes to the floor with fake screams of terror. “Stop it!”

“Percy, kill her!” Rachel yelled.

I raised my sword, but I saw the door opening just as I was about to swing. I knew what Kelli was trying to do, and as much as I wanted to put my sword in her face, I dropped it. Her scream faltered for a second when she saw but returned in full force, with a different note of false agony. The door swung fully open and Kelli exploded in fire, setting half the instruments around her on fire as well. Before the tour guides could get a good luck at us, I had already grabbed Rachel’s arm and pulled her out of the window. “Run,” I hissed, and that’s what we did, zipping between the pedestrians and the tourists. I kept my grip on her wrist tight, and though she stumbled a few times in her mary-janes, she kept up for the most part. We ran almost until Park Avenue, and Rachel was starting to slow down. We stopped and I pushed her into a random alley.

I let her collect herself for a moment, meaning I just stood there while she coughed and brushed monster dust off of herself. Surprisingly, she looked even worse than I did—my uniform was scuffed in a few places and I had a bruise on my cheek that I’d gotten at some point while fighting Kelli, but most of Rachel’s star clips had come out and her hair hung in a tangled cloud around her face. Her hand was bleeding for some reason, and then, of course, there was the dust all over her. 

“Don’t ever take Riptide again,” I hissed.

“Don’t ever freeze again!” she snapped back. “You just stood there, you idiot! She would’ve killed us, okay!” She was clawing the dust off of her face so hard that she was leaving red lines, so I grabbed her hands and held up the one that was bleeding. “Cut it on the edge of cymbals,” she said impatiently, yanking her hand out of mine. “Anyway, I don’t even want to do anything like that ever again, okay?”

I felt suddenly afraid. Was she going to say she didn’t want to be friends anymore because of this? I wouldn’t blame her. For months and months, I worried about Rachel ending up in danger because of me, and now it finally happened. But she said no such thing, just standing there and taking heaving breaths.

I put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m… sorry?”

“Are you asking me a question?” she almost yelled.

“No, no!” I said hastily. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Rachel.”

She took a deep breath as if she was about to yell again, but she stopped, her mouth half open as she saw something behind me. I turned my head and immediately took my hands off of Rachel’s shoulders.

“Percy?” Rachel asked. “Who’s this?”

“I could ask the same about you,” said Annabeth coolly, stepping further into the alley. Why was she here?

“What are you doing?” I asked warily. “Shouldn’t you be in—”

“I’m taking a break from that,” Annabeth told me. She still had glow on her, a sight I’d never get used to. She wore the stuff Zoё and Bianca used to wear, and seeing that made me want to hit something. “Artemis has all her Hunters in the big cities, says all the old monsters are popping up again. I heard reports about empousai at a private school in the city—” She registered my uniform at the same time I started to hear police sirens wailing in the distance, probably zooming down FDR Drive. But I was closer to Central Park than I was to school, so I tried not to panic. “I’m guessing you took care of that?”

“I took care of one of them,” Rachel said. “With Percy’s sword.”

Annabeth turned a cold look at her. “You still haven’t told me who she is, Percy. Is she a demigod?”

I shifted slightly so I was standing more directly in between the two girls. “She’s… a mortal. She’s my—”

“I’m his best friend,” Rachel told her from behind my shoulder. “I’m Rachel Elizabeth Dare.”

I didn’t miss the way Annabeth’s mouth twitched like she was holding back a deep frown. “Your best friend—is a mortal who can kill an empousa?” She scoffed. “What did you use, your mary-janes?”

Rachel was silent long enough for me to turn back to her. She just had a thoughtful look on her face, glancing subtly between me and Annabeth. I don’t know why, but throughout all this time I never truly shared just how close I’d been to Annabeth, but I had a feeling it probably wasn’t a secret anymore.

“This must be Annabeth,” Rachel said after a while, confirming my suspicions. “Joined the Hunters last winter, right?”

I bit my lip and tried to ignore her. I looked back at Annabeth. “Listen—one empousa— she says she’s the senior one, whatever that means. I was going to kill her, but…” I closed my eyes for a second. There wasn’t nearly enough time to explain why I hesitated, why I cared so much about that school and about Paul and my mom’s high hopes for me. “She just… she just exploded, and she was screaming and trying to make it sound like I was hurting her and now they’ll all think I did something and I set the place on fire—”

“Percy, don’t worry about that,” Rachel said, coming closer to put a hand on my shoulder. I was still looking at Annabeth, closely enough to see the way her eyes followed Rachel’s hand. “My dad will talk to them, and I’m sure Paul will—”

“Paul—doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what you know,” I told her through gritted teeth.

Rachel walked around me to stand in between me and Annabeth, forcing me to look at her. “It’ll be fine. Everything is under control.”

“Percy, you’re coming with me,” Annabeth said loudly from behind Rachel, making us flinch. 

“What?” 

“I’m going to get you to camp,” she said tersely.

I frantically looked at Rachel, but she shook her head, putting her hands on my arms. “Relax, Jackson. The police are probably looking for us, so I’ll find an officer and I’ll… I’ll stall, or something. I’ll make something up. I’ll tell them it wasn’t your fault, okay? I promise.”

I spluttered and looked at Annabeth, who just shrugged. “You heard her. She’ll handle it, like she handled the other empousa. And we really need you to get you to camp, okay? They need you.”

My heart sank. “Did something happen?”

Annabeth waved her hand impatiently. “No time to explain.” God, classic Annabeth.

“Go,” Rachel whispered, quiet enough so only I could hear it, before letting go of my shoulders. I walked carefully to Annabeth, and felt the weight of my pen in my pocket again. Before we left, I looked back at Rachel one last time.

“I’ll take care of it,” she told me. “Call me, okay? Do you have the sticky note on you?”

“I memorized your number,” I told her, and Annabeth pulled me out and away from the alley.

I didn’t see how we were going to get to camp fast enough to avoid a conversation, but Annabeth shoved me into another alley, clearly executing some other kind of plan.

“What are you doing?” I snapped.

“Hunter thing. Shut up.”  She grabbed my shoulders and started muttering in Ancient Greek. I only caught a few words, like blessing and transportation. A cooling sensation came over me, like I was being submerged in water, and instinctively I closed my eyes. The sounds of the city and the sirens melted away, and all I could feel was the coolness and Annabeth’s hands. My eyes snapped open, and we were standing at the base of Half-Blood Hill.

“What—”

“You told a mortal girl everything.” It wasn’t a question.

“Listen. When we were… looking for you last winter, I saw her at the Hoover Dam and that’s how I found out she could see through the Mist—and then I ran into her again here because apparently she also lives here and she made me tell her everything and we hung out a couple times—”

“You’ve met her before?” Annabeth asked, crossing her arms. “And you’re best friends after hanging out a couple of times?”

“God,” I muttered, slapping my forehead and turning away.

“She’s kind of cute,” Annabeth muttered.

“So what?” I snapped, turning back to her.

“Not denying it?”

I took a deep breath. “Why the hell did you bring me here?”

A muscle in her jaw twitched. “More attacks. The entrance is open, wherever it may actually be.”
I swallowed. “Okay.”

“I’ve been trying to look for Nico, too,” she told me. “Artemis told me you were worried about him.”

“He’s a son of Hades,” I breathed. 

“I know that, too. Artemis… she spoke to Bianca somehow, in the Underworld. And Bianca said that Nico’s been trying to reach her for months, but she won’t let him. What other kid would have that kind of power?”

I nodded, biting my lip. “Okay. Any word on Thalia and Luke?”

Annabeth went completely stiff, and managed to shake her head.

I closed my eyes, trying to hold back all the things I wanted to say on the subject. I thought about Rachel, who must be with the police by now, and of my mom—and of Paul.

I pushed past Annabeth and started going up the hill.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You brought me to camp, so I’m going into camp,” I snapped back at her, then looked back towards the familiar branches of Thalia’s tree. “I have to make some calls.”

Chapter Text

“Come on, Mom,” I muttered nervously under my breath. “Pick up, come on, come on. Come on…”

Right to voicemail, again. This was the third time, and I was starting to get really, really anxious.

Chiron lumbered into the room, also looking concerned. “Any luck?”

“Hopefully this time,” I said, dialing her number again.

“Percy—”

“She’s going to pick up, okay? She’s probably just busy,” I insisted.

One ring, two rings, three—

“Oh, my god, Percy?”

“Mom!” I hissed, then glanced at Chiron, who stepped back out to give me some privacy. “Mom, why didn’t you pick up?”

“Well, maybe because I was with the POLICE? Percy, what the hell happened?”

“Well, what did Paul say?”

“Paul is… not sure. The tour guide who saw you in the band room insists you did something to that girl Kelli, and they can’t find her friend Tammi anywhere.”

“Well, Kelli exploded!” I snapped. “So there’s no evidence I did anything!”

“Well, she’s missing, Tammi’s missing, and now you’re missing. You’re the new kid who made them scream in terror, and they’re high school juniors with a seemingly clear track record. See how it looks?”

I sighed in frustration, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Your friend Rachel is trying to take care of it. She gave a statement to the police saying that Tammi and Kelli tried to attack the two of you—well, she pretty much just told them exactly what happened without the monster slaying part.”

“You know about that?”

“I ran into her at the police station, and she explained everything to me after we were out. It’s not looking good, because the police don’t believe her at all. They… I mean, they know your history. It’s not looking good for you, and NYPD is going to be all over this.

“And Paul? What does he think?”

“Percy… don’t be upset, okay? I told him everything.”

I was silent for a second, trying to figure out what exactly she was saying. “What do you mean, ‘everything’?”

“I think you know, kid.”

I closed my eyes and put my forehead against the wall. “Mom… how is he taking it?”

There was silence on the other end for a moment, and I was worried that she’d hung up. But I heard some fumbling and fidgeting, and waited nervously.

“Hey, Percy,” said Paul on the phone, “are you okay?”

“Paul! Paul, I’m so sorry—”

“Percy, relax. I’m trying to get it under control.”

“You believe me? And Mom?”

