Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ignorance is bliss.

That was the only thought in Arthur Wolf’s head as he paid for his groceries. Pointedly ignoring the pair of harpies, two registrars over buying several pieces of cookware.

Being clearsighted was a curse in his eyes. To truly know the world around you, makes you wish to dunk your head into the River Lethe if only to have some peace of mind.

Finding out that you are one of the few mortals to truly know that the world was run by a bunch of hormonal gods, and that everything he learned in school wouldn't apply to living in the real world of monsters, demi gods, and divine punishment was probably where his PTSD started.

Not being able to explain to anyone around him what was going on didn’t help with the whole coping part. The feeling of being so alone and scared to step into the world around him made him an outcast in school and at home.

He was always drifting off in class, he was an average student at best, and he couldn’t afford to go to college after his high school graduation. The only option he saw was the Army. Where he failed in brains, other than studying every mythos to ever exist to try and avoid offending any immortal he might unfortunately come across, he more than made up for with his physicality.

But he still had trouble with the whole, clear sighted thing. There were a terrifying amount of monsters everywhere he went. He sometimes saw kids and teenagers fighting them with Celestial Bronze, or other metals he didn’t know. He didn’t stick around to find out.

But for all his avoidance of monsters and gods, he couldn’t run from his mortal problems. Like getting shrapnel to the knee, a permanent ache and an honorable discharge ended a 12 year career. Right now the only thing he had going for himself was his new job in construction ever since his parents died in a car crash.

He should have known that eventually that world would come to him. Everyone has a part to play in this world. You are not given the ability of clear sight to not use it.

But he never would have imagined how he would enter into the Greco/Roman pantheon.

He left the store behind and made his way to his 1980 AMC Spirit when he froze. He felt eyes on him. All his training from the Army and his knowledge of how the world really worked screamed at him not to turn around.

However, whatever, or whomever, was staring at him was much more powerful than him. Against his better judgement he turned around and the blood immediately drained from his face. Because at the end of the parking lot were the Fates.

The three old ladies were knitting as they looked at him, until they brought a silver string up for the middle one. She pulled out a pair of long gold shears and for a moment he thought it was it. He didn’t move; he didn’t dare breathe.

But to his surprise, they didn’t cut it. All three of them turned to their right, looking off into the distance.

Under no circumstances do you disobey the Fates, so he followed their gaze. He couldn’t see what they saw but it seemed him looking pleased them. He risked a glance back to them, the shears were open but not cutting. He heard their voices in his mind.

“Better hurry.”

He blinked, then they were gone.

He turned to his right, threw the groceries into his car, and started driving. There was a reason the Fates showed themselves to him, and he feared them more then any other being in any mythos.

It didn’t take him long to find out where he needed to be. It was in the poorer part of town, where gangs met and drug dealers made their merchandise.

But it was the abandoned house on the edge of the forest that caught his attention. Mostly because it was on fire. He parked the car and got out. He could hear sirens in the distance getting closer, and he could smell drugs going up in flames and shouts coming from inside the house.

It must have been a drug deal gone wrong, or a rival gang trying to claim more territory. But he supposed it didn’t matter. Several people were running out the back and got into a car, speeding away. There was an SUV parked on the side of the house furthest from the forest. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the unmistakable sound of a baby crying coming from inside the house.

He knew why the Fates sent him this way. He needed to save that baby. He charged into the burning house without a second of hesitation. A hole was in the wall facing the forest, but it was next to pipes for the natural gas line. And three feet from that gas line was an infant crying with fear.

He refused to look at the dead body of some low level drug dealer in the kitchen as he moved through the burning house.

He rushed to gather the baby in his arms, at first glance there seemed to be nothing wrong, but smoke was starting to make itself known. He didn’t even get two steps to the clear exit before the gas line exploded. He curled around the baby as fire, and part of the second floor came down in front of them. He was sent flying and landed on his back, but the baby was screaming louder.

He looked in horror as the baby’s face showed clear signs of burns. The damage was terrible, and the baby’s screams of pain fueled him. Adrenaline raced through his system as he got to his feet ignoring his own injuries. He saw the front door, but of course as soon as he got close to it wreckage from the second floor decided to fall down in front of it blocking his escape.

He looked around realizing he was stuck except for the stairs.

The only way out is up.

He rushed up the fiery stairs, grateful that they held his weight and looked around. His only chance was a window, but a fall from the second floor would likely break his legs. Then he remembered the SUV. It must have belonged to the dead man downstairs. He turned to the window facing away from the forest. He hesitated, because even with the car somewhat breaking his fall, it would still hurt like a bitch.

However, it seemed the fire would not wait for him. The gas line that exploded earlier wasn’t the only one in the house, and he could hear the high pitched whistling of the gas pouring out of a broken pipe. He rushed to the window and jumped through it back first to protect the squealing baby in his arms. His fall was broken by the SUV.

He slammed into it, denting the roof of the car and breaking a window in the process. The wind was knocked out of him and he allowed himself to groan in pain as the fire raged on. The sirens had gotten a lot louder.

He grunted as he managed to get off the roof of the car he ruined. His back was definitely badly bruised, but at the very least nothing seemed to be broken. His leg hurt though, a lot. But his big concern at the moment was the screaming baby with a huge burn across its face.

He made his way to the front of the house with only a slight limp right as the fire trucks and an ambulance pulled up in front of him. The EMT took his name and his story while looking over the baby. Now that both their lives weren’t in danger at the moment he took the time to examine the child for the first time.

The baby was wrapped in a silver blanket with a stag button holding it together. Its hair was mostly black, but had streaks of auburn.

