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CHAPTER ONE:I BATTLE THE CHEERLEADING SQUAD
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The last thing I wanted to do on
my summer break was blow up another
school. But there I was Monday
morning, the first week of June, sitting in
my mom’s car in front of Goode
High School on East 81st.
Goode was this big brownstone
building overlooking the East River. A
bunch of BMWs and Lincoln Town
Cars were parked out front. Staring up
at the fancy stone archway, I
wondered how long it would take me to get
kicked out of this place.
“Just relax.” My mom didn’t sound
relaxed. “It’s only an orientation tour.
And remember, dear, this is
Paul’s school. So try not to…you know.”
“Destroy it?”
“Yes.”
Paul Blofis, my mom’s boyfriend,
was standing out front, greeting future
ninth graders as they came up the
steps. With his salt-and-pepper hair, denim
clothes, and leather jacket, he
reminded me of a TV actor, but he was just an
English teacher. He’d managed to
convince Goode High School to accept
me for ninth grade, despite the
fact that I’d gotten kicked out of every school
I’d ever attended. I’d tried to
warn him it wasn’t a good idea, but he
wouldn’t listen.
I looked at my mom. “You haven’t
told him the truth about me, have you?
She tapped her fingers nervously
on the wheel. She was dressed up for a
job interview—her best blue dress
and high-heeled shoes.
“I thought we should wait,” she
admitted.
“So we don’t scare him away.”
“I’m sure orientation will be
fine, Percy, It’s only one morning.”
“Great,” I mumbled. “I can get
expelled before I start the school year.”
“Think positive. Tomorrow you’re
off to camp! After orientation, you’ve
got your date—”
“It’s not a date!” I protested.
“It’s just Annabeth, Mom. Jeez!”
“She’s coming all the way from
camp to meet you.”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’re going to the movies.”
“Yeah.”
“Just the two of you.”
“Mom!”
She held up her hands in
surrender, but I could tell she was trying hard not
to smile. “You’d better get
inside, dear. I’ll see you tonight.”
I was about to get out of the car
when I looked over the steps of the school.
Paul Blofis was greeting a girl
with frizzy red hair. She wore a maroon Tshirt
and ratty jeans decorated with
marker drawings. When she turned, I
caught a glimpse of her face, and
the hairs on my arms stood straight up.
“Percy?” my mom asked. “What’s
wrong?”
“N-nothing,” I stammered. “Does
the school have a side entrance?”
“Down the block on the right.
Why?”
“I’ll see you later.”
My mom started to say something,
but I got out of the car and ran, hoping
the redheaded girl wouldn’t see
me.
What was she doing here?
Not even my luck could be this bad.
Yeah, right. I was about to find
out my luck could get a lot worse.
* * *
Sneaking into orientation didn’t
work out too well. Two cheerleaders in
purple-and-white uniforms were
standing at the side entrance, waiting to
ambush freshmen.
“Hi!” They smiled, which I
figured was the first and last time any
cheerleaders would be that
friendly to me. One was blond with icy blue eyes.
The other was African American
with dark curly hair like Medusa’s (and
believe me, I know what I’m
talking about). Both girls had their names
stitched in cursive on their
uniforms, but with my dyslexia, the words looked
like meaningless spaghetti.
“Welcome to Goode,” the blond
girl said. “You are so going to love it.”
But as she looked me up and down,
her expression said something more
like, Eww, who is this loser?
The other girl stepped
uncomfortably close to me. I studied the stitching
on her uniform and made out Kelli.
She smelled like roses and something
else I recognized from riding
lessons at camp—the scent of freshly washed
horses. It was a weird smell for
a cheerleader. Maybe she owned a horse or
something. Anyway, she stood so
close I got the feeling she was going to try
to push me down the steps.
“What’s your name, fish?”
“Fish?”
“Freshman.”
“Uh, Percy.”
The girls exchanged looks.
“Oh, Percy Jackson,” the blond
one said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
That sent a major Uh-oh chill
down my back. They were blocking the
entrance, smiling in a
not-very-friendly way. My hand crept instinctively
toward my pocket, where I kept my
lethal ballpoint pen, Riptide.
Then another voice came from
inside the building. “Percy?” It was Paul
Blofis, somewhere down the
hallway. I’d never been so glad to hear his
voice.
The cheerleaders backed off. I
was so anxious to get past them I
accidentally kneed Kelli in the
thigh.
Clang.
Her leg made a hollow, metallic
sound, like I’d just hit a flagpole.
“Ow,” she muttered. “Watch it, fish.”
I glanced down, but her leg
looked like a regular old leg. I was too
freaked out to ask questions. I
dashed into the hall, the cheerleaders laughing
behind me.
“There you are!” Paul told me.
“Welcome to Goode!”
“Hey, Paul—uh, Mr. Blofis.” I
glanced back, but the weird cheerleaders
had disappeared.
“Percy, you look like you’ve seen
a ghost.”
“Yeah, uh—”
Paul clapped me on the back.
“Listen, I know you’re nervous, but don’t
worry. We get a lot of kids here
with ADHD and dyslexia. The teachers
know how to help.”
I almost wanted to laugh. If only
ADHD and dyslexia were my biggest
worries. I mean, I knew Paul was
trying to help, but if I told him the truth
about me, he’d either think I was
crazy or he’d run away screaming. Those
cheerleaders, for instance. I had
a bad feeling about them….
Then I looked down the hall, and
I remembered I had another problem.
The redheaded girl I’d seen on
the front steps was just coming in the main
entrance.
Don’t notice me, I prayed.
She noticed me. Her eyes widened.
“Where’s the orientation?” I
asked Paul.
“The gym. That way. But—”
“Bye.”
“Percy?” he called, but I was
already running.
* * *
I thought I’d lost her.
A bunch of kids were heading for
the gym, and soon I was just one of
three hundred fourteen-year-olds
all crammed into the bleachers. A
marching band played an
out-of-tune fight song that sounded like somebody
hitting a bag of cats with a
metal baseball bat. Older kids, probably student
council members, stood up front
modeling the Goode school uniform and
looking all, Hey, we’re cool. Teachers
milled around, smiling and shaking
hands with students. The walls of
the gym were plastered with big purpleand-
white banners that said WELCOME
FUTURE FRESHMEN, GOODE
IS GOOD, WE’RE ALL FAMILY, and a
bunch of other happy slogans that
pretty much made me want to throw
up.
None of the other freshmen looked
thrilled to be here, either. I mean,
coming to orientation in June,
when school doesn’t even start until
September, is not cool. But at
Goode, “We prepare to excel early!” At least
that’s what the brochure said.
The marching band stopped
playing. A guy in a pinstripe suit came to the
microphone and started talking,
but the sound echoed around the gym so I
had no idea what he was saying.
He might’ve been gargling.
Someone grabbed my shoulder,”
What are you doing here?”
It was her: my redheaded
nightmare.
“Rachel Elizabeth Dare,” I said.
Her jaw dropped like she couldn’t
believe I had the nerve to remember
her name. “And you’re Percy
somebody. I didn’t get your full name last
December when you tried to kill
me.”
“Look, I wasn’t—I didn’t—What are
you doing here?”
“Same as you, I guess.
Orientation.”
“You live in New York?”
“What, you thought I lived at the
Hoover Dam?”
It had never occurred to me.
Whenever I thought about her (and I’m not
saying I thought about
her; she just like crossed my mind from time to time,
okay?), I always figured she
lived in the Hoover Dam area, since that’s
where I’d met her. We’d spent
maybe ten minutes together, during which
time I’d accidentally swung a
sword at her, she’d saved my life, and I’d run
away chased by a band of
supernatural killing machines. You know, your
typical chance meeting.
Some guy behind us whispered,
“Hey, shut up. The cheerleaders are
talking!”
“Hi, guys!” a girl bubbled into
the microphone. It was the blonde I’d seen
at the entrance. “My name is
Tammi, and this is like, Kelli.” Kelli did a
cartwheel.
Next to me, Rachel yelped like
someone had stuck her with a pin. A few
kids looked over and snickered,
but Rachel just stared at the cheerleaders in
horror. Tammi didn’t seem to
notice the outburst. She started talking about
all the great ways we could get
involved during our freshman year.
“Run,” Rachel told me. “Now.”
“Why?”
Rachel didn’t explain. She pushed
her way to the edge of the bleachers,
ignoring the frowning teachers
and grumbling kids she was stepping on.
I hesitated. Tammi was explaining
how we were about to break into small
groups and tour the school. Kelli
caught my eye and gave me an amused
smile, like she was waiting to
see what I’d do. It would look bad if I left
right now. Paul Blofis was down
there with the rest of the teachers. He’d
wonder what was wrong.
Then I thought about Rachel
Elizabeth Dare, and the special ability she’d
shown last winter at Hoover Dam.
She’d been able to see a group of security
guards who weren’t guards at all,
who weren’t even human. My heart
pounding, I got up and followed
her out of the gym.
* * *
I found Rachel in the band room.
She was hiding behind a bass drum in
the percussion section.
“Get over here!” she said. “Keep
your head down!”
I felt pretty silly hiding behind
a bunch of bongos, but I crouched down
beside her.
“Did they follow you?” Rachel
asked.
“You mean the cheerleaders?”
She nodded nervously.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “What
are they? What did you see?”
Her green eyes were bright with
fear. She had a sprinkle of freckles on her
face that reminded me of
constellations. Her maroon T-shirt read
HARVARD ART DEPT. “You…you
wouldn’t believe me.”
“Oh, yeah, I would,” I promised.
“I know you can see through the Mist.”
“The what?”
“The Mist. It’s…well, it’s like
this veil that hides the way things really are.
Some mortals are born with the
ability to see through it. Like you.”
She studied me carefully. “You
did that at Hoover Dam. You called me a
mortal. Like you’re not.”
I felt like punching a bongo.
What was I thinking? I could never explain. I
shouldn’t even try.
“Tell me,” she begged. “You know
what it means. All these horrible
things I see?”
“Look, this is going to sound
weird. Do you know anything about Greek
myths?”
“Like…the Minotaur and the
Hydra?”
“Yeah, just try not to say those
names when I’m around, okay?”
“And the Furies,” she said,
warming up. “And the Sirens, and—”
“Okay!” I looked around the band
hall, sure that Rachel was going to
make a bunch of bloodthirsty
nasties pop out of the walls; but we were still
alone. Down the hallway, I heard
a mob of kids coming out of the
gymnasium. They were starting the
group tours. We didn’t have long to talk.
“All those monsters,” I said,
“all the Greek gods—they’re real.”
“I knew it!”
I would’ve been more comfortable
if she’d called me a liar, but Rachel
looked like I’d just confirmed
her worst suspicion.
“You don’t know how hard it’s
been,” she said. “For years I thought I was
going crazy. I couldn’t tell
anybody. I couldn’t—” Her eyes narrowed.
“Wait. Who are you? I mean really?”
“I’m not a monster.”
“Well, I know that. I could see
if you were. You look like…you. But
you’re not human, are you?”
I swallowed. Even though I’d had
three years to get used to who I was, I’d
never talked about it with a
regular mortal before—I mean, except for my
mom, but she already knew. I
don’t know why, but I took the plunge.
“I’m a half-blood,” I said. “I’m
half human.”
“And half what?”
Just then Tammi and Kelli stepped
into the band room. The doors
slammed shut behind them.
“There you are, Percy Jackson,” Tammi
said. “It’s time for your
orientation.”
* * *
“They’re horrible!” Rachel
gasped.
Tammi and Kelli were still
wearing their purple-and-white cheerleader
costumes, holding pom-poms from
the rally.
“What do they really look like?”
I asked, but Rachel seemed too stunned
to answer.
“Oh, forget her.” Tammi gave me a
brilliant smile and started walking
toward us. Kelli stayed by the
doors, blocking our exit.
They’d trapped us. I knew we’d
have to fight our way out, but Tammi’s
smile was so dazzling it distracted
me. Her blue eyes were beautiful, and the
way her hair swept over her
shoulders…
“Percy,” Rachel warned.
I said something really
intelligent like, “Uhhh?”
Tammi was getting closer. She
held out her pom-poms.
“Percy!” Rachel’s voice seemed to
be coming from a long way away.
“Snap out of it!”
It took all my willpower, but I
got my pen out of my pocket and uncapped
it. Riptide grew into a
three-foot-long bronze sword, its blade glowing with a
faint golden light. Tammi’s smile
turned to a sneer.
“Oh, come on,” she protested.
“You don’t need that. How about a kiss
instead?”
She smelled like roses and clean
animal fur—a weird but somehow
intoxicating smell.
Rachel pinched my arm, hard.
“Percy, she wants to bite you! Look at
her!”
She’s just jealous,” Tammi looked
back at Kelli. “May I, mistress?”
Kelli was still blocking the
door, licking her lips hungrily. “Go ahead,
Tammi. You’re doing fine.”
Tammi took another step forward,
but I leveled the tip of my sword at her
chest. “Get back.”
She snarled. “Freshmen,” she said
with disgust. “This is our school, halfblood.
We feed on whom we choose!”
Then she began to change. The
color drained out of her face and arms.
Her skin turned as white as
chalk, her eyes completely red. Her teeth grew
into fangs.
“A vampire!” I stammered. Then I
noticed her legs. Below the
cheerleader skirt, her left leg
was brown and shaggy with a donkey’s hoof.
Her right leg was shaped like a
human leg, but it was made of bronze. “Uhh,
a vampire with—”
“Don’t mention the legs!” Tammi
snapped. “It’s rude to make fun!”
She advanced on her weird,
mismatched legs. She looked totally bizarre,
especially with the pom-poms, but
I couldn’t laugh—not facing those red
eyes and sharp fangs.
“A vampire, you say?” Kelli
laughed. “That silly legend was based on us,
you fool. We are empousai,
servants of Hecate.”
“Mmmm.” Tammi edged closer to me.
“Dark magic formed us from
animal, bronze, and ghost! We
exist to feed on the blood of young men.
