Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

My nightmare started like this.

I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their win-dows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean
churned.

Florida, I thought. Though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I'd never been to Florida. Then I heard hooves clattering against the pavement. I turned and saw my friend Grover running for his life.

Yeah, I said hooves.

Grover is a satyr. From the waist up, he looks like a typical gangly teenager with a peach-fuzz goatee and a bad case of acne. He walks with a strange limp, but unless you happen to catch him without his pants on (which I don't recommend), you'd never know there was anything un-human about him. Baggy jeans and fake feet hide the fact that he's got furry hindquarters and hooves.

Grover had been my best friend in sixth grade. He'd gone on this adventure with me, this kid called Simon and a girl named Annabeth to save the world, but I hadn't seen him since last July, when he set off alone on a dangerous quest—a quest no satyr had ever returned from.

Anyway, in my dream, Grover was hauling goat tail, holding his human shoes in his hands the way he does when he needs to move fast. He clopped past the little tourist shops and surfboard rental places. The wind bent the palm trees almost to the ground.

Grover was terrified of something behind him. He must've just come from the beach. Wet sand was caked in his fur. He'd escaped from somewhere. He was trying to get away from ... something.

A bone-rattling growl cut through the storm. Behind Grover, at the far end of the block, a shadowy figure loomed. It swatted aside a street lamp, which burst in a shower of sparks.

Grover stumbled, whimpering in fear. He muttered to himself, Have to get away. Have to warn them!

I couldn't see what was chasing him, but I could hear it muttering and cursing. The ground shook as it got closer. Grover dashed around a street corner and faltered. He'd run into a dead-end courtyard full of shops. No time to back up. The nearest door had been blown open by the storm. The sign above the darkened display window read: ST. AUGUSTINE BRIDAL BOUTIQUE.

Grover dashed inside. He dove behind a rack of wed-ding dresses. The monster's shadow passed in front of the shop. I could smell the thing—a sickening combination of wet sheep wool and rotten meat and that weird sour body odor only monsters have, like a skunk that's been living off Mexican food. Grover trembled behind the wedding dresses. The monster's shadow passed on.

Silence except for the rain. Grover took a deep breath. Maybe the thing was gone. Then lightning flashed. The entire front of the store exploded, and a monstrous voice bellowed: “MIIIIINE!"
 
I sat bolt upright, shivering in my bed.

There was no storm. No monster.

Morning sunlight filtered through my bedroom window. I thought I saw a shadow flicker across the glass—a humanlike shape. But then there was a knock on my bed-room door—my mom called: "Percy, you're going to be late"—and the shadow at the window disappeared.

It must've been my imagination. A fifth-story window with a rickety old fire escape ... there couldn't have been anyone out there.

"Come on, dear," my mother called again. "Last day of school. You should be excited! You've almost made it.'"

"Coming," I managed.

I felt under my pillow. My fingers closed reassuringly around the ballpoint pen I always slept with. I brought it out, studied the Ancient Greek writing engraved on the side: Anaklusmos. Riptide.

I thought about uncapping it, but something held me back. I hadn't used Riptide for so long….

Besides, my mom had made me promise not to use deadly weapons in the apartment after I'd swung a javelin the wrong way and taken out her china cabinet. I put Anaklusmos on my nightstand and dragged myself out of bed.

I got dressed as quickly as I could. I tried not to think about my nightmare or monsters or the shadow at my window.

Have to get away. Have to warn them! What had Grover meant?

I made a three-fingered claw over my heart and pushed outward—an ancient gesture Grover had once taught me for warding off evil.

The dream couldn't have been real.

Last day of school. My mom was right, I should have been excited. For the first time in my life, I'd almost made it an entire year without getting expelled. No weird accidents. No fights in the classroom. No teachers turning into monsters and trying to kill me with poisoned cafeteria food or exploding homework. Tomorrow, I'd be on my way to my favorite place in the world—Camp Half-Blood—and see potentially see Simon again.

If you didn’t know, Simon and his uncle-of-a-father-figure, Darryl Thorn, literally vanished off the face of the Earth nine months ago. I wonder how they were—the last I heard of them, mom said that Maya and her dad Ajax found the apartment bare and empty when they first disappeared, a week after Simon’s first day in seventh grade. The Lin Abbotts’ searched high and low, and found bits of Simon’s smashed phone over the sidewalk.

When I heard the news, i couldn’t breathe. Simon. My Simon was missing. For the last nine months, i’d been telling myself he was still okay and that he and Darryl probably took a vacation. A very long, very secretive vacation away from New York.

Besides that, only one more day to go. Surely even I couldn't mess that up. As usual, I didn't have a clue how wrong I was.
 
My mom made blue waffles and blue eggs for breakfast. She's funny that way, celebrating special occasions with blue food. I think it's her way of saying anything is possible. Percy can pass seventh grade. Waffles can be blue. Little miracles like that.

I ate at the kitchen table while my mom washed dishes. She was dressed in her work uniform—a starry blue skirt and a red-and-white striped blouse she wore to sell candy at Sweet on America. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. The waffles tasted great, but I guess I wasn't digging in like I usually did. My mom looked over and frowned. "Percy, are you all right?"

"Yeah ... fine."

But she could always tell when something was bothering me. She dried her hands and sat down across from me. "School, or ..." She didn't need to finish. I knew what she was asking.

"I think Grover's in trouble," I said, and I told her about my dream.

She pursed her lips. We didn't talk much about the other part of my life. We tried to live as normally as possible, but my mom knew all about Grover. She also knew all about Simon but that was for another day.

"I wouldn't be too worried, dear," she said. "Grover is a big satyr now, like how Simon is a big boy. If there were a problem, I'm sure we would've heard from ... from camp... ." Her shoulders tensed as she said the word camp.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "I'll tell you what. This afternoon we'll celebrate the end of school. I'll take you and Tyson to Rockefeller Center—to that skateboard shop you like."

Oh, man, that was tempting. We were always struggling with money. Between my mom's night classes and my private school tuition, we could never afford to do special stuff like shop for a skateboard. But something in her voice bothered me.

"Wait a minute," I said. "I thought we were packing me up for camp tonight."

She twisted her dishrag. "Ah, dear, about that... I got a message from Chiron last night."

My heart sank. Chiron was the activities director at Camp Half-Blood. He wouldn't contact us unless something serious was going on. "What did he say?"

"He thinks ... it might not be safe for you to come to camp just yet. We might have to postpone."

"Postpone? Mom, how could it not be safe? I'm a half-blood! It's like the only safe place on earth for me!"

"Usually, dear. But with the problems they're having—"

"What problems?"

“Percy… I'm very, very sorry. I was hoping to talk to you about it this afternoon. I can't explain it all now. I'm not even sure Chiron can. Everything happened so suddenly."

My mind was reeling. How could I not go to camp? I wanted to ask a million questions, but just then the kitchen clock chimed the half-hour.

My mom looked almost relieved. "Seven-thirty, dear. You should go. Tyson will be waiting."

"But—"

“Percy, we'll talk this afternoon. Go on to school."

That was the last thing I wanted to do, but my mom had this fragile look in her eyes—a kind of warning, like if I pushed her too hard she'd start to cry. Besides, she was right about my friend Tyson. I had to meet him at the subway station on time or he'd get upset. He was scared of traveling underground alone.

I gathered up my stuff, but I stopped in the doorway. "Mom, this problem at camp. Does it... could it have anything to do with my dream about Grover? Or with Simon and Mr. Thorn being gone?”

She wouldn't meet my eyes. "We'll talk this afternoon, dear. I'll explain ... as much as I can."

Reluctantly, I told her good-bye. I jogged downstairs to catch the Number Two train. I didn't know it at the time, but my mom and I would never get to have our afternoon talk. In fact, I wouldn't be seeing home for a long, long time.

As I stepped outside, I glanced at the brownstone building across the street. Just for a second I saw a dark shape in the morning sunlight—a human silhouette against the brick wall, with what looked to be a mouse over their shoulder before it shifted into what looked to be another, smaller-looking human sitting on their shoulder with ease, like they’d had done this song and dance; two shadows that belonged to no one. Then they rippled and vanished.

Chapter Text

My day started normal. Or as normal as it ever gets at Meriwether College Prep.

See, it’s this “progressive” school in downtown Manhattan, which means we sit on beanbag chairs instead of at desks, and we don’t get grades, and the teachers wear jeans and rock concert T-shirts to work.

That’s all cool with me. I mean, I’m ADHD and dyslexic, like most half-bloods, so I’d never done that great in regular schools even before they kicked me out. The only bad thing about Meriwether was that the teachers always looked on the bright side of things, and the kids weren’t always…well, bright.

Take my first class today: English. The whole middle school had read this book called Lord of the Flies, where all these kids get marooned on an island and go psycho. So for our final exam, our teachers sent us into the break yard to spend an hour with no adult supervision to see what would happen. What happened was a massive wedgie contest between the seventh and eighth graders, two pebble fights, and a full-tackle basketball game. The school bully, Matt Sloan, led most of those activities.

Sloan wasn’t big or strong, but he acted like he was. He had eyes like a pit bull, and shaggy black hair, and he always dressed in expensive but sloppy clothes, like he wanted everybody to see how little he cared about his family’s money. One of his front teeth was chipped from the time he’d taken his daddy’s Porsche for a joyride and run into a PLEASE SLOW DOWN FOR CHILDREN sign.

Anyway, Sloan was giving everybody wedgies until he made the mistake of trying it on my friend Tyson.

Tyson was the only homeless kid at Meriwether College Prep. As near as my mom and I could figure, he’d been abandoned by his parents when he was very young, probably because he was so… different.

He was six-foot-three and built like the Abominable Snowman, but he cried a lot and was scared of just about everything, including his own reflection. His face was kind of misshapen and brutal-looking. I couldn’t tell you what color his eyes were, because I could never make myself look higher than his crooked teeth. His voice was deep, but he talked funny, like a much younger kid—I guess because he’d never gone to school before coming to Meriwether. He wore tattered jeans, grimy size-twenty sneakers, and a plaid flannel shirt with holes in it. He smelled like a New York City alleyway, because that’s where he lived, in a cardboard refrigerator box off 72nd Street.

Meriwether Prep had adopted him as a community service project so all the students could feel good about themselves. 

Unfortunately, most of them couldn’t stand Tyson. Once they discovered he was a big softie, despite his massive strength and his scary looks, they made themselves feel good by picking on him. I was pretty much his only friend, which meant he was my only friend.

My mom had complained to the school a million times that they weren’t doing enough to help him. She’d called social services, but nothing ever seemed to happen. The social workers claimed Tyson didn’t exist. They swore up and down that they’d visited the alley we described and couldn’t find him, though how you miss a giant kid living in a refrigerator box, I don’t know.

Anyway, Matt Sloan snuck up behind him and tried to give him a wedgie, and Tyson panicked. He swatted Sloan away a little too hard. Sloan flew fifteen feet and got tangled in the little kids’ tire swing.

“You freak!” Sloan yelled. “Why don’t you go back to your cardboard box!”

Tyson started sobbing. He sat down on the jungle gym so hard he bent the bar, and buried his head in his hands.

“Take it back, Sloan!” I shouted.

Sloan just sneered at me. “Why do you even bother, Jackson? You might have friends if you weren’t always sticking up for that freak.”

I balled my fists. I hoped my face wasn’t as red as it felt. “He’s not a freak. He’s just…”

I tried to think of the right thing to say, but Sloan wasn’t listening. He and his big ugly friends were too busy laughing. I wondered if it were my imagination, or if Sloan had more goons hanging around him than usual. I was used to seeing him with two or three, but today he had like, half a dozen more, and I was pretty sure I’d never seen them before.

“Just wait till PE, Jackson,” Sloan called. “You are so dead.”

When first period ended, our English teacher, Mr. de Milo, came outside to inspect the carnage. He pronounced that we’d understood Lord of the Flies perfectly. We all passed his course, and we should never, never grow up to be violent people. Matt Sloan nodded earnestly, then gave me a chip-toothed grin.

I had to promise to buy Tyson an extra peanut butter sandwich at lunch to get him to stop sobbing.

“I…I am a freak?” he asked me.

“No,” I promised, gritting my teeth. “Matt Sloan is the freak.”

Tyson sniffled. “You are a good friend. Miss you next year if…if I can’t…”

His voice trembled. I realized he didn’t know if he’d be invited back next year for the community service project. I wondered if the headmaster had even bothered talking to him about it.

“Don’t worry, big guy,” I managed. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Tyson gave me such a grateful look I felt like a big liar. How could I promise a kid like him that anything would be fine?

Our next exam was science. Mrs. Tesla told us that we had to mix chemicals until we succeeded in making something explode. Tyson was my lab partner. His hands were way too big for the tiny vials we were supposed to use. He accidentally knocked a tray of chemicals off the counter and made an orange mushroom cloud in the trash can.

After Mrs. Tesla evacuated the lab and called the hazardous waste removal squad, she praised Tyson and me for being natural chemists. We were the first ones who’d ever aced her exam in under thirty seconds.

I was glad the morning went fast, because it kept me from thinking too much about my problems. I couldn’t stand the idea that something might be wrong at camp. Even worse, I couldn’t shake the memory of my bad dream. I had a terrible feeling that Grover was in danger.

In social studies, while we were drawing latitude/longitude maps, I opened my notebook and stared at one of the photos inside—first, was of my friend Simon. He was on the floor, his legs crossed in ripped jeans and a slightly fluffy, big purple-and-white sweater that must’ve belonged to Maya, Simon’s soon-to-be-real-sister, last I’d heard. Her dad Ajax and Simon’s uncle Darryl were a sorta thing after their kids introduced them three years ago and since then, they’d been going strong amongst the fact Darryl threw Ajax out the fire escape and yelled at him to be a better fathere. 

In the photo, Maya sat in the back in the couch, her curly hair tied up in a high ponytail as she glared at the camera, her mouth open like she was yelling at him for something while Simon, standing in front of her a few feet, had this cheeky look on face, his blue eyes crinkled and the dimple on his left cheek prominent—a feature I realized you only saw if he was really smiling, like he knew what he was doing to me. 

The next picture was of my friend Annabeth on vacation in Washington, D.C. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over her orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. Her kinky black and blond hair was pulled back in a bandanna. She was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial with her arms crossed, looking extremely pleased with herself, like she’d personally designed the place. See, Annabeth wants to be an architect when she grows up, so she’s always visiting famous monuments and stuff. She’s weird that way. She’d e-mailed me the two pictures after spring break, and every once in a while I’d look at them just to remind myself they were real and Camp Half-Blood hadn’t just been my imagination.

Simon, on the other hand, visited my apartment with his uncle Darryl once after the summer ended, apparently his school break hadn’t ended yet until very late in August, lucky him.

I didn’t know how he got my address—probably from Chiron—but seeing him in the doorway happily talking to my mom in a big black sweater, ripped jeans and his floppy, brown hair over his eyelids after his brutish-looking uncle Darryl dropped him off and went to work for the day, made it feel like it didn’t matter. 

Because Simon was there, even for a moment, before he ultimately disappeared months later. I wondered if it was my fault. If my mom and I scared him off into completely running away from New York entirely.

I wished Annabeth were here. She’d know what to make of my dream and Simon’s disappearance. I’d never admit it to her, but she was smarter than me, even if she was annoying sometimes.

I was about to close my notebook when Matt Sloan reached over and ripped the photos out of the rings

“Hey!” I protested.

Sloan checked out the pictures, looking bored with Annabeth but his eyes got wide at Simon’s. “No way, Jackson. Who is that? Are they is not your—”

“Give them back!” My ears felt hot.

Sloan looked at the photo with this weird expression, his lips pursed like he was almost thinking. He snorted, “no way, she’s way too hot to be your girlfriend.”

“He’s not a she.”

Sloan looked at me like I was stupid, “Please, in that sweater? With those eyes and stupid smile? That’s definitely a she.” He huffed, puffing his chest like he proved me wrong. He flicked it, looking at the photo again, licking his lips, “she looks easy, bet i could steal her from you, Jackson.”

“Give them back!”

He dodged, waving the photos around, “bet she likes it rough.” He leaned forward, his crooked teeth glinting, “does she?”

“Shut up, Sloan!” I growled, “Simon’s thirteen!”

“Simone?” He grinned, looking at the photo and back at me, “bet I'll be calling that name a lot.”

He pocketed Simon’s picture and handed Annabeth’s photo to his ugly buddies, who snickered and started ripping it up to make spit wads. They were new kids who must’ve been visiting, because they were all wearing those stupid HI! MY NAME IS: tags from the admissions office. They must’ve had a weird sense of humor, too, because they’d all filled in strange names like: MARROW SUCKER, SKULL EATER, and JOE BOB. No human beings had names like that.

“These guys are moving here next year,” Sloan bragged, like that was supposed to scare me. “I bet they can pay the tuition, too, unlike your retard friend.”

“He’s not retarded.” I had to try really, really hard not to punch Sloan the face.

“You’re such a loser, Jackson. Good thing I’m gonna put you out of your misery next period.”

His huge buddies chewed up my photo. I wanted to pulverize them, but I was under strict orders from Chiron never to take my anger out on regular mortals, no matter how obnoxious they were. I had to save my fighting for monsters. Still, part of me thought, if Sloan only knew who I really was…

The bell rang.

As Tyson and I were leaving class, a girl’s voice whispered, “Percy!”

I looked around the locker area, but nobody was paying me any attention. Like any girl at Meriwether would ever be caught dead calling my name.

“Percy!” Another voice echoed, this time a guy’s—his voice was soft, a little high, and it cracked between the R and C of my name, like he was running through ten different emotions and couldn’t pick one.

I looked again, scanning the room. Still nothing. All the guys here had mostly low, grouchy voices, and they’d never say my name as gently as that.

Before I had time to consider whether or not I’d been imagining things, a crowd of kids rushed for the gym, carrying Tyson and me along with them. It was time for PE. Our coach had promised us a free-for-all dodgeball game, and Matt Sloan had promised to kill me.

The gym uniform at Meriwether is sky blue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts. Fortunately, we did most of our athletic stuff inside, so we didn’t have to jog through Tribeca looking like a bunch of boot-camp hippie children.

I changed as quickly as I could in the locker room because I didn’t want to deal with Sloan. I was about to leave when Tyson called, “Percy?”

He hadn’t changed yet. He was standing by the weight room door, clutching his gym clothes. “Will you…uh…”

“Oh. Yeah.” I tried not to sound aggravated about it. “Yeah, sure, man.”

Tyson ducked inside the weight room. I stood guard outside the door while he changed. I felt kind of awkward doing this, but he asked me to most days. I think it’s because he’s completely hairy and he’s got weird scars on his back that I’ve never had the courage to ask him about.

Anyway, I’d learned the hard way that if people teased Tyson while he was dressing out, he’d get upset and start ripping the doors off lockers. When we got into the gym, Coach Nunley was sitting at his little desk reading Sports Illustrated. Nunley was about a million years old, with bifocals and no teeth and a greasy wave of gray hair. He reminded me of the Oracle at Camp Half-Blood—which was a shriveled-up mummy—except Coach Nunley moved a lot less and he never billowed green smoke. Well, at least not that I’d observed.

Matt Sloan said, “Coach, can I be captain?”

“Eh?” Coach Nunley looked up from his magazine. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Mm-hmm.”

Sloan grinned and took charge of the picking. He made me the other team’s captain, but it didn’t matter who I picked, because all the jocks and the popular kids moved over to Sloan’s side. So did the big group of visitors.