The EMT told him the baby needed to get to the hospital after he was looked over. He pulled the child to his chest and looked down. There were bandages covering the right side of the baby’s face covering the burns. He could see some paste peaking out from under the wrappings. The poor thing was still crying, understandably, but it was looking at him.

He felt his heart melt. He never bothered with the dating scene, and with his old profession and clear sight giving him PTSD, made him avoid any contact with children. He knew he wasn’t ready for anything remotely like this. But with this child looking at him with such trust. The child the Fates put him on the path to save, he couldn’t give them up.

"You got a strong boy there, sir.” The EMT spoke.

A boy?

He looked under the blanket while the EMT’s back was turned and sure enough, it was a boy.

He smiled at the child in his arms. He was about to climb into the back of the ambulance when he heard a broken roar. He seemed to have been the only one who heard it as the fire fighters and now police officers didn’t look away from their tasks. Nor did they see the silver figures along the tree line of the forest. But the roaring and screams of grief continued until he found the source.

He froze in terror as a twelve year old girl with auburn hair, silver eyes, and golden tears was being held back by several other girls and a golden haired baywatch lifeguard. He knew who they were, he had heard monsters fear the Hunt of Artemis. A group of immortal maidens who killed beasts of legend and hated men. But the twelve year old girl… That could only be Artemis herself. Goddess of chastity, wilderness, hunting, wild animals, the moon, and childbirth. Who also hated men.

The lifeguard was okay though, but then again, it seemed to be because he was a god. He could feel the energy coming off the two impartial deities. The man’s hair also seemed to be glowing.

Apollo

Artemis’s screaming had only gotten louder, but the mist he saw through was doing its job well, because whatever it was that people were seeing he guessed it wasn’t a strangely dressed group of teenage and pre teen girls and the god of the sun struggling to hold back a crying goddess.

“No! I have to save him!” Artemis was yelling.

Him?

He looked down at the child in his arms and everything clicked into place. He wasn’t smart but he wasn’t stupid. This was a demi god son of Artemis. He didn’t know how this came to be but he knew now why he had been sent to save him. He had stopped the string from being cut.

He smiled a little to himself and made to step forward to return the child to her when Apollo’s fury stopped him in his tracks.

“Who’s fault is that!? You threw your own child to their death!”

His breath caught in his throat. Artemis threw away her own demi god child?

“You didn’t see him as a gift, and now you chose to care?!” Artemis ignored her brother’s words and fought to free herself from the grip of her twin and hunters when the rest of the natural gas pipeline exploded.

Fire erupted from the rest of the building, windows blew out, and slowly the building collapsed in on itself.

The firefighters got to work putting out the flames of the now ruined house not hearing the cry of sorrow from the woods. It was a broken thing that would stay with him for the rest of his life. All the fight seemed to leave the moon goddess as she fell to her knees in defeat. Apollo looked to the house as well in sadness, while the hunters around them simply looked at the ground.

He would have stared for the rest of the night if the EMT didn’t tap him on the shoulder. “Sir, we need to get your son looked at. Get in.” He gestured to him to climb into the back of the ambulance. He could hear sobs behind him.

The man hating goddess threw away her son. The opinions of gods and goddesses tended to change on a dime. He looked down at the boy in his arms. Tears still in his silver eyes from fear and pain, but there was innocence, there was trust.

So he ignored the mother of the boy behind him and climbed into the back of the emergency vehicle. He was scared, not of what Artemis was, but what she could do. She did show regret, but he didn’t know enough to trust her.

“What’s his name?” The question startled him. He looked up as they started moving. The EMT was holding a clipboard with a form on it waiting for his answer.

He looked down at the tiny being who looked at him with trust. Deep in his mind, heart, and soul he knew he wouldn’t be able to protect him forever. So he would give protection the only way he could. Besides, despite her horrid actions, Artemis was still his mother. He would give him a small connection to her, for both of their sakes.

“Hunter. His name is Hunter Wolf.”

Chapter Text

Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood. If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life. Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened. But if you recognize yourself in these pages, if you feel something stirring inside, stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it’s only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they’ll come for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My name is Percy Jackson. I’m twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid? Yeah. You could say that. I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan, twenty-nine mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.

I know, it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were. But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes. Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn’t think he’d be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn’t put me to sleep. I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn’t get in trouble.

Boy, was I wrong. See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn’t aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that…Well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good. All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich. My only consultation was that my other best friend Hunter was also stewing in a fury.

He also wanted me to be good. We met for the first time back at our first-grade school. I still remember the moment we became friends. He was sitting in the corner hiding from the girls during playtime that wanted to use him for their pretend weddings. The other boys in our grade weren’t much better, Hunter had an old burn injury that took up most of the right side of his face. His skin was discolored and everyone thought he looked funny and made fun of him. He had climbed to the top of a shelf to hide. Naturally I tried to climb the shelf too and fell halfway up. The teacher put both of us in timeout, not that it stopped me from trying to cheer Hunter up. The next day I refused to leave his side, we played with all the toys we could and every game we could think of.

The two of us had been in the same school ever since. Hunter was the first person other than my mother and his father that stayed long enough for me to really know them. He understood me, he had a lot of the same problems as me, it made me feel like I wasn’t alone. But he was also pulled into my… uh accidents, and I refused to go anywhere without him. So here Hunter was, glowering in his seat next to Grover, looking ready to throttle whoever spoke to him next.

Now back to Grover. He was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must’ve been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don’t let that fool you. You should’ve seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn’t do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip. And I couldn’t do that to Hunter. I always got both of us in trouble and I wanted to give back to him. But despite my promise to myself I was still losing my temper.