“I—I don’t know. But I’m trying to, alright? I mean—I do believe that you didn’t do anything. I know you, and I know you wouldn’t do that. But the other stuff… I don’t know, kid.”

“We aren’t crazy, Paul!”

“I know. I’m not saying that.” There was an uncomfortable minute of silence. “We’ll get it all sorted, okay? Your mom and I will do everything we can. I’m passing the phone back to her.”

“Percy,” said my mom after a moment, “everything is going to be fine.”

“Is Rachel okay?”

“As far as I know, yes. I asked her to join us for dinner, but she said her parents wouldn’t let her, so she went home. She’s a little shaken up, but I think she’ll be okay. And she’s expecting you to call, I think.”

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll call her in a bit,” I said, feeling guilty. “I should probably go, though. I’ve been on the phone way too long.”

“Okay. Be safe, alright? I’m glad you’re at camp.”

“Me, too,” I told her, and hung up. I went down to the first floor of the Big House and walked out onto the porch where Chiron was sitting in wheelchair form, his fingers laced together.

“Is everything alright?” he asked when he noticed me.

“More or less. The police are after me again,” I told him. I looked out at camp and then back to him. “Chiron, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Do you know if Annabeth is staying?”

Chiron shifted uncomfortably. “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that.”

I had to keep myself from scoffing. “Well, I can’t really tell you. Annabeth and I haven’t discussed it.”

“It hasn’t come up in any of your conversations?”

I had to let out a humorless snort at this. “Annabeth and I don’t have any conversations. Not anymore.” 

Chiron frowned, tilting his head. “You two really don’t talk?”

I hated his tone, but I kept my mouth shut. 

“Well,” he continued, crossing his arms. “I’m sure she’ll find you before the hearing. She’s off to talk to Clarisse?”

“Clarisse?” I asked incredulously. I thought about her frantic warning to me to not tell Annabeth about the Labyrinth. “Wait, hearing?”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Chiron said grimly, wheeling past me. “For now, why don’t you get settled in camp?”

Most of the campers had arrived at the end of last week, so there were a ton of greetings, hugs, and unnecessarily hard slaps on the back. It was pretty cool, I guess, and I always loved being at camp over the summer, but there was something wrong, something tense and unusual just beneath the surface. We were all having fun and we were happy to see each other, but I know I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Connor and Travis were more subdued than usual, and Silena’s smile never fully reached her eyes. All the older campers were on edge—did Clarisse tell them what was going on? Were they all in the patrol rotation? Their whole attitude was making me even more nervous than I already felt, so I decided to head down to the sword arena. Practicing always helped me work things out. 

However, the sword arena was definitely not going to help with my anxiety, because as soon as I walked in, I saw a gargantuan hellhound lying on the floor of the arena.

For a minute, I was totally frozen. If my next move was too slow, I was going to turn into dog food. And I didn’t think I had enough time to call for help, so in one swift movement, I took out my sword and charged with a yell. Just before I hit the hellhound, though, another blade blocked mine with so much force that I stumbled back. The new sword belonged to this old-ish guy in Greek armor, so I lunged at him next, which he easily sidestepped.

“Hey!” he barked, his voice gruff and full of authority, but not necessarily cold. “Truce?” He looked like he was about to smile.

“There’s a hellhound!” I said stupidly, just as said hellhound let out a deafening bark.

“That’s just Mrs. O’Leary!” said the man, raising his free hand in defense. “She’s totally harmless. Aren’t you, girl?” he added, looking back at the monster lovingly. She barked again, clearly excited, because the sound was so loud that my ears stung a bit. She raised her head excitedly, revealing a badly chewed up dummy under where her chin had been. The man shuffled closer to the hellhound and kicked the dummy to the far side of the arena, and Mrs. O’Leary chased after it, the wagging of her tail sending drifts of wind in my direction. Now that the hellhound was a little farther away from me, I was able to shift my attention to the man. He seemed to be in his fifties, wearing black utility pants and an orange camp shirt under his armor. His face was what many people would creatively describe as Greek, because how else would you say it? It was the shape of his eyes and the set of his nose that made it obvious. I was a little fascinated by him, because he’s the first guy of his age that I’d seen in a long time that was actually in good shape. I noticed a weird tattoo at the base of his neck, almost the same color of a bruise, but I didn’t want to look too hard out of fear of offending him.

“Mrs. O’Leary is my pet,” the man explained. “I couldn’t let you kill her. Sorry.”

“Who are you?” I snapped.

“Let’s put our swords away first, yeah?”

I scowled at him for a second before capping my sword, and he dropped his own to the ground. “My name is Quintus,” he said, putting his hand out. I shook it for about a nanosecond before taking my hand back. “And don’t ask about the hellhound pet. It’s a really long story.”

“I’m Percy Jackson,” I said warily.

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of you,” Quintus told me, which would normally be a threatening thing for  anyone to say, but he seemed casual enough about it. “Well, I’m the new sword master at camp. I’m helping Chiron with a few things while Lord Dionysus is away on business.”

“Mr. D is away?” I asked, trying to mask the excitement in my voice.

Quintus shifted uncomfortably. “He’s gone to visit some old friends. Make sure they’re on the right side. That’s likely all I can say about it.”

I couldn’t even really think about this right now. I was just too happy that Mr. D wasn’t going to be around. I mean, it was still a little concerning, because things had to be really bad to get someone like Mr. D to actually go and do something.

There was a loud rattle and Mrs. O’Leary nudged a pile of wooden crates with her pickup truck sized head. 

“Hey, stay away from those,” Quintus warned, going over to the dog to go distract her. I had to strain my eyes a bit, but after a moment I was finally able to read the words printed on the sides of the box.

TRIPLE G RANCH

FRAGILE

THIS END UP

(Triple G Ranch is not responsible for property damage, maiming, evisceration, or any other excruciating deaths.)

“Uh, Quintus,” I asked nervously. “What’s in the boxes?”

Quintus said, “a fun little surprise for tomorrow’s activity.”

I didn’t really see how evisceration was going to be fun, but I decided not to ask questions.

“Don’t worry!” he said airily, jogging back to me. “You demigods need a good challenge every now and then, right?” As if my life wasn’t challenging enough. “I would have killed for this kind of opportunity when I was a boy.”

“Hold on. You’re a demigod?”

Quintus chuckled self-consciously. “Indeed I am. Not all of us end up as the subject of gruesome prophecies,” he told me knowingly.

I understood immediately. “You know about my prophecy.”

“I’ve heard a thing or two.”

I swallowed. “Do you think you could—”

Chiron bounded into the arena, looking slightly agitated. “Percy! I didn’t think you’d be… back to training so soon!” He noticed Quintus and pursed his lips slightly. “I see that you’ve met our new instructor. Quintus, mind if I take Percy away for a chat?”

“Not at all, Master Chiron,” said Quintus.

“No need to call me Master,” Chiron said as he took my arm and led me out of the arena.

“What’s his story?” I asked Chiron once we were out.

“Hard to say,” muttered Chiron. “He’s a very qualified half-blood, that much is evident… a very gifted swordsman… but his story… I’m not sure. I can’t even hazard a guess because he’s…”

“Mysterious?” I offered.

“Yes. Hard to read.”

“You don’t trust him,” I realized.

Chiron huffed. “That’s neither here nor there, Percy. Anyway, there are other things that must be discussed—like the empousai you encountered at your orientation.”

“Annabeth told you,” I assumed.

“Yes, but that’s all she said. She insisted I hear the rest from you.”

I scowled again at the thought of her saying that. I sighed and told Chiron the entire story—even the part about Rachel killing Tammi, which made his eyes nearly pop out of his head. I then told him about how Kelli had burst into flames, which clearly made Chiron anxious. “She is not dead,” he said quietly. “She escaped—the more powerful ones do that.” He shook his head. “It’s not good that the she-demons are stirring.”

“They would have killed me,” I admitted. “I just—I couldn’t do anything.”

Chiron nodded. “It is a miracle you survived, Percy. Their spell is one of the strongest of them all.”

“I wouldn’t have survived if not for Rachel.”

“Yes, your mortal girl. Ironic that she is the one who slew the empousa, but we owe her a great debt. She’s really not a demigod, is she?”

“She’s definitely mortal,” I said, thinking of the few times I’d met her parents.

“I should like to speak to her eventually,” Chiron told me, raising his eyebrows in a way that suggested it was my responsibility to make that happen. We walked on for a bit into the woods until we found ourselves approaching a clearing. “Grover will want you to be here.”

“Grover?” I exclaimed. “Grover’s here?”

“He’s just come out of the hearing,” said Chiron grimly. “The Council of Cloven Elders decided his fate today.”

None of those words made any sense to me, but I was still excited to see one of my best friends.  However, that excitement melted away when I saw Grover come into the trees, flanked my Clarisse, Annabeth, and a girl I didn’t know. The unknown girl was crying and holding onto Annabeth, Grover looked like he was going to vomit, and Clarisse just walked stoically, adjusting the bandana in her curly hair. Grover saw me and Chiron waiting, and couldn’t even muster a full smile.

“One week,” he said tiredly, coming forward to give me a halfhearted side-hug. 

“One week for what?” I asked nervously. I looked back at the other girl, and then at Clarisse, who mouthed Grover’s girlfriend. Girlfriend?

“One week until I lose my searcher’s license,” he said grimly. “I have one week to find Pan.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous!” I snapped. “One week? That’s not fair! Who are these council people?”

“Very powerful people,” Chiron muttered. 

“I can’t lose it!” Grover hissed, almost hysterical.

“They have no idea how much you’ve been doing to find him!” the unknown girl said. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that she was a dryad. 

“There’s another option,” Clarisse said grimly.

“Absolutely not!” the dryad yelled. “Grover, you can’t!”

“I might have to, Juniper,” he said softly.

“What are you guys talking about?” I asked dumbly.

Everyone went completely silent. I even resorted to looking at Annabeth, but she wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. I bit the inside of my cheek, feeling a little furious. “Fine. Don’t tell stupid Percy, then.”