Now come, give me that kiss!”
She bared her fangs. I was so
paralyzed I couldn’t move, but Rachel threw
a snare drum at the empousa’s
head.
The demon hissed and batted the
drum away. It went rolling along the
aisles between music stands, its
springs rattling against the drumhead.
Rachel threw a xylophone, but the
demon just swatted that away, too.
“I don’t usually kill girls,”
Tammi growled. “But for you, mortal, I’ll
make an exception. Your eyesight
is a little too good!”
She lunged at Rachel.
“No!” I slashed with Riptide.
Tammi tried to dodge my blade, but I sliced
straight through her cheerleader
uniform, and with a horrible wail she
exploded into dust all over
Rachel.
Rachel coughed. She looked like
she’d just had a sack of flour dumped on
her head. “Gross!”
“Monsters do that,” I said.
“Sorry.”
“You killed my trainee!” Kelli
yelled. “You need a lesson in school spirit,
half-blood!”
Then she too began to change. Her
wiry hair turned into flickering flames.
Her eyes turned red. She grew
fangs. She loped toward us, her brass foot and
hoof clopping unevenly on the
band-room floor.
“I am senior empousa,” she
growled. “No hero has bested me in a
thousand years.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Then you’re
overdue!”
Kelli was a lot faster than
Tammi. She dodged my first strike and rolled
into the brass section, knocking
over a row of trombones with a mighty
crash. Rachel scrambled out of
the way. I put myself between her and the
empousa. Kelli circled
us, her eyes going from me to the sword.
“Such a pretty little blade,” she
said. “What a shame it stands between
us.”
Her form shimmered—sometimes a
demon, sometimes a pretty
cheerleader. I tried to keep my
mind focused, but it was really distracting.
“Poor dear.” Kelli chuckled. “You
don’t even know what’s happening, 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.”
From down the hall, I heard
voices. A tour group was approaching. A man
was saying something about locker
combinations.
The empousa’s eyes lit up.
“Excellent! We’re about to have company!”
She picked up a tuba and threw it
at me. Rachel and I ducked. The tuba
sailed over our heads and crashed
through the window.
The voices in the hall died down.
“Percy!” Kelli shouted,
pretending to be scared, “why did you throw
that?”
I was too surprised to answer.
Kelli picked up a music stand and swiped a
row of clarinets and flutes.
Chairs and musical instruments crashed to the
floor.
“Stop it!” I said.
People were tromping down the
hall now, coming in our direction.
“Time to greet our visitors!”
Kelli bared her fangs and ran for the doors. I
charged after her with Riptide. I
had to stop her from hurting the mortals.
“Percy, don’t!” Rachel shouted.
But I hadn’t realized what Kelli was up to
until it was too late.
Kelli flung open the doors. Paul
Blofis and a bunch of freshmen stepped
back in shock. I raised my sword.
At the last second, the empousa
turned toward me like a cowering victim.
“Oh no, please!” she cried. I
couldn’t stop my blade. It was already in
motion.
Just before the celestial bronze
hit her, Kelli exploded into flames like a
Molotov cocktail. Waves of fire
splashed over everything. I’d never seen a
monster do that before, but I
didn’t have time to wonder about it. I backed
into the band room as the flames
engulfed the doorway.
“Percy?” Paul Blofis looked
completely stunned, staring at me from
across the fire. “What have you
done?”
Kids screamed and ran down the
hall. The fire alarm wailed. Ceiling
sprinklers hissed to life.
In the chaos, Rachel tugged on my
sleeve. “You have to get out of here!”
She was right. The school was in
flames and I’d be held responsible.
Mortals couldn’t see through the
Mist properly. To them it would look like
I’d just attacked a helpless
cheerleader in front of a group of witnesses.
There was no way I could explain
it. I turned from Paul and sprinted for the
broken band room window.
* * *
I burst out of the alley onto
East 81st
and
ran straight into Annabeth.
“Hey, you’re out early!” she
laughed, grabbing my shoulders to keep me
from tumbling into the street.
“Watch where you’re going, Seaweed Brain.”
For a split second she was in a
good mood and everything was fine. She
was wearing jeans and an orange
camp T-shirt and her clay bead necklace.
Her blond hair was pulled back in
a ponytail. Her gray eyes sparkled. She
looked like she was ready to
catch a movie, have a cool afternoon hanging
out together.
Then Rachel Elizabeth Dare, still
covered in monster dust, came charging
out of the alley, yelling,
“Percy, wait up!”
Annabeth’s smile melted. She
stared at Rachel, then at the school. For the
first time, she seemed to notice
the black smoke and ringing fire alarms.
She frowned at me. “What did you
do this time? And who is this?”
“Oh, Rachel—Annabeth.
Annabeth—Rachel. Um, she’s a friend, I
guess.”
I wasn’t sure what else to call
Rachel. I mean, I barely knew her, but after
being in two life-or-death
situations together, I couldn’t just call her nobody.
“Hi,” Rachel said. Then she
turned to me. “You are in so much trouble.
And you still owe me an
explanation!”
Police sirens wailed on FDR
Drive.
“Percy,” Annabeth said coldly.
“We should go.”
“I want to know more about
half-bloods,” Rachel insisted. “And monsters.
And this stuff about the gods.”
She grabbed my arm, whipped out a
permanent marker, and wrote a
phone number on my hand. “You’re going to
call me and explain, okay? You
owe me that. Now get going.”
“But—”
“I’ll make up some story,” Rachel
said. “I’ll tell them it wasn’t your fault.
Just go!”
She ran back toward the school,
leaving Annabeth and me in the street.
“Hey!” I jogged after her. “There
were these two empousai,” I tried to
explain. “They were cheerleaders,
see, and they said camp was going to burn,
and—”
“You told a mortal girl about
half-bloods?”
“She can see through the Mist.
She saw the monsters before I did.”
“So you told her the truth?”
“She recognized me from Hoover
Dam, so—”
“You’ve met her before?”
“Um, last winter. But seriously,
I barely know her.”
“She’s kind of cute.”
“I—I never thought about it.”
Annabeth kept walking toward York
Avenue.
“I’ll deal with the school,” I
promised, anxious to change the subject.
“Honest, it’ll be fine.”
Annabeth wouldn’t even look at
me. “I guess our afternoon is off. We
should get you out of here, now
that the police will be searching for you.”
Behind us, smoke billowed up from
Goode High School. In the dark
column of ashes, I thought I
could almost see a face—a she-demon with red
eyes, laughing at me.
Your pretty
little camp in flames,
Kelli had said. Your friends made slaves
to the Lord of
Time.
“You’re right,” I told Annabeth,
my heart sinking. “We have to get to
Camp Half-Blood. Now.”
CHAPTER TWO:THE UNDERWORLD SENDS ME A PRANK CALL
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Nothing caps off the perfect
morning like a long taxi ride with an angry
girl.
I tried to talk to Annabeth, but
she was acting like I’d just punched her
grandmother. All I managed to get
out of her was that she’d had a monsterinfested
spring in San Francisco; she’d
come back to camp twice since
Christmas but wouldn’t tell me
why (which kind of ticked me off, because
she hadn’t even told me she was
in New York); and she’d learned nothing
about the whereabouts of Nico di
Angelo (long story).
“Any word on Luke?” I asked.
She shook her head. I knew this
was a touchy subject for her. Annabeth
had always admired Luke, the
former head counselor for Hermes who had
betrayed us and joined the evil
Titan Lord Kronos. She wouldn’t admit it,
but I knew she still liked him.
When we’d fought Luke on Mount Tamalpais
last winter, he’d somehow
survived a fifty-foot fall off a cliff. Now, as far as
I knew, he was still sailing
around on his demon-infested cruise ship while
his chopped-up Lord Kronos
re-formed, bit by bit, in a golden sarcophagus,
biding his time until he had
enough power to challenge the Olympian gods.
In demigod-speak, we call this a
“problem.”
“Mount Tam is still overrun with
monsters,” Annabeth said. “I didn’t dare
go close, but I don’t think Luke
is up there. I think I would know if he was.”
That didn’t make me feel much
better. “What about Grover?”
“He’s at camp,” she said. “We’ll
see him today.”
“Did he have any luck? I mean,
with the search for Pan?”
Annabeth fingered her bead
necklace, the way she does when she’s
worried.
“You’ll see,” she said. But she
didn’t explain.
As we headed through Brooklyn, I
used Annabeth’s phone to call my
mom. Half-bloods try not to use
cell phones if we can avoid it, because
broadcasting our voices is like
sending up a flare to the monsters: Here I am!
Please eat me
now! But
I figured this call was important. I left a message on
our home voice mail, trying to
explain what had happened at Goode. I
probably didn’t do a very good
job. I told my mom I was fine, she shouldn’t
worry, but I was going to stay at
camp until things cooled down. I asked her
to tell Paul Blofis I was sorry.
We rode in silence after that.
The city melted away until we were off the
expressway and rolling through
the countryside of northern Long Island,
past orchards and wineries and
fresh produce stands.
I stared at the phone number
Rachel Elizabeth Dare had scrawled on my
hand. I knew it was crazy, but I
was tempted to call her. Maybe she could
help me understand what the empousa
had been talking about—the camp
burning, my friends imprisoned.
And why had Kelli exploded into flames?
I knew monsters never truly died.
Eventually—maybe weeks, months, or
years from now—Kelli would
re-form out of the primordial nastiness
seething in the Underworld. But
still, monsters didn’t usually let themselves
get destroyed so easily. If she
really was destroyed.
The taxi exited on Route 25A. We
headed through the woods along the
North Shore until a low ridge of
hills appeared on our left. Annabeth told the
driver to pull over on Farm Road
3.141, at the base of Half-Blood Hill.
The driver frowned. “There ain’t
nothing here, miss. You sure you want
out?”
“Yes, please,” Annabeth handed
him a roll of mortal cash, and the driver
decided not to argue.
Annabeth and I hiked to the crest
of the hill. The young guardian dragon
was dozing, coiled around the
pine tree, but he lifted his coppery head as we
approached and let Annabeth
scratch under his chin. Steam hissed out his
nostrils like from a teakettle,
and he went cross-eyed with pleasure.
“Hey, Peleus,” Annabeth said.
“Keeping everything safe?”
The last time I’d seen the dragon
he’d been six feet long. Now he was at
least twice that, and as thick
around as the tree itself. Above his head, on the
lowest branch of the pine tree,
the Golden Fleece shimmered, its magic
protecting the camp’s borders
from invasion. The dragon seemed relaxed,
like everything was okay. Below
us, Camp Half-Blood looked peaceful—
green fields, forest, shiny white
Greek buildings. The four-story farmhouse
we called the Big House sat
proudly in the midst of the strawberry fields. To
the north, past the beach, the
Long Island Sound glittered in the sunlight.
Still…something felt wrong. There
was tension in the air, as if the hill
itself were holding its breath,
waiting for something bad to happen.
We walked down into the valley
and found the summer session in full
swing. Most of the campers had
arrived last Friday, so I already felt out of it.
The satyrs were playing their
pipes in the strawberry fields, making the
plants grow with woodland magic.
Campers were having flying horseback
lessons, swooping over the woods
on their pegasi. Smoke rose from the
forges, and hammers rang as kids
made their own weapons for Arts & Crafts.
The Athena and Demeter teams were
having a chariot race around the track,
and over at the canoe lake some
kids in a Greek trireme were fighting a large
orange sea serpent. A typical day
at camp.
“I need to talk to Clarisse,”
Annabeth said.
I stared at her as if she’d just
said I need to eat a large, smelly boot.
“What for?”
Clarisse from the Ares cabin was
one of my least favorite people. She was
a mean, ungrateful bully. Her
dad, the war god, wanted to kill me. She tried
to beat me to a pulp on a regular
basis. Other than that, she was just great.
“We’ve been working on
something,” Annabeth said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Working on what?”
Annabeth glanced toward the
forest.
“I’ll tell Chiron you’re here,”
she said. “He’ll want to talk to you before
the hearing.”
“What hearing?”
But she jogged down the path
toward the archery field without looking
back.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Great
talking with you, too.”
* * *
As I made my way through camp, I
said hi to some of my friends. In the
Big House’s driveway, Connor and
Travis Stoll from the Hermes cabin were
hot-wiring the camps SUV. Silena
Beauregard, the head counselor for
Aphrodite, waved at me from her
Pegasus as she flew past. I looked for
Grover, but I didn’t see him.
Finally I wandered into the sword arena, where
I usually go when I’m in a bad
mood. Practicing always calms me down.
Maybe that’s because swordplay is
one thing I can actually understand.
I walked into the amphitheater
and my heart almost stopped. In the middle
of the arena floor, with its back
to me, was the biggest hellhound I’d ever
seen.
I mean, I’ve seen some pretty big
hellhounds. One the size of a rhino tried
to kill me when I was twelve. But
this hellhound was bigger than a tank. I
had no idea how it had gotten
past the camp’s magic boundaries. It looked
right at home, lying on its
belly, growling contentedly as it chewed the head
off a combat dummy. It hadn’t
noticed me yet, but if I made a sound, I knew
it would sense me. There was no
time to go for help. I pulled out Riptide and
uncapped it.
“Yaaaaah!” I charged. I brought
down the blade on the monster’s
enormous backside when out of
nowhere another sword blocked my strike.
CLANG!
The hellhound pricked up its
ears. “WOOF!”
I jumped back and instinctively
struck at the swordsman—a gray-haired
man in Greek armor. He parried my
attack with no problem.
“Whoa there!” he said. “Truce!”
“WOOF!” The hellhound’s
bark shook the arena.
“That’s a hellhound!” I shouted.
“She’s harmless,” the man said.
“That’s Mrs. O’Leary.”
I blinked. “Mrs. O’Leary?”
At the sound of her name, the
hellhound barked again. I realized she
wasn’t angry. She was excited.
She nudged the soggy, badly chewed target
dummy toward the swordsman.