“I’m going to kill her,” I mumbled.

Grover tried to calm me down. “It’s okay. I like peanut butter.”

He dodged another piece of Nancy’s lunch causing Hunter to growl in rage. I took it as permission from him.

“That’s it.” I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.

“You’re already on probation,” he reminded me. “You know who’ll get blamed if anything happens.”

“It doesn’t make it right.” Hunter muttered.

Looking back on it, I wish I’d decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would’ve been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour. He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years. I also knew Hunter had similar thoughts because he was looking at the artefacts with thinly veiled interest which I knew meant he thought the exhibit was amazing.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me and Hunter the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown after watching Hunter beat up his favorite football students who were annoying a girl in our grade.

From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, “Now, honey,” real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month. One time, after she’d made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover and Hunter I didn’t think Mrs. Dodds was human. Grover looked at me, real serious, and said, “You’re absolutely right.”

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, “Will you shut up?”

It came out louder than I meant it to. The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story. “Mr. Jackson,” he said, “did you have a comment?”

My face was totally red. I said, “No, sir.”

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. “Perhaps you’ll tell us what this picture represents?”

I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. “That’s Kronos eating his kids, right?”

“Yes,” Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. “And he did this because…” He shifted his gaze to Hunter and I let out a quiet sigh of relief.

Hunter rolled his eyes but answered, “Kronos was king of the Titans. He was told that his children, who were the Olympians, would overthrow him. So Kronos ate them, but his wife hid baby Zeus and gave him a rock to eat instead. When Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into puking his other siblings-”

“Eeew!” said one of the girls behind us. Hunter grimaced and turned back to scowl at everyone behind us so I finished Mr. Brunner’s question.

“And so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans, and the gods won.” The rest of the class snickered.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, “Like we’re going to use this in real life. Like it’s going to say on our job applications, ‘Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.’”

“And why, Mr. Jackson and Mr. Wolf,” Brunner said, “to paraphrase Miss Bobofit’s excellent question, does this matter in real life?”

“Busted,” Grover muttered.

“Shut up,” Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair. At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I thought about his question, and shrugged. “I don’t know, sir.” Hunter frowned at the ground and shook his head. That was his own special way of showing his frustration in a class setting.

“I see.” Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. “Well, half credit, you two. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan’s stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it’s time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?”

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses. Grover, Hunter, and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, “Mr. Jackson. Mr. Wolf.”

I knew what was coming. Hunter did too by the clenching of his jaw.

I told Grover to keep going. Then we both turned toward Mr. Brunner. “Sir?” I asked.

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn’t let you go—intense brown eyes that could’ve been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

“You must learn the answer to my question,” Mr. Brunner told me.

“About the Titans?”

“About real life. And how your studies apply to it.”

“Oh.”

“What you learn from me,” he said, “is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson. You as well Hunter Wolf.”

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me and Hunter so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: “What ho!” and challenged us, swordpoint against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected us both to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that both of us have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C– in my life with Hunter being a little worse. His ADHD put mine to shame. He always needed to be doing something, like beating everyone in tag or nailing everyone in dodgeball. But he always put 110% into everything he did. But like me he struggled with the academic part of childhood. No Mr. Brunner didn’t expect the two of us to be as good; he expected us to be better. And I just couldn’t learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly. Hunter was always better at that stuff. In all honesty I would have flunked out of Yancy months ago if it wasn’t for his determination.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he’d been at this girl’s funeral.

He told us to go outside and eat our lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue. Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I’d ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We’d had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers, which Hunter sneered at. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady’s purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn’t seeing a thing.

Grover, Hunter, and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn’t know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn’t make it elsewhere.

“Detention?” Grover asked.

“Nah,” I said. “Not from Brunner. I just wish he’d lay off me sometimes. I mean—I’m not a genius.” Hunter scowled when I said that but didn’t say anything. For so long he had been trying to convince me otherwise, but my grades proved him wrong.

Grover didn’t say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, “Can I have your apple?” I didn’t have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom’s apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn’t seen her since Christmas. Hunter’s dad lived right across the hall from us too. I wanted so bad to grab both my best friends, jump in a taxi and head home. She’d hug me and be glad to see me, but she’d be disappointed, too. She’d send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. So would Uncle Arthur. He would give Hunter a look of fondness before making him march back to school on his own. I wouldn’t be able to stand that sad look she’d give me, and Hunter wouldn’t be able to look at himself in the mirror if he disappointed his dad.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table. I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends, I guess she’d gotten tired of stealing from the tourists, and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover’s lap.

“Oops.” She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos. I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, “Count to ten, get control of your temper.” But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don’t remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, “Percy pushed me!”

Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: “Did you see—”

“—the water—”

“—like it grabbed her—”

Hunter spun towards the other kids and pinned them under his silver glare, but he looked confused. I didn’t know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I’d done something she’d been waiting for all semester. “Now, honey—”

“I know,” I grumbled. “A month erasing workbooks.”

That wasn’t the right thing to say.

“Come with me,” Mrs. Dodds said. Then she shifted her gaze to my left. “You as well Mr. Wolf.” My face scrunched up in anger. “Hey! Hunter didn’t do anything! I was-”

“Wait!” Grover yelped. “It was me. I pushed her.”

I stared at him, stunned. I couldn’t believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Underwood,” she said.

“But—”

“You—will—stay—here.”

Grover looked at us desperately.

Hunter patted him on the shoulder before walking forward with his face a neutral mask. 