I was about to turn and walk away, but Clarisse said, “hey, I’ll tell you later. Got it?”

It sounded a bit like a threat, but I just huffed and nodded. Seriously, was I such an idiot that no one wanted to trust me with anything? The thought pissed me off, and I felt like kicking a tree as we started to head back towards camp at the sound of the dinner horn.

I ate alone, scowling into my food with so much concentration that I didn’t even notice Chiron making his way towards my table in wheelchair form. It was only when he cleared his throat that I turned my head to face him. He crossed his arms and stared expectantly at me, as if he was waiting for me to confess I’d broken one of his favorite vases or something.

“What is it?” I asked after a minute of impatience.

“Percy, I’d like to ask you a favor.”

“Sure, what do you need?”

Chiron glanced sideways at the one place I was trying very hard not to look at, which was the honorary Cabin Eight table where Annabeth currently sat. “Annabeth is on the verge of returning to New York and therefore Mount Olympus so that she can bring backup to camp and the city to keep an eye on the monsters. I’m thinking that you can talk to her and prevent her from doing that—I want her here. Bringing the Hunters and indirectly getting the gods involved—I don’t think such a thing is wise.”

At first I let out a laugh, but then I frowned. “Me… talk to Annabeth?” I shook my head. “Why don’t you make Grover or Clarisse do it? Why don’t you try?”

Chiron shifted uncomfortably in his wheelchair. “I have a feeling that you are the only individual who might have the ability to change her mind.”

I finally allowed myself to look at her, but only for a second. “You can’t be serious,” I told Chiron.

He pursed his lips—he apparently was very serious.

“Well—wait, why don’t we get the gods involved?” I asked. I had a feeling someone had explained it to me at some point, but I was having trouble remembering.

Chiron glanced around furtively before turning his somber gaze back to me. “Old gods… old gods used to be allegiant to the Lord of Time. Who is to say they won’t be when the new war comes?”

I could literally feel my eyes twitching. “You don’t… you don’t actually think there will be another war, right?”

Chiron leaned back in his wheelchair. “I don’t assume anything, my boy. I plan. If there is anything I have learned in all my years of life, it is that you must be ready for anything. And letting Annabeth return to Olympus—Zeus forgive me, but I feel less confident of her safety there than I do of her safety here. Besides—Hunters operate on an entirely separate agenda, and even though I can’t fully take that away from her, it would be better for all of us if she stays here, still functioning as a—semi-camper of sorts. She’s been here a long time, Percy. Her heart will not have shifted to the Hunt so soon.”

“The way you make it sound,” I began, “it makes more sense for someone who’s known her longer to try and get her to stick around. With me?” I allowed myself a quick glance at her. “I told you before, Chiron, Annabeth and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms and if you want me to be completely honest, I don’t know if we ever will be.”

Chiron closed his eyes, and a flicker of annoyance crossed his face. “Percy, with all due respect, the two of you are still very young. A lot of things will seem like the proverbial end of the world—”

“No.” I huffed and shook my head. “This isn’t teenage drama. This is real.”

We sat in silence for a moment. “Will you try, at least?” Chiron said. It was phrased like a request, but I could tell it was now more of an order.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Sure.”

I figured I’d try and put off this conversation with Annabeth for as long as possible, so I asked Chiron if I could use the phone in the Big House to make another call. He didn’t seem particularly thrilled about it, but I guess it was a pretty reasonable request given the fact that I had come to camp under such dire circumstances. I realized about halfway through my walk to the Big House that I was still in my stupid uniform, and I had nearly torn my tie off of myself by the time I reached the phone.

Rachel picked up on the first ring, which was kind of unexpected, but a big relief to me. “Hi, it’s me,” I said, a little awkwardly.

“Oh, thank god. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t call.”

“I know, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been getting grilled by the police and my parents nonstop for hours. But I think we’re done now… I hope we are. Your mom asked me to come over, but my dad… ugh, I don’t even want to talk about it. And the police didn’t believe me! I mean, I look like shit, right? I looked more beaten up than you and they implied that you did it!” She took a deep breath before continuing. “I’m hoping I did some damage control. As far as I know, there isn’t really a warrant for your arrest or anything, but they’re definitely looking for you. I mean, really looking for you. All of NYPD is on your ass. I’m sorry, Jackson. I tried to do more. I’ll keep trying—”

“Hey, hey. It’s okay,” I said hastily, since Rachel was starting to sound really panicked. “You’re doing more than you should anyway!”

“That’s not true. But yes, I appreciate the gratitude. And—where the hell are you?”

“I’m at camp.”

“Ah. With Annabeth.”

“Rachel—”

“Why didn’t you tell me you liked her?”

“Like—like her?” I spluttered. “I don’t like her. I mean, not like that. Actually, not in any way.”

“Don’t play games with me, Percy. It’s completely and overwhelmingly obvious that you’re head over heels! But—I thought you and I were friends, you know? You like her, and it’s not a big deal, so why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because she left,” I snapped, feeling hot and frustrated. “Fine, maybe I liked her, but it doesn’t matter, because she left. She abandoned… she abandoned her friends because she’s running away from her problems.”

“Running away because Thalia betrayed her, too?”

“Well, exactly! That’s why she left, but she’s acting like Thalia and Luke are the same old people that she used to know when she was seven, for god’s sake. She’s in denial about the reason, but it doesn’t change that she left.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, alright? Maybe I just wanted to… put it behind me.”

Rachel was silent on the other end for a moment. “Do you still like her?”

“It doesn’t—”

“Matter, I know,” she finished. “But be serious. Do you?”

“I don’t know.” 

I thought Rachel would keep pushing, but surprisingly, she let it go at that. “Percy… you’re safe there, right?”

“Of course I am. It’s camp. I’m more worried about you—”

“I think I’ll be okay. I think I’d only be attacked by some ancient creepy-crawlie if I’m with you.”

“I’m really sorry about that.”

“I mean… it’s fine. I guess. I just kinda figured you’d be more heroic. But hey, I got to kill my first monster!”

“That was so irresponsible!” I hissed, feeling mad again. “You could have chopped yourself in half—”

“Well, no, because we’ve known from the start that your special little sword can’t do anything to me.”

“Still! You could have gotten yourself killed!”

“And you would have for sure gotten us both killed if I let you stand there like an idiot.”

I grit my teeth. “Thank you,” I muttered. 

“You’re welcome, you jerk.”

Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I turned to see Clarisse standing in the doorway.

“Rachel, can I call you later?”

“I don’t know if I’ll answer,” she told me. “For whatever reason, I’m in a lot of trouble for this stuff at home. But… try at night, okay? And be careful. And—don’t come back to Manhattan.”

“You got it. Good luck,” I said, then hung up.

“Calling your girlfriend, dickhead?” Clarisse asked me as I wrestled with my tie some more.

“Save it,” I told her. “What’s the deal with Grover?”

“It’s not really his deal,” she told me, examining her chipped, ragged nails. Even from a distance I could tell she’d been biting the hell out of them. “It’s a solution I proposed… might kill two birds with one stone. I think—Grover’s best bet might be to search the Labyrinth for Pan, and we can even map the place and put up better defenses for the camp.”

“Are you nuts?” I exclaimed.

“Calm down, Prissy,” Clarisse snapped at me. “It’s a good idea, and it makes sense. I’ve even… discussed it with Chiron. Leading a questwithout making a big deal out of it.”

“What, you leading a mission?” I scoffed.

One of her eyes twitched. “I’m staying. I have business to take care of here.”

“Ah. Chris Rodriguez business. How is he?”

“You shouldn’t even know about that,” Clarisse said in a low, dangerous voice, so I decided to drop it. “Anyway, someone else should lead the quest. Grover or even Annabeth or… or you, though that sounds like a horrible idea.”

“Hey, I lead a successful quest!”

“Whatever,” she muttered, waving her hand dismissively. “But the problem is that Grover is scared out of his mind and Annabeth’s not a camper anymore and you just… well you’re an idiot, so I’m not sure how to go about this. I doubt the Stolls or Silena or Beckendorf would care enough to lead these quests and… unfortunately, you, Annabeth, Grover, and maybe Silena are the only people I trust. You remember what I told you about spies? It could be anyone. Anyone.”

“When I came over spring break, you said it might be Annabeth.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” she sighed, slightly agitated. “I mean… god, I’m second guessing myself. I never do that.” That was a lie. “I trust her, but I haven’t told her there might be a spy.”

“So you don’t trust her.” She shut her eyes, a muscle in her jaw twitching.  “Okay, never mind,” I said hastily. 

“You haven’t told her, right?” Clarisse asked me, opening one eye.

“Still not talking.”

“Right. Okay. Well, that still stands in case you decide to make up, or something.”

“I don’t see that happening,” I muttered. 

“It might have to, because Chiron is seriously thinking about sending you and Annabeth into the Labyrinth with Grover.”

“Well, he hasn’t talked to any of us about all that!” I said indignantly. But I realized that might not be strictly true—that was probably the biggest reason Chiron wanted me to talk to her. Sneaky bastard. 

If I told Annabeth about all this… if I told her that we could go into the Labyrinth, I was almost entirely certain she’d stay. To her, the Labyrinth was and had always been some harrowing path back to Thalia and Luke. She’d agree, and she’d get into that place and she could go completely rogue trying to find them. It was not a situation I wanted to be in or enable, but Chiron was counting on me to convince her to stay, and this was, ironically and unfortunately, the only way. 

Maybe… maybe I could stop her from doing something stupid. Maybe it could be me and Grover and Annabeth again, just like old times, and it would be like she never left.

“Hey!” Clarisse snapped, bringing my attention back to her. “You hear me, right?”

“I hear you,” I mumbled.

“Yeah. Good,” she said quietly. She left without another word, leaving me back to my thoughts. I had a good opportunity to do what Chiron wanted me to, but I was honestly stupid if I really thought I could convince Annabeth to stay in line. If she went on a quest in the Labyrinth, she would go down another wrong path. And it might not work out for her.