On my side I had Tyson, Corey Bailer the computer geek, Raj Mandali the calculus whiz, and a half dozen other kids who always got harassed by Sloan and his gang. Normally I would’ve been okay with just Tyson—he was worth half a team all by himself—but the visitors on Sloan’s team were almost as tall and strong-looking as Tyson, and there were six of them.

Matt Sloan spilled a cage full of balls in the middle of the gym.

“Scared,” Tyson mumbled. “Smell funny.”

I looked at him. “What smells funny?” Because I didn’t figure he was talking about himself.

“Them.” Tyson pointed at Sloan’s new friends. “Smell funny.”

The visitors were cracking their knuckles, eyeing us like it was slaughter time. I couldn’t help wondering where they were from. Someplace where they fed kids raw meat and beat them with sticks.

Sloan blew the coach’s whistle and the game began. Sloan’s team ran for the center line. On my side, Raj Mandali yelled something in Urdu, probably “I have to go potty!” and ran for the exit. Corey Bailer tried to crawl behind the wall mat and hide. The rest of my team did their best to cower in fear and not look like targets.

“Tyson,” I said. “Let’s g—”

A ball slammed into my gut. I sat down hard in the middle of the gym floor. The other team exploded in laughter.

My eyesight was fuzzy. I felt like I’d just gotten the Heimlich maneuver from a gorilla. I couldn’t believe anybody could throw that hard.

Tyson yelled, “Percy, duck!”

I rolled as another dodgeball whistled past my ear at the speed of sound.

Whooom!

It hit the wall mat, and Corey Bailer yelped.

“Hey!” I yelled at Sloan’s team. “You could kill somebody!”

The visitor named Joe Bob grinned at me evilly. Somehow, he looked a lot bigger now… even taller than Tyson. His biceps bulged beneath his T-shirt. “I hope so, Perseus Jackson! I hope so!”

The way he said my name sent a chill down my back. Nobody called me Perseus except those who knew my true identity. Friends…and enemies.

What had Tyson said? They smell funny.

Monsters.

All around Matt Sloan, the visitors were growing in size. They were no longer kids. They were eight-foot-tall giants with wild eyes, pointy teeth, and hairy arms tattooed with snakes and hula women and Valentine hearts.

Matt Sloan dropped his ball. “Whoa! You’re not from Detroit! Who…”

The other kids on his team started screaming and backing toward the exit, but the giant named Marrow Sucker threw a ball with deadly accuracy. It streaked past Raj Mandali just as he was about to leave and hit the door, slamming it shut like magic. Raj and some of the other kids banged on it desperately but it wouldn’t budge.

“Let them go!” I yelled at the giants.

The one called Joe Bob growled at me. He had a tattoo on his biceps that said: JB luvs Babycakes. “And lose our tasty morsels? No, Son of the Sea God. We Laistrygonians aren’t just playing for your death. We want lunch!”

He waved his hand and a new batch of dodgeballs appeared on the center line—but these balls weren’t made of red rubber. They were bronze, the size of cannon balls, perforated like wiffle balls with fire bubbling out the holes. They must’ve been searing hot, but the giants picked them up with their bare hands.

“Coach!” I yelled.

Nunley looked up sleepily, but if he saw anything abnormal about the dodgeball game, he didn’t let on. That’s the problem with mortals. A magical force called the Mist obscures the true appearance of monsters and gods from their vision, so mortals tend to see only what they can understand. Maybe the coach saw a few eighth graders pounding the younger kids like usual. Maybe the other kids saw Matt Sloan’s thugs getting ready to toss Molotov cocktails around. (It wouldn’t have been the first time.) At any rate, I was pretty sure nobody else realized we were dealing with genuine man-eating bloodthirsty monsters.

“Yeah. Mm-hmm,” Coach muttered. “Play nice.”

And he went back to his magazine.

The giant named Skull Eater threw his ball. I dove aside as the fiery bronze comet sailed past my shoulder.

“Corey!” I screamed.

Tyson pulled him out from behind the exercise mat just as the ball exploded against it, blasting the mat to smoking shreds.

“Run!” I told my teammates. “The other exit!”

They ran for the locker room, but with another wave of Joe Bob’s hand, that door also slammed shut.

“No one leaves unless you’re out!” Joe Bob roared. “And you’re not out until we eat you!”

He launched his own fireball. My teammates scattered as it blasted a crater in the gym floor.

I reached for Riptide, which I always kept in my pocket, but then I realized I was wearing gym shorts. I had no pockets. Riptide was tucked in my jeans inside my gym locker. And the locker room door was sealed. I was completely defenseless.

Another fireball came streaking toward me. Tyson pushed me out of the way, but the explosion still blew me head over heels. I found myself sprawled on the gym floor, dazed from smoke, my tie-dyed T-shirt peppered with sizzling holes.

Just across the center line, two hungry giants were glaring down at me.

“Flesh!” they bellowed. “Hero flesh for lunch!” They both took aim.

“Percy needs help!” Tyson yelled, and he jumped in front of me just as they threw their balls.

“Tyson!” I screamed, but it was too late.

Both balls slammed into him…but no…he’d caught them. Somehow Tyson, who was so clumsy he knocked over lab equipment and broke playground structures on a regular basis, had caught two fiery metal balls speeding toward him at a zillion miles an hour. He sent them hurtling back toward their surprised owners, who screamed, “BAAAAAD!” as the bronze spheres exploded against their chests.

The giants disintegrated in twin columns of flame—a sure sign they were monsters, all right.

Monsters don’t die. They just dissipate into smoke and dust, which saves heroes a lot of trouble cleaning up after a fight.

“My brothers!” Joe Bob the Cannibal wailed. He flexed his muscles and his Babycakes tattoo rippled. “You will pay for their destruction!”

“Tyson!” I said. “Look out!”

Another comet hurtled toward us. Tyson just had time to swat it aside. It flew straight over Coach Nunley’s head and landed in the bleachers with a huge KA-BOOM!

Kids were running around screaming, trying to avoid the sizzling craters in the floor. Others were banging on the door, calling for help. Sloan himself stood petrified in the middle of the court, watching in disbelief as balls of death flew around him.

Coach Nunley still wasn’t seeing anything. He tapped his hearing aid like the explosions were giving him interference, but he kept his eyes on his magazine.

Surely the whole school could hear the noise. The headmaster, the police, somebody would come help us.

“Victory will be ours!” roared Joe Bob the Cannibal. “We will feast on your bones!”

I wanted to tell him he was taking the dodgeball game way too seriously, but before I could, he hefted another ball. The other three giants followed his lead.

I knew we were dead. Tyson couldn’t deflect all those balls at once. His hands had to be seriously burned from blocking the first volley. Without my sword…

I had a crazy idea.

I ran toward the locker room.

“Move!” I told my teammates. “Away from the door.”

Explosions behind me. Tyson had batted two of the balls back toward their owners and blasted them to ashes.

That left two giants still standing. 

A third ball hurtled straight at me. I forced myself to wait—one Mississippi, two Mississippi —then dove aside as the fiery sphere demolished the locker room door.

Now, I figured that the built-up gas in most boys’ locker rooms was enough to cause an explosion, so I wasn’t surprised when the flaming dodgeball ignited a huge WHOOOOOOOM!

The wall blew apart. Locker doors, socks, athletic supporters, and other various nasty personal belongings rained all over the gym.

I turned just in time to see Tyson punch Skull Eater in the face. The giant crumpled. But the last giant, Joe Bob, had wisely held on to his own ball, waiting for an opportunity. He threw just as Tyson was turning to face him.

“No!” I yelled.

The ball caught Tyson square in the chest. He slid the length of the court and slammed into the back wall, which cracked and partially crumbled on top of him, making a hole right onto Church Street. I didn’t see how Tyson could still be alive, but he only looked dazed. The bronze ball was smoking at his feet. Tyson tried to pick it up, but he fell back, stunned, into a pile of cinder blocks.

“Well!” Joe Bob gloated. “I’m the last one standing! I’ll have enough meat to bring Babycakes a doggie bag!”

He picked up another ball and aimed it at Tyson.

“Stop!” I yelled. “It’s me you want!”

The giant grinned. “You wish to die first, young hero?”

I had to do something. Riptide had to be around here somewhere.

Then I spotted my jeans in a smoking heap of clothes right by the giant’s feet. If I could only get there.…I knew it was hopeless, but I charged.

The giant laughed. “My lunch approaches.” He raised his arm to throw. I braced myself to die. 

Suddenly the giant’s body went rigid. His expression changed from gloating to surprise.

Right where his belly button should’ve been, his T-shirt ripped open and he grew something like a horn—no, not a horn—the glowing tip of a blade.

The ball dropped out of his hand. The monster stared down at the knife that had just run him through from behind.

He muttered, “Ow,” and burst into a cloud of green flame, which I figured was going to make Babycakes pretty upset.

Standing in the smoke was my friend Annabeth. Her face was grimy and scratched. She had a ragged backpack slung over her shoulder, her baseball cap tucked in her pocket, a bronze knife in her hand, and a wild look in her storm-gray eyes, like she’d just been chased a thousand miles by ghosts as a small brown jumped down from her shoulder, there was a small, shimmering light i could see through the smoke and the silhouette grew into the shape of a lanky boy with a backpack over his shoulder like Annabeth and two blue orbs where his eyes would've been glowing in the rubble.

He stepped out, slowly, and I finally saw the person I’d been missing for nine months.

Simon.

He looked a bit taller—wearier and thinner too, like he’d been holding onto some unshakeable weight. He wore this black-colored tracksuit with a black armband that had a white insignia of an eagle. A thin, pale scar over his right cheek like it’d been grazed by a knife. His hair was shorter too, but it still looked as messy as always with a stickman-looking hairclip in his hair. His eyes were soft and still so blue, I wondered if his voice had changed too.

Matt Sloan, who’d been standing there dumbfounded the whole time, finally came to his senses. He blinked at Simon and Annabeth, as if he dimly recognized her from my notebook picture, a pink hue on his cheeks as he stared at Simon, who shot him a disgusted look. “Those’re the girls…That’s the girl—”

Simon cocked a brow, the scar on his cheek wrinkled in distaste. He looked cool. Calm and collected, but his eyes told a different story, “I’m not a girl.” He said, his voice a bit raspy. “But okay.”

Annabeth, however, punched Sloan in the nose and knocked him flat while Simon kicked him between the legs. “And you,” she told him as he put his hands between his legs, his face scrunched up in pain as Simon stomped his foot Matt’s where the sun didn’t shine, “lay off our friend.” 

Simon grunted in agreement, muttering something I didn’t get but it reminded me of last summer—the two of them working together in tandem, like siblings. 

The gym was in flames. Kids were still running around screaming. I heard sirens wailing and a garbled voice over the intercom. Through the glass windows of the exit doors, I could see the headmaster, Mr. Bonsai, wrestling with the lock, a crowd of teachers piling up behind him.

“Annabeth… Simon…” I stammered. “How did you…how long have you…”

“Pretty much all morning.” Simon said, his voice still soft and gentle as Annabeth sheathed her bronze knife, he glanced between her and me with a sad expression. “We’ve been trying to find a good time to talk to you, but you were never alone.”

“The shadow I saw this morning—that was—” My face felt hot. “Oh my gods, you were looking in my bedroom window?”

“There’s no time to explain!” Annabeth snapped, though she looked a little red-faced herself, Simon’s face turned pink and he hid his face in his tracksuit’s collar to hide his blush. “I just didn’t want to—”

“There!” a woman screamed. The doors burst open and the adults came pouring in.

“Meet us outside,” Annabeth told me. “And him.” She pointed to Tyson, who was still sitting dazed against the wall. Annabeth gave him a look of distaste that I didn’t quite understand but Simon stomped her foot, giving her a look that said ‘behave’. She scowled. “You’d better bring him.”

“What?”

“No time!” Simon said, his voice cracking—was he the second voice I'd heard? “Hurry!”

His body quickly shimmered and shrunk down: his limbs disappeared, morphing into his body before turning into a beautiful-looking green and black snake. I reached out to touch him, maybe pet his scales but Annabeth quickly snatched him up as Simon coiled his reptile body around her arm and she put on her Yankees baseball cap, which was a magic gift from her mom, and they both instantly vanished.

That left me standing alone in the middle of the burning gymnasium when the headmaster came charging in with half the faculty and a couple of police officers. “Percy Jackson?” Mr. Bonsai said. “What…how…”

Over by the broken wall, Tyson groaned and stood up from the pile of cinder blocks. “Head hurts.”

Matt Sloan was coming around, too. He focused on me with a look of terror. “Percy did it, Mr. Bonsai! He set the whole building on fire. Coach Nunley will tell you! He saw it all!”

Coach Nunley had been dutifully reading his magazine, but just my luck—he chose that moment to look up when Sloan said his name. “Eh? Yeah. Mm-hmm.”

The other adults turned toward me. I knew they would never believe me, even if I could tell them the truth.

I grabbed Riptide out of my ruined jeans, told Tyson, “Come on!” and jumped through the gaping hole in the side of the building.

Chapter Text

Annabeth and Simon, who was now human again, were waiting for us in an alley down Church Street. They pulled Tyson and me off the sidewalk just as a fire truck screamed past, heading for Meriwether Prep.

“Where’d you find him?” she demanded, pointing at Tyson.

Now, under different circumstances, I would’ve been really happy to see her. Simon too. Annabeth and I made our peace last summer, despite the fact that her mom was Athena and didn’t get along with my dad.

I’d missed Annabeth probably more than I wanted to admit. Simon even more. But I’d just been attacked by cannibal giants, Tyson had saved my life three or four times, and all Annabeth could do was glare at him like he was the problem while Simon was staring at him with thinly veiled fear.

“He’s my friend,” I told her.

“Is he homeless?”

“Annabeth!” Simon chided but his face told me he wanted to know too. “Is he...?”

I huffed, “What does that have to do with anything? He can hear you, you know. Why don’t you ask him?”

Simon looked surprised, his face softening as he looked up at Tyson. “He can talk?”

“I talk,” Tyson admitted, looking between them. “You are pretty.”

“Ah! Gross!” Annabeth stepped away from him while Simon’s face flushed pink, muttering a small ‘Thanks’ trying to swat away Tyson’s hand.

I couldn’t believe she was being so rude. I examined Tyson’s hands, which I was sure must’ve been badly scorched by the flaming dodge balls, but they looked fine—grimy and scarred, with dirty fingernails the size of potato chips—but they always looked like that.

“Tyson,” I said in disbelief. “Your hands aren’t even burned.”

“Of course not,” Annabeth muttered. “I’m surprised the Laistrygonians had the guts to attack you with him around.”

“Be nice.” Simon reprimanded, sounding like my mom when she was trying to be optimistic, “I’m sure he’s… not too bad?” 

Tyson, meanwhile, seemed fascinated by Simon and Annabeth’s curly blond-ish hair. He tried to touch Annabeth’s, but she smacked his hand away but Simon cupped the side of hair his clip was sitting on and didn’t fight it as much, so Tyson continued fondling his hair.

“Annabeth, Simon,” I said, “what are you talking about? Laistry-what?”

“Laistrygonians. The monsters in the gym. They’re a race of giant cannibals who live in the far north. Odysseus ran into them once, but I’ve never seen them as far south as New York before.” Annabeth explained, as Tyson played with Simon’s loose curls since he wasn’t putting much of a fight—I wondered why he wasn’t taking as good care of them as he did nine months ago.

“Laistry—I can’t even say that. What would you call them in English?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Canadians,” she decided, making Simon snort a brittle sound. “Now come on, we have to get out of here.”

“The police’ll be after me.”

“That’s the least of our problems,” Simon said. “Have you been having the dreams?’

“The dreams… about Grover?”

Their faces turned pale. “Grover? No, what about Grover?”

Their eyes looked stormy, like both of their minds were racing a million miles an hour as they glanced at each other then me.

“Camp,” she said at last. “Big trouble at camp.”

“My mom was saying the same thing! But what kind of trouble?”

“We don’t know exactly. Something’s wrong. We have to get there right away. Monsters have been chasing me all the way from Virginia, trying to stop me, Simon hasn’t encountered any of them while he was away. Have you had a lot of attacks?”

I shook my head. “None all year…until today.”

“None? But how…” Her eyes drifted to Tyson. “Oh.”

Simon nodded—like it all made sense, “Oh, yeah.”

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?”

Tyson raised his hand like he was still in class. “Canadians in the gym called Percy something…Son of the Sea God?”

Simon, Annabeth and I exchanged looks.

I didn’t know how I could explain, but I figured Tyson deserved the truth after almost getting killed.

“Big guy,” I said, “you ever hear those old stories about the Greek gods? Like Zeus,

Poseidon, Athena—”

“Yes,” Tyson said.

“Well…those gods are still alive. They kind of follow Western Civilization around, living in the strongest countries, so like now they’re in the U.S. And sometimes they have kids with mortals. Kids called half-bloods.”

“Yes,” Tyson said, like he was still waiting for me to get to the point.

“Uh, well, Simon, Annabeth and I are half-bloods,” I said. “We’re like… heroes-in-training. And whenever monsters pick up our scent, they attack us. That’s what those giants were in the gym. Monsters.”

“Yes.”

I stared at him. He didn’t seem surprised or confused by what I was telling him, which surprised and confused me. “So…you believe me?”

Tyson nodded. “But you are…Son of the Sea God?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “My dad is Poseidon.”

Tyson frowned. Now he looked confused. “But then…”

A siren wailed. A police car raced past our alley.

“We don’t have time for this,” Annabeth said.“We’ll talk in the taxi.”

“A taxi all the way to camp?” I said. “You know how much money—”

“Trust us.” Simon begged, “please.”

I hesitated. “What about Tyson?”

I imagined escorting my giant friend into Camp Half-Blood. If he freaked out on a regular playground with regular bullies, how would he act at a training camp for demigods? On the other hand, the cops would be looking for us.

“We can’t just leave him,” I decided. “He’ll be in trouble, too.”

“Yeah.” Annabeth looked grim. “We definitely need to take him. Now come on.”

Simon didn’t bother saying anything, just tapped her foot and began walking.

I didn’t like the way she said that, as if Tyson were a big disease we needed to get to the hospital, but I followed her down the alley. Together the four of us sneaked through the side streets of downtown while a huge column of smoke billowed up behind us from my school gymnasium.

“Here.” Annabeth stopped us on the corner of Thomas and Trimble. She fished around in her backpack. “I hope I have one left. Simon?”

He shook his head, “You snatched me during drills. Besides, I didn’t expect you to know where I was.” 

She grumbled. 

The two of them looked even worse than I’d realized at first. Annabeth's chin was cut and Simon’s scar looked like it was threatening to reopen. Twigs and grass were tangled in her ponytail, as if she’d slept several nights in the open while Simon’s face was caked is dust and dirt, the tip of his nose covered in something that made it twitch. The slashes on the hems of Annabeth’s jeans looked suspiciously like claw marks and Simon’s uniform was torn over his arms and legs, sagging slightly to show a scandalous amount of skin—criss-cross scars over his upper thighs, the dagger mark was already healed.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

All around us, sirens wailed. I figured it wouldn’t be long before more cops cruised by, looking for juvenile delinquent gym-bombers. No doubt Matt Sloan had given them a statement by now. He’d probably twisted the story around so that Tyson and I were the bloodthirsty cannibals.

“Found one. Thank the gods.” Annabeth pulled out a gold coin that I recognized as a drachma, the currency of Mount Olympus. It had Zeus’s likeness stamped on one side and the Empire State Building on the other

“Annabeth,” I said, “New York taxi drivers won’t take that.”