“It’s okay, man,” I told him. “Thanks for trying.”

“Honey,” Mrs. Dodds barked at me. “Now.”

Nancy Bobofit smirked. I gave her my deluxe I’ll-kill-you-later stare. Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn’t there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at us to come on.

How’d she get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I’ve missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn’t so sure.

 Hunter glared at Mrs. Dodds in confusion and shared a look with me. Good to know he saw it too.

We went after Mrs. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me, Hunter, and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. She’s going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.

But apparently that wasn’t the plan.

Both of us followed her deeper into the museum. When we finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for the three of us, the gallery was empty. Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling. Even without the noise, I would’ve been nervous. It’s weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it…

“You’ve been giving us problems, honey,” she said.

I did the safe thing. I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. “Did you really think you would get away with it?”

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil. She’s a teacher, I thought nervously. It’s not like she’s going to hurt me. But by the way Hunter had tensed, like he was seconds away from rushing Mrs. Dodds and attacking her out of sheer survival instincts killed that thought quickly.

I said, “I’ll—I’ll try harder, ma’am.”

Thunder shook the building.

“We are not fools, Percy Jackson,” Mrs. Dodds said. “It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain. And you Hunter Wolf, his ally. Where has he taken it?!”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. All I could think of was that the teachers must’ve found the illegal stash of candy I’d been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they’d realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book. I had no idea why Hunter was being dragged into this, why she thought he had anything to do with either of those things, but it caused a tidal wave of guilt that I had gotten Hunter in trouble again.

“Well?” she demanded. Evil eyes flickering between the two of us. Hunter was so tense he might as well have been a wood board. He had always had good instincts for when something bad was going to happen. Had saved me a lot of trouble in the past, but it seems for us, luck has run out.

I tried to appease Mrs. Dodds to see if she would at least spare Hunter from whatever mess I had gotten myself into. “Ma’am, I don’t…”

“Your time is up,” she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn’t human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who’d been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand. “What ho, Percy!” he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at us.

With a yelp me and Hunter dodged and I felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn’t a pen anymore. It was a sword, Mr. Brunner’s bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes. My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, “Die, honey!”

And she flew straight at me.

But Hunter was there. He jumped onto our math teacher's back and locked his arms around her neck before she could attack. Mrs. Dodds flailed around trying to get him off. Hunter wouldn’t budge though. He had the grip strength of a legendary rock climber. That didn’t stop Mrs. Dodds from flying backward at full strength and smashing him into the wall.

From here I could have sworn I heard something crack, and my heart filled with terror as my best friend since 1st grade had the wind knocked out of him. It loosed his grip enough that Mrs. Dodds broke free and caught Hunter with her talons.

He cried out in pain as the claws dug into his shoulders. It finally broke me out of my stupor as a rage as strong as a hurricane raced through me. I started to charge but then Mrs. Dodds froze. She took a deep breath and stared at Hunter with a look of shock.

“Your scent… how is this possible?”

Hunter didn’t care for it. All he saw was an opening, and he took it. He reared his fist back and smashed it into Mrs. Dodds face. Once, twice, three times until she let him go. Hunter fell and landed in a roll and I quickly pulled him behind me.

Mrs. Dodds righted herself and seemed to remember that I existed. Hunter’s punches seemed to have broken her nose as some kind of weird black goo was now covering a decent portion of her face. She snarled again and charged at me but I was ready.

She wasn’t going to hurt Hunter anymore.

I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!

Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

Hunter and I were alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.

Mr. Brunner wasn’t there. Nobody was there but us.

I turned and Hunter was sitting up and holding his left shoulder with a wince. I put the pen in my pocket and rushed to help him stand.

My hands were still trembling. My lunch must’ve been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I looked at Hunter again and he moved his hand to show the blood that had started to leak from the cut on his shoulder from Mrs. Dodds talons. No, I didn't imagine anything.

“Are you okay?” I asked. That was the only thing that mattered right now.

“I’m fine. It’s not that deep a cut.” Hunter replied. I nodded at him as I tried to believe what had just happened to the two of us.

We went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, “I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt.”

I said, “Who?”

“Our teacher. Duh!”

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about. She just rolled her eyes and turned away. Hunter glared at her back then looked at me in disbelief.

Glad to know I’m not crazy.

I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, “Who?” But he paused first, and he wouldn’t look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.

Hunter let his thoughts out before I could. “This isn’t funny, Grover. This is serious.”

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he’d never moved.

I went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. “Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson.” I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding it.

“Sir,” I said, “where’s Mrs. Dodds?”

He stared at me blankly. “Who?”

“The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher.” Hunter glared at our Latin teacher, trying to gauge his expression.

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. “Percy, Hunter, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?”

"What is happening?" Hunter whispered behind me.

Chapter Text

I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on Hunter and I. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr, a perky blond woman whom I’d never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip, had been our prealgebra teacher since Christmas.

Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho. Hunter had just pinned people to lockers and wouldn't let them go until they looked ready to pee themselves in fear of his wrath. The whole school had given him a wide berth after the fourth time he scared someone.

It had gotten to the point where I almost believed them. That Mrs. Dodds had never existed. Almost. But Hunter’s paranoia proved I wasn’t crazy. Plus Grover couldn’t fool me. When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn’t exist. But I knew he was lying. Hunter did too by the glares he sent Grover’s way and the looks we shared.

Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum. I didn’t have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.

The freak weather continued, which didn’t help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.

I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class. Hunter fared no better. His already short temper basically evaporated. Some big kid on the school’s baseball team tried to make fun of him to build aura points. Hunter responded by breaking his arm. It got him stuck with in school suspension for the rest of the year after they pried him away from the kid crying on the floor.

Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn’t even sure what it meant, but it sounded good. The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy. Hunter’s dad got one too. My friend was seething in frustration for days.

Fine, I told myself. Just fine. I was homesick. I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties. The only upside was that Hunter would be right across the hall from me, and Uncle Arthur could let me stay over. He somehow hated Gabe more than me, it was impressive in all honesty.

And yet…there were things I’d miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I know Hunter had loved it. I’d miss Grover, who’d been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. I worried how he’d survive next year without the two of us.

I’d miss Latin class, too; Mr. Brunner’s crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well. As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn’t forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and death for Hunter and I. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d started to believe him.

The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.

I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt. I remembered Mr. Brunner’s serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson. You as well Hunter Wolf. I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.

Hunter was in a different dorm and still on in school suspension. I didn’t want to risk getting him in trouble with me showing up at his door in the middle of the night. With our luck a teacher would catch us talking within a minute and might just throw us out right then and there instead of waiting till exams were over tomorrow. I might not be able to study with Hunter at the moment, but there was someone else I could talk to.

I’d never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn’t want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn’t tried. I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner’s door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.

I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover’s said “…worried about Percy and Hunter, sir.” I froze. I’m not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear one of your best friends talking about you to an adult.

I inched closer.

“…alone this summer,” Grover was saying. “I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too—”

“We would only make matters worse by rushing them,” Mr. Brunner said. “We need the boys to mature more. I’m surprised that both of them had been hidden for so long.”

“But they may not have time. The summer solstice deadline—”

“Will have to be resolved without them, Grover. Let those two enjoy their ignorance while they still can.”

“Sir, they saw her.…”

“Their imagination,” Mr. Brunner insisted. “The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince them of that.”

“Hunter had a gash from her! He’s not fooled and Percy trusts him more than anyone. Sir, I…I can’t fail in my duties again.” Grover’s voice was choked with emotion. “You know what that would mean.”

“You haven’t failed, Grover,” Mr. Brunner said kindly. “I should have seen her for what she was. Now let’s just worry about keeping Percy and Hunter alive until next fall—”

The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.

Mr. Brunner went silent. My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall. A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner’s office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer’s bow.

I opened the nearest door and slipped inside. A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on. A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.

Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. “Nothing,” he murmured. “My nerves haven’t been right since the winter solstice.”

“Mine neither,” Grover said. “But I could have sworn…”

“Go back to the dorm,” Mr. Brunner told him. “You’ve got a long day of exams tomorrow.”

“Don’t remind me.”

The lights went out in Mr. Brunner’s office. I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever. When I was sure they were gone I made a mad dash to Hunter’s dorm. He opened the door and gave me a look of surprise. His roommate was a kid on the smaller side that Hunter tolerated because he gave him study tips in exchange for protection from bullies. I pulled him into the hallway before either of them could protest.

I quickly filled Hunter in on what I had overheard from Grover and Mr. Brunner. His expression became a mix of anger and worry.

“I knew something was wrong. They know what happened with Mrs. Dodds.” He muttered as he rubbed his shoulder where the old hags talons had cut him.

“Why are they worried about keeping us alive?”

“I have no idea Hunter. But we’re gonna get through this.” I told him. He nodded at me, then I hugged him. Hunter had never really been warm to the idea of physical affection, but he put up with it for those he cared about.

“Let’s get through tomorrow's torture, then figure out what to do.” He said, stubbornly refusing to hug me back.

I let him go and agreed. He gave me a smile that was a small step above a grimace that betrayed just how nervous he was. He walked back inside with a frown and I made my way back to my own dorm when his door shut.

Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he’d been there all night. “Hey,” he said, bleary-eyed. “You going to be ready for this test?” I didn’t answer.

“You look awful.” He frowned. “Is everything okay?”

“Just…tired.” I turned so he couldn’t read my expression, and started getting ready for bed. I didn’t understand what I’d heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I’d imagined the whole thing. But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me and Hunter behind our backs. They thought we were in some kind of danger.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I’d misspelled, Hunter stalking alongside me with a sneer, Mr. Brunner called us back inside.

For a moment, I was worried he’d found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. “Percy, Hunter,” he said. “Don’t be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It’s…it’s for the best.”

His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips. Hunter turned his silver glare that could make anyone run in fear at her, causing her to flush and look down. It was almost enough to make me smile.

I mumbled, “Okay, sir.”

“I mean…” Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “This isn’t the right place for you two. It was only a matter of time.”

My eyes stung. Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me and my brother in all but blood that we couldn’t handle it. After saying he believed in us all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.

“Right,” I said, trembling.

“No, no,” Mr. Brunner said. “Oh, confound it all. What I’m trying to say…you’re not normal, Percy. You as well Hunter. That’s nothing to be—”

“Thanks,” I blurted. “Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding us.”

“Boys—”

But I was already gone. Hunter growled, then followed me.

On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase. Hunter was packing with the ferocity of a cage wolf. He wanted nothing more than to get out of this stupid building. The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me and Hunter, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. Hunter and I were nobodies, from a patchwork family of nobodies.

They asked me what I’d be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city. They asked Hunter and he punched one in the jaw and glared at the rest.

What I didn’t tell them was that I’d have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I’d go to school in the fall. Hunter glowered as he thought about the same things.

“Oh,” one of the guys said. “That’s cool.” They went back to their conversation as if we’d never existed. The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to. He’d booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as we had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he’d always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, I’d always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I said, “Looking for Kindly Ones?”