“Good girl,” the man said. With
his free hand he grabbed the armored
manikin by the neck and heaved it
toward the bleachers. “Get the Greek! Get
the Greek!”
Mrs. O’Leary bounded after her
prey and pounced on the dummy,
flattening its armor. She began
chewing on its helmet.
The swordsman smiled dryly. He
was in his fifties. I guess, with short
gray hair and a clipped gray
beard. He was in good shape for an older guy.
He wore black mountain-climbing
pants and a bronze breastplate strapped
over an orange camp T-shirt. At
the base of his neck was a strange mark, a
purplish blotch like a birthmark
or a tattoo, but before I could make out what
it was, he shifted his armor
straps and the mark disappeared under his collar.
“Mrs. O’Leary is my pet,” he
explained. “I couldn’t let you stick a sword
in her rump, now, could I? That
might have scared her.”
“Who are you?”
Promise not to kill me if I put
my sword away?”
“I guess.”
He sheathed his sword and held
out his hand. “Quintus.”
I shook his hand. It was as rough
as a sandpaper.
“Percy Jackson,” I said. “Sorry
about—How did you, um—”
“Get a hellhound for a pet? Long
story, involving many close calls with a
death and quite a few giant chew
toys. I’m the new sword instructor, by the
way. Helping out Chiron while Mr.
D is away.”
“Oh.” I tried not to stare as
Mrs. O’Leary ripped off the target dummy’s
shield with the arm still
attached and shook it like a Frisbee. “Wait, Mr. D is
away?”
“Yes, well…busy times. Even
Dionysus must help out. He’s gone to visit
some old friends. Make sure
they’re on the right side. I probably shouldn’t
say more than that.”
If Dionysus was gone, that was
the best news I’d had all day. He was only
our camp director because Zeus
had sent him here as a punishment for
chasing some off-limits wood
nymph. He hated the campers and tried to
make our lives miserable. With
him away, this summer might actually be
cool. On the other hand, if
Dionysus had gotten off his butt and actually
started helping the gods recruit
against the Titan threat, things must be
looking pretty bad.
Off to my left, there was a loud BUMP.
Six wooden crates the size of
picnic tables were stacked
nearby, and they were rattling. Mrs. O’Leary
cocked her head and bounded
toward them.
“Whoa, girl!” Quintus said.
“Those aren’t for you.” He distracted her with
the bronze shield Frisbee.
The crates thumped and shook.
There were words printed on the sides, but
with my dyslexia they took me a
few minutes to decipher:
TRIPLE G RANCH
FRAGILE
THIS END UP
Along the bottom, in smaller
letters: OPEN WITH CARE. TRIPLE G
RANCH IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
PROPERTY DAMAGE,
MAIMING, OR EXCRUCIATINGLY
PAINFUL DEATHS.
“What’s in the boxes?” I asked.
“A little surprise,” Quintus
said. “Training activity for tomorrow night.
You’ll love it.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, though I
wasn’t sure about the “excruciatingly painful
death” part.
Quintus threw the bronze shield,
and Mrs. O’Leary lumbered after it.
“You young ones need more
challenges. They didn’t have camps like this
when I was a boy.”
“You—you’re a half-blood?” I
didn’t mean to sound surprised, but I’d
never seen an old demigod before.
Quintus chuckled. “Some of us do
survive into adulthood, you know. Not
all of us are the subject of
terrible prophecies.”
“You know about my prophecy?”
“I’ve heard a few things.”
I wanted to ask what few
things, but just then Chiron clip-clopped into the
arena. “Percy, there you are!”
He must’ve just come from
teaching archery. He had a quiver and bow
slung over his #1 CENTAUR
T-shirt. He’d trimmed his curly brown hair
and beard for the summer, and his
lower half, which was a white stallion,
was flecked with mud and grass.
“I see you’ve met our new
instructor.” Chiron’s tone was light, but there
was an uneasy look in his eyes.
“Quintus, do you mind if I borrow Percy?”
“Not at all, Master Chiron.”
“No need to call me ‘Master’,”
Chiron said, though he sounded sort of
pleased. “Come, Percy. We have
much to discuss.”
I took one more glance at Mrs.
O’Leary, who was now chewing off the
target dummy’s legs.
“Well, see you,” I told Quintus.
As we were walking away, I
whispered to Chiron, “Quintus seemed kind
of—”
“Mysterious?” Chiron suggested.
“Hard to read?”
“Yeah.”
Chiron nodded. “A very qualified
half-blood. Excellent swordsman, I just
wish I understood…”
Whatever he was going to say, he
apparently changed his mind. “First
things first, Percy. Annabeth
told me you met some empousai.”
“Yeah.” I told him about the
fight at Goode, and how Kelli had exploded
into flames.
“Mm,” Chiron said. “The more
powerful ones can do that. She did not die,
Percy. She simply escaped. It is
not good that the she-demons are stirring.”
“What were they doing there?” I
asked. “Waiting for me?”
“Possibly,” Chiron frowned. “It
is amazing you survived. Their powers of
deception…almost any male hero
would’ve fallen under their spell and been
devoured.”
“I would’ve been,” I admitted.
“Except for Rachel.”
Chiron nodded. “Ironic to be
saved by a mortal, yet we owe her a debt.
What the empousa said
about an attack on camp—we must speak of this
further. But for now, come, we
should get to the woods. Grover will want
you there.”
“Where?”
“At his formal hearing,” Chiron
said grimly. “The Council of Cloven
Elders is meeting now to decide
his fate.”
* * *
Chiron said we needed to hurry,
so I let him give me a ride on his back.
As we galloped past the cabins, I
glanced at the dining hall—an open-air
Greek pavilion on a hill
overlooking the sea. It was the first time I’d seen the
place since last summer, and it
brought back bad memories.
Chiron plunged into the woods.
Nymphs peeked out of the trees to watch
us pass. Large shapes rustled in
the shadows—monsters that were stocked in
here as a challenge to the
campers.
I thought I knew the forest
pretty well after playing capture the flag here
for two summers, but Chiron took
me a way I didn’t recognize, through a
tunnel of old willow trees, past
a little waterfall, and into a glade blanketed
with wildflowers.
A bunch of satyrs were sitting in
a circle in the grass. Grover stood in the
middle, facing three really old,
really fat satyrs who sat on topiary thrones
shaped out of rose bushes. I’d
never seen the three old satyrs before, but I
guessed they must be the Council
of Cloven Elders.
Grover seemed to be telling them
a story. He twisted the bottom of his Tshirt,
shifting nervously on his goat
hooves. He hadn’t changed much since
last winter, maybe because satyrs
age half as fast as humans. His acne had
flared up. His horns had gotten a
little bigger so they just stuck out over his
curly hair. I realized with a
start that I was taller than he was now.
Standing off to one side of the
circle were Annabeth, another girl I’d
never seen before, and Clarisse.
Chiron dropped me next to them.
Clarisse’s stringy brown hair was
tied back with a camouflage bandanna.
If possible, she looked even
buffer, like she’d been working out. She glared
at me and muttered, “Punk,” which
must’ve meant she was in a good mood.
Usually she says hello by trying
to kill me.
Annabeth had her arm around the
other girl, who looked like she’d been
crying. She was small—petite, I
guess you’d call it—with wispy hair the
color of amber and a pretty,
elfish face. She wore a green chiton and laced
sandals, and she was dabbing her
eyes with a handkerchief. “It’s going
terribly,” she sniffled.
“No, no,” Annabeth patted her
shoulders. “He’ll be fine, Juniper.”
Annabeth looked at me and mouthed
the words Grover’s girlfriend.
At least I thought that’s what
she said, but that didn’t make any sense.
Grover with a girlfriend? Then I
looked at Juniper more closely, and I
realized her ears were slightly
pointed. Her eyes, instead of being red from
crying, were tinged green, the
color of chlorophyll. She was a tree nymph—
a dryad.
“Master Underwood!” the council
member on the right shouted, cutting
off whatever Grover was trying to
say. “Do you seriously expect us to
believe this?”
“B-but Silenus,” Grover
stammered. “It’s the truth!”
The Council guy, Silenus, turned
to his colleagues and muttered
something. Chiron cantered up to
the front and stood next to them. I
remembered he was an honorary
member of the council, but I’d never
thought about it much. The elders
didn’t look very impressive. They
reminded me of the goats in a
petting zoo—huge bellies, sleepy expressions,
and glazed eyes that couldn’t see
past the next handful of goat chow. I
wasn’t sure why Grover seemed so
nervous.
Silenus tugged his yellow polo
shirt over his belly and adjusted himself
on his rosebush throne. “Master
Underwood, for six months—six months—
we have been hearing these
scandalous claims that you heard the wild god
Pan speak.”
“But I did!”
“Impudence!” said the elder on
the left.
“Now, Maron,” Chiron said.
“Patience.”
“Patience, indeed!” Maron said.
“I’ve had it up to my horns with this
nonsense. As if the wild god
would speak to…to him.”
Juniper looked like she wanted to
charge the old satyr and beat him up,
but Annabeth and Clarisse held
her back. “Wrong fight, girlie,” Clarisse
muttered. “Wait.”
I don’t know what surprised me
more: Clarisse holding someone back
from a fight, or the fact that
she and Annabeth, who despised each other,
almost seemed like they were
working together.
“For six months,” Silenus
continued, “we have indulged you, Master
Underwood. We let you travel. We
allowed you to keep your searcher’s
license. We waited for you to
bring proof of your preposterous claim. And
what have you found in six months
of travel?”
“I just need more time,” Grover
pleaded.
“Nothing!” the elder in the
middle chimed in. “You have found nothing.”
“But, Leneus—”
Silenus raised his hand. Chiron leaned
in and said something to the satyrs.
The satyrs didn’t look happy.
They muttered and argued among themselves,
but Chiron said something else,
and Silenus sighed. He nodded reluctantly.
“Master Underwood,” Silenus
announced, “we will give you one more
chance.”
Grover brightened. “Thank you!”
“One more week.”
“What? But sir! That’s
impossible!”
“One more week, Master Underwood.
And then, if you cannot prove your
claims, it will be time for you
to pursue another career. Something to suit
your dramatic talents. Puppet
theater, perhaps. Or tap dancing.”
“But sir, I—I can’t lose my
searcher’s license. My whole life—”
“This meeting of the council is
adjourned,” Silenus said. “And now let us
enjoy our noonday meal!”
The old satyr clapped his hands,
and a bunch of nymphs melted out of the
trees with platters of
vegetables, fruits, tin cans, and other goat delicacies.
The circle of satyrs broke and
charged the food. Grover walked dejectedly
toward us. His faded blue T-shirt
had a picture of a satyr on it. It read GOT
HOOVES?
“Hi, Percy,” he said, so
depressed he didn’t even offer to shake my hand.
“That went well, huh?”
“Those old goats!” Juniper said.
“Oh, Grover, they don’t know how hard
you’ve tried!”
“There is another option,”
Clarisse said darkly.
“No. No.” Juniper shook her head.
“Grover, I won’t let you.”
His face was ashen. “I—I’ll have
to think about it. But we don’t even
know where to look.”
“What are you talking about?” I
asked.
In the distance, a conch horn
sounded.
Annabeth pursed her lips. “I’ll
fill you in later, Percy. We’d better get
back to our cabins. Inspection is
starting.”
* * *
It didn’t seem fair that I’d have
to do cabin inspection when I just got to
camp, but that’s the way it
worked. Every afternoon, one of the senior
counselors came around with a
papyrus scroll checklist. Best cabin got first
shower hour, which meant hot
water guaranteed. Worst cabin got kitchen
patrol after dinner.
The problem for me: I was usually
the only one in the Poseidon cabin, and
I’m not exactly what you would call
neat. The cleaning harpies only came
through on the last day of
summer, so my cabin was probably just the way
I’d left it on winter break: my
candy wrappers and chip bags still on my
bunk, my armor for capture the
flag lying in pieces all around the cabin.
I raced toward the commons area,
where the twelve cabins—one for each
Olympian god—made a U around the
central green. The Demeter kids were
sweeping out theirs and making
fresh flowers grow in their window boxes.
Just by snapping their fingers
they could make honeysuckle vines bloom
over their doorway and daisies
cover their roof, which was totally unfair. I
don’t think they ever got last
place in inspection. The guys in the Hermes
cabin were scrambling around in a
panic, stashing dirty laundry under their
beds and accusing each other of
taking stuff. They were slobs, but they still
had a head start on me.
Over at the Aphrodite cabin,
Silena Beauregard was just coming out,
checking items off the inspection
scroll. I cursed under my breath. Silena
was nice, but she was an absolute
neat freak, the worst inspector. She liked
things to be pretty. I didn’t do
“pretty.” I could almost feel my arms getting
heavy from all the dishes I would
have to scrub tonight.
The Poseidon cabin was at the end
of the row of “male god” cabins on the
right side of the green. It was
made of gray shell-encrusted sea rock, long
and low like a bunker, but it had
windows that faced the sea and it always
had a good breeze blowing through
it.
I dashed inside, wondering if
maybe I could do a quick under-the-bed
cleaning job like the Hermes
guys, and I found my half-brother Tyson
sweeping the floor.
“Percy!” he bellowed. He dropped
his broom and ran at me. If you’ve
never been charged by an
enthusiastic Cyclops wearing a flowered apron
and rubber cleaning gloves, I’m
telling you, it’ll wake you up quick.
“Hey, big guy!” I said. “Ow,
watch the ribs. The ribs.”
I managed to survive his bear
hug. He put me down, grinning like crazy,
his single calf-brown eye full of
excitement. His teeth were as yellow and
crooked as ever, and his hair was
a rat’s nest. He wore ragged XXXL jeans
and a tattered flannel shirt
under his flowered apron, but he was still a sight
for sore eyes. I hadn’t seen him
in almost a year, since he’d gone under the
sea to work at the Cyclopes’
forges.
“You are okay?” he asked. “Not
eaten by monsters?”