Simon put a hand on my shoulder, and a rush of warmth entered my body, “Percy, just wait.”

“Stêthi,” she shouted in Ancient Greek. “Ô hárma diabolês!”

As usual, the moment she spoke in the language of Olympus, I somehow understood it. She’d said: Stop, Chariot of Damnation!

That didn’t exactly make me feel real excited about whatever her plan was.

She threw her coin into the street, but instead of clattering on the asphalt, the drachma sank right through and disappeared.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, just where the coin had fallen, the asphalt darkened. It melted into a rectangular pool about the size of a parking space—bubbling red liquid like blood. Then a car erupted from the ooze.

It was a taxi, all right, but unlike every other taxi in New York, it wasn’t yellow. It was smoky gray. I mean it looked like it was woven out of smoke, like you could walk right through it. There were words printed on the door—something like GYAR SSIRES—but my dyslexia made it hard for me to decipher what it said.

The passenger window rolled down, and an old woman stuck her head out. She had a mop of grizzled hair covering her eyes, and she spoke in a weird mumbling way, like she’d just had a shot of Novocain. “Passage? Passage?”

“Four to Camp Half-Blood,” Annabeth said. She opened the cab’s back door and waved at me to get in, like this was all completely normal.

“Ach!” the old woman screeched. “We don’t take his kind!”

She pointed a bony finger at Tyson.

What was it? Pick-on-Big-and-Ugly-Kids Day?

“Extra pay,” Simon promised, taking his hand off and the warmth rushed out my body. “Three more drachma on arrival.”

“Done!” the woman screamed.

Reluctantly I got in the cab, Simon after. Tyson squeezed in the middle. Annabeth crawled in last.

The interior was also smoky gray, but it felt solid enough. The seat was cracked and lumpy—no different than most taxis. There was no Plexiglas screen separating us from the old lady driving…Wait a minute. There wasn’t just one old lady. There were three, all crammed in the front seat, each with stringy hair covering her eyes, bony hands, and a charcoal-colored sackcloth dress.

The one driving said, “Long Island! Out-of-metro fare bonus! Ha!”

She floored the accelerator, and my head slammed against the backrest. A prerecorded voice came on over the speaker: Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I’m out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!

I looked down and found a large black chain instead of a seat belt. I decided I wasn’t that desperate…yet.

The cab sped around the corner of West Broadway, and the gray lady sitting in the middle screeched, “Look out! Go left!”

“Well, if you’d give me the eye, Tempest, I could see that!” the driver complained.

Wait a minute. Give her the eye?

I didn’t have time to ask questions because the driver swerved to avoid an oncoming delivery truck, ran over the curb with a jaw-rattling thump, and flew into the next block.

“Wasp!” the third lady said to the driver. “Give me the girl’s coin! I want to bite it.”

“You bit it last time, Anger!” said the driver, whose name must’ve been Wasp. “It’s my turn!”

“Is not!” yelled the one called Anger.

The middle one, Tempest, screamed, “Red light!”

“Brake!” yelled Anger.

Instead, Wasp floored the accelerator and rode up on the curb, screeching around another corner, and knocking over a newspaper box. She left my stomach somewhere back on Broome Street.

“Excuse me,” I said. “But…can you see?”

“No!” screamed Wasp from behind the wheel.

“No!” screamed Tempest from the middle.

“Of course!” screamed Anger by the shotgun window.

I looked at Annabeth and Simon. “They’re blind?”

“Not completely,” Annabeth said. “They have an eye.”

“One eye?”

“Yeah.” Simon nodded.

“Each?”

“No. One eye total.”

Next to Simon, Tyson groaned and grabbed the seat. “Not feeling so good.”

“Oh, man,” I said, because I’d seen Tyson get carsick on school field trips and it was not something you wanted to be within fifty feet of. “Hang in there, big guy. Anybody got a garbage bag or something?”

The three gray ladies were too busy squabbling to pay me any attention. I looked over at Annabeth, who was hanging on for dear life, and Simon, who was hugging my arm so tight like I was the only thing keeping him grounded, and I gave her a why-did-you-do-this-to-me look.

“Hey,” she said, “Gray Sisters Taxi is the fastest way to camp.”

“Then why didn’t you take it from Virginia?”

“That’s outside their service area,” she said, like that should be obvious. “They only serve Greater New York and surrounding communities.”

“We’ve had famous people in this cab!” Anger exclaimed. “Jason! You remember him?”

“Don’t remind me!” Wasp wailed. “And we didn’t have a cab back then, you old bat. That was three thousand years ago!”

“Give me the tooth!” Anger tried to grab at Wasp’s mouth, but Wasp swatted her hand away.

“Only if Tempest gives me the eye!”

“No!” Tempest screeched. “You had it yesterday!”

“But I’m driving, you old hag!”

“Excuses! Turn! That was your turn!”

Wasp swerved hard onto Delancey Street, squishing me between Simon (who was still pretty light that he landed on my lap), Tyson and the door. She punched the gas and we shot up the Williamsburg Bridge at seventy miles an hour.

The three sisters were fighting for real now, slapping each other as Anger tried to grab at Wasp’s face and Wasp tried to grab at Tempest’s. With their hair flying and their mouths open, screaming at each other, I realized that none of the sisters had any teeth except for Wasp, who had one mossy yellow incisor. Instead of eyes, they just had closed, sunken eyelids, except for Anger, who had one bloodshot green eye that stared at everything hungrily, as if it couldn’t get enough of anything it saw.

Finally Anger, who had the advantage of sight, managed to yank the tooth out of her sister Wasp’s mouth. This made Wasp so mad she swerved toward the edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, yelling, “’Ivit back! ’Ivit back!”

Tyson groaned and clutched his stomach.

“Uh, if anybody’s interested,” I said, “we’re going to die!”

“Don’t worry,” Annabeth told me, sounding pretty worried as Simon squeezed my bicep reassuringly, his face pale. “The Gray Sisters know what they’re doing. They’re really very wise.”

This coming from the daughter of Athena, but I wasn’t exactly reassured. We were skimming along the edge of a bridge a hundred and thirty feet above the East River.

“Yes, wise!” Anger grinned in the rearview mirror, showing off her newly acquired tooth.

“We know things!”

“Every street in Manhattan!” Wasp bragged, still hitting her sister. “The capital of Nepal!”

“The location you seek!” Tempest added.

Immediately her sisters pummeled her from either side, screaming, “Be quiet! Be quiet! He didn’t even ask yet!”

“What?” I said. “What location? I’m not seeking any—”

“Nothing!” Tempest said. “You’re right, boy. It’s nothing!”

“Tell me.”

“No!” they all screamed.

“The last time we told, it was horrible!” Tempest said.

“Eye tossed in a lake!” Anger agreed.

“Years to find it again!” Wasp moaned. “And speaking of that—give it back!”

“No!” yelled Anger.

“Eye!” Wasp yelled. “Gimme!”

She whacked her sister Anger on the back. There was a sickening pop and something flew out of Anger’s face. Anger fumbled for it, trying to catch it, but she only managed to bat it with the back of her hand. The slimy green orb sailed over her shoulder, into the backseat, and straight into my lap.

I jumped so hard, my head hit the ceiling and the eyeball rolled away.

“I can’t see!” all three sisters yelled.

“Give me the eye!” Wasp wailed.

“Give her the eye!” Annabeth screamed.

“I don’t have it!” I said.

“There, by your foot,” Simon said, pointing. “Don’t step on it! Get it!”

“I’m not picking that up!”

”Percy!” He repeated. “Pick up!”

The taxi slammed against the guardrail and skidded along with a horrible grinding noise. The whole car shuddered, billowing gray smoke as if it were about to dissolve from the strain.

“Going to be sick!” Tyson warned.

“Annabeth,” I yelled, “let Tyson use your backpack!”

“Are you crazy? Get the eye!” She snapped.

“Annabeth, give him your bag!” Simon begged, “Please, I'll help you wash it, just give it to him!”

Wasp yanked the wheel, and the taxi swerved away from the rail. We hurtled down the bridge toward Brooklyn, going faster than any human taxi. The Gray Sisters screeched and pummeled each other and cried out for their eye.

At last I steeled my nerves. I ripped off a chunk of my tie-dyed T-shirt, which was already falling apart from all the burn marks, and used it to pick the eyeball off the floor.

“Nice boy!” Anger cried, as if she somehow knew I had her missing peeper. “Give it back!”

“Not until you explain,” I told her. “What were you talking about, the location I seek?”

“No time!” Tempest cried. “Accelerating!”

I looked out the window. Sure enough, trees and cars and whole neighborhoods were now zipping by in a gray blur. We were already out of Brooklyn, heading through the middle of Long Island.

“Percy,” Annabeth warned as Simon dug his nails into my arm, “they can’t find our destination without the eye. We’ll just keep accelerating until we break into a million pieces.”

“First they have to tell me,” I said. “Or I’ll open the window and throw the eye into oncoming traffic.”

“No!” the Gray Sisters wailed. “Too dangerous!”

“I’m rolling down the window.”

“Wait!” the Gray Sisters screamed. “30, 31, 75, 12!”

They belted it out like a quarterback calling a play.

“What do you mean?” I said. “That makes no sense!”

“30, 31, 75, 12!” Anger wailed. “That’s all we can tell you. Now give us the eye! Almost to camp!”

We were off the highway now, zipping through the countryside of northern Long Island. I could see Half-Blood Hill ahead of us, with its giant pine tree at the crest—Thalia’s tree, which contained the life force of a fallen hero.

“Percy!” Annabeth said more urgently as Simon nodded along. “Give them the eye now!”

I decided not to argue. I threw the eye into Wasp’s lap.

The old lady snatched it up, pushed it into her eye socket like somebody putting in a contact lens, and blinked. “Whoa!”

She slammed on the brakes. The taxi spun four or five times in a cloud of smoke and squealed to a halt in the middle of the farm road at the base of Half-Blood Hill.

Tyson let loose a huge belch. “Better now.”

“All right,” I told the Gray Sisters. “Now tell me what those numbers mean.”

“No time!” Annabeth opened her door as Simon kicked our side open. “We have to get out now.”

I was about to ask why, when I looked up at Half-Blood Hill and understood.

At the crest of the hill was a group of campers. And they were under attack.

Chapter Text

Mythologically speaking, if there’s anything I hate worse than trios of old ladies, it’s bulls. Last summer, I fought the Minotaur on top of Half-Blood Hill. This time what I saw up there was even worse: two bulls. And not just regular bulls—bronze ones the size of elephants. And even that wasn’t bad enough. Naturally they had to breathe fire, too.

As soon as we exited the taxi, the Gray Sisters peeled out, heading back to New York, where life was safer. They didn’t even wait for their extra three-drachma payment. They just left us on the side of the road, Annabeth with nothing but her backpack and knife, Simon in his tracksuit of a uniform and a stickman of a hairclip, Tyson and me still in our burned-up tie-dyed gym clothes.

“Oh, man,” said Annabeth, looking at the battle raging on the hill. If Simon was surprised he didn’t show it, he let out a tired sigh and fixed his hairclip until it and his hair was out of his eyes.

What worried me most weren’t the bulls themselves. Or the ten heroes in full battle armor who were getting their bronze-plated booties whooped. What worried me was that the bulls were ranging all over the hill, even around the back side of the pine tree. That shouldn’t have been possible. The camp’s magic boundaries didn’t allow monsters to cross past Thalia’s tree. But the metal bulls were doing it anyway.

One of the heroes shouted, “Border patrol, to me!” A girl’s voice—gruff and familiar.

Border patrol? I thought. The camp didn’t have a border patrol.

“It’s Clarisse,” Annabeth said. “Come on, we have to help her.”

Simon’s face hardened, like he was holding back something to keep focus, “Maya.” He whispered, "Wherever Clarisse is, we can bet my sister will be flanking her.”

Normally, rushing to Maya and Clarisse’s aid would not have been high on my “to do” list. The duo were one of the biggest bullies at camp. The first time we’d met Clarisse tried to introduce my head to a toilet while Maya offered to pants me. Clarisse was also a daughter of Ares, and I’d had a very serious disagreement with her father last summer, so now the god of war and all his children basically hated my guts. Maya, meanwhile, was a Nike kid, meaning she hated losing more than anything—she was also Simon’s sister in everything but blood, which meant after the constant times Simon got hurt last summer thanks to me, she’d kept me on my toes.

Still, they were in trouble. Their fellow warriors were scattering, running in panic as the bulls charged. The grass was burning in huge swathes around the pine tree. One hero screamed and waved his arms as he ran in circles, the horsehair plume on his helmet blazing like a fiery Mohawk. Maya’s armour was dented, digging into her side as she rode one of the bulls rodeo style, her dagger plunged into a crack between the metal plates, threatening to shake off. Clarisse’s own armor was charred. She was fighting with a broken spear shaft, the other end embedded uselessly in the metal joint of one bull’s shoulder.

Simon’s breath hitched and he sprinted, already glowing the white colour I saw when he transformed from a mouse to human to a snake. His body morphed into something big, his steps leaving hoof prints in the dirt before the glowing stopped and a giant bull, the size of the metal ones, appeared in his place. Bull-Simon prodded and butted a metal bull, spinning it by the ear and yanking the other off campers, huffing his snout as he jimmied out Clarisse’s spear’s blade with his teeth, tossing it to her. Maya was thrown off to the side, landing on her feet, her knees bent in a crouch with her sneakers covered in an inch of dirt from the impact.

I uncapped my ballpoint pen. It shimmered, growing longer and heavier until I held the bronze sword Anaklusmos in my hands—I had to help Simon, I wasn’t going to lose him again. “Tyson, stay here. I don’t want you taking any more chances.”

“No!” Annabeth said. “We need him.”

I stared at her, “He’s mortal. He got lucky with the dodge balls but he can’t—”

“Percy, do you know what those are up there? The Colchis bulls, made by Hephaestus himself. We can’t fight them without Medea’s Sunscreen SPF 50,000. We’ll get burned to a crisp.”

“Medea’s what?”

Annabeth rummaged through her backpack and cursed. “I had a jar of tropical coconut scent sitting on my night-stand at home. Why didn’t I bring it?”

I’d learned a long time ago not to question Annabeth too much. It just made me more confused. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not going to let Tyson get fried.”

“Percy—”

“Tyson, stay back.” I raised my sword. “I’m going in.”

Tyson tried to protest, but I was already running up the hill toward Clarisse, who was yelling at her patrol, trying to get them into phalanx formation. It was a good idea. The few who were listening lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, locking their shields to form an ox-hide–and-bronze wall, their spears bristling over the top like porcupine quills.

Unfortunately, Clarisse could only muster six campers. Maya was catching her breath, her arms covered in red lines and her face and hair covered in dirt and mud—her brown eyes were puffy and red, like she’d been crying nonstop for months. The other four were still running around with their helmets on fire. Annabeth ran toward them, trying to help. She taunted one of the bulls into chasing her, then turned invisible, completely confusing the monster while Simon rammed his horns into its rear, flying it across the ground. The other bull charged Clarisse’s line.

I was halfway up the hill—not close enough to help. Clarisse hadn’t even seen me yet. The bull moved deadly fast for something so big. Its metal hide gleamed in the sun. It had fist-sized rubies for eyes, and horns of polished silver. When it opened its hinged mouth, a column of white-hot flame blasted out.

“Hold the line!” Clarisse ordered her warriors as Maya, now alert at the voice of her commander, ran over to help her—swiping a fallen shield off the ground and holding up her dagger as high as she could.

Whatever else you could say about Clarisse or Maya, they were brave. Clarisse was a big girl with cruel eyes like her father’s while Maya had the body of a wrestler with a smirk sharp enough to cut metal. They looked like they were born to wear Greek battle armor, but I didn’t see how even they could stand against that bull’s charge.

Unfortunately, at that moment, the other bull lost interest in finding Annabeth or fighting Simon after he knocked it off balance minutes before. It turned, wheeling around behind Clarisse on her unprotected side. Simon trampled after it, campers diving out of his way but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t fast enough.

“Behind you!” I yelled. “Look out!”

I shouldn’t have said anything, because all I did was startle her. Bull Number One crashed into her shield, and the phalanx broke. Clarisse went flying backward and landed in a smoldering patch of grass. The bull charged past her, but not before blasting the other heroes and Maya with its fiery breath. Their shields melted right off their arms. They dropped their weapons and ran as Bull Number Two closed in on Clarisse for the kill but slid in front of it, shakily holding up her picked up dagger to the bull, tears welling up in her eyes as she tried to protect her commander.

I lunged forward and grabbed Maya and Clarisse by the straps of their armor in one hand. I dragged them out of the way just as Bull Number Two freight-trained past. I gave it a good swipe with Riptide and cut a huge gash in its flank, but the monster just creaked and groaned and kept on going.

It hadn’t touched me, but I could feel the heat of its metal skin. Its body temperature could’ve microwaved a frozen burrito.

“Let me go!” Clarisse pummeled my hand. “Percy, curse you!”

“I have to fight!” Maya screamed, hot tears streaming down her face like a dam had broke inside her, “Simon—Birdie, Twiggy—he’s out there! I have to find him!’

I dropped them in a heap next to the pine tree and turned to face the bulls. We were on the inside slope of the hill now, the valley of Camp Half-Blood directly below us—the cabins, the training facilities, the Big House—all of it at risk if these bulls got past us.

Annabeth shouted orders to the other heroes, telling them to spread out and keep the bulls distracted as Simon ran around, letting heroes ride him into battle, dodging seamlessly before campers jumped on and off while Simon rammed his horns into a robot’s eyes.

Bull Number One ran a wide arc, making its way back toward me. As it passed the middle of the hill, where the invisible boundary line should’ve kept it out, it slowed down a little, as if it were struggling against a strong wind; but then it broke through and kept coming. Bull Number Two turned to face me, fire sputtering from the gash I’d cut in its side. I couldn’t tell if it felt any pain, but its ruby eyes seemed to glare at me like I’d just made things personal.

I couldn’t fight both bulls at the same time. I’d have to take down Bull Number Two first, cut its head off before Bull Number One charged back into range. My arms already felt tired. I realized how long it had been since I’d worked out with Riptide, how out of practice I was.

I lunged but Bull Number Two blew flames at me. I rolled aside as the air turned to pure heat. All the oxygen was sucked out of my lungs. My foot caught on something—a tree root, maybe—and pain shot up my ankle. Still, I managed to slash with my sword and lop off part of the monster’s snout. It galloped away, wild and disoriented. But before I could feel too good about that, I tried to stand, and my left leg buckled underneath me. My ankle was sprained, maybe broken.

Bull Number One charged straight toward me. No way could I crawl out of its path.

Annabeth shouted: “Tyson, help him!”

Bull-Simon huffed in agreement, bits of his fur already charred off as he got head-butted in the jaw, sending him sprawling as campers dove away like the red sea for him, scrambling.

Somewhere near, toward the crest of the hill, Tyson wailed, “Can’t—get—through!”

“I, Annabeth Chase, give you permission to enter camp!”

A small flash of light where Simon had fallen. “I, Simon Thorn, give you permission to enter camp!” He yelled, his voice hoarse and shrill—his tracksuit was even more torn with blood with red marks over his arms, legs and on the side of his neck—now in his human form, just for a second before the glowing appeared and his body shifted into something a bit bigger. A rhino, his small eyes looking around warily as he struggled to his feet, shaking his horned nose as if to say ‘bring it on’.