I swore softly under my breath. Still, this was the only way I could get Annabeth to stay. And at the end of the day, is that not all I really wanted?

I knocked a couple of times on the silver door, but no one had answered for over a minute, so I was turning to walk away when I heard the door open behind me.

“Percy?” Annabeth asked. Her curls were held back in a satiny gray cloth. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard you’re going to go back to Olympus,” I started, feeling nervous.

“Yeah, probably,” she replied, shifting from one foot to another. 

I stared awkwardly for a moment before saying, “what if I gave you a really good reason not to go?”

Chapter Text

I figured with all the concerning stuff going on with the Labyrinth and the alleged looming war against whoever and whatever, everyone would be operating on panic and damage control mode, readying campers for battle and fortifying the camp. Instead, after breakfast (where Annabeth was notably not present), Chiron led us all towards the woods and announced that a game would be taking place in the woods, something related to hunting and searching and whatever. There were cheers, but also some concerned mutters from the older campers. Connor and Travis stood next to me, talking quietly amongst themselves. I only got a few words, like ‘rotation’ and ‘not safe’. If the Stolls were nervous, then everyone should be nervous, in my opinion. Quintus stood next to Chiron, looking simultaneously bored and amused by the excitement in camp. 

“Hey,” I heard someone say softly behind me, and I turned to see Beckendorf looming above me. “Clarisse said you’re in the loop about patrol, right?”

“Right…”

He glanced over at the Apollo kids, and I noticed that Lee Fletcher had his arm in a sling. “Well… thought you should get an update. We saw an Aethiopian drakon near the camp border—it nearly got through, and would have if not for Fletcher and his siblings.”

My mouth nearly fell open in shock. “You’re joking. What do you mean it almost got through?”

“He means its goddamn head came through the border,” Connor said, who had evidently been eavesdropping. “Had to push through it a bit, but it literally put its head through the border like it was Jell-o.”

“It’s still out there,” Beckendorf warned. “Fletcher just… really pissed it off.”

“Why hasn’t Chiron said anything, then?” I asked. “I mean, why are we playing games at all?”

“I think it’s because of that Quintus guy,” Travis said quietly. Chiron dismissed us to go get our armor and the four of us walked together, the Stolls on one side of me and Beckendorf on the other. “We were giving our report to Chiron after we got the drakon away from us and Quintus was there. I guess Chiron trusts him or whatever. Silena suggested that we cancel the game, Quintus like, reminded Chiron that stuff like this happened before and that the drakon was spotted in the far end of camp boundary anyway. Chiron didn’t seem too thrilled, but I don’t know. He didn’t seem too worried either. Quintus also said that it would be good preparation for us or something.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to seem worried in front of Quintus,” I reasoned. After all, Chiron did sort of hint that he really didn’t trust Quintus. So why had he been there when the other campers were telling him about the drakon?

“That’s not unlikely, actually,” Beckendorf told me, nodding. “I mean, this guy is new. Like, really new. And honestly, I don’t care that he’s a demigod, because now we know that demigods can pick the wrong side. I mean look what happened with—”

He trailed off, and I looked up to see that Clarisse was walking a little farther ahead of us. Beckendorf just sighed and walked off in the direction of his cabin, and so did I. Honestly, I was starting to get a little excited by the time I reached the forest edge in my armor, but the drakon thing worried me. 

Even more worrying was the fact that I still couldn’t see Annabeth anywhere. I mean, not that that would have been a bad thing—I was against the idea of her going into the Labyrinth and giving her a way to pursue Luke and Thalia—but I had also been pretty sure that it would have made her stay. When I’d talked to her outside Cabin Eight, things almost felt normal—the hot summer breeze, the way she listened intently to me as I spoke, all the expressions and mannerisms that I still hadn’t forgotten. If I could just ignore the way she glowed a little in the dark, I could almost act as though that memory was from before, when we were friends and we were talking things out like we always used to. Yes, I hated the way she jumped to attention and started to look hopeful when I mentioned her coming into the Labyrinth, but I hated myself even more for trying to convince myself that she actually wanted to stay for any reason related to me. She was honestly acting a little crazy and I was just being pathetic, but if that’s what it took for us to just be together again like normal, then it wasn’t so bad, right?

I scoffed to myself. That was total crazy talk. Chiron would be mad at me, but maybe it was better if Annabeth stayed far away from the Labyrinth. 

Chiron told us to get into our teams, and I joined the Hermes, Athena, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus cabins. Normally I’d be a little worried about the Aphrodite campers, but Beckendorf told me that Silena had been training them all in combat. Some of them seemed a little nervous, but I caught a few of them practicing sword swings and immediately felt a lot better; Silena really did a great job with them.

We were just getting ready to hand out the flags when I heard footsteps running toward us. I looked up and I saw Annabeth, who was tightening her armor as she came. One of my eyes started to twitch, and Connor elbowed me lightly saying, “You didn’t say Annabeth was staying.”

“I didn’t know she was staying,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Annabeth!” Chiron said excitedly, then glanced at me. “So lovely of you to join us for today’s game! Usually it’s campers against Hunters, but—”

“I can be on my old cabin’s team,” she said casually, walking over to us. My old cabin. I hoped no one noticed my eyes twitching.

“Actually, we’re not teaming up at all,” said Quintus loudly from the front. “In fact, it’s going to be more of a… partner based event.” Excited cheers rose up from the crowd. “Partners have already been chosen!”

Complains and even a few muttered curses rose up from the crowd. 

“Your goal is simple: collect the gold laurels without dying. The wreath is wrapped in a silk package, tied to the back of one of the monsters. There are six monsters. Each has a silk package. Only one holds the laurels. You must find the wreath before the other teams. And, of course…you will have to slay the monster to get it, and stay alive.” The crowd started murmuring excitedly. The task sounded pretty straightforward. Hey, we’d all slain monsters before. That’s what we trained for. “I will now announce your partners,” Quintus said. “There will be no trading. No switching. No complaining.” 

Quintus produced a big scroll and started reading off names. Beckendorf would be with Silena Beauregard, which Beckendorf looked pretty happy about. Travis and Connor would be together. No surprise. They did everything together. Clarisse was with Lee Fletcher from the Apollo cabin—melee and ranged combat combined, they would be a tough combo to beat, but I wondered if Clarisse was feeling up to it. I glanced over at her and saw her staring intently at the ground, too preoccupied to even bother Lee, who was just absentmindedly picking at his sling. Quintus kept rattling off the names until he said, “Percy Jackson with Annabeth Chase.”

The crowd fell deathly silent. Honestly, how many people were involved in my conflict with Annabeth? I felt like a main character in a telenovela.

“Wait, how is he with Annabeth?” I heard Travis mutter. “No one knew she was staying.”

Quintus heard this and waved his hand dismissively. “We would have put Percy with another pair to make a team of three if she hadn’t stayed, but Chiron assured me that we’d have the numbers. And we do! Although—I hope this doesn’t interfere with whatever Hunter duties I presume you have here?” he added, looking at Annabeth.

“I can spare some time,” she replied, and I looked at her to see that her eyes were on me. “Besides, I don’t mind. I was a camper myself until pretty recently.”

Was. I was literally about to vomit.

“I see. Good!” Quintus said, and continued to read off the list of names. Annabeth came to stand next to me, but neither of us said a word to one another. We just waited until a dryad blew the horn, and the game began.

It was still light when we got into the woods, but the shadows from the trees made it feel like midnight. It was cold, too, even in summer. Annabeth and I found tracks almost immediately—scuttling marks made by something with a lot of legs. We began to follow the trail, and forged deeper into the west woods where the monsters were wilder. We were standing on a ledge overlooking a marshy pond when Annabeth tensed. “I looked for Nico here,” she whispered softly. “Artemis wanted me to.”

I frowned. “Does anyone else—any of the other Hunters—do they know who he is?” I wanted to protect his identity. I wanted to be the one to find him and make things right for what had happened to his sister. Now, six months later, I hadn’t even come close to finding him. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. 

“No,” Annabeth told me. “Artemis is… keeping a lot of things hush-hush. She’s got such an elaborate web of secrets that even I can’t keep up with it all.”

“Well, what do you know about Nico so far?” I asked her.

Annabeth didn’t speak for a moment. The woods were quiet except for the sound of our breathing. “He’s trying to summon the dead,” she said.

“Well, yeah. Bianca.”

“No, not just her. Other people. Some other ghost that was giving him some bad advice. Telling him to take revenge and all.” 

A shiver ran up my spine.  “Wait, how do you know all of this?” I asked

She shifted from one foot to another. “Actually, you were supposed to know. Artemis and I intercepted an Iris-message heading your way because it carried traces of, like, dark and ancient magic with it. And in this Iris-message, I saw Nico communicating with this spirit, listening to it speak. Spirits are never good advisers—they’ve got their own agendas. Old grudges. And they resent the living.” 

“So he’s going to come after me,” I said. “He blames me for Bianca dying.”

Annabeth shakes her head vigorously. “It wasn’t your fault.”

I appreciated the sentiment, but I shook my head. “He thinks it is, no matter what.”

“Maybe,” she replied pensively. “The spirit mentioned a maze.” She nodded. “Yeah, that settles it. We have to figure out the Labyrinth.” 

“Maybe,” I said uncomfortably. “But who sent the Iris-message? And did it seem like Nico was trying to reach me, specifically?” 

“See, I don’t think so,” Annabeth told me. “I saw it and it was… really weird. Like I was interrupting a moment I was never meant to see. It makes me feel like maybe he’s not the one who sent that message, because he seemed to think it was just him and that spirit talking.”

A branch snapped in the woods. Dry leaves rustled. Something large was moving in the trees, just beyond the ridge.

I drew Riptide, looking at Annabeth. “Time to go,” I muttered grimly. We started to make our way towards the noise, which eventually took us to Zeus’s Fist.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?” Annabeth asked.

I didn’t answer. I was focusing on some noise that appeared to be behind us. No, in front. No, to the side. It was weird. Scuttling noises seemed to be coming from several different directions. We were circling the boulders, our swords drawn, when someone right behind us said, “Hi.” 