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. “Wha—what do you mean?”

I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam. I also told him that Hunter knew. Grover took a glance at him and shrunk back at Hunter's piecing silver eyes.

Grover’s eye twitched. “How much did you hear?”

“Oh…not much. What’s the summer solstice deadline?”

He winced. “Look, guys…I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers…”

“Grover—”

“And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and…”

“Grover, you’re a really, really bad liar.”

His ears turned pink. From his shirt pocket, he fished out two grubby business cards. “Just both of you take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.”

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:

Grover Underwood

Keeper

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800) 009-0009

“What’s Half—”

“Don’t say it aloud!” he yelped. “That’s my, um…summer address.”

My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I’d never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.

“Okay,” I said glumly. “So, like, if we want to come visit your mansion.”

He nodded. “Or…or if you need me.”

“Why would we need you?” Hunter asked sharply.

It came out harsher than he meant it to, I could tell by his slight wince.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam’s apple. “Look, Percy, Hunter, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you.”

I stared at him. Hunter actually gaped in shock.

All year long, I’d gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. Hunter had openly pushed back against the worst bullies in school to keep him out of the line of fire. I’d lost sleep worrying that he’d get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who needed to defend us.

“Grover,” I said, “what exactly are you protecting us from?” Hunter shared a look with me at the question. The message was clear: This is very serious, I’m scared.

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway. After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we’d all have to get off. Grover, Hunter, and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road—no place you’d notice if you didn’t break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand. The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I’d ever seen. I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks.

The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn. All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.

The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at Hunter and I.

We shared a glance. Hunter was tensed up, like he wanted to bolt, but instinct was telling him to stay still and couldn’t understand why.

Good to know he saw them too.

I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.

“Grover?” I said. “Hey, man—”

“Tell me they’re not looking at you. They are, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?” Hunter chuffed under his breath. Nice to know he appreciated my humor.

“Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all.”

The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.

“We’re getting on the bus,” he told us. “Come on.”

“What?” I said. “It’s a thousand degrees in there.”

Hunter shoved off Grover's hand when he tried to physically drag him onto the broken vehicle. “Come on!” He pried open the door and climbed inside, but Hunter and I stayed back. Hunter had tensed, which meant something bad was coming.

Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for; Sasquatch or Godzilla.

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life. The passengers cheered. “Darn right!” yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. “Everybody back on board!”

Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I’d caught the flu. Hunter also looked like he was three seconds away from puking his guts out.

Grover didn’t look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.

“Grover?”

“Yeah?”

“What are you not telling us?”

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. “Percy, Hunter, what did you see back at the fruit stand?”

I answered for us because Hunter looked like he had swallowed a lemon. “You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They’re not like…Mrs. Dodds, are they?”

His expression was hard to read, but based on Hunter’s fear despite not knowing what was really there gave me the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, “Just tell me what you saw.”

Hunter answered this time, his tone making him seem as if he was a prey animal. “The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn.”

Grover closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might’ve been crossing himself, but it wasn’t. It was something else, something almost—older.

He said, “You saw her snip the cord.”

“Yeah. So?” But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.

“This is not happening,” Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. “I don’t want this to be like the last time.”

“What last time?” Hunter demanded.

“Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth.”

“Grover,” I said, because he was really starting to scare me. “What are you talking about?”

“Let me walk you guys home from the bus station. Promise me.” This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could and Hunter nodded his consent.

“Is this like a superstition or something?” I asked.

No answer.

“Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?” Hunter gulped, as if he knew subconsciously that I hit the nail right on the head.

Grover's head kept switching back and forth between the two of us mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers would look best on our coffins.

Chapter Text

Confession time: We ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.

I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at Hunter and I like we were already dead, muttering “Why does this always happen?” and “Why does it always have to be sixth grade?” Hunter snapped at him to stop it, but whatever those old ladies were they scared him more then, what I like to call, Hunter’s predator voice.

Whenever he got upset, Grover’s bladder acted up, so I wasn’t surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made us promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom. Hunter gave me a side glance, then we got our suitcases, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.

“East One-hundred-and-fourth and First,” I told the driver.

Here are some things you should know about my mother and Uncle Arthur, before you meet them.

My mother’s name is Sally Jackson and she’s the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck. Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn’t care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.

The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad. I don’t have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn’t like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She has no pictures. See, they weren’t married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back. Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.

She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn’t an easy kid. Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.

The only saving grace was Uncle Arthur and Hunter. They lived in the apartment right across the hall. After me and Hunter met in first grade my mom and Uncle Arthur developed a very close relationship, almost like siblings. They had talked for hours once they met each other and soon enough Hunter was coming over almost every day after school with his dad.

Uncle Arthur hated Gabe, but for some reason never threw him out, and he totally could. That man was built like a tank. Uncle Arthur was the best man I had ever known, he was brave, gentle with everyone he loved, and would fight to his last breath to keep everyone close to him safe.

And like my mom he had horrible luck. Arthur Wolf’s parents died in a car crash when he was seventeen. He barely managed to finish high school with foster care that did little to nothing to help him because he was so close to being aged out of the system. He didn’t have the grades or the money to go to college so he chose to join the army the second his graduation was over. It was the only lifestyle he could manage for himself before he was injured in the Gulf War and forced to retire. He had a permanent ache in his leg, but that never stopped him from standing up for what was right.

He did everything in his power to give Hunter and I a fun childhood, where for a few hours the two of us could just be kids and not have to think about how unfair the world was to us. There was that one time he took me and Hunter ding-dong-ditching so that we could have a “core childhood memory” to hold onto. Uncle Arthur also made sure we could also do things we were interested in.