“Not even a little bit.” I showed
him that I still had both arms and both
legs, and Tyson clapped happily.
“Yay!” he said. “Now we can eat
peanut butter sandwiches and ride fish
ponies! We can fight monsters and
see Annabeth and make things go
BOOM!”
I hoped he didn’t mean all at the
same time, but I told him absolutely,
we’d have a lot of fun this
summer. I couldn’t help smiling, he was so
enthusiastic about everything.
“But first,” I said, “we’ve gotta
worry about inspection. We should…”
Then I looked around and realized
Tyson had been busy. The floor was
swept. The bunk beds were made.
The saltwater fountain in the corner had
been freshly scrubbed so the
coral gleamed. On the windowsills, Tyson had
set out water-filled vases with
sea anemones and strange glowing plants
from the bottom of the ocean,
more beautiful than any flower bouquets the
Demeter kids could whip up.
“Tyson, the cabin looks…amazing!”
He beamed. “See the fish ponies?
I put them on the ceiling!”
A herd of miniature bronze
hippocampi hung on wires from the ceiling, so
it looked like they were swimming
through the air. I couldn’t believe Tyson,
with his huge hands, could make
things so delicate. Then I looked over at
my bunk, and I saw my old shield
hanging on the wall.
“You fixed it!”
The shield had been badly damaged
in a manticore attack last winter. But
now it was perfect again—not a
scratch. All the bronze pictures of my
adventures with Tyson and
Annabeth in the Sea of Monsters were polished
and gleaming.
I looked at Tyson. I didn’t know
how to thank him.
Then somebody behind me said,
“Oh, my.”
Silena Beauregard was standing in
the doorway with her inspection scroll.
She stepped into the cabin, did a
quick twirl, then raised her eyebrows at me.
“Well, I had my doubts. But you
clean up nicely, Percy. I’ll remember that.”
She winked at me and left the
room.
* * *
Tyson and I spent the afternoon
catching up and just hanging out, which
was nice after a morning of getting
attacked by demon cheerleaders.
We went down to the forge and
helped Beckendorf from the Hephaestus
cabin with his metalworking.
Tyson showed us how he’d learned to craft
magic weapons. He fashioned a
flaming double-bladed war axe so fast even
Beckendorf was impressed.
While he worked, Tyson told us
about his year under the sea. His eye lit
up when he described the
Cyclopes’ forges and the palace of Poseidon, but
he also told us how tense things
were. The old gods of the sea, who’d ruled
during Titan times, were starting
to make war on our father. When Tyson
had left, battles had been raging
all over the Atlantic. Hearing that made me
feel anxious, like I should be
helping out, but Tyson assured me that Dad
wanted us both at camp.
“Lots of bad people above the
sea, too,” Tyson said. “We can make them
go boom.”
After the forges, we spent some
time at the canoe lake with Annabeth.
She was really glad to see Tyson,
but I could tell she was distracted. She
kept looking over at the forest,
like she was thinking about Grover’s problem
with the council. I couldn’t
blame her. Grover was nowhere to be seen, and I
felt really bad for him. Finding
the lost god Pan had been his lifelong goal.
His father and his uncle had both
disappeared following the same dream.
Last winter, Grover had heard a
voice in his head: I await you—a voice he
was sure belonged to Pan—but
apparently his search had led nowhere. If the
council took away his searcher’s
license now, it would crush him.
“What’s this ‘other way’?” I
asked Annabeth. “The thing Clarisse
mentioned?”
She picked up a stone and skipped
it across the lake. “Something Clarisse
scouted out. I helped her a
little this spring. But it would be dangerous.
Especially for Grover.”
“Goat boy scares me,” Tyson
murmured.
I stared at him. Tyson had faced
down fire-breathing bulls and sea
monsters and cannibal giants.
“Why would you be scared of Grover?”
“Hooves and horns,” Tyson
muttered nervously. “And goat fur makes my
nose itchy.”
And that pretty much ended our
Grover conversation.
* * *
Before dinner, Tyson and I went
down to the sword arena. Quintus was
glad to have company. He still
wouldn’t tell me what was in the wooden
crates, but he did teach me a few
sword moves. The guy was good. He
fought the way some people play
chess—like he was putting all the moves
together and you couldn’t see the
pattern until he made the last stroke and
won with a sword at your throat.
“Good try,” he told me. “But your
guard is too low.”
He lunged and I blocked.
“Have you always been a
swordsman?” I asked.
He parried my overhead cut. “I’ve
been many things.”
He jabbed and I sidestepped. His
shoulder strap slipped down, and I saw
that mark on his neck—the purple
blotch. But it wasn’t a random mark. It
had a definite shape—a bird with
folded wings, like a quail or something.
“What’s that on your neck?” I
asked, which was probably a rude question,
but you can blame my ADHD. I tend
to just blurt things out.
Quintus lost his rhythm. I hit
his sword hilt and knocked the blade out of
his hand.
He rubbed his fingers. Then he
shifted his armor to hide the mark. It
wasn’t a tattoo, I realized. It
was an old burn…like he’d been branded.
“A reminder.” He picked up his
sword and forced a smile. “Now, shall we
go again?”
He pressed me hard, not giving me
time for any more questions.
While he and I fought, Tyson
played with Mrs. O’Leary, who he called
the “little doggie.” They had a
great time wrestling for the bronze shield and
playing Get the Greek. By sunset,
Quintus hadn’t even broken a sweat,
which seemed kind of strange; but
Tyson and I were hot and stick, so we hit
the showers and got ready for
dinner.
I was feeling good. It was almost
like a normal day at camp. Then dinner
came, and all the campers lined
up by cabin and marched into the dining
pavilion. Most of them ignored
the sealed fissure in the marble floor at the
entrance—a ten-foot-long jagged
scar that hadn’t been there last summer—
but I was careful to step over
it.
“Big crack,” Tyson said when we
were at our table. “Earthquake,
maybe?”
“No,” I said. “Not an
earthquake.”
I wasn’t sure I should tell him.
It was a secret only Annabeth and Grover
and I knew. But looking in
Tyson’s big eye, I knew I couldn’t hide it from
him.
“Nico di Angelo,” I said,
lowering my voice. “He’s this half-blood kid we
brought to camp last winter. He,
uh…he asked me to guard his sister on a
quest, and I failed. She died.
Now he blames me.”
Tyson frowned. “So he put a crack
in the floor?”
“These skeletons attacked us,” I
said. “Nico told them to go away, and the
ground just opened up and
swallowed them. Nico…” I looked around to
make sure no one was listening.
“Nico is a son of Hades.”
Tyson nodded thoughtfully. “The
god of dead people.”
“Yeah.”
“So the Nico boy is gone now?”
“I—I guess. I tried to search for
him this spring. So did Annabeth. But we
didn’t have any luck. This is
secret, Tyson. Okay? If anyone found out he
was a son of Hades, he would be
in danger. You can’t even tell Chiron.”
“The bad prophecy,” Tyson said.
“Titans might use him if they knew.”
I stared at him. Sometimes it was
easy to forget that as big and childlike
as he was, Tyson was pretty
smart. He knew that the next child of the Big
Three gods—Zeus, Poseidon, or
Hades—who turned sixteen was prophesied
to either save or destroy Mount
Olympus. Most people assumed that meant
me, but if I died before I turned
sixteen, the prophecy could just as easily
apply to Nico.
“Exactly,” I said. “So—”
“Mouth sealed,” Tyson promised.
“Like the crack in the ground.”
* * *
I had trouble falling asleep that
night. I lay in bed listening to the waves
on the beach, and the owls and
monsters in the woods. I was afraid once I
drifted off I’d have nightmares.
See, for half-bloods, dreams are
hardly ever just dreams. We get messages.
We glimpse things that are
happening to our friends or enemies. Sometimes
we even glimpse the past or the
future. And at camp, my dreams were
always more frequent and vivid.
So I was still awake around
midnight, staring at the bunk bed mattress
above me, when I realized there
was a strange light in the room. The
saltwater fountain was glowing.
I threw off the covers and walked
cautiously toward it. Steam rose from
the hot salt water. Rainbow
colors shimmered through it, though there was
no light in the room except for
the moon outside. Then a pleasant female
voice spoke from the steam: Please
deposit one drachma.
I looked over at Tyson, but he
was still snoring. He sleeps about as
heavily as a tranquilized
elephant.
I didn’t know what to think. I’d
never gotten a collect Iris-message before.
One golden drachma gleamed at the
bottom of the fountain. I scooped it up
and tossed it through the mist.
The coin vanished.
“O, Iris, Goddess of the
rainbow,” I whispered. “Show me…Uh, whatever
you need to show me.”
The mist shimmered. I saw the
dark shore of a river. Wisps of fog drifted
across black water. The beach was
strewn with jagged volcanic rock. A
young boy squatted at the
riverbank, tending a campfire. The flames burned
an unnatural blue color. Then I
saw the boy’s face. It was Nico di Angelo.
He was throwing pieces of paper
into the fire—Mythomagic trading cards,
part of the game he’d been
obsessed with last winter.
Nico was only ten, or maybe
eleven by now, but he looked older. His hair
had grown longer. It was shaggy
and almost touched his shoulders. His eyes
were dark. His olive skin had
turned paler. He wore ripped black jeans and a
battered aviator’s jacket that
was several sizes too big, unzipped over a black
shirt. His face was grimy, his
eyes a little wild. He looked like a kid who’d
been living on the streets.
I waited for him to look at me.
No doubt he’d get crazy angry, start
accusing me of letting his sister
die. But he didn’t seem to notice me.
I stayed quiet, not daring to
move. If he hadn’t sent this Iris-message, who
had?
Nico tossed another trading card
into the blue flames. “Useless,” he
muttered. “I can’t believe I ever
liked this stuff.”
“A childish game, master,”
another voice agreed. It seemed to come from
near the fire, but I couldn’t see
who was talking.
Nico stared across the river. On
the far shore was black beach shrouded in
haze. I recognized it: the
Underworld. Nico was camping at the edge of the
river Styx.
“I’ve failed,” he muttered.
“There’s no way to get her back.”
The other voice kept silent.
Nico turned toward it doubtfully.
“Is there? Speak.”
Something shimmered. I thought it
was just firelight. Then I realized it
was the form of a man—a wisp of
blue smoke, a shadow. If you looked at
him head-on, he wasn’t there. But
if you looked out of the corner of your eye,
you could make out his shape. A
ghost.
“It has never been done,” the
ghost said. “But there may be a way.”
“Tell me,” Nico commanded. His
eyes shined with a fierce light.
“An exchange,” the ghost said. “A
soul for a soul.”
“I’ve offered!”
“Not yours,” the ghost said. “You
cannot offer your father a soul he will
eventually collect anyway. Nor
will he be anxious for the death of his son. I
mean a soul that should have died
already. Someone who has cheated
death.”
Nico’s face darkened. “Not that
again. You’re talking about murder.”
“I’m talking about justice,” the
ghost said. “Vengeance.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
The ghost laughed dryly. “You
will learn differently as you get older.”
Nico stared at the flames. “Why
can’t I at least summon her? I want to
talk to her. She would…she would
help me.”
“I will help you,” the
ghost promised. “Have I not saved you many times?
Did I not lead you through the
maze and teach you to use your powers? Do
you want revenge for your sister
or not?”
I didn’t like the ghost’s tone of
voice. He reminded me of a kid at my old
school, a bully who used to
convince other kids to do stupid things like steal
lab equipment and vandalize the
teachers’ cars. The bully never got in
trouble himself, but he got tons
of other kids suspended.
Nico turned from the fire so the
ghost couldn’t see him, but I could. A tear
traced its way down his face.
“Very well. You have a plan?”
“Oh, yes,” the ghost said,
sounding quite pleased. “We have many dark
roads to travel. We must start—”
The image shimmered. Nico
vanished. The woman’s voice from the mist
said, Please deposit one
drachma for another five minutes.
There were no other coins in the
fountain. I grabbed for my pockets, but I
was wearing pajamas. I lunged for
the nightstand to check for spare change,
but the Iris-message had already
blinked out, and the room went dark again.
The connection was broken.
I stood in the middle of the
cabin, listening to the gurgle of the saltwater
fountain and the ocean waves
outside.
Nico was alive. He was trying to
bring his sister back from the dead. And
I had a feeling I knew what soul
he wanted to exchange—someone who had
cheated death. Vengeance.
Nico di Angelo would come looking
for me.
CHAPTER THREE:WE PLAY TAG WITH SCORPIONS
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The next morning there was a lot
of excitement at breakfast.
Apparently around three in the
morning an Aethiopian drakon had been
spotted at the borders of camp. I
was so exhausted I slept right through the
noise. The magical boundaries had
kept the monster out, but it prowled the
hills, looking for weak spots in
our defenses, and it didn’t seem anxious to
go away until Lee Fletcher from
Apollo’s cabin led a couple of his siblings
in pursuit. After a few dozen
arrows lodged in the chinks of the drakon’s
armor, it got the message and
withdrew.
“It’s still out there,” Lee
warned us during announcements. “Twenty
arrows in its hide, and we just
made it mad. The thing was thirty feet long
and bright green. It’s eyes—” he
shuddered.
“You did well, Lee,” Chiron
patted him on the shoulder. “Everyone stay
alert, but stay calm. This has
happened before.”
“Aye,” Quintus said from the head
table. “And it will happen again. More
and more frequently.”
The campers murmured among
themselves.
Everyone knew the rumors: Luke
and his army of monsters were planning
an invasion of the camp. Most of
us expected it to happen this summer, but
no one knew how or when. It
didn’t help that our attendance was down. We
only had about eighty campers.
Three years ago, when I’d started, there had
been more than a hundred. Some
had died. Some had joined Luke. Some had
just disappeared.
“This is a good reason for new
war games, “Quintus continued, a glint in
his eyes. “We’ll see how you all
do with that tonight.”