We whirled around, and the tree nymph Juniper yelped. “Put those down!” she protested. “Dryads don’t like sharp blades, okay?” 

“Juniper,” Annabeth exhaled. “What are you doing here?” 

“I live here.” 

I lowered my sword. “In the boulders?” 

She pointed toward the edge of the clearing.  “In the juniper. Duh.” It made sense, and I felt kind of stupid. I’d been hanging around dryads for years, but I never really talked to them much. I knew they couldn’t go very far away from their tree, which was the source of life. But I didn’t know much else. “Are you guys busy?” Juniper asked. 

“Well,” I said, “we’re in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we’re trying not to die.” 

“We’re not busy,” Annabeth said. “What’s wrong, Juni?” 

Juniper sniffled. She wiped her silky sleeve under her eyes. “It’s Grover. He seems so distraught. All year he’s been out looking for Pan. And every time he comes back, it's worse. I thought maybe, at first, he was seeing another tree.” 

“No,” Annabeth said as Juniper started crying. “I’m sure that’s not it.” 

“He had a crush on a blueberry bush once,” Juniper said miserably. 

“Juniper,” Annabeth said, “Grover would never even look at another tree. He’s just stressed out about his searcher’s license.” 

“He can’t go underground!” she protested. “You can’t let him.” 

Annabeth looked uncomfortable. “It might be the only way to help him; if we just knew where to start.”

“What, you think Pan is in the Labyrinth?” I asked incredulously.

“Ah.” Juniper wiped a green tear off her cheek. “About that…” Another rustle in the woods, and Juniper yelled, “Hide!” Before I could ask why, she went poof into green mist. Annabeth and I turned. Coming out of the woods was a glistening amber insect, ten feet long, with jagged pincers, an armored tail, and a stinger as long as my sword. A scorpion. Tied to its back was a red silk package. 

“One of us gets behind it,” Annabeth said, as the thing clattered towards us. 

I tried to shake the discomfort off of myself. I could only think about Luke and the scorpion he’d tried to kill me with. “Cuts off its tail while the other distracts it in front.” 

“I’ll take point,” I said. “You’ve got the invisibility hat.” She nodded. We’d fought together so many times we knew each other’s moves, even if things were so much different now. We could do this, easy. But it all went wrong when the other two scorpions appeared from the woods. “Three?” Annabeth said. “That’s not possible! The whole woods, and half the monsters come at us?” 

I swallowed. One, we could take. Two, with a little luck. Three? Doubtful. 

The scorpions scurried toward us, whipping their barbed tails like they’d come here just to kill us. Annabeth and I put our backs against the nearest boulder. 

“Climb?” I said. 

“No time,” she said. She was right. The scorpions were already surrounding us. They were so close I could see their hideous mouths foaming, anticipating an ice juicy meal of demigods. “Look out!” Annabeth parried away a stinger with the flat of her blade. I stabbed with Riptide, but the scorpion backed out of range. We clambered sideways along the boulders, but the scorpions followed us. I slashed at another one, but going on the offensive was too dangerous. If I went for the body, the tail stabbed downward. If I went for the tail, the thing’s pincers came from either side and tried to grab me. All we could do was defend, and we wouldn’t be able to keep that up for very long. I took another step sideways, and suddenly there was nothing behind me. It was a crack between two of the largest boulders, something I’d passed by a million times, but… 

“In here,” I said. 

Annabeth sliced at a scorpion then looked at me like I was crazy. “In there? It’s too narrow.”

“I’ll cover you. Go!” She ducked behind me and started squeezing between the two boulders. Then she yelped and grabbed my armor straps, and suddenly I was tumbling into a pit that hadn’t been there a moment before. I could see the scorpions above us, the purple evening sky and the trees, and then the hole shut like the lens of a camera, and we were in complete darkness. 

Our breathing echoed against stone. It was wet and cold. I was sitting on a bumpy floor that seemed to be made of bricks. I lifted Riptide. The faint glow of the blade was just enough to illuminate Annabeth’s frightened face and the mossy stone walls on either side of us. 

“Where the hell are we?” Annabeth said. 

“Safe from the scorpions, anyway,” I tried to sound calm, but I was freaking out. The crack between the boulders couldn’t have led into a cave. I would’ve known if there was a cave here; I was sure of it. It was like the ground had opened up and swallowed us. I lifted my sword again for light. “It’s a long room,” I muttered. Annabeth gripped my arm, and I tried not to freak out about it. 

“It’s not a room. It’s a corridor.” She was right—the darkness felt…emptier in front of us. There was a warm breeze, like in subway tunnels, only it felt older, more dangerous somehow. I started forward, but Annabeth stopped me. “Don’t take another step,” she warned. “We need to find the exit.” She sounded really scared now, and it was an alarming realization.

“It’s okay,” I promised. “It’s right—” I looked up and realized I couldn’t see where we’d fallen in. The ceiling was solid stone. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions. Annabeth’s hand slipped into mine. Under different circumstances I would’ve been angry or embarrassed, but here in the dark I was glad to know where she was. It was about the only thing I was sure of. 

“Two steps back,” she advised. We stepped backward together like we were in a minefield. “Okay,” she said. “Help me examine the walls.” 

“What for?” 

“The mark of Daedalus,” she said, as if that was supposed to make sense. 

“Uh, okay. What kind of—” 

“Got it!” she said with relief. She set her hand on the wall and pressed against a tiny fissure, which began to glow blue. A Greek symbol appeared: ∆, the Ancient Greek Delta. The roof slid open and we saw the night sky, stars blazing. It was a lot darker than it should’ve been. Metal ladder rungs appeared in the side of the wall, leading up, and I could hear people yelling our names.

I looked nervously at her, and then I began to climb.

We made our way around the rocks and ran into Clarisse and a bunch of other campers carrying torches. “Where have you two been?” Clarisse demanded. “We’ve been looking forever.” 

“But we were gone only a few minutes,” I protested. She looked behind me and realization settled into her expression.

“You went in there.” It wasn’t a question.

“You think so?” I asked incredulously. 

“You mean the Labyrinth?” Annabeth said, coming to stand next to me.

Clarisse frowned at me, and I tried to shake my head as imperceptibly as possible.

“The Lady Artemis has kept me informed,” Annabeth continued, but her tone was a little stiff now.

“Percy! Are you alright?” Chiron asked, trotting up to me.

“We’re fine,” I said. “We fell in a hole.” The other campers that had approached us looked at me skeptically, then at Annabeth. “Honest!” I said. “There were three scorpions after us, so we ran and hid in the rocks. But we were only gone a minute.” 

“You’ve been missing for almost an hour,” Chiron said. “The game is over.”

I noticed at that point that Clarisse was wearing the golden laurels, but she wasn’t bragging about her victory, which was seriously uncharacteristic of her. “They found it, Chiron. We’re sure now.”

Chiron’s lips parted slightly. “We’re sure now?”

“I think we are,” Annabeth said.

A bunch of campers started asking questions, looking about as confused as I was, but Chiron raised his hand for silence. “Tonight is not the right time, and this is not the right place.” He stared at boulders as if he’d just noticed how dangerous they were. “All of you, back to your cabins. Get some sleep. A game well played, but curfew is past!” There was a lot of mumbling and complaints, but the campers drifted off, talking among themselves and giving me suspicious looks. 

Once everyone had gone, Clarisse actually slowly sank down to sit on the ground. “An invasion route,” she said quietly. “Straight into the heart of camp.”

“We should talk about this in the morning,” Chiron said nervously. “We shouldn’t linger here.”

I wanted to argue, but no one else was, so we started to make our way back to camp. Annabeth had gone cold and distant again, walking a few paces ahead while I walked in line with Clarisse. We didn’t talk, but I was actually glad that she was next to me. The woods seemed ten times more hostile now, as if they were unwilling to let us leave alive.

I made it back to my cabin eventually, but I felt restless and nervous.  It was hard to fall asleep, but when I finally did, I dreamed of a prison. I saw a boy in a Greek tunic and sandals crouching alone in a massive stone room. The ceiling was open to the night sky, but the walls were twenty feet high and polished marble, completely smooth. Scattered around the room were wooden crates. Some were cracked and tipped over, as if they’d been flung in there. Bronze tools spilled out of one—a compass, a saw, and a bunch of other things I didn’t recognize. 

The boy huddled in the corner, shivering from cold, or maybe fear. He was spattered in mud. His legs, arms, and face were scraped up as if he’d been dragged here along with the boxes. Then the double oak doors creaked open. Two guards in bronze armor marched in, holding an old man between them. They flung him to the floor in a battered heap. 

“Father!” The boy ran to him. The man’s robes were in tatters. His hair was streaked with gray, and his beard was long and curly. His nose had been broken. His lips were bloody. The boy took the old man’s head in his arms. “What did they do to you?” Then he yelled at the guards. “I’ll kill you!” 

“There will be no killing today,” a voice said. The guards moved aside. Behind them stood a tall man in white robes. He wore a thin circlet of gold on his head. His beard was pointed like a spear blade. His eyes glittered cruelly. “You helped the Athenian kill my Minotaur, Daedalus. You turned my own daughter against me.” 

“You did that yourself, Your Majesty,” the old man croaked. A guard planted a kick in the old man’s ribs. He groaned in agony. 

The young boy cried, “Stop!” 

“You love your maze so much,” the king said, “I have decided to let you stay here. This will be your workshop. Make me new wonders. Amuse me. Every maze needs a monster. You will be mine.” 

“I don’t fear you,” the old man groaned. 

The king smiled coldly. He locked his eyes on the boy. “But a man cares about his son, eh? Displease me, old man, and the next time my guards inflict a punishment, it will be on him!” The king swept out of the room with his guards, and the doors slammed shut, leaving the boy and his father alone in the darkness. 

“What shall we do?” the boy moaned. “Father, they will kill you!” 