Thunder shook the hillside. Suddenly Tyson was there, barreling toward me, yelling: “Percy needs help!”

Before I could tell him no, he dove between me and the bull just as it unleashed a nuclear firestorm.

“Tyson!” I yelled.

The blast swirled around him like a red tornado. I could only see the black silhouette of his body. I knew with horrible certainty that my friend had just been turned into a column of ashes.

But when the fire died, Tyson was still standing there, completely unharmed. Not even his grungy clothes were scorched. The bull must’ve been as surprised as I was, because before it could unleash a second blast, Tyson balled his fists and slammed them into the bull’s face. “BAD COW!”

His fists made a crater where the bronze bull’s snout used to be. Two small columns of flame shot out of its ears. Tyson hit it again, and the bronze crumpled under his hands like aluminum foil. The bull’s face now looked like a sock puppet pulled inside out.

“Down!” Tyson yelled.

The bull staggered and fell on its back. Its legs moved feebly in the air, steam coming out of its ruined head in odd places, Simon came running, jamming his horn into the gaps between the metal plates, panting as blood dripped down his shoulder as he forced himself to go harder, goring his horn into the metal plate itself before he decided that was enough, pulling back his head and shifted back into human, swaying on his feet with a bruise the size of an apple over his eye and marks covering his body up and down and around with his tracksuit threatening to fall off his body, before Tyson caught him. Simon’s eyes widened before relaxing, muttering something I couldn’t hear, but Tyson beamed down at him like Simon said something nice.

Annabeth ran over to check on me.

My ankle felt like it was filled with acid, but she gave me some Olympian nectar to drink from her canteen, and I immediately started to feel better. There was a burning smell that I later learned was me. The hair on my arms had been completely singed off.

“The other bull?” I asked, ignoring the hot knot in my stomach seeing Tyson hold Simon, who looked at peace in his arms, touching his bruised eye with a wince.

Annabeth pointed down the hill. Clarisse and Maya (who still looked like she was crying but channeled it all into rage) had taken care of Bad Cow Number Two. She’d impaled it through the back leg with a celestial bronze spear while Maya managed to shove her dagger into its neck. Now, with its snout half gone, a dagger in its neck and a huge gash in its side, it was trying to run in slow motion, going in circles like some kind of merry-go-round animal, unable to move its head.

Clarisse pulled off her helmet and marched toward us. A strand of her stringy brown hair was smoldering, but she didn’t seem to notice as Maya limped over, her entire face red as she held onto her commander for support, her armour still digging into her abdomen. 

“You—ruin—everything!” she yelled at me, an arm around Maya’s shoulder, who was glaring at me like she remembered my every mistake last year, including the fact I was the last person Simon visited before he disappeared, “I had it under control!”

I was too stunned to answer. Annabeth grumbled, “Good to see you too, Clarisse. Maya.”

“Argh!” Clarisse screamed. “Don’t ever, EVER try saving us again!”

Maya grunted, she had tear marks rolling down her cheeks, “We had it under control, you little pest!” She snapped, but didn't have its usual bite.

“Clarisse, Maya,” Annabeth said, “you’ve got wounded campers.”

That sobered them up. Even Clarisse cared about the soldiers under her command, her holding Maya up was proof of that.

“We’ll be back,” Clarisse growled, then trudged off to assess the damage with Maya limping beside her.

I stared at Tyson. “You didn’t die.”

Tyson looked down like he was embarrassed while Simon groaned, lolling his head. “I am sorry. Came to help. Disobeyed you.”

“My and Simon’s fault,” Annabeth said. “We had no choice. We had to let Tyson cross the boundary line to save you. Otherwise, you would’ve died.”

“Let him cross the boundary line?’” I asked. “But—”

“Percy,” Simon choked, lifting his head up slightly—his face looked horrible—the bruise’s swelling swallowed his bruised eye whole and tears were forming around his eyes, “have you ever looked at Tyson closely? I mean…in the face. Ignore the Mist, and really look at him.”

The Mist makes humans see only what their brains can process…I knew it could fool demigods too, but…

I looked Tyson in the face. It wasn’t easy. I’d always had trouble looking directly at him, though I’d never quite understood why. I’d thought it was just because he always had peanut butter in his crooked teeth. I forced myself to focus at his big lumpy nose, then a little higher at his eyes.

No, not eyes.

One eye. One large, calf-brown eye, right in the middle of his forehead, with thick lashes and big tears trickling down his cheeks on either side.

“Tyson,” I stammered. “You’re a…”

“Cyclops,” Annabeth offered. “A baby by the looks of him. Probably why he couldn’t get past the boundary line as easily as the bulls. Tyson’s one of the homeless orphans.”

Simon leaned his head back over Tyson’s thick arm, his hair falling off his eyes, “You didn’t tell me that…” he mumbled, looking at Tyson with softer eyes—er, eye, now. Sorry, couldn’t help it.

“One of the what?” I asked.

“They’re in almost all the big cities,” Annabeth said  distastefully. “They’re…mistakes, Percy. Children of nature spirits and gods…Well, one god in particular, usually…and they don’t always come out right. No one wants them. They get tossed aside. They grow up wild on the streets. I don’t know how this one found you, but he obviously likes you. We should take him to Chiron, let him decide what to do.”

Simon tensed, “Annabeth, please. He won’t hurt anyone. He likes Percy, he saved him. He’s just a baby.”

Annabeth shot him a look but her eyes widened, looking at Simon’s swollen eye and the marks and burns over his skin.

“But the fire. How—” I stammered.

“He’s a Cyclops.” Annabeth paused, as if she were remembering something unpleasant. “They work the forges of the gods. They have to be immune to fire. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

I was completely shocked. How had I never realized what Tyson was?

But I didn’t have much time to think about it just then. The whole side of the hill was burning. Wounded heroes needed attention. And there were still two banged-up bronze bulls to dispose of, which I didn’t figure would fit in our normal recycling bins.

Clarisse and Maya came back over and Clarisse wiped the soot off her forehead while Maya tore off her dented breastplate, “Jackson, if you can stand, get up. We need to carry the wounded back to the Big House, let Tantalus know what’s happened.”

“Tantalus?” I asked.

“The activities director,” Maya said impatiently, looking at me like I was stupid. “Ever since Simon’s gone missing in September, camp’s been spiraling.”

“Chiron is the activities director. And where’s Argus? He’s head of security. He should be here.”

Clarisse made a sour face. “Argus got fired. You two have been gone too long. Things are changing.” She looked at Simon, but she didn’t seem to recognise him—neither did Maya, but the tears must’ve blurred her vision, “who’s the twerp.”

Simon groaned, shaking his fist weakly as them, his hair clip sliding down his hair. And Maya stepped forward, her eyes widening and I realized she had the same hairclip Simon wore but in a much better condition, “Twiggy?”

“Wait, Simon?” Clarisse said, whipping her head around as Maya grabbed Simon out Tyson’s arms, shooting him a glare as she fixed her grip on him, “Holy… Thorn, you look...”

“Sup, Claire.” Simon smiled, the scar on his cheek crinkling. Maya lightly touched his other cheek, fixing his shirt to cover his bleeding torso where I could see a constellation of freckles, and small pale scars over his chest, “Mynx.”

“You stupid boy.” Clarisse croaked, “you stupid, stupid boy—“ 

She would’ve said more but Maya was full on crying now, “Dad was so worried, you and Baba were missing, the apartment was stripped clean! And—and.” She didn’t say anything else, squeezing Simon tight and peppering his face in kisses like, if she gave him all her love, he’d heal. 

Clarisse didn’t add on, wrapping a hand around Simon’s good arm. “Welcome back, Twiggy.” She said, her voice weirdly soft. Like a lost soldier had finally came back home to them.

Finally, I found my words. “But Chiron…He’s trained kids to fight monsters for over three thousand years. He can’t just be gone. What happened?”

“That happened,” Clarisse snapped, her voice snapping back into guff and hard like it’d always been.

She pointed to Thalia’s tree.

Every camper knew the story behind the tree. Six years ago, Grover, Annabeth, and two other demigods named Thalia and Luke had come to Camp Half-Blood chased by an army of monsters. When they got cornered on top of this hill, Thalia, a daughter of Zeus, had made her last stand here to give her friends time to reach safety. As she was dying, her father, Zeus, took pity on her and changed her into a pine tree. Her spirit had reinforced the magic borders of the camp, protecting it from monsters. The pine had been here ever since, strong and healthy.

But now, its needles were yellow. A huge pile of dead ones littered the base of the tree. In the center of the trunk, three feet from the ground, was a puncture mark the size of a bullet hole, oozing green sap.

A sliver of ice ran through my chest. Now I understood why the camp was in danger. The magical borders were failing because Thalia’s tree was dying.

Someone had poisoned it.

Chapter Text

Ever come home and found your room messed up? Like some helpful person (hi, Mom) has tried to “clean” it, and suddenly you can’t find anything? And even if nothing is missing, you get that creepy feeling like somebody’s been looking through your private stuff and dusting everything with lemon furniture polish?

That’s kind of the way I felt seeing Camp Half-Blood again.

On the surface, things didn’t look all that different. The Big House was still there with its blue gabled roof and its wraparound porch. The strawberry fields still baked in the sun. The same white-columned Greek buildings were scattered around the valley—the amphitheater, the combat arena, the dining pavilion overlooking Long Island Sound. And nestled between the woods and the creek were the same cabins—a crazy assortment of twelve buildings, each representing a different Olympian god.

But there was an air of danger now. You could tell something was wrong. Instead of playing volleyball in the sandpit, counselors and satyrs were stockpiling weapons in the tool shed.

Dryads armed with bows and arrows talked nervously at the edge of the woods. The forest looked sickly, the grass in the meadow was pale yellow, and the fire marks on Half-Blood Hill stood out like ugly scars.

Somebody had messed with my favorite place in the world, and I was not…well, a happy camper.

As we made our way to the Big House, I recognized a lot of kids from last summer. Nobody stopped to talk. Nobody said, “Welcome back.” Some did double takes when they saw Tyson, but most just walked grimly past and carried on with their duties—running messages, toting swords to sharpen on the grinding wheels. The camp felt like a military school. And believe me, I know. I’ve been kicked out of a couple.

None of that mattered to Tyson. He was absolutely fascinated by everything he saw.

“Whasthat!” he gasped.

“The stables for pegasi,” I said. “The winged horses.”

“Whasthat!”

“Um…those are the toilets.”

“Whasthat!”

“The cabins for the campers. If they don’t know who your Olympian parent is, they put you in the Hermes cabin—that brown one over there—until you’re determined. Then, once they know, they put you in your dad or mom’s group.”

He looked at me in awe. “You…have a cabin?”

“Number three.” I pointed to a low gray building made of sea stone.

“You live with friends in the cabin?”

“No. No, just me.” I didn’t feel like explaining. The embarrassing truth: I was the only one who stayed in that cabin because I wasn’t supposed to be alive. The “Big Three” gods—Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades—had made a pact after World War II not to have any more children with mortals. We were more powerful than regular half-bloods. We were too unpredictable. When we got mad we tended to cause problems…like World War II, for instance. The “Big Three” pact had only been broken twice—once when Zeus sired Thalia, once when Poseidon sired me.

Neither of us should’ve been born.

Thalia had gotten herself turned into a pine tree when she was twelve. Me…well, I was doing my best not to follow her example. I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me into if I were ever on the verge of death—plankton, maybe. Or a floating patch of kelp.

When we got to the Big House, we found Chiron in his apartment, listening to his favorite 1960s lounge music while he packed his saddlebags, Simon—who must’ve snuck out of the infirmary when Clarisse and Maya rushed him there after the bulls attacked—was leaning on a crutch with half of his face and his arms and legs covered in gauze and a hand on Chiron’s arm, was muffed but i could tell he was begging SImon not to go. “Please, grandpa!” He rasped, shakily pulling down the bandages from his lips, “Don’t go, please, please!”

I guess I should mention—Chiron is a centaur. From the waist up he looks like a regular middle-aged guy with curly brown hair and a scraggly beard; Simon dubbed him his grandfather at nine for his slight resemblance to his uncle Darryl and since then, he’s introduced Chiron as such, because Simon had a habit of teasing older men he saw as family. From the waist down, Chiron’s a white stallion. He can pass for human by compacting his lower half into a magic wheelchair. In fact, he’d passed himself off as my Latin teacher during my sixth-grade year. But most of the time, if the ceilings are high enough, he prefers hanging out in full centaur form.

As soon as we saw him, Tyson froze. “Pony!” he cried in total rapture.

Chiron and Simon turned, both looking offended as Simon squinted with his good eye. “I beg your pardon?” Chiron asked.

Annabeth ran up and hugged him. “Chiron, what’s happening? You’re not…leaving?” Her voice was shaky. 

Chiron was like a second father to her.

Simon gave up trying to see us and rigidly angled himself into Chiron’s side, “Please, Chiron. I have so much to tell you, don’t go—“ he gasped, clutching Chiron’s coat and letting the crutch drop. “you’d know what to do with all I've gone through, don’t leave me.”

Chiron ruffled her hair and gave her a kindly smile before side-hugging Simon, pressing a kiss over his hairline. “Hello, children. Simon, you look as if you’ve seen better days, my dear—“ Simon sniffled, nodding—“and, that hairclip, half of Gemini? Good choice. And Percy, my goodness. You’ve grown over the year!”

I swallowed. “Clarisse said you were…you were…”

“Fired.” Chiron’s eyes glinted with dark humor. “Ah, well, someone had to take the blame. Lord Zeus was most upset. The tree he’d created from the spirit of his daughter, poisoned! Mr. D had to punish someone.”

“Besides himself, you mean,” I growled. Just the thought of the camp director, Mr. D, made me angry.

“But this is crazy!” Annabeth cried. “Chiron, you couldn’t have had anything to do with poisoning Thalia’s tree!”

“What Annabeth said!” Simon added, his voice cracking again, “Please, I've just come back, you told me you’d still be here if I ever lost my way.”

“Nevertheless,” Chiron sighed, “some in Olympus do not trust me now, under the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” I asked.

Chiron’s face darkened. He stuffed a Latin-English dictionary into his saddlebag while the Frank Sinatra music oozed from his boom box. Simon screeched at him to stop, his legs threatening to fail before Annabeth or Chiron caught him each time.

Tyson was still staring at Chiron in amazement. He whimpered like he wanted to pat Chiron’s flank but was afraid to come closer. “Pony?”

Chiron sniffed. “My dear young Cyclops! I am a centaur.”

Simon glanced at Tyson, shaking his head, “Tyson, back off.” He said. It wasn’t rude but it surprised me. Simon never said that kind of stuff to me nine months ago. I chalked it up to nerves.

“Chiron,” I said. “What about the tree? What happened?”

He shook his head sadly. “The poison used on Thalia’s pine is something from the Underworld, Percy. Some venom even I have never seen. It must have come from a monster quite deep in the pits of Tartarus.”

“Then we know who’s responsible. Kro—”

“Your grandfather.” Simon choked, correcting me. “Names have power, Percy—remember, please.”

Chiron nodded, brushing back Simon’s hair as he adjusted the hairclip that I now knew was half of Gemini. “Do not invoke the titan lord’s name, Percy. Especially not here, not now.”

“But last summer he tried to cause a civil war in Olympus! This has to be his idea. He’d get Luke to do it, that traitor.”

Simon let out a choke at the mention of him, and Annabeth shot me a look to shut up, helping place the instrument back under his armpit as Chiron helped dab away Simon’s tears.

“Perhaps,” Chiron said. “But I fear I am being held responsible because I did not prevent it and I cannot cure it. The tree has only a few weeks of life left unless…”

“Unless what?” Annabeth and Simon asked.

“No,” Chiron said. “A foolish thought. The whole valley is feeling the shock of the poison. The magical borders are deteriorating. The camp itself is dying. Only one source of magic would be strong enough to reverse the poison, and it was lost centuries ago.”

“What is it?” I asked. “We’ll go find it!”

Chiron closed his saddlebag. He pressed the stop button on his boom box. Then he turned and rested his hand on my shoulder, looking me straight in the eyes. “Percy, you must promise me that you will not act rashly. I told your mother I did not want you to come here at all this summer. It’s much too dangerous. But now that you are here, stay here. Train hard. Learn to fight. But do not leave.”

“Why?” I asked. “I want to do something! I can’t just let the borders fail. The whole camp will be—”

“Overrun by monsters,” Chiron said. “Yes, I fear so. But you must not let yourself be baited into hasty action! This could be a trap of the titan lord. Remember last summer! He almost took your life.”

It was true, but still, I wanted to help so badly. I also wanted to make Kronos pay. I mean, you’d think the titan lord would’ve learned his lesson eons ago when he was overthrown by the gods. You’d think getting chopped into a million pieces and cast into the darkest part of the Underworld would give him a subtle clue that nobody wanted him around. But no. Because he was immortal, he was still alive down there in Tartarus—suffering in eternal pain, hungering to return and take revenge on Olympus. He couldn’t act on his own, but he was great at twisting the minds of mortals and even gods to do his dirty work.

The poisoning had to be his doing. Who else would be so low as to attack Thalia’s tree, the only thing left of a hero who’d given her life to save her friends?

Annabeth was trying hard not to cry. Chiron brushed a tear from her cheek while Simon clung onto his coat. “Stay with Percy, children,” he told them. “Keep him safe. The prophecy—remember it!”

“I—we will.” They said in unison.

“Um…” I said. “Would this be the super-dangerous prophecy that has me in it, but the gods

have forbidden you to tell me about?”

Nobody answered.

“Right,” I muttered. “Just checking.”

“Chiron…” Annabeth said. “You told me the gods made you immortal only so long as you

were needed to train heroes. If they dismiss you from camp—”

“No!” Simon begged.

“Swear you will do your best to keep Percy from danger,” Chiron insisted. “Swear upon the River

Styx.”

“I—I swear it upon the River Styx,” Annabeth said.

Thunder rumbled outside.

“As do I.” Simon mumbled.

Chiron cupped his cheek, lifting his head. “Simon, my boy…”

“I swear upon the River Styx.” He finally said. 

No thunder but it pleased the centaur.

“Very well,” Chiron said. He seemed to relax just a little. “Perhaps my name will be cleared and I shall return. Until then, I go to visit my wild kinsmen in the Everglades. It’s possible they know of some cure for the poisoned tree that I have forgotten. In any event, I will stay in exile until this matter is resolved…one way or another.”

Annabeth stifled a sob. Chiron patted her shoulder awkwardly while Simon continued hugging his upper torso. “There, now, child. I must entrust your safety to Mr. D and the new activities director. We must hope…well, perhaps they won’t destroy the camp quite as quickly as I fear.”

“Who is this Tantalus guy, anyway?” I demanded. “Where does he get off taking your job?”

A conch horn blew across the valley. I hadn’t realized how late it was. It was time for the campers to assemble for dinner.

“Go,” Chiron said. “You will meet him at the pavilion. I will contact your mother, Percy, and

let her know you’re safe. No doubt she’ll be worried by now. Just remember my warning! You

are in grave danger. Do not think for a moment that the titan lord has forgotten you!”

With that, he clopped out of the apartment, after Annabeth pulled Simon off his grandpa, and down the hall, Tyson calling after him, “Pony! Don’t go!”

I realized I’d forgotten to tell Chiron about my dream of Grover. Now it was too late. The best teacher I’d ever had was gone, maybe for good.

Tyson started bawling almost as bad as Annabeth and Simon.

I tried to tell them that things would be okay, but I didn’t believe it.