“Yes…” Chiron said. “Well, enough
announcements. Let us bless this
meal and eat.” He raised his
goblet. “To the gods.”
We all raised our glasses and
repeated the blessing.
Tyson and I took our plates to
the bronze brazier and scraped a portion of
our food into the flames. I hoped
the gods liked raisin toast and Froot Loops.
“Poseidon,” I said. Then I
whispered, “Help me with Nico, and Luke, and
Grover’s problem…”
There was so much to worry about
I could’ve stood there all morning, but
I headed back to the table.
Once everyone was eating, Chiron
and Grover came over to visit. Grover
was bleary-eyed. His shirt was
inside out. He slid his plate onto the table and
slumped next to me.
Tyson shifted uncomfortably. “I
will go…um…polish my fish ponies.”
He lumbered off, leaving his
breakfast half-eaten.
Chiron tried for a smile. He
probably wanted to look reassuring, but in
centaur form he towered over me,
casting a shadow across the table. “Well,
Percy, how did you sleep?”
“Uh, fine.” I wondered why he
asked that. Was it possible he knew
something about the weird
Iris-message I’d gotten?
“I brought Grover over,” Chiron
said, “because I thought you two might
want to, ah, discuss matters. Now
if you’ll excuse me, I have some Irismessages
to send. I’ll see you later in
the day.” He gave Grover a
meaningful look, then trotted out
of the pavilion.”
“What’s he talking about?” I
asked Grover.
Grover chewed his eggs. I could
tell he was distracted, because he bit the
tines of his fork and chewed
those down, too. “He wants you to convince
me,” he mumbled.
Somebody else slid next to me on
the bench: Annabeth.
“I’ll tell you what it’s about,”
she said. “The Labyrinth.”
It was hard to concentrate on
what she was saying, because everybody in
the dining pavilion was stealing
glances at us and whispering. And Annabeth
was right next to me. I mean right
next to me.
“You’re not supposed to be here,”
I said.
“We need to talk,” she insisted.
“But the rules…”
She knew as well as I did that
campers weren’t allowed to switch tables.
Satyrs were different. They
weren’t really demigods. But the half-bloods had
to sit with their cabins. I
wasn’t even sure what the punishment was for
switching tables. I’d never seen
it happen. If Mr. D had been here, he
probably would’ve strangled
Annabeth with magical grapevines or
something, but Mr. D wasn’t here.
Chiron had already left the pavilion.
Quintus looked over and raised an
eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything.
“Look,” Annabeth said, “Grover is
in trouble. There’s only one way we
can figure to help him. It’s the
Labyrinth. That’s what Clarisse and I have
been investigating.”
I shifted my weight, trying to
think clearly. “You mean the maze where
they kept the Minotaur, back in
the old days?”
“Exactly,” Annabeth said.
“So…it’s not under the king’s
palace in Crete anymore,” I guessed. “The
Labyrinth is under some building
in America.”
See? It only took me a few years
to figure things out. I knew that
important places moved around
with Western Civilization, like Mount
Olympus being over the Empire
State building, and the Underworld entrance
being in Los Angeles. I was
feeling pretty proud of myself.
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Under
a building? Please, Percy. The
Labyrinth is huge. It
wouldn’t fit under a single city, much less a single
building.”
I thought about my dream of Nico
at the River Styx. “So…is the
Labyrinth part of the Underworld?”
“No.” Annabeth frowned. “Well,
there may be passages from the
Labyrinth down into the
Underworld. I’m not sure. But the Underworld is
way, way down. The Labyrinth is
right under the surface of the mortal world,
kind of like a second skin. It’s
been growing for thousands of years, lacing
its way under Western cities,
connecting everything together underground.
You can get anywhere through the
Labyrinth.”
“If you don’t get lost,” Grover
muttered. “And die a horrible death.”
“Grover, there has to be a way,”
Annabeth said. I got the feeling they’d
had this conversation before.
“Clarisse lived.”
“Barely!” Grover said. “And the
other guy—”
“He was driven insane. He didn’t
die.”
“Oh, joy.” Grover’s lower lip
quivered. “That makes me feel much
better.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Back up. What’s
this about Clarisse and a crazy guy?”
Annabeth glanced over toward the
Ares table. Clarisse was watching us
like she knew what we were
talking about, but then she fixed her eyes on her
breakfast plate.
“Last year,” Annabeth said,
lowering her voice, “Clarisse went on a
mission for Chiron.”
“I remember,” I said. “It was
secret.”
Annabeth nodded. Despite how
serious she was acting, I was happy she
wasn’t mad at me anymore. And I
kind of liked the fact that she’d broken
the rules to come sit next to me.
“It was secret,” Annabeth agreed,
“because she found Chris Rodriguez.”
“The guy from the Hermes cabin?”
I remembered him from two years ago.
We’d eavesdropped on Chris
Rodriguez aboard Luke’s ship, the Princess
Andromeda. Chris was one
of the half-bloods who’d abandoned camp and
joined the Titan Army.
“Yeah,” Annabeth said. “Last
summer he just appeared in Phoenix,
Arizona, near Clarisse’s mom’s
house.”
“What do you mean he just
appeared?”
“He was wandering around the
desert, in a hundred and twenty degrees, in
full Greek armor, babbling about
string.”
“String,” I said.
“He’d been driven completely
insane. Clarisse brought him back to her
mom’s house so the mortals
wouldn’t institutionalize him. She tried to nurse
him back to health. Chiron came
out and interviewed him, but it wasn’t
much good. The only thing they
got out of him: Luke’s men have been
exploring the Labyrinth.”
I shivered, though I wasn’t
exactly sure why. Poor Chris…he hadn’t been
a bad guy. What could’ve driven
him mad? I looked at Grover, who was
chewing up the rest of his fork.
“Okay,” I asked. “Why were they
exploring the Labyrinth?”
“We weren’t sure,” Annabeth said.
“That’s why Clarisse went on a
scouting expedition. Chiron kept
things hushed up because he didn’t want
anyone panicking. He got me
involved because…well, the Labyrinth has
always been one of my favorite
subjects. The architecture involved—” Her
expression turned a little
dreamy. “The builder, Daedalus, was a genius. But
the point is, the Labyrinth has
entrances everywhere. If Luke could figure
out how to navigate it, he could
move his army around with incredible
speed.”
“Except it’s a maze, right?”
“Full of horrible traps,” Grover
agreed. “Dead ends. Illusions. Psychotic
goat-killing monsters.”
“But not if you had Ariadne’s
string,” Annabeth said. “In the old days,
Ariadne’s string guided Theseus
out of the maze. It was a navigation
instrument of some kind, invented
by Daedalus. And Chris Rodriguez was
mumbling about string.”
“So Luke is trying to find Ariadne’s
string,” I said. “Why? What’s he
planning?”
Annabeth shook her head. “I don’t
know. I thought maybe he wanted to
invade camp through the maze, but
that doesn’t make any sense. The closest
entrances Clarisse found were in
Manhattan, which wouldn’t help Luke get
past our borders. Clarisse
explored a little way into the tunnels, but…it was
very dangerous. She had some
close calls. I researched everything I could
find about Daedalus. I’m afraid
it didn’t help much. I don’t understand
exactly what Luke’s planning, but
I do know this: the Labyrinth might be the
key to Grover’s problem.”
I blinked. “You think Pan is
underground?”
“It would explain why he’s been
impossible to find.”
Grover shuddered. “Satyrs hate
going underground. No searcher would
ever try going in that place.
No flowers. No sunshine. No coffee shops!”
“But,” Annabeth said, “the
Labyrinth can lead you almost anywhere. It
reads your thoughts. It was
designed to fool you, trick you and kill you; but
if you can make the Labyrinth
work for you—”
“It could lead you to the wild
god,” I said.
“I can’t do it.” Grover hugged
his stomach. “Just thinking about it makes
me want to throw up my
silverware.”
“Grover, it may be your last
chance,” Annabeth said. “The council is
serious. One week or you
learn to tap dance!”
Over at the head table, Quintus
cleared his throat. I got the feeling he
didn’t want to make a scene, but
Annabeth was really pushing it, sitting at
my table so long.
“We’ll talk later,” Annabeth
squeezed my arm a little too hard. “Convince
him, will you?”
She returned to the Athena table,
ignoring all the people who were staring
at her.
Grover buried his head in his
hands. “I can’t do it, Percy. My searcher’s
license. Pan. I’m going to lose
it all. I’ll have to start a puppet theater.”
“Don’t say that! We’ll figure
something out.”
He looked at me teary-eyed.
“Percy, you’re my best friend. You’ve seen
me underground. In that Cyclops’s
cave. Do you really think I could…”
His voice faltered. I remembered
the Sea of Monsters, when he’d been
stuck in a Cyclops’s cave. He’d
never liked underground places to begin
with, but now Grover really hated
them. Cyclopes gave him the creeps, too.
Even Tyson…Grover tried to hide
it, but Grover and I could sort of read
each other’s emotions because of
this empathy link between us. I knew how
he felt. Grover was terrified of
the big guy.
“I have to leave,” Grover said
miserably. “Juniper’s waiting for me. It’s a
good thing she finds cowards
attractive.”
After he was gone, I looked over
at Quintus. He nodded gravely, like we
were sharing some dark secret.
Then he went back to cutting his sausage
with a dagger.
* * *
In the afternoon, I went down to
the Pegasus stables to visit my friend
Blackjack.
Yo, boss! He capered
around in his stall, his black wings buffeting the air.
Ya bring me some
sugar cubes?
“You know those aren’t good for
you, Blackjack.”
Yeah, so you
brought me some, huh?
I smiled and fed him a handful.
Blackjack and I went back a long way. I
sort of helped rescue him from
Luke’s demon cruise ship a few years ago,
and ever since, he insisted on
repaying me with favors.
So we got any
quests coming up? Blackjack
asked. I’m ready to fly, boss!
I patted his nose. “Not sure,
man. Everybody keeps talking about
underground mazes.”
Blackjack whinnied nervously. Nuh-uh.
Not for this horse! You aint
gonna be crazy
enough to go in no maze, boss. Are ya? You’ll end up in the
glue factory!
“You may be right, Blackjack.
We’ll see.”
Blackjack crunched down his sugar
cubes. He shook his mane like he was
having a sugar seizure. Whoa!
Good stuff! Well, boss, you come to your
senses and want
to fly somewhere, just give a whistle. Ole Blackjack and his
buddies, we’ll
stampede anybody for ya!
I told him I’d keep it in mind.
Then a group of younger campers came into
the stables to start their riding
lessons, and I decided it was time to leave. I
had a bad feeling I wasn’t going
to see Blackjack for a long time.
* * *
That night after dinner, Quintus
had us suit up in combat armor like we
were getting ready for capture
the flag, but the mood among the campers
was a lot more serious. Sometime
during the day the crates in the arena had
disappeared, and I had a feeling
whatever was in them had been emptied into
the woods.
“Right,” Quintus said, standing
on the head dining table. “Gather ’round.”
He was dressed in black leather
and bronze. In the torchlight, his gray hair
made him look like a ghost. Mrs.
O’Leary bounded happily around him,
foraging for dinner scraps.
“You will be in teams of two,”
Quintus announced. When everybody
started talking and trying to
grab their friends, he yelled: “Which have
already been chosen!”
“AWWWWW!” everybody complained.
“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.”
“Aroooof!” Mrs. O’Leary
buried her face in a plate of pizza.
Quintus produced a big scroll and
started reading off names. Beckendorf
would be with Silena Beauregard,
which Beckendorf looked pretty happy
about. The Stoll brothers, 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. Quintus kept
rattling off the names until he said, “Percy
Jackson with Annabeth Chase.”
“Nice.” I grinned at Annabeth.
“Your armor is crooked” was her
only comment, and she redid my straps
for me.
“Grover Underwood,” Quintus said,
“with Tyson.”
Grover just about jumped out of
his goat fur. “What? B-but—”
“No, no,” Tyson whimpered. “Must
be a mistake. Goat boy—”
“No complaining!” Quintus
ordered. “Get with your partner. You have
two minutes to prepare!”
Tyson and Grover both looked at
me pleadingly. I tried to give them an
encouraging nod, and gestured
that they should move together. Tyson
sneezed. Grover started chewing
nervously on his wooden club.
“They’ll be fine,” Annabeth said.
“Come on. Let’s worry about how we’re
going to stay alive.”
* * *
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.
We jumped a creek and heard some
twigs snapping nearby. We crouched
behind a boulder, but it was only
the Stoll brothers tripping through the
woods and cursing. Their dad was
the god of thieves, but they were about as
stealthy as buffaloes.
Once the Stolls had passed, we
forged deeper into the west woods where
the monsters were wilder. We were
standing on a ledge overlooking a
marshy pond when Annabeth tensed.
“This is where we stopped looking.”
It took me a second to realize
what she meant. Last winter, when we’d
given up hope of finding him,
Grover, Annabeth, and I had stood on this
rock, and I’d convinced them not
to tell Chiron the truth: that Nico was a son
of Hades. At the time it seemed
the right thing to do. 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.
“I saw him last night,” I said.
Annabeth knit her eyebrows. “What
do you mean?”
I told her about the
Iris-message. When I was done, she stared into the
shadows of the woods. “He’s
summoning the dead? That’s not good.”
“The ghost was giving him bad
advice,” I said. “Telling him to take
revenge.”
“Yeah…spirits are never good
advisers they’ve got their own agendas.
Old grudges. And they resent the
living.”
“He’s going to come after me,” I
said. “The spirit mentioned a maze.”
She nodded. “That settles it. We have
to figure out the Labyrinth.”
“Maybe,” I said uncomfortably.
“But who sent the Iris-message? If Nico
didn’t know I was there—”
A branch snapped in the woods.
Dry leaves rustled. Something large was
moving in the trees, just beyond
the ridge.
“That’s not the Stoll brothers,”
Annabeth whispered.
Together we drew our swords.