The old man swallowed with difficulty. He tried to smile, but it was a gruesome sight with his bloody mouth. “Take heart, my son.” He gazed up at the stars. “I—I will find a way.” A bar lowered across the doors with a fatal BOOM, and I woke in a cold sweat.  I wanted to talk to someone back home, but I wasn’t sure who. Surely not my mother, who was probably already panicked enough as it was, and probably not Paul.

I found myself sneaking into the Big House a few minutes later, definitely going about things more quietly this time. I dialed Rachel’s number into the phone, feeling stupid for calling her so late but hoping she’d pick up anyway.

She did on the second ring. “Hello?” She sounded alert and awake, not the way he’d expect most people to sound at four in the morning.

“Rachel, it’s Percy.”

“Percy! Are you okay? Why are you calling?”

I bit my lip for a moment before continuing. “Bad dreams.”

I expected Rachel to make fun of me, but she was just silent for a moment before speaking. “Me, too.”

“What did you dream about?”

“Um, I’m not really sure how to explain,” she said, dropping her voice to just above a whisper. “I saw this guy wearing these like, old fashioned clothes. He was speaking to this old guy—well, kind of yelling at him, I guess, and he wore a gold—”

“Gold thing on his head,” I finished, feeling cold all over. “Rachel, you and I had the same dream. The same exact one, I think.”

“How?” she asked, almost pleading. “I’m mortal. Why is this happening to me?”

“I wish I knew, believe me,” I whispered to her. “I told you about my mom—”

“I’m not like Sally,” Rachel said emphatically. “She sees through—a different kind of wall than the one I’m seeing through. And for me, I don’t think it’s like the past or the present or the future or whatever. It just feels like this weird, terrifying combination of all three.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, feeling totally useless.

“Do you think that Chiron guy would be able to help me with it?” Rachel asked, then took a trembling breath. “Dude, I’m scared. I don’t like having these dreams. I got these weird flashes since I met you at the Hoover Dam, but I thought it was just one of those hyper-vivid dreams or something. But it’s happening more and more now. I am seeing the most awful things and I can’t—” She faltered, and I realized with some horror that she might have been crying. “I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t, what is happening or will happen or has happened. I’m—I’m fucking terrified, Percy.”

“I know you are,” I replied softly. “And you might be right, Chiron might know something. But you, coming here to camp—”

“I know, I know. It’ll make things weird with you and Annabeth.”

“What? What—no. That’s not it at all,” I spluttered indignantly. “Seriously. It’s just—we don’t let mortals in here. My own mother couldn’t come in. And I swear, it’s not like I don’t want you to. I do.”

Rachel was quiet for a few moments. “I want to talk to Chiron. I don’t really care whether it’s in camp or not. I just need someone that might know more about this than you—no offense.”

“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “I’ll talk to him, okay, Rachel? I’ll try to make it work.”

She sighed on the other line. “Thank you.” We stayed like that for a while, not talking and listening to the faint sounds of each other’s breathing. “Percy,” she said after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“I miss having you here,” she said, so quietly I barely heard it, and hung up.

Chapter Text

Chiron had called a war council the following morning, and even Annabeth and Juniper were there. Clarisse was explaining everything she knew about the Labyrinth, even talked about finding Chris Rodriguez there. She seemed really uncomfortable with the entire thing, but Chiron had decided that it was at least time to bring the head counselors into the loop. 

The entire time she spoke, Clarisse was glaring daggers at everyone around the table except me, surprisingly, as if she was trying to figure out if anyone present could have been the spy. I honestly doubted it, given that most of the counselors looked pretty freaked out by the whole conversation. 

“Luke must have known about the Labyrinth entrance,” Annabeth said when Clarisse was done speaking. “He knew everything about camp.” I thought I heard a little pride in her voice, like she still respected the guy, evil as he was. 

Juniper cleared her throat. “That’s what I was trying to tell you last night. The cave entrance has been there a long time. Luke used to use it.” 

Silena, who had been white as a sheet the entire time, leaned forward and frowned. “You knew about the Labyrinth entrance, and you didn’t say anything?”

Juniper took on a dark green blush. “I didn’t know it was anything serious until last night. I thought it was just some cave.”

“You didn’t find it weird that Luke randomly went in a cave?” Clarisse asked, crossing her arms.

“What you stupid demigods do is none of my business,” Juniper replied sullenly. “Besides—Luke… he scared me. I didn’t want to know what he was doing, to be completely honest with you.”

“Interesting,” said Quintus. “And you believe this young man, Luke, would dare use the Labyrinth as an invasion route?” 

“Definitely,” Clarisse said. “If he could get an army of monsters inside Camp Half-Blood, just pop up in the middle of the woods without having to worry about our magical boundaries, we wouldn’t stand a chance. He could wipe us out easily. He must’ve been planning this for months. He's been sending scouts into the maze. We know because…because I found Chris.” She paused for a second, and I saw a muscle twitch in her jaw. “The point is, Luke has been looking for a way to navigate the maze. He’s searching for Daedalus’s workshop.” 

I remembered my dream the night before—the bloody old man in tattered robes. “The guy who created the maze,” I said.

“Yes,” Annabeth replied. “The greatest architect, the greatest inventor of all time. If the legends are true, his workshop is in the center of the Labyrinth. He’s the only one who knows how to navigate the maze perfectly. If Luke managed to find the workshop and convince Daedalus to help him, Luke wouldn’t have to fumble around searching for paths, or risk losing his army in the maze’s traps. He could navigate anywhere he wanted—quickly and safely. First to Camp Half-Blood to wipe us out. Then…to Olympus.”

Beckendorf put his huge hands on the table. “Back up a sec, Annabeth, you said ‘convince Daedalus’? Isn’t Daedalus dead?” 

Quintus grunted. “I would hope so. He lived, what, three thousand years ago? And even if he were alive, don’t the old stories say he fled from the Labyrinth?” 

Chiron sighed deeply. “That’s the problem, my dear Quintus. No one knows. There are rumors…well, there are many disturbing rumors about Daedalus, but one is that he disappeared back into the Labyrinth toward the end of his life. He might still be there.” 

I thought about the old man I’d seen in my dreams. He’d looked so frail, it was hard to believe he’d lasted another week, much less three thousand years. 

“We need to go in,” Annabeth announced. “We have to find the workshop before Luke does. If Daedalus is alive, we convince him to help us, not Luke. If Ariadne’s string still exists, we make sure it never falls into Luke’s hands.” 

“Wait a second,” I said. “If we’re worried about an attack, why not just blow up the entrance? Seal the tunnel?” 

“Great idea!” Grover said. “I’ll get the dynamite!” 

“It’s not so easy, stupid,” Clarisse growled. “We tried that at the entrance we found in Phoenix. It didn’t go well. Like, I wrecked an entire building and the Labyrinth entrance just shifted a couple of feet. I hate to say it, but brute force isn’t the move this time.”

“You wrecked a building?” Connor asked incredulously.

“We could fight,” Lee Fletcher said. “We know where the entrance is now. We can set up a defensive line and wait for them. If an army tries to come through, they’ll find us waiting with our bows.” 

“We will certainly set up defenses,” Chiron agreed. “But I fear Clarisse is right. The magical borders have kept this camp safe for hundreds of years. If Luke manages to get a large army of monsters into the center of camp, bypassing our boundaries…we may not have the strength to defeat them.” Nobody looked real happy about that news. Chiron usually tried to be upbeat and optimistic. If he was predicting we couldn’t hold off an attack, that wasn’t good. 

“We have to get to Daedalus’s workshop first,” Annabeth insisted. “Find Ariadne’s string and prevent Luke from using it.” 

I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Do you want to find Daedalus’s workshop or do you want to find Luke?”

The temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees and Annabeth slowly turned her head to me. “And what do you mean by that?” she asked.

I scowled and looked at the table. “Nothing. Also, if nobody can navigate in there, what chance do we have?” 

“I’ve been studying architecture for years,” she said. “I know Daedalus’s Labyrinth better than anybody.” 

“From reading about it.” 

“Well, yes.” 

I scoffed. “That’s not enough.” 

“It has to be!” 

“It isn’t!”

“Are you going to help me or not?” she snapped. I realized everyone was watching Annabeth and me like a tennis match. 

Chiron cleared his throat. “First things first. We need a quest. Someone must enter the Labyrinth, find the workshop of Daedalus, and prevent Luke from using the maze to invade this camp.” “Annabeth or Percy should lead,” said Clarisse. “Maybe Annabeth, if she’s familiar with the way the Labyrinth might work.” She still looked uncomfortable with talking about it and entrusting anything to do with the Labyrinth with someone else, but it seemed as though she trusted Annabeth slightly more than she trusted everyone else in the room. There was a murmur of agreement to Clarisse’s proposal. I knew Annabeth had been waiting for her own quest since she was a little kid, but she looked uncomfortable. “You’ve done as much as I have, Clarisse. And… I’m not really a camper, so maybe it’s Artemis’s decision.” she said. “You should go, too.” 

Clarisse shook her head. “I’m not going back in there.” 

Lee Fletcher scoffed. “Don’t tell me you’re scared, Clarisse.” 

Clarisse got to her feet, I thought she was going to pulverize him, but she said in a shaky voice: “You don’t understand anything, freak. I’m never going in there again. Never!” She got to her feet and stormed out of the room.

Lee looked ashamed. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” Chiron said tiredly. “She’s been through a lot. I wouldn’t push her. And Annabeth, I will speak to the Lady Artemis. I’m sure she’ll see the value in you leading the quest Now, do we have agreement that Annabeth should lead?” We all nodded except Quintus. He folded his arms and stared at the table, but I wasn’t sure anyone else noticed. “Very well,” Chiron turned to Annabeth. “My dear, it’s your time to visit the Oracle. Assuming you return to us in one piece, we shall discuss what to do next.” 

She got to her feet, shooting me a poisonous glare before walking out of the room. Grover nudged my leg with his, but I ignored it, instead also getting up to go down to the porch of the Big House.