The sun was setting behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins. We stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in. Annabeth was still pretty shaken up, but she promised she’d talk to us later. Then she went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin—a dozen boys and girls with blond hair and gray eyes like hers. Annabeth wasn’t the oldest, but she’d been at camp more summers than just about anybody. You could tell that by looking at her camp necklace—one bead for every summer, and Annabeth had six.

No one questioned her right to lead the line.

Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn’t seem to have fazed her. Someone had taped a piece of paper to her back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell her about it.

After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin—six guys led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteen-year-old African American kid. He had hands the size of catchers’ mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmith’s forge all day. He was nice enough once you got to know him, but no one ever called him Charlie or Chuck or Charles (apart from Simon usually, but he also called him Beck). Most just called him Beckendorf. Rumor was he could make anything. Give him a chunk of metal and he could create a razor-sharp sword or a robotic warrior or a singing birdbath for your grandmother’s garden. Whatever you wanted.

The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came up from the canoe lake. Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came a dozen satyrs, who reminded me painfully of Grover.

I’d always had a soft spot for the satyrs. When they were at camp, they had to do all kinds of odd jobs for Mr. D, the director, but their most important work was out in the real world. They were the camp’s seekers. They went undercover into schools all over the world, looking for potential half-bloods and escorting them back to camp. That’s how I’d met Grover. He had been the first one to recognize I was a demigod.

After the satyrs filed in to dinner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. They were always the biggest cabin. Last summer, it had been led by Luke, the guy who’d fought with Thalia and Annabeth on top of Half-Blood Hill. For a while, before Poseidon had claimed me, I’d lodged in the Hermes cabin. Luke had befriended me…and then he’d tried to kill me.

Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll with Maya—who had a band-aid over her brow and a bit of blood dribbling down her nose—behind them. They weren’t twins, but they looked so much alike it didn’t matter. I could never remember which one was older. They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALFBLOOD T-shirts untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes’s kids had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes whenever they looked at you—like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt. I’d always thought it was funny that the god of thieves would have kids with the last name “Stoll,” but the only time I mentioned it to Travis and Connor, they both stared at me blankly like they didn’t get the joke. Simon, back then, had laughed about it, saying they wouldn't know the joke even if it hit them.

Now Simon gave me a small apologetic smile and limped over to his cabin. You see, Simon was an unclaimed kid. Had been for three years, going on four. The Stolls paused when he stood in front of them, their usual mischievous grins vanishing, replaced by something raw and unguarded. Then, they moved as one, tackling him in a hug right there in front of the stunned cabin. They didn't just hug him; they clung to him, pressing their noses to his skin like they wanted to smell him forever, to confirm he was real.

"Get off him, you idiots, he’s bruised enough!" Maya protested, but she was grinning and Simon was laughing, a real, genuine sound I hadn't heard from him in so long.

 "Stop! Stop sniffing me, you dogs!" Simon yelped.

A murmur rippled through the rest of the Hermes cabin, a mix of relief and awe. Kids I barely recognized, new faces who had only heard stories of the long-absent Simon, jostled for a better look. The unclaimed didn't usually get welcoming committees, but Simon wasn't just any unclaimed. He was theirs.

"Stolls!" Simon yelped, pushing their faces away as he laughed, "Stop, stop—we're in front of people!"

"Don't care," Travis mumbled into Simon's shoulder, his voice thick. Connor just tightened his grip, his knuckles white where he fisted the back of Simon's torn tracksuit jacket, barely glancing at the eagle armband.

I stood frozen, a few feet away, feeling like I was watching a private reunion I had no part in. That hot knot from the hill tightened in my stomach. I’d been the one to drag him to safety, the one who’d worried about him for months, but this… this was different. This was a claim. An unspoken history I wasn't part of.

Connor finally pulled back just enough to look at Simon, his hands still firmly on Simon's arms as Maya shook her head with a smile. "Nine months, Thorn. You can't just disappear for nine months and expect a casual handshake."

"We thought you were a pelt on some monster's wall," Travis added, his usual smirk trying to make a comeback, but it wavered at the edges, betraying the real fear underneath.

"I'm harder to get rid of than that," Simon said, his voice softer now. He winced as Travis clapped him on the back, a little too hard, and instinctively, both Stolls shifted to support his weight, their banter forgotten, their focus absolute.

I saw the way their eyes scanned his injuries—the apple-sized bruise, the bloody scratches—and the protective fury that flashed across their faces. They were a unit. A trio. And I was on the outside.

The tension broke when they helped him on his feet. The rest of the cabin, a mix of unclaimed kids, Hermes campers and the newer campers (who had only known Simon as a cautionary tale—the kid who’d been gone so long everyone assumed the worst) finally surged forward. They were a sea of curious faces, their questions overlapping.

"Where were you?"

"Did you fight a monster?"

"Is it true you once tricked the Ares cabin into painting their own cabin pink?"

The swarm of questions continued with Simon trying his best to answer until Maya, with the practiced authority of a head counselor, stepped in. "Alright, back off! Give him air, you vultures. He's not a storybook, he's a person. And he should be in the infirmary.”

The crowd reluctantly parted. Maya’s gaze fell on me for a second, a flicker of something unreadable—maybe gratitude for the hill, maybe residual annoyance—before she turned her full attention to Simon. She gently took his crutch from where it had fallen and slipped it back under his arm.

"Infirmary. Again," she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. "Now. You look like you lost a fight with a woodchipper."

Simon offered a weak, pained smile. "Feels like it." He leaned heavily on the crutch, the brief energy from the reunion visibly draining away. The Stoll brothers moved to flank him, their usual mischief replaced by a grim determination.

"I'll take him," Maya said, cutting them off with a look. "You two get the cabin seated. And for the gods' sake, try to look like responsible leaders for five minutes.” She turned to Simon, “and you. Don’t you dare sneak out this time.”

“Yes, Ma’am!” The three of them gave her a mock salute and the Stolls continued walking the rest of the cabin while Maya hauled Simon to the infirmary, her voice barely above a whisper as she scolded him.

As soon as the last campers had filed in, I led Tyson into the middle of the pavilion.

Conversations faltered. Heads turned. “Who invited that?” somebody at the Apollo table murmured.

I glared in their direction, but I couldn’t figure out who’d spoken.

From the head table a familiar voice drawled, “Well, well, if it isn’t Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete.”

I gritted my teeth. “Percy Jackson…sir.”

Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. “Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever.”

He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with black socks. With his pudgy belly and his blotchy red face, he looked like a Las Vegas tourist who’d stayed up too late in the casinos. Behind him, a nervous-looking satyr was peeling the skins off grapes and handing them to Mr. D one at a time.

Mr. D’s real name is Dionysus. The god of wine. Zeus appointed him director of Camp HalfBlood to dry out for a hundred years—a punishment for chasing some off-limits wood nymph.

Next to him, where Chiron usually sat (or stood, in centaur form), was someone I’d never seen before—a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner’s jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails, and badly cut gray hair, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker. He stared at me; his eyes made me nervous. He looked…fractured. Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the same time.

“This boy,” Dionysus told him, “you need to watch. Poseidon’s child, you know.”

“Ah!” the prisoner said. “That one.”

His tone made it obvious that he and Dionysus had already discussed me at length.

“I am Tantalus,” the prisoner said, smiling coldly. “On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble.”

“Trouble?” I demanded.

Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table—the front page of today’s New York Post. There was my yearbook picture from Meriwether Prep. It was hard for me to make out the headline, but I had a pretty good guess what it said. Something like: Thirteen-Year Old Lunatic Torches Gymnasium.

“Yes, trouble,” Tantalus said with satisfaction. “You caused plenty of it last summer, I understand.”

I was too mad to speak. Like it was my fault the gods had almost gotten into a civil war?

A satyr inched forward nervously and set a plate of barbecue in front of Tantalus. The new activities director licked his lips. He looked at his empty goblet and said, “Root beer. Barq’s special stock. 1967.”

The glass filled itself with foamy soda. Tantalus stretched out his hand hesitantly, as if he were afraid the goblet was hot.

“Go on, then, old fellow,” Dionysus said, a strange sparkle in his eyes. “Perhaps now it will work.”

Tantalus grabbed for the glass, but it scooted away before he could touch it. A few drops of root beer spilled, and Tantalus tried to dab them up with his fingers, but the drops rolled away like quicksilver before he could touch them. He growled and turned toward the plate of barbecue.

He picked up a fork and tried to stab a piece of brisket, but the plate skittered down the table and flew off the end, straight into the coals of the brazier.

“Blast!” Tantalus muttered.

“Ah, well,” Dionysus said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. “Perhaps a few more days. Believe me, old chap, working at this camp will be torture enough. I’m sure your old curse will fade eventually.”

“Eventually,” muttered Tantalus, staring at Dionysus’s Diet Coke. “Do you have any idea

how dry one’s throat gets after three thousand years?”

“You’re that spirit from the Fields of Punishment,” I said. “The one who stands in the lake with the fruit tree hanging over you, but you can’t eat or drink.”

Tantalus sneered at me. “A real scholar, aren’t you, boy?”

“You must’ve done something really horrible when you were alive,” I said, mildly impressed. “What was it?”

Tantalus’s eyes narrowed. Behind him, the satyrs were shaking their heads vigorously, trying to warn me.

“I’ll be watching you, Percy Jackson,” Tantalus said. “I don’t want any problems at my camp.”

“Your camp has problems already…sir.”

“Oh, go sit down, Johnson,” Dionysus sighed. “I believe that table over there is yours—the one where no one else ever wants to sit.”

My face was burning, but I knew better than to talk back. Dionysus was an overgrown brat,

but he was an immortal, superpowerful overgrown brat. I said, “Come on, Tyson.”

“Oh, no,” Tantalus said. “The monster stays here. We must decide what to do with it.”

“Him,” I snapped. “His name is Tyson.”

The new activities director raised an eyebrow.

“Tyson saved the camp,” I insisted. “He pounded those bronze bulls. Otherwise they would’ve burned down this whole place.”

“Yes,” Tantalus sighed, “and what a pity that would’ve been.”

Dionysus snickered.

“Leave us,” Tantalus ordered, “while we decide this creature’s fate.”

Tyson looked at me with fear in his one big eye, but I knew I couldn’t disobey a direct order from the camp directors. Not openly, anyway.

“I’ll be right over here, big guy,” I promised. “Don’t worry. We’ll find you a good place to sleep tonight.”

Tyson nodded. “I believe you. You are my friend.”

Which made me feel a whole lot guiltier.

I trudged over to the Poseidon table and slumped onto the bench. A wood nymph brought me a plate of Olympian olive-and-pepperoni pizza, but I wasn’t hungry. I’d been almost killed twice today. I’d managed to end my school year with a complete disaster. Camp Half-Blood was in serious trouble and Chiron had told me not to do anything about it.

I didn’t feel very thankful, but I took my dinner, as was customary, up to the bronze brazier and scraped part of it into the flames.

“Poseidon,” I murmured, “accept my offering.”

And send me some help while you’re at it, I prayed silently. Please.

The smoke from the burning pizza changed into something fragrant—the smell of a clean sea breeze with wildflowers mixed in—but I had no idea if that meant my father was really listening.

I went back to my seat. I didn’t think things could get much worse. But then Tantalus had one of the satyrs blew the conch horn to get our attention for announcements.

“Yes, well,” Tantalus said, once the talking had died down. “Another fine meal! Or so I am told.” As he spoke, he inched his hand toward his refilled dinner plate, as if maybe the food wouldn’t notice what he was doing, but it did. It shot away down the table as soon as he got within six inches.

“And here on my first day of authority,” he continued, “I’d like to say what a pleasant form of punishment it is to be here. Over the course of the summer, I hope to torture, er, interact with each and every one of you children. You all look good enough to eat.”

Dionysus clapped politely, leading to some halfhearted applause from the satyrs. Tyson was still standing at the head table, looking uncomfortable, but every time he tried to scoot out of the limelight, Tantalus pulled him back.

“And now some changes!” Tantalus gave the campers a crooked smile. “We are reinstituting the chariot races!”

Murmuring broke out at all the tables—excitement, fear, disbelief.

“Now I know,” Tantalus continued, raising his voice, “that these races were discontinued some years ago due to, ah, technical problems.”

“Three deaths and twenty-six mutilations,” someone at the Apollo table called.

“Yes, yes!” Tantalus said. “But I know that you will all join me in welcoming the return of this camp tradition. Golden laurels will go to the winning charioteers each month. Teams may register in the morning! The first race will be held in three days time. We will release you from most of your regular activities to prepare your chariots and choose your horses. Oh, and did I mention, the victorious team’s cabin will have no chores for the month in which they win?”

An explosion of excited conversation—no KP for a whole month? No stable cleaning? Was he serious?

Then the last person I expected to object did so.

“But, sir!” Clarisse said. She looked nervous, but she stood up to speak from the Ares table.

Some of the campers snickered when they saw the YOU MOO, GIRL! sign on her back. “What about patrol duty? I mean, if we drop everything to ready our chariots—”

“Ah, the hero of the day,” Tantalus exclaimed. “Brave Clarisse, who single-handedly bested the bronze bulls!”

Clarisse blinked, then blushed. “Um, I didn’t—”

“And modest, too.” Tantalus grinned. “Not to worry, my dear! This is a summer camp. We are here to enjoy ourselves, yes?”

“But the tree—”

“And now,” Tantalus said, as several of Clarisse’s cabin mates pulled her back into her seat,

“before we proceed to the campfire and sing-along, one slight housekeeping issue. Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase have seen fit, for some reason, to bring this here.” Tantalus waved a hand toward Tyson.

Uneasy murmuring spread among the campers. A lot of sideways looks at me. I wanted to kill Tantalus.

“Now, of course,” he said, “Cyclopes have a reputation for being bloodthirsty monsters with a very small brain capacity. Under normal circumstances, I would release this beast into the woods and have you hunt it down with torches and pointed sticks. But who knows? Perhaps this Cyclops is not as horrible as most of its brethren. Until it proves worthy of destruction, we need a place to keep it! I’ve thought about the stables, but that will make the horses nervous. Hermes’s cabin, possibly?”

Silence at the Hermes table. Travis and Connor Stoll developed a sudden interest in the tablecloth. I couldn’t blame them. The Hermes cabin was always full to bursting. There was no way they could take in a six-foot-three Cyclops.

“Come now,” Tantalus chided. “The monster may be able to do some menial chores. Any suggestions as to where such a beast should be kenneled?”

Suddenly everybody gasped.

Tantalus scooted away from Tyson in surprise. All I could do was stare in disbelief at the brilliant green light that was about to change my life—a dazzling holographic image that had appeared above Tyson’s head.

With a sickening twist in my stomach, I remembered what Annabeth had said about Cyclopes, They’re the children of nature spirits and gods…Well, one god in particular, usually…

Swirling over Tyson was a glowing green trident—the same symbol that had appeared above me the day Poseidon had claimed me as his son.

There was a moment of awed silence.

Being claimed was a rare event. Some campers waited in vain for it their whole lives. When I’d been claimed by Poseidon last summer, everyone had reverently knelt. But now, they followed Tantalus’s lead, and Tantalus roared with laughter. “Well! I think we know where to put the beast now. By the gods, I can see the family resemblance!”

Everybody laughed except Simon, Annabeth and a few of my other friends.

Tyson didn’t seem to notice. He was too mystified, trying to swat the glowing trident that was now fading over his head. He was too innocent to understand how much they were making fun of him, how cruel people were. But I got it.

I had a new cabin mate. I had a monster for a half-brother.

Chapter Text

The next few days were torture, just like Tantalus wanted.

First there was Tyson moving into the Poseidon cabin, giggling to himself every fifteen seconds and saying, “Percy is my brother?” like he’d just won the lottery.

“Aw, Tyson,” I’d say. “It’s not that simple.”

But there was no explaining it to him. He was in heaven. And me…as much as I liked the big guy, I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. Ashamed. There, I said it.

My father, the all-powerful Poseidon, had gotten moony-eyed for some nature spirit, and Tyson had been the result. I mean, I’d read the myths about Cyclopes. I even remembered that they were often Poseidon’s children. But I’d never really processed that this made them my… family. Until I had Tyson living with me in the next bunk.

And then there were the comments from the other campers. Suddenly, I wasn’t Percy Jackson, the cool guy who’d retrieved Zeus’s lightning bolt last summer or Percy Jackson, the guy who sent Simon Thorn in the infirmary and got him to join my quest. Now I was Percy Jackson, the poor schmuck with the ugly monster for a brother.

“He’s not my real brother!” I protested whenever Tyson wasn’t around. “He’s more like a half-brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like…a half-brother twice removed, or something.”

Nobody bought it.

I admit—I was angry at my dad. I felt like being his son was now a joke.

Annabeth and Simon (who kept sneaking out of the infirmary using his animal forms, which Maya and everyone else at camp found out about after he shifted in front of them) tried to make me feel better. Annabeth suggested we team up for the chariot race to take our minds off our problems while Simon promised to help distract the other teams. Don’t get me wrong—we three hated Tantalus and we were worried sick about camp—but we didn’t know what to do about it. 

Until we could come up with some brilliant plan to save Thalia’s tree, we figured we might as well go along with the races. After all, Annabeth’s mom, Athena, had invented the chariot, and my dad had created horses and Simon would technically turn into a horse. Together we would own that track.

One morning Annabeth and I were sitting by the canoe lake—Simon got hounded to go back to the infirmary despite looking much better; the bruise on his eye swelled down to the size of my thumb but he was told to cover it with an eyepatch and the bandages on his face were practically nonexistent by now by i felt like he snuck out again—sketching chariot designs when some jokers from Aphrodite’s cabin walked by and asked me if I needed to borrow some eyeliner for my eye…“Oh sorry, eyes.”

As they walked away laughing, a dove with one eye, it’s feathers matted around it, flew down to us—a small glow shimmered from it, its small body morphing into something bigger and Simon appeared, his eye still covered with a medical eyepatch. Annabeth grumbled, “Just ignore them, Percy. It isn’t your fault you have a monster for a brother.”

“He’s not my brother!” I snapped. “And he’s not a monster, either!”

Simon raised his eyebrows. “Hey, don’t get mad at us! And technically, he is a monster.”

“Well you both gave him permission to enter the camp.”

Annabeth continued, falling back into their old routine of finishing each other’s sentences, “Because it was the only way to save your life! I mean…we’re sorry, Percy, we didn’t expect Poseidon to claim him. Cyclopes are the most deceitful, treacherous—”

“He is not! What have you got against Cyclopes, anyway?”

Annabeth’s ears turned pink and Simon made this weird, pitiful face. I got the feeling there was something they weren’t telling me—something bad.

“Just forget it,” she said. “Now, the axle for this chariot—”

“You’re treating him like he’s this horrible thing,” I said. “He saved my life.”

Annabeth threw down her pencil and stood. “Then maybe you should design a chariot with him.”

“Maybe I should.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

She stormed off and left me feeling even worse than before.

Simon, still sitting there, was silent for a bit before he nudged my foot, “Percy… If there’s one thing I know, you’re gonna regret saying Tyson isn’t your brother.”

I rounded him, “How’d you know?” I spat, “you don't have one! You have a sister—Maya loves you! She's normal—she's not a freak!"

Simon just stared at me. Like really stared. His face contorted into something that resembled that anger and pity all in one, "I have a brother, Percy." He said slowly, like he was speaking to a fussy kid, "A younger one. A twin."

"Oh, yeah?" I challenged, "What's his name?"

“Nolan.” He said, “his name’s Nolan.”