* * *
We got to Zeus’s Fist, a huge
pile of boulders in the middle of the west
woods. It was a natural landmark
where campers often rendezvoused on
hunting expeditions, but now
there was nobody around.
“Over there,” Annabeth whispered.
“No, wait,” I said. “Behind us.”
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, Juniper?”
Junper 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, its 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.”
“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 toward us.
“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. 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.
“Wh-where 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. All I could think of was the fissure
in the dining room pavilion,
where those skeletons had been consumed last
summer. I wondered if the same
thing had happened to us.
I lifted my sword again for
light.
“It’s a long room,” I muttered.
Annabeth gripped my arm. “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.
“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 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
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.
“Percy! Annabeth!” Tyson’s voice bellowed
the loudest, but others were
calling out too.
I looked nervously at Annabeth.
Then we 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 said.
Chiron trotted up, followed by
Tyson and Grover.
“Percy!” Tyson said. “You are
okay?”
“We’re fine,” I said. “We fell in
a hole.”
The others 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.”
“Yeah,” Grover muttered. “We
would’ve won, but a Cyclops sat on me.”
“Was an accident!” Tyson
protested, and then he sneezed.
Clarisse was wearing the gold
laurels, but she didn’t even brag about
winning them, which wasn’t like
her. “A hole?” she said suspiciously.
Annabeth took a deep breath. She
looked around at the other campers.
“Chiron…maybe we should talk
about this at the Big House.”
Clarisse gasped. “You found it,
didn’t you?”
Annabeth bit her lip. “I—Yeah.
Yeah, we did.”
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.
“This explains a lot,” Clarisse
said. “It explains what Luke is after.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “What do
you mean? What did we find?”
Annabeth turned toward me, her
eyes dark with worry. “An entrance to
the Labyrinth. An invasion route
straight into the heart of the camp.”
CHAPTER FOUR: ANNABETH BREAKS THE RULES
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Chiron had insisted we talk about
it in the morning, which was kind of
like, Hey, your life’s in
mortal danger. Sleep tight! It was hard to fall asleep,
but when I finally did, I dreamed
of a prison.
I saw a goy 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 moaned
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 won
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 was still feeling shaky the
next morning when Chiron called a war
council. We met in the sword
arena, which I thought was pretty strange—
trying to discuss the fate of the
camp while Mrs. O’Leary chewed on a lifesize
squeaky pink rubber yak.
Chiron and Quintus stood at the
front by the weapon racks. Clarisse and
Annabeth sat next to each other
and led the briefing. Tyson and Grover sat
as far away from each other as
possible. Also present around the table:
Juniper the tree nymph, Silena
Beauregard, Travis and Connor Stoll,
Beckendorf, Lee Fletcher, even
Argus, our hundred-eyed security chief.
That’s how I knew it was serious.
Argus hardly ever shows up unless
something really major is going
on. The whole time Annabeth spoke, he
kept his hundred blue eyes trained
on her so hard his whole body turned
bloodshot.
“Luke must have known about the
Labyrinth entrance,” Annabeth said.
“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 Beauregard frowned. “You
knew about the Labyrinth entrance, and
you didn’t say anything?”
Juniper’s face turned green. “I
didn’t know it was important. Just a cave. I
don’t like yucky old caves.”
“She has good taste,” Grover
said.
“I wouldn’t have paid any
attention except…well, it was Luke.” She
blushed a little greener.
Grover huffed. “Forget what I
said about good taste.”
“Interesting,” Quintus polished
his sword as he spoke. “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 easy. He must’ve been
planning this for months.”
“He’s been sending scouts into
the maze,” Annabeth said. “We know
because…because we found one.”
“Chris Rodriguez,” Chiron said.
He gave Quintus a meaningful look.
“Ah,” Quintus said. “The one in
the…Yes, I understand.”
“The one in the what?” I asked.
Clarisse glared at me. “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.”
“Yes,” Annabeth said. “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 knew 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.”
The arena was silent except for
Mrs. O’Leary’s toy yak getting
disemboweled: SQUEAK! SQUEAK!
Finally 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 clopped restlessly on his
hooves. “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.”
Annabeth nodded. “The Labyrinth
is magical architecture, Percy. It would
take huge power to seal even one
of its entrances. In Phoenix, Clarisse
demolished a whole building with
a wrecking ball, and the maze entrance
just shifted a few feet. The best
we can do is prevent Luke from learning to
navigate the Labyrinth.”
“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.”
“But if nobody can navigate in
there,” I said, “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.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It has to be!”
“It isn’t!”
“Are you going to help me or
not?”
I realized everyone was watching
Annabeth and me like a tennis match.
Mrs. O’Leary’s squeaky yak went EEK!
As she ripped off its pink rubber
head.
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.”
“We all know who should lead
this,” Clarisse said. “Annabeth.”
There was a murmur of agreement.
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,” she said. “You should go,
too.”
Clarisse shook her head. “I’m not
going back in there.”
Travis Stoll laughed. “Don’t tell
me you’re scared. Clarisse, chicken?”
Clarisse got to her feet, I
thought she was going to pulverize Travis, but
she said in a shaky voice: “You
don’t understand anything, punk. I’m never
going in there again. Never!”
She stormed out of the arena.
Travis looked around sheepishly.
“I didn’t mean to—”
Chiron raised his hand. “The poor
girl has had a difficult year. Now, do
we have agreement that Annabeth
should lead the quest?”
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.”
* * *
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.
I paced the arena, waiting. Mrs.
O’Leary ate her lunch, which consisted of
a hundred pounds of ground beef
and several dog biscuits the size of trashcan
lids. I wondered where Quintus
got dog biscuits that size. I didn’t figure
you could just walk into Pet Zone
and put those in your shopping cart.
Chiron was deep in conversation
with Quintus and Argus. It looked to me
like they were disagreeing about
something. Quintus kept shaking his head.
On the other side of the arena,
Tyson and the Stoll brothers were racing
miniature bronze chariots that
Tyson had made out of armor scraps.
I gave up on pacing and left the
arena. I stared across the fields at the Big
House’s attic window, dark and
still. What was taking Annabeth so long? I
was pretty sure it hadn’t taken
me this long to get my quest.
“Percy,” a girl whispered.
Juniper was standing in the
bushes. It was weird how she almost turned
invisible when she was surrounded
by plants.
She gestured me over urgently.
“You need to know: Luke wasn’t the only
one I saw around that cave.”
“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—”
“Juniper?” Grover called from
inside the arena. “Where’d you go?”
Juniper sighed. “I’d better go
in. Just remember what I said. Don’t trust
that man!”
She ran into the arena.
I stared at the Big House,
feeling more uneasy than ever. If Quintus was
up to something…I needed
Annabeth’s advice. She might know what to
make of Juniper’s news. But where
the heck was she? Whatever was
happening with the Oracle, it
shouldn’t be taking this long.
Finally I couldn’t stand it
anymore.
It was against the rules, but
then again, nobody was watching. I ran down
the hill and headed across the
fields.
* * *
The front parlor of the Big House
was strangely quiet. I was used to
seeing Dionysus by the fireplace,
playing cards and eating grapes and
griping at satyrs, but Mr. D was
still away.
I walked down the hallway,
floorboards creaking under my feat. When I
got to the base of the stairs, I
hesitated. Four floors above would be a little
trapdoor leading to the attic.
Annabeth would be up there somewhere. I
stood quietly and listened. But
what I heard wasn’t what I had expected.
Sobbing. And it was coming from
below me.
I crept around the back of the
stairs. The basement door was open. I didn’t
even know the Big House had a
basement. I peered inside and saw two
figures in the far corner,
sitting amid a bunch of stockpiled cases of
ambrosia and strawberry
preserves. One was Clarisse. The other was a
teenage Hispanic guy in tattered
camouflage pants and a dirty black T-shirt.
His hair was greasy and matted.
He was hugging his shoulders and sobbing.
It was Chris Rodriguez, the
half-blood who’d gone to work for Luke.
“It’s okay,” Clarisse was telling
him. “Try a little more nectar.”
“You’re an illusion, Mary!” Chris
backed farther into the corner. “G-get
away.”
“My name’s not Mary.” Clarisse’s
voice was gentle but really sad. I never
knew Clarisse could sound that
way. “My name is Clarisse. Remember.
Please.”
“It’s dark!” Chris yelled. “So
dark!”
“Come outside,” Clarisse coaxed.
“The sunlight will help you.”
“A…a thousand skulls. The earth
keeps healing him.”
“Chris,” Clarisse pleaded. It sounded
like she was close to tears. “You
have to get better. Please. Mr. D
will be back soon. He’s an expert in
madness. Just hang on.”
Chris’s eyes were like a cornered
rat’s—wild and desperate. “There’s no
way out, Mary. No way out.”
Then he caught a glimpse of me
and made a strangled, terrified sound.
“The son of Poseidon! He’s
horrible!”
I backed away, hoping Clarisse
hadn’t seen me. I listened for her to come
charging out and yell at me, but
instead she just kept talking to Chris in a sad
pleading voice, trying to get him
to drink the nectar. Maybe she thought it
was part of Chris’s
hallucination, but…son of Poseidon? Chris had been
looking at me, and yet why did I
get the feeling he hadn’t been talking about
me at all?
And Clarisse’s tenderness—it had never
even occurred to me that she
might like someone; but the way
she said Chris’s name…She’d known him
before he changed sides. She’d
known him a lot better than I realized. And
now he was shivering in a dark
basement, afraid to come out, and mumbling
about someone named Mary. No
wonder Clarisse didn’t want anything to do
with the Labyrinth. What had
happened to Chris in there?
I heard a creak from above—like
the attic door opening—and I ran for the
front door. I needed to get out
of that house.
* * *
“My dear,” Chiron said. “You made
it.”
Annabeth looked at me first. I
couldn’t tell if she was trying to warn me,
or if the look in her eyes was
just plain fear. Then she focused on 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. After what I’d seen of
Chris Rodriguez, I didn’t even
want to think about Annabeth descending
into that weird maze again.
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 I’d seen of Nico
summoning spirits. 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 stood. “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 didn’t even hesitate. “I’m in.”
She smiled for the first time in
days, and that made it all worthwhile.
“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!”
“And Tyson,” Annabeth said. “I’ll
need you too.”
“Yay! Blow-things-up time!” Tyson
clapped so hard he woke up Mrs.
O’Leary, who was dozing in the
corner.
“Wait, Annabeth,” Chiron said.
“This goes against the ancient laws. A
hero is allowed only two
companions.”
“I need them all,” she insisted.
“Chiron, it’s important.”
I didn’t know why she was so
certain, but I was happy she’d included
Tyson. I couldn’t imagine leaving
him behind. He was huge and strong and
great at figuring out mechanical
things. Unlike satyrs, Cyclopes had no
problem underground.
“Annabeth.” Chiron flicked his
tail nervously. “Consider well. You would
be breaking the ancient laws, and
there are always consequences. Last winter,
five went on a quest to save
Artemis. Only three came back. Think on that.
Three is a sacred number. There
are three fates, three furies, three Olympian
sons of Kronos. It is a good
strong number that stands against many dangers.
Four…this is risky.”
Annabeth took a deep breath. “I
know. But we have to. Please.”
I could tell Chiron didn’t like
it. Quintus was studying us, like he was
trying to decide which of us
would come back alive.
Chiron sighed. “Very well. Let us
adjourn. The members of the quest
must prepare themselves. Tomorrow
at dawn, we send you into the
Labyrinth.”
* * *
Quintus pulled me aside as the
council was breaking up.
“I have a bad feeling about
this,” he told me.
Mrs. O’Leary came over, wagging
her tail happily. She dropped her shield
at my feet, and I threw it for
her. Quintus watched her romp after it. I
remembered what Juniper had said
about him scouting out the maze. I
didn’t’ trust him, but when he
looked at me, I saw real concern in his eyes.
“I don’t like the idea of you
going down there,” he said. “Any of you. but
if you must, I want you to
remember something. The Labyrinth exists to fool
you. It will distract you. That’s
dangerous for half-bloods. We are easily
distracted.”
“You’ve been in there?”
“Long ago.” His voice was ragged.
“I barely escaped with my life. Most
who enter aren’t that lucky.”
He gripped my shoulder. “Percy,
keep your mind on what matters most. If
you can do that, you might find
the way. And here, I wanted to give you
something.”
He handed me a little silver
tube. It was so cold I almost dropped it.
“A whistle?” I asked.
“A dog whistle,” Quintus said.
“For Mrs. O’Leary.”
“Um, thanks, but—”
“How will it work in the maze?
I’m not a hundred percent certain it will.
But Mrs. O’Leary is a hellhound.
She can appear when called, no matter
how far away she is. I’d feel
better knowing you had this. If you really need
help, use it; but be careful, the
whistle is made of Stygian ice.”
“What ice?”
“From the River Styx. Very hard
to craft. Very delicate. It cannot melt,
but it will shatter when you blow
it, so you can only use it once.”
I thought about Luke, my old
enemy. Right before I’d gone on my first
quest, Luke had given me a gift,
too—magic shoes that had been designed to
drag me to my death. Quintus
seemed nice. So concerned. And Mrs.
O’Leary liked him, which had to
count for something. She dropped the
slimy shield at my feet and
barked excitedly.
I felt ashamed that I could even
think about mistrusting Quintus. But then
again, I’d trusted Luke once.
“Thanks,” I told Quintus. I
slipped the freezing whistle into my pocket,
promising myself that I would
never use it, and I dashed off to find
Annabeth.
* * *
As long as I’d been at camp, I’d
never been inside the Athena cabin.
It was a silvery building,
nothing fancy, with plain white curtains and a
carved stone owl over the
doorway. The owl’s onyx eyes seemed to follow
me as I walked closer.
“Hello?” I called inside.
Nobody answered. I stepped in and
caught my breath. The place was a
workshop for brainiac kids. The
bunks were all pushed against one wall as if
sleeping didn’t matter very much.