Waiting for Annabeth was harder than visiting the Oracle myself. I’d heard it speak prophecies twice before. The first time had been in the dusty attic of the Big House, where the spirit of Delphi slept inside the body of a mummified hippie lady. The second time, the Oracle had come out for a little stroll in the woods. I still had nightmares about that. I’d never felt threatened by the Oracle’s presence, but I’d heard stories: campers who’d gone insane, or who’d seen visions so real they died of fear. Quintus, Chiron, and Argus, our security guard, were pacing around in front of the Big House while I sat in one of the armchairs on the porch. They all looked pretty agitated and like they were fighting about something, and I caught Quintus glancing over at me more than once. The other head counselors were milling about, but for the most part they ignored me—probably because I was sitting around with a furious expression on my face.

“Hey, Percy,” said Juniper after a moment, coming over to sit next to me. “I need to tell you something.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

Luke wasn’t the only one I saw around that cave,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?” 

She glanced back at the arena. “I was trying to say something, but he was right there.” 

“Who?” 

“The sword master,” she said. “He was poking around the rocks.” 

My stomach clenched. “Quintus? When?” 

“I don’t know: I don’t pay attention to time. Maybe a week ago, when he first showed up.” “What was he doing? Did he go in?” 

“I—I’m not sure. He’s creepy, Percy. I didn’t even see him come into the glade. Suddenly he was just there. You have to tell Grover it’s too dangerous—” 

“Juni?” Grover said, walking over to us. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Plant biology,” Juniper said immediately, and then gave me a meaningful look. “Come on, Grover, let’s take a walk.” They both started to walk away from the Big House, and I huffed impatiently before falling back in my chair. If Quintus was up to something…I needed Annabeth’s advice, as much as I hated to admit it. She might know what to make of Juniper’s news. But where was she? Whatever was happening with the Oracle, it shouldn’t be taking this long. I was literally about to get up and go inside the Big House when Annabeth came out, looking ashen. 

“My dear!” Chiron called, trotting over to us. “You made it!”

Annabeth glanced sideways at me, a warning in her dark eyes. She bit her lip and stared at me for a moment before turning her attention to Chiron and Quintus. “I got the prophecy. I will lead the quest to find Daedalus’s workshop.” Nobody cheered. I mean, we all liked Annabeth, and we wanted her to have a quest, but this one seemed insanely dangerous. And given the situation with her being more likely to try and find Luke, I was really not happy about the prospect of her being in the Labyrinth. 

Chiron scraped a hoof on the dirt floor. “What did the prophecy say exactly, my dear? The wording is important.” 

Annabeth took a deep breath. “I, ah…well, it said, you shall delve in the darkness of the endless maze...” We waited. “The dead, the traitor, and the lost one raise.” 

Grover perked up. “The lost one! That must mean Pan! That’s great!”

“With the dead and the traitor,” I added. “Not so great.” 

“And?” Chiron asked. “What is the rest?” 

“You shall rise or fall by the ghost king’s hand,” Annabeth said, “the child of Athena’s final stand.” 

Everyone looked around uncomfortably. Annabeth was a daughter of Athena, and a final stand didn’t sound good. 

“Hey…we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Silena said. “Annabeth isn’t the only child of Athena, right?” “But who’s this ghost king?” Beckendorf asked. No one answered. I thought about the Iris-message Annabeth had seen of Nico summoning spirits, and the dream I had about the man with the gold circlet. I had a bad feeling the prophecy was connected to that. 

“Are there more lines?” Chiron asked. “The prophecy does not sound complete.” 

Annabeth hesitated. “I don’t remember exactly.” 

Chiron raised an eyebrow. Annabeth was known for her memory. She never forgot something she heard. Annabeth shifted on her bench. “Something about…Destroy with a hero’s final breath.” 

“And?” Chiron asked. 

She pursed her lips. “Look, the point is, I have to go in. I’ll find the workshop and stop Luke. And…I need help.” She turned to me. “Will you come?” 

I answered faster than I meant to. “I’m in.” 

She smiled for the first time in days, which would have made me feel better under different circumstances. “Grover, you too? The wild god is waiting.” 

Grover seemed to forget how much he hated the underground. The line about the “lost one” had completely energized him. “I’ll pack extra recyclables for snacks!”

Chiron sighed and nodded. “Very well. Let us adjourn. The members of the quest must prepare themselves. Tomorrow at dawn, we send you into the Labyrinth.” 

I went inside to call Rachel after all the other counselors had scattered. Chiron looked a little uncomfortable when I asked, but he let me do it anyway. I didn’t really care, just as long as Annabeth didn’t know what I was doing. 

I didn’t expect Rachel to pick up since it was almost the middle of the day, but she did almost immediately.

“Did something happen?” she said immediately.

“Oh, you know it’s me?”

“I memorized the camp’s number. I mean, I kinda had to, since you call so much.”

“I don’t call you that much,” I responded indignantly.

“Yeah, whatever. Why are you calling?”

“I’m going—off-grid for a while. I won’t be able to contact you for a while, and I just wanted to let you know before I left.”

“Okay… where are you going?”

I bit my lip. “It’s best if I don't say. I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“Being your best friend puts me in danger anyway,” said Rachel sullenly. “But… thanks for telling me anyway.”

“Sure.”

“You’ll be careful, right?”

“I will if you’ll also be careful.”

“I always am. It’s also easier when I’m not with you, Percy,” she said, but her tone was not unkind. “Keep your shit together, please. I want you to be able to start freshman year with me soon.”

I scoffed. “As if they’ll let me in now.”

“Dude, they will. Your guy Paul sorted it all out for you. Unfortunately, you still have to go to school with me.”

I exhaled softly, feeling such an intense wave of relief that I had to lean against the wall. “Oh, no,” I said, but I knew Rachel could hear the sarcasm in my voice. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Me, too. I’ll see you when all this is over, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, and hung up. I turned to leave, but I saw Annabeth standing in the doorway, looking slightly awkward.

“Hi,” she said. “Who were you talking to?”

“My mom,” I replied without skipping a beat. “What are you doing here?” I noticed that she had a thick scroll in her hands and her mouth was set into a grim line. “What’s that?” I asked, jerking my head towards the scroll.

She frowned at the scroll in her hands. “Just trying to do some research. Daedalus’s Labyrinth is so huge. None of the stories agree about anything. The maps just lead from nowhere to nowhere.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” I promised, but I wasn’t sure why I was saying that. It’s not like I entirely wanted this to work out for her, because any success Annabeth might have in the Labyrinth might bring her closer to Luke. I’d already lost her to the Hunters—what if I lost her to him, too?

“I’ve wanted to lead a quest since I was seven,” she said, but she looked devastated. 

“You’re going to be fine,” I told her.

She looked at me gratefully, but then stared down at the scroll again. “I’m worried, Percy. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to do this. Or Grover.” 

“Hey, we’re your friends,” I said, uncomfortably shifting from one foot to another. “We wouldn’t miss it.” 

“But…” She stopped herself. 

“What is it?” I asked. “The prophecy?”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” she said in a small voice. 

“What was the last line?” Then she did something that really surprised me. She blinked back tears and put out her arms. 

Almost as though I had no control over my limbs, I found myself walking towards her, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her close to me. I had pushed her away when she hugged me in the forest a few months back, but I couldn’t deny that I’ve been wanting to hold her ever since our last quest had ended. Her hair still smelled the same and she still looked the same and it honestly felt really nice to hug her, even though there was a colony of butterflies going nuts in my stomach and she was shaking like a leaf. 

“It’s okay,” I said awkwardly, rubbing her back. “You’ll be fine.”

She pulled back slightly, her brows drawn together. “I’m not worried about myself.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She opened her mouth to speak, but someone cleared their throat behind her and I looked up to see Malcolm standing outside the door. I let go of Annabeth immediately and stepped away, and she rubbed her hands on her pants, keeping her eyes on the ground.

“Sorry,” said Malcolm. “Chiron told me to come find you, Annabeth.”

“Tell Chiron I’ll be outside in a minute,” she said, and Malcolm nearly tripped over himself trying to leave. She looked back up at me, and there were tears in her eyes. “Percy—what you said earlier about finding Luke… would that be such a bad thing?”

My mouth fell open while I tried to figure out something to say. I eventually settled for “are you serious?”

Annabeth rubbed her eyes. “He’s not a bad guy, Percy.”

“Oh, sure. He’s a really great guy who wants to do super bad things all the time.”

“He’s not doing it with malicious intent! I’m not saying he’s on the right side, but he’s got a real reason for doing the things that he does. Even you can admit that, can’t you?”

The truth was that I could, but I really didn’t want to give Annabeth that satisfaction, so I lied and said, “absolutely not.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but her shoulders slumped slightly and she looked away from me. “Yeah, alright. I should probably go talk to Chiron.”

“Wait,” I said. “About your prophecy. The line about a hero’s last breath—” 

“You’re wondering which hero? I don’t know.” 

“No. Something else. I was thinking the last line usually rhymes with the one before it. Was it something about—did it end in the word death?” 

Annabeth stared down at her scroll again, taking deep, slow breaths. “You’d better go, Percy. Get ready for the quest. I’ll—I’ll see you in the morning.”

I bit my lip and left, but a really, really bad feeling was starting to come over me; I was really starting to think that one of us wouldn’t come back from this quest alive.

At least I got a good night’s sleep before the quest, right? Wrong. That night in my dreams, I was outside the door leading to the stateroom of the Princess Andromeda. Luke was standing near me. He wore an ancient Greek chiton and a white himation, a kind of cape that flowed down his shoulders. The white clothes made him look timeless and a little surreal, like one of the minor gods on Mount Olympus. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been bloody and beaten up. Now he looked perfectly fine. Almost too healthy.  Next to him stood Thalia, also in a chiton, a pale blue one, her dark hair just past her chin now in glossy waves. It was a weird and uncomfortable sight, seeing her in anything other than dark clothes. 

“You have to be careful,” she said, reaching out to touch Luke’s face. He had been staring intently at the stateroom door, but leaned into Thalia’s touch. “You know you can’t fully trust him, right?”

“He’s a means to an end,” Luke muttered, but the words sounded flat, as if he’d rehearsed them.