He had signed Hunter up for parkour lessons at a local gym to help him burn off his ADHD energy into something productive and he always found time to take me to the New York aquarium so I could see sea life. The sixteen hour shifts he worked on construction sites around the city in order to give us the chance to really be ourselves showed just how much he loved us. He never looked at Hunter and I and saw freaks, he saw kids with a lot of potential. He always told us that just because we weren’t good at one thing didn’t mean we were bad at everything despite so many others looking down at us because we couldn’t keep up in school.

He made both of us feel seen. He was the kind of man I wanted to be like. But for all his goodness Uncle Arthur did have a temper. Remember when I said that Uncle Arthur didn’t like Gabe but wouldn’t throw him out of our lives despite being more than able too? That didn’t stop him from scaring Gabe into submission whenever he came into my mom’s apartment.

But deep down I did feel bad for my mom. Hunter and I were very similar, and by that I mean troubled. Plus Uncle Arthur hating Gabe too made arguments between us bad. Whenever Uncle Arthur wasn’t there Gabe went back to his usual self and treated all of us like we were trash. Between everything we made made my mom’s life hard and Uncle Arthur more stressed. The way Gabe treated her when he wasn’t around, the way we hated each other, the way Hunter despised him… well, when we came home was a good example.

I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work or Uncle Arthur got a shift off. Hunter refused to let me go into the apartment alone so we both grimaced and shouldered forward after Hunter confirmed that his dad wasn’t home. Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.

Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, “So, you’re home.”

“Where’s my mom?”

“Working,” he said. “You got any cash?”

That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?

Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something. He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don’t know why he hadn’t been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our “guy secret.” Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out. So naturally I told Hunter who told his dad. Watching Gabe turn white with fear when Uncle Arthur barged into the room with the force of a tsunami, eyes blazing with rage was one of the best moments of my life.

It never stopped Gabe from pushing it though. The man had no shame.

“I don’t have any cash,” I told him.

He raised a greasy eyebrow. Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should’ve covered up everything else.

“You took a taxi from the bus station,” he said. “Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?”

Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. “Come on, Gabe,” he said. “The kid just got here.”

“Am I right?” Gabe repeated.

Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.

“He’s not giving you anything.” Hunter growled before I could do anything else. Gabe’s expression turned furious. Hunter hated Gabe more than his dad, and that was saying something and Gabe hated not getting his way.

But Gabe also hated getting his lights punched out by Uncle Arthur.

“I had hoped you wouldn’t come over.” He sneered, before turning back to his poker game. Hunter gave me a smirk that I returned. We moved to go to my room, but I couldn't resist a parting shot. “Hope you lose.”

“Your report card came, brain boy!” he shouted after me. “I wouldn’t act so snooty! I bet your little friend was as dumb as you this year!”

I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn’t my room. During school months, it was Gabe’s “study.” He didn’t study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.

I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.

Gabe’s smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady’s shears snipping the yarn. But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover’s look of panic, how he’d made us promise that we wouldn’t go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone, something, was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons. Hunter shook me out of it. He looked a little pale too but his head was turned toward the door and a smile was growing on his face.

I wondered why, then I heard my mom’s voice. “Percy?” She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.

My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She’s got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I’ve never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me, Hunter, Uncle Arthur, or Gabe.

“Oh, Percy, Hunter.” She hugged me tight. “I can’t believe it. You’ve both grown since Christmas!”

Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She’d brought everyone a huge bag of “free samples,” the way she always did when Hunter and I came home. Hunter never liked candy, so Uncle Arhtur and I always took his share.

And speaking of Uncle Arthur.

“Dad!” Hunter cried as he leaped into his father's arms.

Uncle Arthur let out a laugh, he was dressed in his construction worker uniform. I’d never say this out loud, but the whole outfit made him look like a buff traffic cone.

“Hey there bud! Put on some muscle?” Uncle Arthur squeezed Hunter’s arm and gave an approving hum. Hunter flushed red but tried to wave it off.

We all sat on the edge of my bed. While I attacked blueberry sour strings and Hunter looked at me in disgust, my mom ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn’t put in my letters. She didn’t mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn’t seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?

Hunter was in a similar predicament, but I was too focused on my mom to really notice. I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.

From the other room, Gabe yelled, “Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?” I gritted my teeth. My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should’ve been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.

“I’m here too pal! Want to try that again?” Uncle Arthur yelled back. Silence was his only answer. Hunter smirked at me and I grinned back, but it faded at my mom’s look of reproach. Uncle Arthur cleared his throat and asked, “So, how was Yancy?”

I hid my wince and Hunter cringed back. For both of their sakes I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. Hunter just scowled at the floor and didn’t help but I couldn’t hold it against him. Hunter hated admitting to weakness. I gave him a side hug and said that we weren’t too down about the expulsion. Hunter and I had made a new friend. We both did well in Latin. And the fights were not as bad as the headmaster said. Hunter gave a cough but didn’t change anything.

I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

Until that trip to the museum…

“What?” my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. “Did something scare you?”

“No, Mom.”

I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid. Hunter had bitten his lip, his tell that he was nervous.

“You boys know you can tell us anything right?” Uncle Arthur asked. He leveled us both with a stare that we couldn’t hold. His eyes that had seen so much yet still held compassion.

“Yes dad, we know.”

Uncle Arthur frowned and met my mom’s eyes over our heads. My mom pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn’t push me.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said. “We’re going to the beach.”

My eyes widened. “Montauk?”

“Three nights—same cabin.”

“When?”

She smiled. “As soon as we get changed.”