Most of the room was filled with
workbenches and tables and sets
of tools and weapons. The back of the room
was a huge library crammed with
old scrolls and leather-bound books and
paperbacks. There was and
architect’s drafting table with a bunch of rulers
and protractors, and some 3-D
models of buildings. Huge old war maps were
plastered to the ceiling. Sets of
armor hung under the windows, their bronze
plates glinting in the sun.
Annabeth stood in the back of the
room, rifling through old scrolls.
“Knock, knock?” I said.
She turned with a start. “Oh…hi.
Didn’t hear you.”
“You okay?”
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.”
I thought about what Quintus had
said, how the maze tries to distract you.
I wondered if Annabeth knew that
already.
“We’ll figure it out,” I
promised.
Her hair had come loose and was
hanging in a tangled blond curtain all
around her face. Her gray eyes
looked almost black.
“I’ve wanted to lead a quest
since I was seven,” she said.
“You’re going to do awesome.”
She looked at me gratefully, but
then stared down at all the books and
scrolls she’d pulled from the
shelves. “I’m worried, Percy. Maybe I
shouldn’t have asked you to do
this. Or Tyson or Grover.”
“Hey, we’re your friends. 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.
I stepped forward and hugged her.
Butterflies started turning my stomach
into a mosh pit.
“Hey, it’s…it’s okay.” I patted
her back.
I was aware of everything in the
room. I felt like I could read the tiniest
print on any book on the shelves.
Annabeth’s hair smelled like lemon soap.
She was shivering.
“Chiron might be right,” she
muttered. “I’m breaking the rules. But I
don’t know what else to do. I
need you three. It just feels right.”
“Then don’t worry about it,” I
managed. “We’ve had plenty of problems
before, and we solved them.”
“This is different. I don’t want
anything happening to…any of you.”
Behind me, somebody cleared his
throat.
It was one of Annabeth’s
half-brothers, Malcolm. His face was bright red.
“Um, sorry,” he said. “Archery
practice is starting, Annabeth. Chiron said to
come find you.”
I stepped away from Annabeth. “We
were just looking at maps,” I said
stupidly.
Malcolm stared at me. “Okay.”
“Tell Chiron I’ll be right
there,” Annabeth said, and Malcom left in a
hurry.
Annabeth rubbed her eyes. “You go
ahead, Percy. I’d better get ready for
archery.”
I nodded, feeling more confused
than I ever had in my life. I wanted to
run from the cabin…but then again
I didn’t.
“Annabeth?” 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 scrolls.
“You’d better go, Percy. Get ready
for the quest. I’ll—I’ll see you
in the morning.”
I left her there, staring at maps
that led from nowhere to nowhere; but I
couldn’t shake the feeling that
one of us wasn’t going to come back from
this quest alive.
CHAPTER FIVE: NICO BUYS HAPPY MEALS FOR THE DEAD
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At least I got a good night’s
sleep before the quest, right?
Wrong.
That night in my dreams, I was in
the stateroom of the Princess
Andromeda. The windows
were open on a moonlit sea. Cold wind rustled
the velvet drapes.
Luke knelt on a Persian rug in
front of the golden sarcophagus of Kronos.
In the moonlight, Luke’s blond
hair looked pure white. 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 broken and unconscious after
a nasty fall from Mount Tam. Now he
looked perfectly fine. Almost too
healthy.
“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.
A jolt went through me. I
realized I’d never heard Luke’s last name before.
It had never even occurred to me.
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.
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
awesome, 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!”
“I don’t know why you’re so huffy
these days. You used to be fun to hang
around.”
“That was before I saw what you
did to that boy in Seattle.”
“Oh, he meant nothing to me,”
Kelli said. “Just a snack, really. You know
my heart belongs to you, Luke.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Now
report or get out.”
Kelli shrugged. “Fine. The
advanced team is ready, as you surprised. 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 start, my heart
pounding. I could’ve sworn the empousa’s
fangs were an inch from my
throat.
Tyson was snoring in the next
bunk. The sound calmed me down a little.
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 blueand-
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. Instead I thought about what I’d
seen last night—the weird image
of Nico at the banks of the River Styx.
“You’re trying to tell me
something,” I said.
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.” It was the
same ghost I’d seen Nico with 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.
“There are too many,” the ghost
said nervously. “You don’t know your
own powers.”
“I’ve got it under control,” Nico
said, though his voice sounded fragile.
He drew his sword—a short blade
made of solid black metal. I’d never seen
anything like it. It wasn’t
celestial bronze or steel. Iron, maybe? The crowd
of shades retreated at the sight
of it.
“One at a time,” Nico commanded.
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, I thought. 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.”
“Just tell me!”
“My stepfather died,” Theseus
remembered. “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. “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.
Suddenly, around the edges of the
pool, the other ghosts became restless.
They stirred, whispering in
nervous tones.
“I want to see my sister!” Nico
demanded. “Where is she?”
“He is coming,” Theseus said
fearfully. “He has sensed your summons.
He comes.”
“Who?” Nico demanded.
“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.
Tyson muttered in his sleep and turned over.
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 font crashed to the
floor in pieces. Tyson snorted
and muttered, but he kept sleeping.
I sank to the ground, shivering
from what I’d seen. Tyson found me there
in the morning, still staring at
the shattered remains of the saltwater fountain.
* * *
Just after dawn, the quest group
met at Zeus’s Fist. I’d packed my
knapsack—thermos with nectar,
baggie of ambrosia, bedroll, rope, clothes,
flashlights, and lots of extra
batteries. I had Riptide in my pocket. The magic
shield/wristwatch Tyson had made
for me was on my wrist.
It was a clear morning. The fog
had burned off and the sky was blue.
Campers would be having their
lessons today, flying pegasi and practicing
archery and scaling the lava
wall. Meanwhile, we could be heading
underground.
Juniper and Grover stood apart
from the group. Juniper had been crying
again, but she was trying to keep
it together for Grover’s sake. She kept
fussing with his clothes,
straightening his rasta cap and brushing goat fur off
his shirt. Since we had no idea
what we would encounter, he was dressed as
a human, with the cap to hide his
horns, and jeans, fake feet, and sneakers to
hide his goat legs.
Chiron, Quintus, and Mrs. O’Leary
stood with the other campers who’d
come to wish us well, but there
was too much activity for it to feel like a
happy send-off. A couple of tents
had been set up by the rocks for guard
duty. Beckendorf and his siblings
were working on a line of defensive spikes
and trenches. Chiron had decided
we needed to guard the Labyrinth exit at
all times, just in case.
Annabeth was doing one last check
on her supply pack. When Tyson and
I came over, she frowned. “Percy,
you look terrible.”
“He killed the water fountain
last night,” Tyson confided.
“What?” she asked.
Before I could explain, Chiron
trotted over. “Well, it appears you are
ready!”
He tried to sound upbeat, but I
could tell he was anxious. I didn’t want to
freak him out any more, but I
thought about last night’s dream, and before I
could change my mind, I said,
“Hey, uh, Chiron, can I ask you a favor while
I’m gone?”
“Of course, my boy.”
“Be right back, guys.” I nodded
toward the woods. Chiron asked an
eyebrow, but he followed me out
of earshot.
“Last night,” I said, “I dreamed
about Luke and Kronos.” I told him the
details. The news seemed to weigh
on his shoulders.
“I feared this,” Chiron said.
“Against my father, Kronos, we would stand
no chance in a fight.”
Chiron rarely called Kronos his
father. I mean, we all knew it was true.
Everybody in the Greek world—god,
monster, or Titan—was related to one
another somehow. But it wasn’t
exactly something Chiron liked to brag
about. Oh, my dad is the
all-powerful evil Titan lord who wants to destroy
Western
Civilization. I want to be just like him when I grow up!
“Do you know what he meant about
a bargain?” I asked.
“I am not sure, but I fear they
seek to make a deal with Daedalus. If the
old inventor is truly alive, if
he has not been driven insane by millennia in
the Labyrinth…well, Kronos can
find ways to twist anyone to his will.”
“Not anyone,” I promised.
Chiron managed a smile. “No.
Perhaps not anyone. But, Percy, you must
beware. I have worried for some
time that Kronos may be looking for
Daedalus for a different reason,
not just passage through the maze.”
“What else would he want?”
“Something Annabeth and I were
discussing. Do you remember what you
told me about your first trip to
the Princess Andromeda, the first time you
saw the golden coffin?”
I nodded. “Luke was taking about
raising Kronos, little pieces of him
appearing in the coffin every
time someone new joined his cause.”
“And what did Luke say they would
do when Kronos had risen
completely?”
A chill went down my spine. “He
said they would make Kronos a new
body, worthy of the forges of
Hephaestus.”
“Indeed,” Chiron said. “Daedalus
was the world’s greatest inventor. He
created the Labyrinth, but much
more. Automatons, thinking
machines…What if Kronos wishes
Daedalus to make him a new form?”
That was a real pleasant thought.
“We’ve got to get to Daedalus
first,” I said, “and convince him not to.”
Chiron stared off into the trees.
“One other thing I do not
understand…this talk of a last
soul joining their cause. That does not bode
well.”
I kept my mouth shut, but I felt
guilty. I’d made the decision not to tell
Chiron about Nico being a son of
Hades. The mention of souls, though—
What if Kronos knew about Nico?
What if he managed to turn him evil? It
was almost enough to make me want
to tell Chiron, but I didn’t. for one
thing, I wasn’t sure Chiron could
do anything about it. I had to find Nico
myself. I had to explain things
to him, make him listen.
“I don’t know,” I said at last.
“But, uh, something Juniper said, maybe
you should hear.” I told him how
the tree nymph had seen Quintus poking
around the rocks.
Chiron’s jaw tightened. “That
does not surprise me.”
“It doesn’t sur—you mean you
know?”
“Percy, when Quintus showed up at
camp offering his services…well, I
would have to be a fool not to be
suspicious.”
“Then why did you let him in?”
“Because sometimes it is better
to have someone you mistrust close to you,
so that you can keep an eye on
him. He may be just what he says: a halfblood
in search of a home. Certainly he
has done nothing openly that would
make me question his loyalty. But
believe me. I will keep an eye—”
Annabeth trudged over, probably
curious why we were taking so long.
“Percy, you ready?”
I nodded. My hand slipped into my
pocket, where I kept the ice whistle
Quintus had given me. I looked
over and saw Quintus watching me carefully.
He raised his hand in farewell.
Our spies report
success,
Luke had said. The same day we decided to
send a quest, Luke had known
about it.
“Take care,” Chiron told us. “And
good hunting.”
“You too,” I said.
We walked over to the rocks,
where Tyson and Grover were waiting. I
stared at the crack between the
boulders—the entrance that was about to
swallow us.
“Well,” Grover said nervously,
“good-bye sunshine.”
“Hello rocks,” Tyson agreed.
And together, the four of us
descended into darkness.
CHAPTER SIX:WE MEET THE GOD WITH TWO FACES
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We made it a hundred feet before
we were hopelessly lost.
The tunnel looked nothing like
the one Annabeth and I had stumbled into
before. Now it was round like a
sewer, constructed of red brick with ironbarred
portholes ever ten feet. I shined
a light through one of the portholes
out of curiosity, but I couldn’t
see anything. It opened into infinite darkness.
I thought I heard voices on the
other side, but it may have been just the cold
wind.
Annabeth tried her best to guide
us. She had this idea that we should stick
to the left wall.
“If we keep one hand on the left
wall and follow it,” she said, “we should
be able to find our way out again
by reversing course.”
Unfortunately, as soon as she
said that, the left wall disappeared. We
found ourselves in the middle of
a circular chamber with eight tunnels
leading out, and no idea how we’d
gotten there.
“Um, which way did we come in?”
Grover said nervously.
“Just turn around,” Annabeth
said.
We each turned toward a different
tunnel. It was ridiculous. None of us
could decide which way led back
to camp.
“Left walls are mean,” Tyson
said. “Which way now?”
Annabeth swept her flashlight
beam over the archways of the eight
tunnels. As far as I could tell,
they were identical. “That way,” she said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Deductive reasoning.”
“So…you’re guessing.”
“Just come on,” she said.
The tunnel she’d chosen narrowed
quickly. The walls turned to gray
cement, and the ceiling got so
low that pretty soon we were hunching over.
Tyson was forced to crawl.
Grover’s hyperventilating was the
loudest noise in the maze. “I can’t
stand it anymore,” he whispered.
“Are we there yet?”
“We’ve been down here maybe five
minutes,” Annabeth told him.
“It’s been longer than that,”
Grover insisted. “And why would Pan be
down here? This is the opposite
of the wild!”
We kept shuffling forward. Just
when I was sure the tunnel would get so
narrow it would squish us, it
opened into a huge room. I shined my light
around the walls and said,
“Whoa.”
The whole room was covered in
mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy
and faded, but I could still make
out the colors—red, blue, green, gold. The
frieze showed the Olympian gods
at a feast. There was my dad, Poseidon,
with his trident, holding out
grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine. Zeus was
partying with satyrs, and Hermes
was flying through the air on his winged
sandals. The pictures were
beautiful, but they weren’t very accurate. I’d seen
the gods. Dionysus was not that
handsome, and Hermes’s nose wasn’t that
big.
In the middle of the room was a
three-tiered fountain. It looked like it
hadn’t held water in a long time.
“What is this place?” I muttered.
“It looks—”
“Roman,” Annabeth said. “Those
mosaics area bout two thousand years
old.”
“But how can they be Roman?” I
wasn’t that great on ancient history, but
I was pretty sure the Roman
Empire never made it as far as Long Island.
“The Labyrinth is a patchwork,”
Annabeth said. “I told you, it’s always
expanding, adding pieces. It’s
the only work of architecture that grows by
itself.”
“You make it sound like it’s
alive.”
A groaning noise echoed from the
tunnel in front of us.
“Let’s not talk about it being
alive,” Grover whimpered. “Please?”
“All right,” Annabeth said.
“Forward.”