The name hung in the air between us, a solid, undeniable fact. Nolan. Simon had a brother. A twin. And in that moment, I felt smaller and more foolish than I ever had facing down a monster.

All my pent-up anger and shame deflated, leaving behind a cold, hollow feeling. I’d been so wrapped up in my own embarrassment, so desperate to distance myself from Tyson, that I’d lashed out at the one person who’d been trying to help. And I’d done it by insulting a bond I knew nothing about.

Simon’s single eye was hard, the usual glint of humor completely gone, replaced by a flat, disappointed glare. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. The comparison was a slap in the face: him, who would clearly move mountains for a brother he never even talked about, and me, who was whining because my brother was different.

He stood up, brushing the grass from his jeans. The movement was stiff, still favoring his injured side. “I’m going to check on Maya,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Try not to alienate anyone else before the race.”

He walked away, not with Annabeth’s dramatic storming-off, but with a weary, deliberate pace that was somehow worse. He was hurt, and I was the cause.

I sat there by the canoe lake, the unfinished chariot design blurring in front of me. Annabeth was mad at me. Simon was disappointed in me. And Tyson… Tyson was probably back at the cabin, happily arranging my spare socks or something, completely unaware that I was denying his existence to anyone who would listen.

A hot wave of self-loathing washed over me. Simon was right. I was going to regret this. I already did.

The feeling only intensified that evening at dinner. I was picking at my food, ignoring the snickers from the Ares table, when a commotion erupted at the Hermes table. Travis Stoll was standing on a bench, holding a winged shoe aloft.

"Latest design!" he announced to his cabin. "Guaranteed to give you an edge in the race! Or... maybe it'll just make you run in circles. Fifty-fifty chance!"

Connor snatched the shoe from him. "Don't listen to him! It's a prototype from the Stoll and Thorn collaboration! Much safer than his usual stuff!"

Simon, sitting between them, groaned and buried his face in his hands. "I told you not to call it that! I just said the leather needed to be softer!"

"See? Expert advice!" Connor said, slinging an arm around Simon's neck and ruffling his hair. Simon swatted him away, but he was laughing, the sound bright and unforced. The entire Hermes table was watching them with a kind of fond exasperation. Simon was back. He was theirs.

Maya punched Simon in the arm, her face brighter than anyone had seen before… since Simon went missing, “Seriously, Twiggy, what else are you hiding? Secret animal-shifting societies, you being flipping royalty and also a soon to be political figure. Next you’re gonna say you can split the ocean.”

“Wanna bet?” A girl from the other side of the table smirked. I recognised her as Calla Velcaso, Maya’s older half sister.

“With Simon’s luck? I bet he could.” Lysander Mirr, their other half-brother, snorted, pointing his fork at him, “it’d be a gamble.”

I looked down at my plate. I had Annabeth, sure. But seeing Simon surrounded by his chaotic, loyal cabin... It highlighted what I was missing. What I was pushing away.

The next couple of days, I tried to keep my mind off my problems.

Selena Beauregard, one of the nicer girls from Aphrodite’s cabin, gave me my first riding lesson on a pegasus. Simon was also there, giving me that sad look in his eyes—like he was seeing something I wasn’t. I ignored him. Selena explained that there was only one immortal winged horse named Pegasus, who still wandered free somewhere in the skies, but over the eons he’d sired a lot of children, none quite so fast or heroic, but all named after the first and greatest.

Being the son of the sea god, I never liked going into the air. My dad had this rivalry with Zeus, so I tried to stay out of the lord of the sky’s domain as much as possible. But riding a winged horse felt different. It didn’t make me nearly as nervous as being in an airplane. Maybe that was because my dad had created horses out of sea foam, so the pegasi were sort of…neutral territory. I could understand their thoughts. I wasn’t surprised when my pegasus went galloping over the treetops or chased a flock of seagulls into a cloud.

The problem was that Tyson wanted to ride the “chicken ponies,” too, but the pegasi got skittish whenever he approached. I told them telepathically that Tyson wouldn’t hurt them and Simon—quietly—asked them in horse-speak that Tyson was just a little heavy and nothing more, but they didn’t seem to believe us. That made Tyson cry—followed by Simon yanking out tissues to help wipe the tears.

The only people at camp who had no problem with Tyson were Simon—much to his cabin’s irritation—and Beckendorf from the Hephaestus cabin. The blacksmith god had always worked with Cyclopes in his forges, so Beckendorf took Tyson down to the armory to teach him metalworking. He said he’d have Tyson crafting magic items like a master in no time. Simon mumbled something about Tyson being a good kid, just misunderstood but didn't say anything more to me, working alongside with Beckendorf.

After lunch, I worked out in the arena with Apollo’s cabin. Swordplay had always been my strength. People said I was better at it than any camper in the last hundred years, except maybe Luke. People always compared me to Luke.

I thrashed the Apollo guys easily. I should’ve been testing myself against the Ares and Athena cabins, since they had the best sword fighters, but I didn’t get along with Clarisse and her siblings, and after my argument with Annabeth, I just didn’t want to see her.

I went to archery class, even though I was terrible at it, and it wasn’t the same without Chiron teaching. In arts and crafts, I started a marble bust of Poseidon, but it started looking like Sylvester Stallone, so I ditched it. I scaled the climbing wall in full lava-and-earthquake mode.

And in the evenings, I did border patrol. Even though Tantalus had insisted we forget trying to protect the camp, some of the campers had quietly kept it up, working out a schedule during our free times.

I sat at the top of Half-Blood Hill and watched the dryads come and go, singing to the dying pine tree. Satyrs brought their reed pipes and played nature magic songs, and for a while the pine needles seemed to get fuller. The flowers on the hill smelled a little sweeter and the grass looked greener. But as soon as the music stopped, the sickness crept back into the air. The whole hill seemed to be infected, dying from the poison that had sunk into the tree’s roots. The longer I sat there, the angrier I got.

Luke had done this. I remembered his sly smile, the dragon-claw scar across his face. He’d pretended to be my friend, and the whole time he’d been Kronos’s number-one servant. I opened the palm of my hand. The scar Luke had given me last summer was fading, but I could still see it—a white asterisk-shaped wound where his pit scorpion had stung me.

I thought about what Luke had told me right before he’d tried to kill me: Good-bye, Percy. There is a new Golden Age coming. You won’t be part of it.

Later, as I was heading back to my cabin, someone fell into step beside me. It was Simon. He didn't look at me, just stared straight ahead, his hands shoved in his pockets. His clothes were baggy on him—like he was wearing someone else’s clothes—or maybe he’d lost weight during those nine months nobody could reach him. The eyepatch was gone, revealing a fading yellow bruise around his eye and he had a fainter limp.

"Look," he said, his voice low. "About before."

"No," I interrupted, stopping. "You were right. I was a jerk."

He finally glanced at me, his expression unreadable. "Yeah, you were. But... I get it. It's complicated." He kicked at a loose stone. "Family always is. Even the ones you choose."

He didn't say anything about Nolan. He didn't have to. The acknowledgement was enough.

"Tyson asked about you today," I said quietly. "Said he likes you because you don't look at him like he's scary."

A faint smile touched Simon's lips. "He's a good kid, Percy. A really good kid. You're lucky."

And with that, he fished out a polaroid from his back pocket, “I saw what that Sloan guy did… he’s a jerk for stealing the picture. And, I know it’s not the same photo, but I think it’d suffice.”

I grabbed it greedily, squinting my eyes in the dim light to try and see it, "Dude... I can barely see this," I complained, trying to adjust it with any light I could find. 

Simon snorted and fished out a flashlight from his pocket, "the Stolls were using it," He explained and shone a small beam of light over the photo.

The photo was washed in the bright, hazy light of a beach day. It was Simon, alright, but a different Simon. He was sitting in the shade of a wide-striped umbrella, the sand behind him a blinding white. He wore swim trunks and… bandages. A large, clean white patch was taped over his lower abdomen, and another wrapped around his upper thighs. He looked thinner than I remembered from the summer, more fragile, but he was smiling—a small, genuine smile directed at the camera he held out in front of him. In his lap was a thick book. It was a selfie, capturing a quiet, solitary moment.

"It's from December," Simon said, his voice soft in the twilight. "Christmas trip with… Nolan and our uncle Malcolm… my biological family. And a few of my friends at L.A.I.R.. at this beach in California, Santa Catalina.”

He hesitated on the word 'biological,' like it tasted foreign. He’d always talked about his uncle Darryl, Ajax and Maya. I’d never heard him mention anyone else. The photo explained so much and yet nothing at all. The bandages. The tired eyes. The fact that he’d been gone for nine months...  

"It's what I wanted to tell Chiron about.. My lineage. I think he'd give me some tips, but..." He trailed off, shuffling his feet. "See me if you wanna know more. If you want..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. The invitation was there, fragile and hesitant. He was offering me a piece of his nine-month absence, a piece that was clearly tangled in pain. The bandages were a stark, silent testament to that.

He wasn't just offering me a replacement picture. He was offering me a piece of his truth. A painful, complicated piece that he’d been carrying alone. He was trusting me with it, after I’d been such a jerk.

"I want to," I said, my voice hoarse. I finally looked up from the photo to his face. The fading bruise around his eye seemed like just one more mark in a long series. "Simon, I... I'm sorry. For what I said. About you not having a brother. That was... I was wrong."

He met my gaze then, and the hard disappointment from before had softened into something sadder and more accepting. "I know," he said simply. "It's okay."

But it wasn't okay. I needed him to know I meant it. "Tyson is my brother. You were right. I was just... scared of what everyone would think."

A small, understanding smile touched his lips. "People are always going to think something, Percy. The Stolls think I'm a chaotic gremlin who attracts trouble. Clarisse thinks I'm a twerp. Maya thinks I need a full-time babysitter. My biological family thinks I should be more open to them..." He shrugged. "What matters is what you know is true."

He nodded toward the path leading to the cabins. "Come on. I'll walk you back. You can keep the photo."

As we walked, the silence between us was comfortable now, not heavy. I kept glancing down at the Polaroid in my hand. Simon on a beach, wounded and alone, yet still strong enough to document the moment. It was the most honest picture of him I'd ever seen. It wasn't the cheeky, dimpled smile from the photo Sloan stole. This was something deeper. This was the Simon who had survived something, and the fact that he was sharing it with me felt like a gift more valuable than any magical sword.

When we reached the door of the Poseidon cabin, I could hear Tyson’s rumbling snore from inside.

"Thanks, Simon," I said, holding up the photo. "For this. And... for everything else."

He gave me a real smile this time, small but genuine. "Get some sleep, Percy. Big race tomorrow. We're going to need you at your best." He paused, then added, "And tell Tyson I said goodnight."

He turned and limped off toward the Hermes cabin, leaving me standing there with a new picture for my notebook and a whole new set of questions burning in my mind. But for the first time since I'd returned to camp, the burning wasn't just anger or shame. It was a fierce, protective curiosity. I wanted to know his story. I wanted to be someone he could trust with it.

And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would do anything to make sure I never saw that weary, wounded look in his eyes again.

At night, I had more dreams of Grover. Sometimes, I just heard snatches of his voice. Once, I heard him say: It’s here. Another time: He likes sheep.

I thought about telling Simon and Annabeth about my dreams, but I would’ve felt stupid. I mean, He likes sheep? Annabeth would’ve thought I was crazy while Simon would give me this look like I should sit down.

The night before the race, Tyson and I finished our chariot. It was wicked cool. Tyson had made the metal parts in the armory’s forges. I sanded the wood and put the carriage together. 

It was blue and white, with wave designs on the sides and a trident painted on the front. After all that work, it seemed only fair that Tyson would ride shotgun with me, though I knew the horses wouldn’t like it, and Tyson’s extra weight would slow us down.

As we were turning in for bed, Tyson said, “You are mad?”

I realized I’d been scowling. “Nah. I’m not mad.”

He lay down in his bunk and was quiet in the dark. His body was way too long for his bed.

When he pulled up the covers, his feet stuck out the bottom. “I am a monster.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It is okay. I will be a good monster. Then you will not have to be mad.”

I didn’t know what to say. I stared at the ceiling and felt like I was dying slowly, right along with Thalia’s tree.

“It’s just…I never had a half-brother before.” I tried to keep my voice from cracking. “It’s really different for me. And I’m worried about the camp. And another friend of mine, Grover… he might be in trouble. I keep feeling like I should be doing something to help, but I don’t know what.”

Tyson said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “It’s not your fault. I’m mad at Poseidon. I feel like he’s trying to embarrass me, like he’s trying to compare us or something, and I don’t understand why.”

I heard a deep rumbling sound. Tyson was snoring.

I sighed. “Good night, big guy. Simon says goodnight, too.”

And I closed my eyes, too.

In my dream, Grover was wearing a wedding dress.

It didn’t fit him very well. The gown was too long and the hem was caked with dried mud. The neckline kept falling off his shoulders. A tattered veil covered his face.

He was standing in a dank cave, lit only by torches. There was a cot in one corner and an old-fashioned loom in the other, a length of white cloth half woven on the frame. And he was staring right at me, like I was a TV program he’d been waiting for. “Thank the gods!” he yelped. “Can you hear me?”

My dream-self was slow to respond. I was still looking around, taking in the stalactite ceiling, the stench of sheep and goats, the growling and grumbling and bleating sounds that seemed to echo from behind a refrigerator-sized boulder, which was blocking the room’s only exit, as if there were a much larger cavern beyond it.

“Percy?” Grover said. “Please, I don’t have the strength to project any better. You have to hear me!”

“I hear you,” I said. “Grover, what’s going on?”

From behind the boulder, a monstrous voice yelled, “Honeypie! Are you done yet?”

Grover flinched. He called out in falsetto, “Not quite, dearest! A few more days!”

“Bah! Hasn’t it been two weeks yet?”

“N-no, dearest. Just five days. That leaves twelve more to go.”

The monster was silent, maybe trying to do the math. He must’ve been worse at arithmetic than I was, because he said, “All right, but hurry! I want to SEEEEE under that veil, heh-hehheh.”

Grover turned back to me. “You have to help me! No time! I’m stuck in this cave. On an island in the sea.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know exactly! I went to Florida and turned left.”

“What? How did you—”

“It’s a trap!” Grover said. “It’s the reason no satyr has ever returned from this quest. He’s a shepherd, Percy! And he has it. Its nature magic is so powerful it smells just like the great god Pan! The satyrs come here thinking they’ve found Pan, and they get trapped and eaten by Polyphemus!”

“Poly-who?”

“The Cyclops!” Grover said, exasperated. “I almost got away. I made it all the way to St. Augustine.”

“But he followed you,” I said, remembering my first dream. “And trapped you in a bridal boutique.”

“That’s right,” Grover said. “My first empathy link must’ve worked then. Look, this bridal dress is the only thing keeping me alive. He thinks I smell good, but I told him it was just goatscented perfume. Thank goodness he can’t see very well. His eye is still half blind from the last time somebody poked it out. But soon he’ll realize what I am. He’s only giving me two weeks to finish the bridal train, and he’s getting impatient!”

“Wait a minute. This Cyclops thinks you’re—”

“Yes!” Grover wailed. “He thinks I’m a lady Cyclops and he wants to marry me!”

Under different circumstances, I might’ve bursted out laughing, but Grover’s voice was deadly serious. He was shaking with fear.

“I’ll come rescue you,” I promised. “Where are you?”

“The Sea of Monsters, of course!”

“The sea of what?”

“I told you! I don’t know exactly where! And look, Percy… um, I’m really sorry about this, but this empathy link… well, I had no choice. Our emotions are connected now. If I die…”

“Don’t tell me, I’ll die too.”

“Oh, well, perhaps not. You might live for years in a vegetative state. But, uh, it would be a lot better if you got me out of here.”

“Honeypie!” the monster bellowed. “Dinnertime! Yummy yummy sheep meat!”

Grover whimpered. “I have to go. Hurry!”

“Wait! You said ‘it’ was here. What?”

But Grover’s voice was already growing fainter. “Sweet dreams. Don’t let me die!”

The dream faded and I woke with a start. It was early morning. Tyson was staring down at me, his one big brown eye full of concern.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

His voice sent a chill down my back, because he sounded almost exactly like the monster I’d heard in my dream.

The morning of the race was hot and humid. Fog lay low on the ground like sauna steam. Millions of birds were roosting in the trees—fat gray-and-white pigeons, except they didn’t coo like regular pigeons. They made this annoying metallic screeching sound that reminded me of submarine radar.

The racetrack had been built in a grassy field between the archery range and the woods. Hephaestus’s cabin had used the bronze bulls, which were completely tame since they’d had their heads smashed in, to plow an oval track in a matter of minutes.

There were rows of stone steps for the spectators—Tantalus, the satyrs, a few dryads, and all of the campers who weren’t participating, including Maya, who was busy petting a hawk on her shoulder that had a small patch of feathers that looked Gemini temple—like a birthmark. Mr. D didn’t show. He never got up before ten o’clock.

“Right!” Tantalus announced as the teams began to assemble. A naiad had brought him a big platter of pastries, and as Tantalus spoke, his right hand chased a chocolate éclair across the judge’s table. “You all know the rules. A quarter-mile track. Twice around to win. Two horses per chariot. Each team will consist of a driver and a fighter. Weapons are allowed. Dirty tricks are expected. But try not to kill anybody!” Tantalus smiled at us like we were all naughty children. “Any killing will result in harsh punishment. No s’mores at the campfire for a week! Now ready your chariots!”

Beckendorf led the Hephaestus team onto the track. They had a sweet ride made of bronze and iron—even the horses, which were magical automatons like the Colchis bulls. I had no doubt that their chariot had all kinds of mechanical traps and more fancy options than a fully loaded Maserati.

The Ares chariot was bloodred, and pulled by two grisly horse skeletons. Clarisse climbed aboard with a batch of javelins, spiked balls, caltrops, and a bunch of other nasty toys.

Apollo’s chariot was trim and graceful and completely gold, pulled by two beautiful palominos. Their fighter was armed with a bow, though he had promised not to shoot regular pointed arrows at the opposing drivers.

Hermes’s chariot was green and kind of old-looking, as if it hadn’t been out of the garage in years. It didn’t look like anything special, but it was manned by the Stoll brothers, and I shuddered to think what dirty tricks they’d schemed up. Simon—who was the hawk Maya was petting—sat on Maya’s shoulder as she walked over to the brothers, Simon rubbing his head on her neck affectionately as she scratched under his beak.

That left two chariots: one driven by Annabeth, and the other by me.

Before the race began, I tried to approach Annabeth and tell her about my dream.

She perked up when I mentioned Grover, but when I told her what he’d said, she seemed to get distant again, suspicious.

“You’re trying to distract me,” she decided.

“What? No I’m not!”

“Oh, right! Like Grover would just happen to stumble across the one thing that could save the camp.”

“What do you mean?”

She rolled her eyes. “Go back to your chariot, Percy.”

“I’m not making this up. He’s in trouble, Annabeth.”

She hesitated. I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to trust me. Despite our occasional fights, we’d been through a lot together that Simon had to break up. And I knew she would never want anything bad to happen to Grover.

“Percy, an empathy link is so hard to do. I mean, it’s more likely you really were dreaming.”

“The Oracle,” I said. “We could consult the Oracle.”

Annabeth frowned. Last summer, before my quest, I’d visited the strange spirit that lived in the Big House attic and it had given me a prophecy that came true in ways I’d never expected. The experience had freaked me out for months. Annabeth knew I’d never suggest going back there if I wasn’t completely serious.