“Exactly,” Thalia whispered, nodding. “We’ll do our part, but at the end of the day it’s about you and me, right?”

“And all the others left behind,” Luke told her, and these words sounded more passionate. To my horror, he leaned forward to kiss her, moving  his hand into her hair. If I could throw up in my dreams, I probably would have. The kiss was starting to get seriously heated, with Luke pushing Thalia into the wall by the door, and I was genuinely considering ways I could kill myself in the dream so I would be forced to wake up in real life when she pushed him away, her lips red and swollen. “Go now. He probably won’t like to be kept waiting.”

Luke took a deep breath and touched Thalia’s cheek once before opening the stateroom door and walking in. I followed him quietly, knowing that neither he nor Thalia could see me.

The windows were open on a moonlit sea. Cold wind rustled the velvet drapes. He kept walking forward and then knelt on a Persian rug in front of the golden sarcophagus of Kronos. In the moonlight, Luke’s dark hair looked pure white.

“Our spies report success, my lord,” he said. “Camp Half-Blood is sending a quest, as you predicted. Our side of the bargain is almost complete.” 

Excellent . The voice of Kronos didn’t so much speak as pierce my mind like a dagger. It was freezing with cruelty. Once we have the means to navigate, I will lead the vanguard through myself . 

Luke closed his eyes as if collecting his thoughts. “My lord, perhaps it is too soon. Perhaps Krios or Hyperion should lead—” 

No . The voice was quiet but absolutely firm. I will lead. One more heart shall join our cause, and that will be sufficient. At last I shall rise fully from Tartarus . 

“But the form, my lord…” Luke’s voice started shaking. 

Show me your sword, Luke Castellan.  

Luke drew his sword. Backbiter’s double edge glowed wickedly—half steel, half celestial bronze. I’d almost been killed several times by that sword. It was an evil weapon, able to kill both mortals and monsters. It was the only blade I really feared. Almost against my will, I thought about what would happen if anyone tried to kill Rachel with that sword, and immediately felt nauseated.

You pledged yourself to me , Kronos reminded him. You took this sword as proof of your oath. “Yes, my lord. It’s just—” 

You wanted power. I gave you that. You are now beyond harm. Soon you will rule the world of gods and mortals. Do you not wish to avenge yourself? To see Olympus destroyed? 

A shiver ran through Luke’s body. “Yes.” 

The coffin glowed, golden light filling the room. Then make ready the strike force. As soon as the bargain is done, we shall move forward. First, Camp Half-Blood will be reduced to ashes. Once those bothersome heroes are eliminated, we will march on Olympus . There was a knock on the stateroom doors. The light of the coffin faded. Luke rose. He sheathed his sword, adjusted his white clothes, and took a deep breath. “Come in.” 

The doors opened. Two dracaenae slithered in—snake women with double serpent trunks instead of legs. Between them walked Kelli, the empousa cheerleader from my freshman orientation. 

“Hello, Luke,” Kelli smiled. She was wearing a red dress and she looked gorgeous, but I’d seen her real form. I knew what she was hiding: mismatched legs, red eyes, fangs, and flaming hair. 

“What is it, demon?” Luke’s voice was cold. “I told you not to disturb me.” 

Kelli pouted. “That’s not very nice. You look tense. How about a nice shoulder massage?” 

Luke stepped back. “If you have something to report, say it. Otherwise leave!” 

“God, you’re so disgustingly loyal to that Zeus girl. You used to be fun to hang around.”

“Give me your report or get the hell out of my face,” Luke snapped.

Kelli shrugged. “Fine. The advanced team is ready, as you wanted. We can leave—” She frowned. 

“What is it?” Luke asked. 

“A presence,” Kelli said. “Your senses are getting dull, Luke. We’re being watched.” 

She scanned the stateroom. Her eyes focused right on me. Her face withered into a hag’s. She bared her fangs and lunged. 

I woke with a sharp gasp, clutching the sheets. I didn’t know how Kelli could sense me in a dream, but I’d heard more than I wanted to know. An army was ready. Kronos would lead it personally. All they needed was a way to navigate the Labyrinth so they could invade and destroy Camp Half-Blood, and Luke apparently thought that was going to happen very soon. I was tempted to go wake up Annabeth and tell her, middle of the night or not. 

Then I realized the room was lighter than it should have been. A blue and-green glow was coming from the saltwater fountain, brighter and more urgent than the night before. It was almost like the water was humming. 

I got out of bed and approached. No voice spoke out of the water this time, asking for a deposit. I got the feeling the fountain was waiting for me to make the first move. I probably should’ve gone back to bed, but instead I looked intently at the fountain and said, “you’re trying to tell me something.”

No response from the fountain. 

“All right,” I said. “Show me Nico di Angelo.” I didn’t even throw a coin in, but this time it didn’t matter. It was like some other force had control of the water besides Iris the messenger goddess. The water shimmered. Nico appeared, but he was no longer in the Underworld. He was standing in a graveyard under a starry sky. Giant willow trees loomed all around him. He was watching some gravediggers at work. I heard shovels and saw dirt flying out of a hole. Nico was dressed in a black cloak. The night was foggy. It was warm and humid, and frogs were croaking. A large Wal-Mart bag sat next to Nico’s feet. 

“Is it deep enough yet?” Nico asked. He sounded irritated.

“Nearly, my lord.” I thought it was the same ghost that Annabeth mentioned having seen with Nico before, the faint shimmering image of a man. “But, my lord, I tell you, this is unnecessary. You already have me for advice.” 

“I want a second opinion!” Nico snapped his fingers, and the digging stopped. Two figures climbed out of the hole. They weren’t people—they were skeletons in ragged clothes. “You are dismissed,” Nico said. “Thank you.” The skeletons collapsed into piles of bones. 

“You might as well thank the shovels,” the ghost complained. “They have as much sense.” 

Nico ignored him. He reached into his Wal-Mart bag and pulled out a twelve-pack of Coke. He popped open a can. Instead of drinking it, he poured it into the grave. “Let the dead taste again,” he murmured. “Let them rise and take this offering. Let them remember.” He dropped the rest of the Cokes into the grave and pulled out a white paper bag decorated with cartoons. I hadn’t seen one in years, but I recognized it—a McDonald’s Happy Meal. He turned it upside down and shook the fries and hamburger into the grave. 

“In my day, we used animal blood,” the ghost mumbled. “It’s perfectly good enough. They can’t taste the difference.” 

“I will treat them with respect,” Nico said. 

“At least let me keep the toy,” the ghost said. 

“Be quiet!” Nico ordered. He emptied another twelve-pack of soda and three more Happy Meals into the grave, then began chanting in Ancient Greek. I caught only some of the words—a lot about the dead and memories and returning from the grave. Real happy stuff. The grave started to bubble. Frothy brown liquid rose to the top like the whole thing was filling with soda. The fog thickened. The frogs stopped croaking. Dozens of figures began to appear among the gravestones: bluish, vaguely human shapes. Nico had summoned the dead with Coke and cheeseburgers. 

A single figure floated forward and knelt at the pool. It made slurping sounds as it drank. Its ghostly hands scooped French fries out of the pool. When it stood again, I could see it much more clearly—a teenage guy in Greek armor. He had curly hair and green eyes, a clasp shaped like a seashell on his cloak. “Who are you?” Nico said. “Speak.”

The young man frowned as if trying to remember. Then he spoke in a voice like dry, crumpling paper: “I am Theseus.” 

No way . This couldn’t be the Theseus. He was just a kid. I’d grown up hearing stories about him fighting the Minotaur and stuff, but I’d always pictured him as this huge, buff guy. The ghost I was looking at wasn’t strong or tall. And he wasn’t any older than I was. 

“How can I retrieve my sister?” Nico asked. 

Theseus’s eyes were lifeless as glass. “Do not try. It is madness.” I felt the sadness and the regret radiating off of him even through the Iris-message, so strong that I had to grip the edge of the fountain to stay standing.

“Just tell me!” Nico snapped, looking frantic.

“My stepfather died,” Theseus said, closing his eyes as he tried to remember more details. “He threw himself into the sea because he thought I was dead in the Labyrinth. I wanted to bring him back, but I could not.”

Nico’s ghost hissed. “My lord, the soul exchange! Ask him about that!” 

Theseus scowled. “That voice. I know that voice.” 

“No you don’t, fool!” the ghost said. “Answer the lord’s questions and nothing more!” 

“I know you,” Theseus insisted, as if struggling to recall. 

“I want to hear about my sister,” Nico said, ignoring them both. “Will this quest into the Labyrinth help me win her back?” 

Theseus was looking for the ghost, but apparently couldn’t see him. Slowly he turned his eyes back on Nico. “The Labyrinth is treacherous. There is only one thing that saw me through: the love of a mortal girl. The string was only part of the answer. It was the princess who guided me.” 

“We don’t need any of that,” the ghost said. “I will guide you, my lord. Ask him if it is true about an exchange of souls. He will tell you.” 

“A soul for a soul,” Nico asked. “Is it true?” 

“I—I must say yes. But the specter—” 

“Just answer the questions, knave!” the ghost said.

“I want to see my sister!” Nico demanded, nearly in tears. “Where is she?”

“He is coming,” Theseus said fearfully. “He has sensed your summons. He comes.” 

“Who?” Nico asked.

“He comes to find the source of this power,” Theseus said. “You must release us.” The water in my fountain began to tremble, humming with power. I realized the whole cabin was shaking. The noise grew louder. The image of Nico in the graveyard started to glow until it was painful to watch. 

“Stop,” I said out loud. “Stop it!”  

The fountain began to crack and purple light threw horrible, ghostly shadows on the cabin walls, as if the specters were escaping right out of the fountain. In desperation I uncapped Riptide and slashed at the fountain, cleaving it in two. Salt water spilled everywhere, and the great stone fountain crashed to the floor in pieces.

I sank to the ground, shivering from what I’d seen, unable to move or go back to sleep until Annabeth and Grover found me a few hours later, sitting silently on the cold floor.