“Down the hall with the bad
sounds?” Tyson said. Even he looked
nervous.
“Yeah,” Annabeth said. “The
architecture is getting older. That’s a good
sign. Daedalus’s workshop would
be in the oldest part.”
That made sense. But soon the
maze was toying with us—we went fifty
feet and the tunnel turned back
to cement, with brass pipes running down the
sides. The walls were
spray-painted with graffiti. A neon tagger sign read
MOZ RULZ.
“I’m thinking this is not Roman,”
I said helpfully.
Annabeth took a deep breath, then
forged ahead.
Every few feet the tunnels twisted
and turned and branched off. The floor
beneath us changed from cement to
mud to bricks and back again. There was
no sense to any of it. We
stumbled into a wince cellar—a bunch of dusty
bottles in wooden racks—like we
were walking through somebody’s
basement, only there was no exit
above us, just more tunnels leading on.
Later the ceiling turned to
wooden planks, and I could hear voices above
us and the creaking of footsteps,
as if we were walking under some kind of
bar. It was reassuring to hear
people, but then again, we couldn’t get to them.
We were stuck down here with no
way out. Then we found our first skeleton.
He was dressed in white clothes,
like some kind of uniform. A wooden
crate of glass bottles sat next
to him.
“A milkman,” Annabeth said.
“What?” I asked.
“They used to deliver milk.”
“Yeah, I know what they are,
but…that was when my mom was little, like
a million years ago. What’s he
doing here?”
“Some people wander in by
mistake,” Annabeth said. “Some come
exploring on purpose and never make
it back. A long time ago, the Cretans
sent people in here as human
sacrifices.”
Grover gulped. “He’s been down
here a long time.” He pointed to the
skeleton’s bottles, which were
coated with white dust. The skeleton’s fingers
were clawing at the brick wall,
like he had died trying to get out.
“Only bones,” Tyson said. “Don’t
worry, goat boy. The milkman is dead.”
“The milkman doesn’t bother me,”
Grover said. “It’s the smell. Monsters.
Can’t you smell it?”
Tyson nodded. “Lots of monsters.
But underground smells like that.
Monsters and dead milk people.”
“Oh, good,” Grover whimpered. “I
thought maybe I was wrong.”
“We have to get deeper into the
maze,” Annabeth said. “There has to be a
way to the center.”
She led us to the right, then the
left, through a corridor of stainless steel
like some kind of air shaft, and
we arrived back in the Roman tile room with
the fountain.
This time, we weren’t alone.
* * *
What I noticed first were his
faces. Both of them. They jutted out from
either side of his head, staring
over his shoulders, so his head was much
wider than it should’ve been,
kind of like a hammerhead shark’s looking
straight at him, all I saw were
two overlapping ears and mirror-image
sideburns.
He was dressed like a New York
City doorman: a long black overcoat,
shiny shoes, and a black top-hat
that somehow managed to stay on his
double-wide head.
“Well, Annabeth?” said his left
face. “Hurry up!”
“Don’t mind him,” said the right
face. “He’s terribly rude. Right this way,
miss.”
Annabeth’s jaw dropped. “Uh…I
don’t…”
Tyson frowned. “That funny man
has two faces.”
“The funny man has ears, you
know!” the left face scolded. “Now come
along, miss.”
“No, no,” the right face said.
“This way, miss. Talk to me, please.”
The two-faced man regarded
Annabeth as best he could out of the corners
of his eyes. It was impossible to
look at him straight on without focusing on
one side or the other. And
suddenly I realized that’s what he was asking—he
wanted Annabeth to choose.
Behind him were two exits,
blocked by wooden doors with huge iron
locks. They hadn’t been there our
first time through the room. The two-faced
doorman held a silver key, which
he kept passing from his left hand to his
right hand. I wondered if this
was a different room completely, but the frieze
of the gods looked exactly the
same.
Behind us, the doorway we’d come
through had disappeared, replaced by
more mosaics. We wouldn’t be
going back the way we came.
“The exits are closed,” Annabeth
said.
“Duh!” the man’s left face said.
“Where do they lead?” she asked.
“One probably leads the way you
wish to go,” the right face said
encouragingly. “The other leads
to certain death.”
“I—I know who you are,” Annabeth
said.
“Oh, you’re a smart one!” The
left face sneered. “But do you know which
way to choose? I don’t have all
day.”
“Why are you trying to confuse
me?” Annabeth asked.
The right face smiled. “You’re in
charge now, my dear. All the decisions
are on your shoulders. That’s
what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“I—”
“We know you, Annabeth,” the left
face said. “We know what you
wrestle with every day. We know
your indecision. You will have to make
your choice sooner or later. And
the choice may kill you.”
I didn’t know what they were
talking about, but it sounded like it was
about more than a choice between
doors.
The color drained out of
Annabeth’s face. “No…I don’t—”
“Leave her alone,” I said. “Who
are you, anyway?”
“I’m your best friend,” the right
face said.
“I’m your worst enemy,” the left
face said.
“I’m Janus,” both faces said in
harmony. “God of Doorways. Beginnings.
Endings. Choices.”
“I’ll see you soon enough,
Perseus Jackson,” said the right face. “But for
now it’s Annabeth’s turn.” He
laughed giddily. “Such fun!”
“Shut up!” his left face said.
“This is serious. One bad choice can ruin
your whole life. It can kill you
and all of your friends. But no pressure,
Annabeth. Choose!”
With a sudden chill, I remembered
the words of the prophecy: the child of
Athena’s final
stand.
“Don’t do it,” I said.
“I’m afraid she has to,” the
right face said cheerfully.
Annabeth moistened her lips. “I—I
chose—”
Before she could point to a door,
a brilliant light flooded the room.
Janus raised his hands to either
side of his head to cover his eyes. When
the light died, a woman was
standing at the fountain.
She was tall and graceful with
long hair the color of chocolate, braided in
plaits with gold ribbons. She
wore a simple white dress, but when she moved,
the fabric shimmered with colors
like oil on water.
“Janus,” she said, “are we
causing trouble again?”
“N-no, milady!” Janus’s right
face stammered.
“Yes!” the left face said.
“Shut up!” the right face said.
“Excuse me?” the woman asked.
“Not you, milady! I was talking
to myself.”
“I see,” the lady said. “You know
very well your visit is premature. The
girl’s time has not yet come. So I
give you a choice: leave these heroes to me,
or I shall turn you into a
door and break you down.”
“What kind of door?” the left
face asked.
“Shut up!” the right face said.
“Because French doors are nice,”
the left face mused. “Lots of natural
light.”
“Shut up!” the right face wailed.
“Not you, milady! Of course I’ll leave. I
was just having a bit of fun.
Doing my job. Offering choices.”
“Causing indecision,” the woman
corrected. “Now be gone!”
The left face muttered, “Party
power,” then he raised his silver key,
inserted it into the air, and
disappeared.
The woman turned toward us, and
fear closed around my heart. Her eyes
shined with power. Leave these
heroes to me. That didn’t sound good. For a
second, I almost wished we
could’ve taken our chances with Janus. But then
the woman smiled.
“You must be hungry,” she said.
“Sit with me and talk.”
She waved her hand, and the old
Roman fountain began to flow. Jets of
clear water sprayed into the air.
A marble table appeared, laden with platters
of sandwiches and pitchers of
lemonade.
“Who…who are you?” I asked.
“I am Hera.” The woman smiled.
“Queen of Heaven.”
* * *
I’d seen Hera once before at a
Council of the Gods, but I hadn’t paid
much attention to her. At the
time I’d been surrounded by a bunch of other
gods who were debating whether or
not to kill me.
I didn’t remember her looking so
normal. Of course, gods are usually
twenty feet tall when they’re on
Olympus, so that makes them look a lot less
normal. But now, Hera looked like
a regular mom.
She served us sandwiches and
poured lemonade.
“Grover, dear,” she said, “use
your napkin. Don’t eat it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grover said.
“Tyson, you’re wasting away.
Would you like another peanut butter
sandwich?”
Tyson stifled a belch. “Yes, nice
lady.”
“Queen Hera,” Annabeth said. “I
can’t believe it. What are you doing in
the Labyrinth?”
Hera smiled. She flicked one
finger and Annabeth’s hair combed itself.
All the dirt and grime
disappeared from her face.
“I came to see you, naturally,”
the goddess said.
Grover and I exchanged nervous
looks. Usually when the gods come
looking for you, it’s not out of
the goodness of their hearts. It’s because they
want something.
Still, that didn’t keep me from
chowing down on turkey-and-Swiss
sandwiches and chips and
lemonade. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.
Tyson was inhaling one peanut
butter sandwich after another, and Grover
was loving the lemonade,
crunching the Styrofoam cup like an ice-cream
cone.
“I didn’t think—” Annabeth
faltered. “Well, I didn’t think you liked
heroes.”
Hera smiled indulgently. “Because
of that little spat I had with Hercules?
Honestly, I got so much bad press
because of one disagreement.”
“Didn’t you try to kill him,
like, a lot of times?” Annabeth asked.
Hera waved her hand dismissively.
“Water under the bridge, my dear.
Besides, he was one of my loving
husband’s children by another woman.
My patience wore thin, I’ll admit
it. But Zeus and I have had some excellent
marriage counseling sessions
since then. We’ve aired our feelings and come
to an understanding—especially
after that last little incident.”
“You mean when he sired Thalia?”
I guessed, but immediately wished I
hadn’t. As soon as I said the
name of our friend, the half-blood daughter of
Zeus, Hera’s eyes turned toward
me frostily.
“Percy Jackson, isn’t it? One of
Poseidon’s…children.” I got the feeling
she was thinking of another word
besides children. “As I recall, I voted to let
you live at the winter solstice.
I hope I voted correctly.”
She turned back to Annabeth with
a sunny smile. “At any rate, I certainly
bear you no ill will, my girl. I
appreciate the difficulty of your quest.
Especially when you have
troublemakers like Janus to deal with.”
Annabeth lowered her gaze. “Why
was he here? He was driving me
crazy.”
“Trying to,” Hera agreed. “You
must understand, the minor gods like
Janus have always been frustrated
by the small parts they play in the
universe. Some, I fear, have
little love for Olympus, and could easily be
swayed to support the rise of my
father.”
“Your father?” I said. “Oh,
right.”
I’d forgotten that Kronos was
Hera’s dad, too, along with being the father
to Zeus, Poseidon, and all the
eldest Olympians. I guess that made Kronos
my grandfather, but that thought
was so weird I put it out of my mind.
“We must watch the minor gods,”
Hera said. “Janus. Hecate. Morpheus.
They give lip service to Olympus,
and yet—”
“That’s where Dionysus went,” I
remembered. “He was checking on the
minor gods.”
“Indeed.” Hera stared at the
fading mosaics of the Olympians. “You see,
in times of trouble, even gods
can lose faith. They start putting their trust in
the wrong things. They stop
looking at the big picture and start being selfish.
But I’m the goddess of marriage,
you see. I’m used to perseverance. You
have to rise above the squabbling
and chaos, and keep believing. You have
to always keep your goals in
mind.”
“What are your goals?” Annabeth
asked.
She smiled. “To keep my family,
the Olympians, together, of course. At
the moment, the best way I can do
that is by helping you. Zeus does not
allow me to interfere much, I am
afraid. But once every century or so, for a
quest I care deeply about, he
allows me to grant a wish.”
“A wish?”
“Before you ask it, let me give
you some advice, which I can do for free. I
know you see Daedalus. His
Labyrinth is as much a mystery to me as it is to
you. But if you want to know his
fate, I would visit my son Hephaestus at
his forge. Daedalus was a great
inventor, a mortal after Hephaestus’s heart.
There has never been a mortal
Hephaestus admired more. If anyone would
have kept up with Daedalus and
could tell you his fate, it is Hephaestus.”
“But how do we get there?”
Annabeth asked. “That’s my wish. I want a
way to navigate the Labyrinth.”
Hera looked disappointed. “So be
it. You wish for something, however,
that you have already been
given.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The means is already within your
grasp.” She looked at me. “Percy
knows the answer.”
“I do?”
“But that’s not fair,” Annabeth
said. “You’re not telling me what it is!”
Hera shook her head. “Getting
something and having the wits to use
it…those are two different
things. I’m sure your mother Athena would
agree.”
The room rumbled like distant
thunder. Hera stood. “That would be my
cue. Zeus grows impatient. Think
on what I have said, Annabeth. Seek out
Hephaestus. You will have to pass
through the ranch, I imagine. But keep
going. And use all the means at
your disposal, however common they may
seem.”
She pointed toward the two doors
and they melted away, revealing twin
corridors, open and dark. “One
last thing, Annabeth. I have postponed your
day of choice, I have not
prevented it. Soon, as Janus said, you will have to
make a decision. Farewell!”
She waved a hand and turned into
white smoke. So did the food, just as
Tyson chomped down on a sandwich
that turned to mist in his mouth. The
fountain trickled to a stop. The
mosaic walls dimmed and turned grungy and
faded again. The room was no
longer any place you’d want to have a picnic.
Annabeth stamped her foot. “What
sort of help was that? ‘Here, have a
sandwich. Make a wish. Oops, I
can’t help you!’ Poof!”
“Poof,” Tyson agreed sadly,
looking at his empty plate.
“Well,” Grover sighed, “she said
Percy knows the answer. That’s
something.”
They all looked at me.
“But I don’t,” I said. “I don’t
know what she was talking about.”
Annabeth sighed. “All right. Then
we’ll just keep going.”
“Which way?” I asked. I really
wanted to ask what Hera had meant—
about the choice Annabeth needed
to make. But then Grove and Tyson both
tensed. They stood up together
like they’d rehearsed it. “Left,” they both
said.
Annabeth frowned. “How can you be
sure?”
“Because something is coming from
the right,” Grover said.
“Something big,” Tyson agreed.
“In a hurry.”
“Left is sounding pretty good,” I
decided. Together we plunged into the
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