Before she could answer, the conch horn sounded, making Simon squawk and transform back into human, falling on the Stolls and Maya’s feet with an audible groan. Maya helped him to his feet and shooed him away from the Stolls, where he crept over to my side, “got room for one more?”

“I guess.” I shrugged and Simon produced a folded leather shoulder pad from his pocket, grinning.

“If I’m with you, the birds might not notice you.” He said, “or maybe they will.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain later.” He said, “all you need to know is that, my mom is the minister of the birds.” 

I didn’t protest, strapping it on, “don’t fall off, okay?” I said worriedly, “Maya’s gonna have my hide if i get you hurt again.”

“Promise.” He said.

“Charioteers!” Tantalus called. “To your mark!”

“We’ll talk later,” Annabeth told me, glancing at Simon, “after I win.”

As I was walking back to my own chariot, I noticed how many more pigeons were in the trees now—screeching like crazy, making the whole forest rustle. Nobody else seemed to be paying them much attention, but they made me nervous. Their beaks glinted strangely. Their eyes seemed shinier than regular birds. Simon must’ve noticed too, but he kept quiet, already shapeshifting again—he shrunk down and he was a golden eagle as he hopped on my shoulder. 

Tyson was having trouble getting our horses under control. Simon and I had to talk to them a long time before they would settle down.

Simon chirped a bit, but the horses didn’t comply. Doing the equivalent of a sigh, he nudged me with his beak.

He’s a monster, lord! they complained to me.

He’s a son of Poseidon, I told them. Just like…well, just like me.

No! they insisted. Monster! Horse-eater! Not trusted!

I’ll give you sugar cubes at the end of the race, I said.

Sugar cubes?

Very big sugar cubes. And apples. Did I mention the apples?

Finally they agreed to let me harness them.

Now, if you’ve never seen a Greek chariot, it’s built for speed, not safety or comfort. It’s basically a wooden basket, open at the back, mounted on an axle between two wheels. The driver stands up the whole time, and you can feel every bump in the road. The carriage is made of such light wood that if you wipe out making the hairpin turns at either end of the track, you’ll probably tip over and crush both the chariot and yourself. It’s an even better rush than skateboarding.

I took the reins and maneuvered the chariot to the starting line, Simon ruffling his feathers as if preparing to take flight. I gave Tyson a ten-foot pole and told him that his job was to push the other chariots away if they got too close, and to deflect anything they might try to throw at us.

“No hitting ponies with the stick,” he insisted.

“No,” I agreed. “Or people, either, if you can help it. We’re going to run a clean race. Just keep the distractions away and let me concentrate on driving.”

“We will win!” He beamed.

We are so going to lose, I thought to myself, but I had to try. I wanted to show the others… well, I wasn’t sure what, exactly. That Tyson wasn’t such a bad guy? That I wasn’t ashamed of being seen with him in public? Maybe that they hadn’t hurt me with all their jokes and namecalling?

As the chariots lined up, more shiny-eyed pigeons gathered in the woods. They were screeching so loudly the campers in the stands were starting to take notice, glancing nervously at the trees, which shivered under the weight of the birds. Tantalus didn’t look concerned, but he did have to speak up to be heard over the noise.

“Charioteers!” he shouted. “Attend your mark!”

He waved his hand and the starting signal dropped. The chariots roared to life. Hooves thundered against the dirt. Simon took off. The crowd cheered.

Almost immediately there was a loud nasty crack! I looked back in time to see the Apollo chariot flip over. The Hermes chariot had rammed into it—maybe by mistake, maybe not. The riders were thrown free, but their panicked horses dragged the golden chariot diagonally across the track. The Hermes team, Travis and Connor Stoll, were laughing at their good luck, but not for long. The Apollo horses crashed into theirs thanks to Simon annoyingly blocking their vision with his wings and squawking in their ears, and the Hermes chariot flipped too, leaving a pile of broken wood and four rearing horses in the dust.

Two chariots down in the first twenty feet. I loved this sport.

Simon flew back to my shoulder and I turned my attention back to the front. We were making good time, pulling ahead of Ares, but Annabeth’s chariot was way ahead of us. She was already making her turn around the first post, her javelin man grinning and waving at us, shouting: “See ya!”

The Hephaestus chariot was starting to gain on us, too. Beckendorf pressed a button, and a panel slid open on the side of his chariot.

“Sorry, Percy!” he yelled. “You too Simon!” Three sets of balls and chains shot straight toward our wheels.

They would’ve wrecked us completely if Tyson hadn’t whacked them aside with a quick swipe of his pole. He gave the Hephaestus chariot a good shove and sent them skittering sideways while we pulled ahead.

“Nice work, Tyson!” I yelled.

“Birds!” he cried.

“What?”

We were whipping along so fast it was hard to hear or see anything, but Tyson pointed toward the woods and I saw what he was worried about. The pigeons had risen from the trees.

They were spiraling like a huge tornado, heading toward the track.

No big deal, I told myself. They’re just pigeons. Simon can handle them.

I tried to concentrate on the race while Simon flew off, circling the birds warily before going off to disrupt the other cabins.

We made our first turn, the wheels creaking under us, the chariot threatening to tip, but we were now only ten feet behind Annabeth. If I could just get a little closer, Tyson could use his pole.…

Annabeth’s fighter wasn’t smiling now. He pulled a javelin from his collection and took aim at me. He was about to throw when we heard the screaming.

The pigeons were swarming—thousands of them dive-bombing the spectators in the stands, attacking the other chariots. Bird-Simon let out a cry that sounded like ‘stop!’. Beckendorf was mobbed. His fighter tried to bat the birds away but he couldn’t see anything. The chariot veered off course and plowed through the strawberry fields, the mechanical horses steaming.

In the Ares chariot, Clarisse barked an order to her fighter, who quickly threw a screen of camouflage netting over their basket. The birds swarmed around it, pecking and clawing at the fighter’s hands as he tried to hold up the net, but Clarisse just gritted her teeth and kept driving. Her skeletal horses seemed immune to the distraction. The pigeons pecked uselessly at their empty eye sockets and flew through their rib cages, but the stallions kept right on running.

The spectators weren’t so lucky. The birds were slashing at any bit of exposed flesh, driving everyone into a panic as Simon flew around, fighting off the birds to stop attacking—but they seemed to start targeting the ones Simon wasn't around, exhausting him as he made his rounds. Now that the birds were closer, it was clear they weren’t normal pigeons.

Their eyes were beady and evil-looking. Their beaks were made of bronze, and judging from the yelps of the campers, they must’ve been razor sharp.

“Stymphalian birds!” Annabeth yelled. She slowed down and pulled her chariot alongside mine as Simon dropped down, his talon gripping my arm as he shifted in his human form as he gripped my arm. “They’ll strip everyone to bones if we don’t drive them away!”

“Tyson,” Simon said, his voice raspy, “we’re turning around!”

“Going the wrong way?” he asked.

“Always,” I grumbled, but I steered the chariot toward the stands. “Simon, you said your mom’s the minister of the birds.”

He nodded, “we used to be lords and ladies but yeah, the title still holds power.”

“Got it.” I said, "can you control them?"

"Maybe." Simon bit his lip, "I have to try, but..." he shook his head, and whistled, causing the birds to turn to him as he jumped off, letting out a short scream that got cut off as he hit the floor.

My blood ran cold. 

"Simon!" I yelled, my heart lurching into my throat.

A few birds squawked, breaking from the main flock and diving toward the spot where Simon had seemingly fallen. Their metallic cries took on a new, urgent tone. It wasn't the mindless shrieking of an attack; it was concern.

I saw a flash of gold among the grass—not the dull sheen of the Stymphalian birds, but the bright, living gold of his eagle form. He was rolling, tumbling, but it was controlled. The dive had been a feint.

The birds that had followed him down now hovered uncertainly. Simon righted himself and let out a piercing, authoritative cry that cut through the chaos. It was a sound full of command, a sound that spoke of lineage and ancient pacts. The responding screeches from the demon pigeons were less aggressive, more confused. 

Simon swerved at them, clipping his talons and beak at them, screeching and crying to buy us time. Annabeth rode right next to me. She shouted, “Heroes, to arms!” But I wasn’t sure anyone could hear her over the screeching of the birds and the general chaos.

I held my reins in one hand and managed to draw Riptide as a wave of birds dived at my face, their metal beaks snapping. I slashed them out of the air and they exploded into dust and feathers, but there were still millions of them left. One nailed me in the back end and I almost jumped straight out of the chariot.

Annabeth and Simon weren’t having much better luck. The closer we got to the stands, the thicker the cloud of birds became.

Some of the spectators were trying to fight back. The Athena campers were calling for shields. The archers from Apollo’s cabin brought out their bows and arrows, ready to slay the menace, but with so many campers mixed in with the birds, it wasn’t safe to shoot.

“Too many!” I yelled to Annabeth. “How do you get rid of them?”

She stabbed at a pigeon with her knife. “Hercules used noise! Brass bells! He scared them away with the most horrible sound he could—”

Simon’s bird eyes got wide and shifted back into a human, his hair ruffled with feathers, continuing her sentence, “Percy… Chiron’s collection!”

I understood instantly. “You think it’ll work?”

Annabeth handed her fighter the reins and leaped from her chariot into mine like it was the easiest thing in the world. “To the Big House! It’s our only chance! Simon, keep them busy.”

“Roger.” Simon saluted and shapeshifted back—the glowing light going away faster with each transformation. He flapped his wings and took off.

Clarisse has just pulled across the finish line, completely unopposed, and seemed to notice for the first time how serious the bird problem was.

When she saw us driving away, she yelled, “You’re running? The fight is here, cowards!” She drew her sword and charged for the stands.

I urged our horses into a gallop. The chariot rumbled through the strawberry fields, across the volleyball pit, and lurched to a halt in front of the Big House. Annabeth and I ran inside, tearing down the hallway to Chiron’s apartment.

His boom box was still on his nightstand. So were his favorite CDs. I grabbed the most repulsive one I could find, Annabeth snatched the boom box, and together we ran back outside. Down at the track, the chariots were in flames. Wounded campers ran in every direction, with birds shredding their clothes and pulling out their hair, while Simon swatted away any birds from campers and Tantalus chased breakfast pastries around the stands, every once in a while yelling, “Everything’s under control! Not to worry!”

We pulled up to the finish line. Annabeth got the boom box ready. I prayed the batteries weren’t dead.

I pressed PLAY and started up Chiron’s favorite—the All-Time Greatest Hits of Dean Martin.

Suddenly the air was filled with violins and a bunch of guys moaning in Italian.

The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out. Then they abandoned the track altogether and flew skyward in a huge dark wave.

“Now!” shouted Annabeth as Simon dropped down to his human form, letting out an eagle cry that made the birds pause. “Archers!”

With clear targets, Apollo’s archers had flawless aim. Most of them could nock five or six arrows at once. Within minutes, the ground was littered with dead bronze-beaked pigeons, and the survivors were a distant trail of smoke on the horizon.

The camp was saved, but the wreckage wasn’t pretty. Most of the chariots had been completely destroyed. Almost everyone was wounded, bleeding from multiple bird pecks. The kids from Aphrodite’s cabin were screaming because their hairdos had been ruined and their clothes pooped on. Simon was scuffed up from the waist up, golden eagle feathers entwined in his ruffled hair as Maya—who has some cuts and scratches on her fingers and face—dragged him to her side, cursing under her breath.

“Bravo!” Tantalus said, but he wasn’t looking at me, Simon or Annabeth. “We have our first

winner!” He walked to the finish line and awarded the golden laurels for the race to a stunned-looking Clarisse.

Then he turned and smiled at me. “And now to punish the troublemakers who disrupted this race.”

Chapter Text

The way Tantalus saw it, the Stymphalian birds had simply been minding their own business in the woods and would not have attacked if Annabeth, Tyson, and I hadn’t disturbed them with our bad chariot driving and forcing Simon to fight for our battle.

This was so completely unfair, I told Tantalus to go chase a doughnut, which didn’t help his mood. He sentenced us to kitchen patrol—scrubbing pots and platters all afternoon in the underground kitchen with the cleaning harpies. The harpies washed with lava instead of water, to get that extra-clean sparkle and kill ninety-nine point nine percent of all germs, so Simon (who volunteered to help), Annabeth and I had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons.

Tyson didn’t mind. He plunged his bare hands right in and started scrubbing, but Simon, Annabeth and I had to suffer through hours of hot, dangerous work, especially since there were tons of extra plates. Tantalus had ordered a special luncheon banquet to celebrate Clarisse’s chariot victory—a full-course meal featuring country-fried Stymphalian death-bird.

Maya had saved Simon a plate the size of my arm. How she snuck it out was beyond me but Simon really surprised me by actually eating it. I thought him being able to turn into any animal would’ve made him vegan, if not vegetarian but he managed to eat the whole thing in one sitting. He offered to share, muttering about something about his appetite changing over the months but Annabeth and I declined while Tyson got a few bites. It was crazy how a kid as thin as Simon could eat all that food and not get any thicker.

The only good thing about our punishment was that it gave Simon, Annabeth and me a common enemy and lots of time to talk. After listening to my dream about Grover again, they looked like they might be starting to believe me.

“If he’s really found it,” Simon murmured, “and if we could retrieve it—”

“Hold on,” I said. “You two act like this…whatever-it-is Grover found is the only thing in the world that could save the camp. What is it?”

“I’ll give you a hint. What do you get when you skin a ram?”

“A coat.” Simon shrugged, and Annabeth stomped on his foot. “Ow! Hey! It’s a good answer!”

“Messy?” I said.

Annabeth sighed, cutting in. “A fleece. The coat of a ram is called a fleece. And if that ram happens to have golden wool—”

“The Golden Fleece. Are you serious?”

Annabeth scraped a plateful of death-bird bones into the lava. “Percy, remember the Gray Sisters? They said they knew the location of the thing you seek. And they mentioned Jason. Three thousand years ago, they told him how to find the Golden Fleece. You do know the story of Jason and the Argonauts?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That old movie with the clay skeletons.”

Simon snorted and Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Oh my gods, Percy! You are so hopeless.”

“What?” I demanded.

“Just listen. The real story of the Fleece: there were these two children of Zeus, Cadmus and Europa, okay? They were about to get offered up as human sacrifices, when they prayed to Zeus to save them. So Zeus sent this magical flying ram with golden wool, which picked them up in Greece and carried them all the way to Colchis in Asia Minor. Well, actually it carried Cadmus. Europa fell off and died along the way, but that’s not important.”

“It was probably important to her.” Simon and I said.

“The point is, when Cadmus got to Colchis, he sacrificed the golden ram to the gods and hung the Fleece in a tree in the middle of the kingdom. The Fleece brought prosperity to the land. Animals stopped getting sick. Plants grew better. Farmers had bumper crops. Plagues never visited. That’s why Jason wanted the Fleece. It can revitalize any land where it’s placed. It cures sickness, strengthens nature, cleans up pollution—”

“It could cure Thalia’s tree.”

Simon nodded. “And it would totally strengthen the borders of Camp Half-Blood. But, Percy, the Fleece has been missing for centuries. Tons of heroes have searched for it with no luck.”

“But Grover found it,” I said. “He went looking for Pan and he found the Fleece instead because they both radiate nature magic. It makes sense, guys. We can rescue him and save the camp at the same time. It’s perfect!”

They hesitated, sharing a glance between each other. “A little too perfect, don’t you think? What if it’s a trap?”

I remembered last summer, how Kronos had manipulated our quest. He’d almost fooled us into helping him start a war that would’ve destroyed Western Civilization.

“What choice do we have?” I asked. “Are you going to help me rescue Grover or not?”

Simon let out a hum and Annabth glanced at Tyson, who’d lost interest in our conversation and was happily making toy boats out of cups and spoons in the lava.

“Percy,” she said under her breath, “we’ll have to fight a Cyclops. Polyphemus, the worst of the Cyclopes. And there’s only one place his island could be. The Sea of Monsters.”

“Where’s that?”

She stared at me like she thought I was playing dumb. “The Sea of Monsters. The same sea Odysseus sailed through, and Jason, and Aeneas, and all the others.”

“You mean the Mediterranean?”

“No. Well, yes…but no.”

“Another straight answer. Thanks.”

Simon flipped a plate on the drying rack. “Look, Percy, the Sea of Monsters is the sea all heroes sail through on their adventures. It used to be in the Mediterranean, yes. But like everything else, it shifts locations as the West’s center of power shifts.”

“Like Mount Olympus being above the Empire State Building,” I said. “And Hades being under Los Angeles.”

“Right.”

“But a whole sea full of monsters—how could you hide something like that? Wouldn’t the mortals notice weird things happening…like, ships getting eaten and stuff ?”

Annabth continued. “Of course they notice. They don’t understand, but they know something is strange about that part of the ocean. The Sea of Monsters is off the east coast of the U.S. now, just northeast of Florida. The mortals even have a name for it.”

“The Bermuda Triangle?”

“Exactly.” They said in unison.

I let that sink in. I guess it wasn’t stranger than anything else I’d learned since coming to Camp Half-Blood.

“Okay…so at least we know where to look.”

Simon bit his lip. “It’s still a huge area, Percy. Searching for one tiny island in monster-infested waters—”

“Hey, I’m the son of the sea god. This is my home turf. How hard can it be?”

“Very hard.” He scowled, his grip tightening on his plate before relaxing, “to find something that vague… in the Triangle of all places…” He shook his head, “you’re gonna need help.”

Annabeth knit her eyebrows, shooting him a glance. “We’ll have to talk to Tantalus, get approval for a quest. He’ll say no.”

“Not if we tell him tonight at the campfire in front of everybody. The whole camp will hear. They’ll pressure him. He won’t be able to refuse.” I said.

“Maybe.” A little bit of hope crept into Annabeth’s voice as Simon took another plate, nodding silently. “We’d better get these dishes done. Hand me the lava spray gun, will you?”

That night at the campfire, Apollo’s cabin led the sing-along. They tried to get everybody’s spirits up, but it wasn’t easy after that afternoon’s bird attack. We all sat around a semicircle of stone steps, singing halfheartedly and watching the bonfire blaze while the Apollo guys strummed their guitars and picked their lyres. Maya had Simon draped over her shoulder, his arm around her neck and over the other; that wary look in his eyes gone for a moment as she braided his eagle feathers—dyed green, blue, red and all sorts of colours—his short hair with some twine, molding it into the shape of laurel crown—citing “it’s his feathers, surely he can wear them?”’ with a look that dared us to comment. We didn’t.

We did all the standard camp numbers: “Down by the Aegean,” “I Am My Own Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa,” “This Land is Minos’s Land.” The bonfire was enchanted, so the louder you sang, the higher it rose, changing color and heat with the mood of the crowd. On a good night, I’d seen it twenty feet high, bright purple, and so hot the whole front row’s marshmallows burst into the flames. Tonight, the fire was only five feet high, barely warm, and the flames were the color of lint.

Dionysus left early. After suffering through a few songs, he muttered something about how even pinochle with Chiron had been more exciting than this. Then he gave Tantalus a distasteful look and headed back toward the Big House.

When the last song was over, Tantalus said, “Well, that was lovely!”

He came forward with a toasted marshmallow on a stick and tried to pluck it off, real casuallike. But before he could touch it, the marshmallow flew off the stick. Tantalus made a wild grab, but the marshmallow committed suicide, diving into the flames.

Tantalus turned back toward us, smiling coldly. “Now then! Some announcements about tomorrow’s schedule.”

“Sir,” I said.

Tantalus’s eye twitched. “Our kitchen boy has something to say?”

Some of the Ares campers snickered, but I wasn’t going to let anybody embarrass me into silence. I stood and looked at Annabeth and Simon. Thank the gods, they stood up with me. 

Simon’s crown fell over his once covered eye, making him look more scary than he should have been—like some pirate. His eyes were narrowed and the soft glint in his eyes disappeared and his lips were pursed as he stood up to his full height, which wasn’t much. He looked tired. Exhausted and done with what his camp was coming to. The scar on his cheek, though small and stout, made look fierce.

For a moment, he looked like… Luke.

I said, “We have an idea to save the camp.”

Dead silence, but I could tell I’d gotten everybody’s interest, because the campfire flared bright yellow.

“Indeed,” Tantalus said blandly. “Well, if it has anything to do with chariots—”

“The Golden Fleece,” I said. “We know where it is.”

The flames burned orange. Before Tantalus could stop me, I blurted out my dream about Grover and Polyphemus’s island. Annabeth and Simon stepped in and reminded everybody what the Fleece could do. It sounded more convincing coming from them—especially with how the campers were looking at Simon, as he pushed back the feathers from his eye and his kind face came back into view.

“The Fleece can save the camp,” she concluded. “I’m certain of it.”

“Nonsense,” said Tantalus. “We don’t need saving.”

Everybody stared at him until Tantalus started looking uncomfortable.

“Besides,” he added quickly, “the Sea of Monsters? That’s hardly an exact location. You wouldn’t even know where to look.”

“Yes, I would,” I said.

Annabeth leaned toward me and whispered, “You would?”

I nodded, because Annabeth had jogged something in my memory when she reminded me about our taxi drive with the Gray Sisters. At the time, the information they’d given me made no sense. But now…

“30, 31, 75, 12,” I said.

“Ooo-kay,” Tantalus said. “Thank you for sharing those meaningless numbers.”

“They’re sailing coordinates,” I said. “Latitude and longitude. I, uh, learned about it in social

Studies.”

Even Annabeth looked impressed. “30 degrees, 31 minutes north, 75 degrees, 12 minutes west. He’s right! The Gray Sisters gave us those coordinates. That’d be somewhere in the Atlantic, off the coast of Florida. The Sea of Monsters. We need a quest!”

“Wait just a minute,” Tantalus said.

But the campers took up the chant. “We need a quest! We need a quest!”

The flames rose higher.

“It isn’t necessary!” Tantalus insisted.

“WE NEED A QUEST! WE NEED A QUEST!”

“Fine!” Tantalus shouted, his eyes blazing with anger. “You brats want me to assign a Quest?”

“YES!”

“Very well,” he agreed. “I shall authorize a champion to undertake this perilous journey, to retrieve the Golden Fleece and bring it back to camp. Or die trying.”

My heart filled with excitement. I wasn’t going to let Tantalus scare me. This was what I needed to do. I was going to save Grover and the camp. Nothing would stop me.

“I will allow our champion to consult the Oracle!” Tantalus announced. “And choose two companions for the journey. And I think the choice of champion is obvious.”

Tantalus looked at Annabeth and me as if he wanted to flay us alive. “The champion should be one who has earned the camp’s respect, who has proven resourceful in the chariot races and courageous in the defense of the camp. You shall lead this quest…Clarisse!”

The fire flickered a thousand different colors. The Ares cabin started stomping and cheering, “CLARISSE! CLARISSE!”

Clarisse stood up, looking stunned. Then she swallowed, and her chest swelled with pride. “I accept the quest!”

“Wait!” I shouted. “Grover is my friend. The dream came to me.”

“Sit down!” yelled one of the Ares campers. “You had your chance last summer!”

“Yeah, he just wants to be in the spotlight again!” another said.

Clarisse glared at me. “I accept the quest!” she repeated. “I, Clarisse, daughter of Ares, will save the camp!”

The Ares campers cheered even louder. Annabeth protested, and the other Athena campers joined in. Everybody else started taking sides—shouting and arguing and throwing marshmallows. I thought it was going to turn into a full-fledged s’more war until Tantalus shouted, “Silence, you brats!”

His tone stunned even me.

“Sit down!” he ordered. “And I will tell you a ghost story.”

I didn’t know what he was up to, but we all moved reluctantly back to our seats. The evil aura radiating from Tantalus was as strong as any monster I’d ever faced.

“Once upon a time there was a mortal king who was beloved of the Gods!” Tantalus put his hand on his chest, and I got the feeling he was talking about himself.

“This king,” he said, “was even allowed to feast on Mount Olympus. But when he tried to take some ambrosia and nectar back to earth to figure out the recipe—just one little doggie bag, mind you—the gods punished him. They banned him from their halls forever! His own people mocked him! His children scolded him! And, oh yes, campers, he had horrible children. Children—just—like—you!”

He pointed a crooked finger at several people in the audience, including me.

“Do you know what he did to his ungrateful children?” Tantalus asked softly. “Do you know how he paid back the gods for their cruel punishment? He invited the Olympians to a feast at his palace, just to show there were no hard feelings. No one noticed that his children were missing. And when he served the gods dinner, my dear campers, can you guess what was in the stew?”

No one dared answer. The firelight glowed dark blue, reflecting evilly on Tantalus’s crooked face.

“Oh, the gods punished him in the afterlife,” Tantalus croaked. “They did indeed. But he’d had his moment of satisfaction, hadn’t he? His children never again spoke back to him or questioned his authority. And do you know what? Rumor has it that the king’s spirit now dwells at this very camp, waiting for a chance to take revenge on ungrateful, rebellious children. And so…are there any more complaints, before we send Clarisse off on her quest?”

Silence.

Tantalus nodded at Clarisse. “The Oracle, my dear. Go on.”

She shifted uncomfortably, like even she didn’t want glory at the price of being Tantalus’s pet. “Sir—”

“Go!” he snarled.

She bowed awkwardly and hurried off toward the Big House.

“What about you, Percy Jackson?” Tantalus asked. “No comments from our dishwasher?”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of punishing me again.

“Good,” Tantalus said. “And let me remind everyone—no one leaves this camp without my permission. Anyone who tries…well, if they survive the attempt, they will be expelled forever, but it won’t come to that. The harpies will be enforcing curfew from now on, and they are always hungry! Good night, my dear campers. Sleep well.”

With a wave of Tantalus’s hand, the fire was extinguished, and the campers trailed off toward their cabins in the dark. Maya grabbed Simon’s waist, helping him limp back despite his protests.

I couldn’t explain things to Tyson. He knew I was sad. He knew I wanted to go on a trip and Tantalus wouldn’t let me.

“You will go anyway?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It would be hard. Very hard.”

“I will help.”

“No. I—uh, I couldn’t ask you to do that, big guy. Too dangerous.”

Tyson looked down at the pieces of metal he was assembling in his lap—springs and gears and tiny wires. Beckendorf had given him some tools and spare parts, and now Tyson spent every night tinkering, though I wasn’t sure how his huge hands could handle such delicate little pieces.

“What are you building?” I asked.

Tyson didn’t answer. Instead he made a whimpering sound in the back of his throat. “Annabeth doesn’t like Cyclopes. You…don’t want me along?”

“Oh, that’s not it,” I said halfheartedly. “Annabeth likes you. Really. And Simon really, really likes you.”

He had tears in the corners of his eye.

I remembered that Grover, like all satyrs, could read human emotions. I wondered if Cyclopes had the same ability.

Tyson folded up his tinkering project in an oilcloth. He lay down on his bunk bed and hugged his bundle like a teddy bear. When he turned toward the wall, I could see the weird scars on his back, like somebody had plowed over him with a tractor. I wondered for the millionth time how he’d gotten hurt.

“Daddy always cared for m-me,” he sniffled. “Now…I think he was mean to have a Cyclops boy. I should not have been born.”

“Don’t talk that way! Poseidon claimed you, didn’t he? So…he must care about you…a lot.…”

My voice trailed off as I thought about all those years Tyson had lived on the streets of New York in a cardboard refrigerator box. How could Tyson think that Poseidon had cared for him? What kind of dad let that happen to his kid, even if his kid was a monster?

“Tyson… camp will be a good home for you. The others will get used to you. I promise.”

Tyson sighed. I waited for him to say something. Then I realized he was already asleep.

I lay back on my bed and tried to close my eyes, but I just couldn’t. I was afraid I might have another dream about Grover. If the empathy link was real…if something happened to Grover… would I ever wake up?

The full moon shone through my window. The sound of the surf rumbled in the distance. I could smell the warm scent of the strawberry fields, and hear the laughter of the dryads as they chased owls through the forest. But something felt wrong about the night—the sickness of Thalia’s tree, spreading across the valley.

Could Clarisse save Half-Blood Hill? I thought the odds were better of me getting a “Best Camper” award from Tantalus.

I got out of bed and pulled on some clothes. I grabbed a beach blanket and a six-pack of Coke from under my bunk. The Cokes were against the rules. No outside snacks or drinks were allowed, but if you talked to the right guy in Hermes’s cabin and paid him a few golden drachma, he could smuggle in almost anything from the nearest convenience store.

Sneaking out after curfew was against the rules, too. If I got caught I’d either get in big trouble or be eaten by the harpies. But I wanted to see the ocean. I always felt better there. My thoughts were clearer. I left the cabin and headed for the beach.

I spread my blanket near the surf and popped open a Coke. For some reason sugar and caffeine always calmed down my hyperactive brain. I tried to decide what to do to save the camp, but nothing came to me. I wished Poseidon would talk to me, give me some advice or something.

The sky was clear and starry. I was checking out the constellations Simon and Annabeth had taught me—Sagittarius, Hercules, Corona Borealis—when somebody said, “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

I almost spewed soda.

Standing right next to me was a guy in nylon running shorts and a New York City Marathon T-shirt. He was slim and fit, with salt-and-pepper hair and a sly smile. He looked kind of familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.

My first thought was that he must’ve been taking a midnight jog down the beach and strayed inside the camp borders. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Regular mortals couldn’t enter the valley. But maybe with the tree’s magic weakening he’d managed to slip in. But in the middle of the night? And there was nothing around except farmland and state preserves. Where would this guy have jogged from?

“May I join you?” he asked. “I haven’t sat down in ages.”

Now, I know—a strange guy in the middle of the night. Common sense: I was supposed to run away, yell for help, etc. But the guy acted so calm about the whole thing that I found it hard to be afraid.

I said, “Uh, sure.”

He smiled. “Your hospitality does you credit. Oh, and Coca-Cola! May I?”

He sat at the other end of the blanket, popped a soda and took a drink. “Ah…that hits the spot. Peace and quiet at—”

A cell phone went off in his pocket.

The jogger sighed. He pulled out his phone and my eyes got big, because it glowed with a bluish light. When he extended the antenna, two creatures began writhing around it—green snakes, no bigger than earthworms.

The jogger didn’t seem to notice. He checked his LCD display and cursed. “I’ve got to take this. Just a sec…” Then into the phone: “Hello?”

He listened. The mini-snakes writhed up and down the antenna right next to his ear.

“Yeah,” the jogger said. “Listen—I know, but…I don’t care if he is chained to a rock with vultures pecking at his liver, if he doesn’t have a tracking number, we can’t locate his package…A gift to humankind, great…You know how many of those we deliver—Oh, never mind. Listen, just refer him to Eris in customer service. I gotta go.”

He hung up. “Sorry. The overnight express business is just booming. Now, as I was saying—”

“You have snakes on your phone.”

“What? Oh, they don’t bite. Say hello, George and Martha.”

Hello, George and Martha, a raspy male voice said inside my head.

Don’t be sarcastic, said a female voice.

Why not? George demanded. I do all the real work.

“Oh, let’s not go into that again!” The jogger slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Now, where were we…Ah, yes. Peace and quiet.”

He crossed his ankles and stared up at the stars. “Been a long time since I’ve gotten to relax. Ever since the telegraph—rush, rush, rush. Do you have a favorite constellation, Percy?”

I was still kind of wondering about the little green snakes he’d shoved into his jogging shorts, but I said, “Uh, I like Hercules.”

“Why?”

“Well…because he had rotten luck. Even worse than mine. It makes me feel better.”

The jogger chuckled. “Not because he was strong and famous and all that?”

“No.”

“You’re an interesting young man. And so, what now?”

I knew immediately what he was asking. What did I intend to do about the Fleece?

Before I could answer, Martha the snake’s muffled voice came from his pocket: I have Demeter on line two.

“Not now,” the jogger said. “Tell her to leave a message.”

She’s not going to like that. The last time you put her off, all the flowers in the floral delivery division wilted.

“Just tell her I’m in a meeting!” The jogger rolled his eyes. “Sorry again, Percy. You were saying…”

“Um…who are you, exactly?”

“Haven’t you guessed by now, a smart boy like you?”

Show him! Martha pleaded. I haven’t been full-size for months.

Don’t listen to her! George said. She just wants to show off!

The man took out his phone again. “Original form, please.”

The phone glowed a brilliant blue. It stretched into a three-foot-long wooden staff with dove wings sprouting out the top. George and Martha, now full-sized green snakes, coiled together around the middle. It was a caduceus, the symbol of Cabin Eleven.

My throat tightened. I realized who the jogger reminded me of with his elfish features, the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.…

“You’re Luke’s father,” I said. “Hermes.”

The god pursed his lips. He stuck his caduceus in the sand like an umbrella pole. “‘Luke’s father.’ Normally, that’s not the first way people introduce me. God of thieves, yes. God of messengers and travelers, if they wish to be kind.”

God of thieves works, George said.

Oh, don’t mind George. Martha flicked her tongue at me. He’s just bitter because Hermes likes me best.

He does not!

Does too!

“Behave, you two,” Hermes warned, “or I’ll turn you back into a cell phone and set you on vibrate! Now, Percy, you still haven’t answered my question. What do you intend to do about the quest?”

“I—I don’t have permission to go.”

“No, indeed. Will that stop you?”

“I want to go. I have to save Grover.”

Hermes smiled. “I knew a boy once…oh, younger than you by far. A mere baby, really.”

Here we go again, George said. Always talking about himself.

Quiet! Martha snapped. Do you want to get set on vibrate?

Hermes ignored them. “One night, when this boy’s mother wasn’t watching, he sneaked out of their cave and stole some cattle that belonged to Apollo.”

“Did he get blasted to tiny pieces?” I asked.

“Hmm…no. Actually, everything turned out quite well. To make up for his theft, the boy gave Apollo an instrument he’d invented—a lyre. Apollo was so enchanted with the music that he forgot all about being angry.”

“So what’s the moral?”

“The moral?” Hermes asked. “Goodness, you act like it’s a fable. It’s a true story. Does truth have a moral?”

“Um…”

“How about this: stealing is not always bad?”

“I don’t think my mom would like that moral.”

Rats are delicious, suggested George.

What does that have to do with the story? Martha demanded.

Nothing, George said. But I’m hungry.

“I’ve got it,” Hermes said. “Young people don’t always do what they’re told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment. How’s that?”

“You’re saying I should go anyway,” I said, “even without permission.”

Hermes’s eyes twinkled. “Martha, may I have the first package, please?”

Martha opened her mouth…and kept opening it until it was as wide as my arm. She belched out a stainless steel canister—an old-fashioned lunch box thermos with a black plastic top. The sides of the thermos were enameled with red and yellow Ancient Greek scenes—a hero killing a lion; a hero lifting up Cerberus, the three-headed dog.

“That’s Hercules,” I said. “But how—”

“Never question a gift,” Hermes chided. “This is a collector’s item from Hercules Busts Heads. The first season.

“Hercules Busts Heads?”

“Great show.” Hermes sighed. “Back before Hephaestus-TV was all reality programming. Of course, the thermos would be worth much more if I had the whole lunch box—”

Or if it hadn’t been in Martha’s mouth, George added. I’ll get you for that. Martha began chasing him around the caduceus.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “This is a gift?”

“One of two,” Hermes said. “Go on, pick it up.”

I almost dropped it because it was freezing cold on one side and burning hot on the other. The weird thing was, when I turned the thermos, the side facing the ocean—north—was always the cold side.…

“It’s a compass!” I said.

Hermes looked surprised. “Very clever. I never thought of that. But its intended use is a bit more dramatic. Uncap it, and you will release the winds from the four corners of the earth to speed you on your way. Not now! And please, when the time comes, only unscrew the lid a tiny bit. The winds are a bit like me—always restless. Should all four escape at once…ah, but I’m sure you’ll be careful. And now my second gift. George?”

She’s touching me, George complained as he and Martha slithered around the pole.

“She’s always touching you,” Hermes said. “You’re intertwined. And if you don’t stop that, you’ll get knotted again!”

The snakes stopped wrestling.

George unhinged his jaw and coughed up a little plastic bottle filled with chewable vitamins.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “Are those Minotaur-shaped?”

Hermes picked up the bottle and rattled it. “The lemon ones, yes. The grape ones are Furies, I think. Or are they hydras? At any rate, these are potent. Don’t take one unless you really, really need it.”

“How will I know if I really, really need it?”

“You’ll know, believe me. Nine essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids…oh, everything you need to feel yourself again.”

He tossed me the bottle.

“Um, thanks,” I said. “But Lord Hermes, why are you helping me?”

He gave me a melancholy smile. “Perhaps because I hope that you can save many people on this quest, Percy. Not just your friend Grover.”

I stared at him. “You don’t mean…Luke?”

Hermes didn’t answer.

“Look,” I said. “Lord Hermes, I mean, thanks and everything, but you might as well take back your gifts. Luke can’t be saved. Even if I could find him…he told me he wanted to tear down Olympus stone by stone. He betrayed everybody he knew. He—he hates you especially.”

Hermes gazed up at the stars. “My dear young cousin, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn’t matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don’t appreciate your genius for inventing the Internet—”

“You invented the Internet?”

It was my idea, Martha said.

Rats are delicious, George said.

“It was my idea!” Hermes said. “I mean the Internet, not the rats. But that’s not the point. Percy, do you understand what I’m saying about family?”

“I—I’m not sure.”

“You will some day.” Hermes got up and brushed the sand off his legs. “In the meantime, I must be going.”

You have sixty calls to return, Martha said.

And one thousand-thirty-eight e-mails, George added. Not counting the offers for online discount ambrosia.

“And you, Percy,” Hermes said, “have a shorter deadline than you realize to complete your quest. Your friends should be coming right about…now.”

I heard Simon and Annabeth’s voices calling my name from the sand dunes. Tyson, too, was shouting from a little bit farther away.

“I hope I packed well for you,” Hermes said. “I do have some experience with travel.”

He snapped his fingers and three yellow duffel bags appeared at my feet. “Waterproof, of course. If you ask nicely, your father should be able to help you reach the ship.”

“Ship?”

Hermes pointed. Sure enough, a big cruise ship was cutting across Long Island Sound, its white-and-gold lights glowing against the dark water.

“Wait,” I said. “I don’t understand any of this. I haven’t even agreed to go!”

“I’d make up your mind in the next five minutes, if I were you,” Hermes advised. “That’s when the harpies will come to eat you. Now, good night, cousin, and dare I say it? May the gods go with you.”

He opened his hand and the caduceus flew into it.

Good luck, Martha told me.

Bring me back a rat, George said.

The caduceus changed into a cell phone and Hermes slipped it into his pocket.

He jogged off down the beach. Twenty paces away, he shimmered and vanished, leaving me alone with a thermos, a bottle of chewable vitamins, and five minutes to make an impossible decision.