I couldn’t believe it. The four of us hadn’t been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn’t enough money. Uncle Arthur had offered to pay, but he was stretched thin with all the extracurricular activities he signed us up for.

Hunter and Uncle Arthur had started to join our beach excursions to Montauk since it became obvious that I refused to go anywhere without my brother in all but blood. Yeah the beach was great when it was just me and my mom, it was better when I could share it with my whole makeshift family.

Gabe, having gathered his courage to face Uncle Arthur, appeared in the doorway and growled, “Bean dip, Sally? Didn’t you hear me?”

I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom’s eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here. She glared at Uncle Arthur and he backed off immediately. The message to him was clear: don’t do anything that would get you arrested.

“I was on my way, honey,” she told Gabe. “We were just talking about the trip.”

Gabe’s eyes got small. “The trip? You mean you were serious about that?”

“I knew it,” I muttered. “He won’t let us go.”

“As if he could stop us.” Hunter whispered. My mom glared, but Uncle Arthur gave us both a wink of approval.

“Of course he will,” my mom said evenly. “Your stepfather is just worried about money. That’s all. Besides,” she added, “Gabriel won’t have to settle for bean dip. I’ll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works.”

Gabe softened a bit. “So this money for your trip…it comes out of your clothes budget, right?”

“Yes, honey,” my mother said.

“And you won’t take my car anywhere but there and back.”

“We’ll be very careful.”

“I don’t see why you can’t take his car.” Gabe pointed at Uncle Arthur, but flinched away a little when Uncle Arthur narrowed his eyes. It was awesome.

“Arthur needed to take his car into the shop, honey.”

Gabe scratched his double chin. “Maybe if you hurry with that sevenlayer dip…And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game.”

Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.

But my mom’s eyes warned the three of us not to make him mad.

Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought? Why couldn’t Uncle Arthur throw him out into the street?

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I’m really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now.”

Hunter just glared at Gabe, hating that this man was even in his presence.

Gabe’s eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect the sarcasm in my statement. Then his eyes flicked up to Uncle Arthur and he quickly looked away.

“Yeah, whatever,” he decided.

He went back to his game.

“Thank you, Percy,” my mom said. “Once we get to Montauk, we’ll talk more about…whatever you both had forgotten to tell us, okay?”

For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I’d seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air. But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.

Uncle Arthur had a tense expression but didn’t say anything. He took Hunter across the hall to pack for the weekend.

An hour later we were ready to leave. Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch Hunter and I lug my mom’s bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his ’78 Camaro—for the whole weekend. Uncle Arthur was loading his share of bags into the trunk and shot Gabe a look that for once my step-father ignored.

“Not a scratch on this car, brain boy,” he warned me as I loaded the last bag. “Not one little scratch.”

Like I’d be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn’t matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he’d find a way to blame me. Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can’t explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I’d seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he’d been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn’t stay long enough to find out. Hunter let out a laugh of disbelief and gave me a high five before we both jumped into the backseat and told my mom to step on it.

Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

I loved the place.

We’d been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she’d met my dad. As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.

Uncle Arthur gave her a look of amusement and she shoved a hand into his face without looking away from the road.

We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin’s windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.

I guess I should explain the blue food. See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn’t totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.

Hunter and Uncle Arthur thought the whole thing was hilarious, so they pitched in to get everything blue for me as well. Uncle Arthur got me blue bedsheets and Hunter always got me blue toys for Christmas and my birthday.

When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.

Uncle Arthur didn’t talk about his past much. It was clear he didn’t think it was safe for kids ears, but he loved telling stories about Hunter when he was a toddler to Hunter’s horror and my joy. Hunter threw his hotdog at me, that nailed me right in the head. I growled, Hunter never missed when he threw something. I didn’t have good accuracy like him, but I wasn’t about to let that go unpunished.

I let out a war cry and tackled him into the dune behind us. I could vaguely hear my mom’s exasperation and Uncle Arthur amusement at our antics. The two of us wrestled in the sand and I couldn’t stop my smile of joy. Hunter was smiling too, it felt nice having a friend, no, a brother like Hunter. Someone who would always have your back. Someone who reminded you that you were never alone.

Our scuffle eventually reached the ocean and the two of us fell in. I popped up ready for another round while Hunter came up shivering. He glared at me with no real heat and I smirked. My mom called us both back to the fire and we walked over with smiles.

“How come you’re never cold when you jump into the ocean?” He pouted. I just swung my arm over his shoulders and marched us back to our parents.

Uncle Arthur already had towels ready, but I was dry. I didn’t think much of it. Uncle Arthur gave my mom a look that she returned. He sighed and wrapped them both around Hunter as we all sat down again.

Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom’s eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.

“He was kind, Percy,” she said. “Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes.” Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. “I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud.”

I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.

“How old was I?” I asked. “I mean…when he left?”

She watched the flames. “He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin.”

“But…he knew me as a baby.”

“No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born.”

I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember…something about my father. A warm glow. A smile. I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I’d felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he’d never even seen me…

I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He’d left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe. The only upside was that we met Uncle Arthur and Hunter.

But then Hunter asked a question that caused both adults to freeze.

“What about my mom?”

You see Hunter had been adopted by Uncle Arthur when he was just a baby. He once told me a while ago that when he was around eight he asked Uncle Arthur where his mother was after a play date before they both moved in across the hall.

He explained that Uncle Arthur’s face had gone white before telling him that his mother had chosen to give him up. He also told me that when he asked why she didn’t want him his dad told him that Hunter’s mother didn’t feel ready for a child and left it at that.

I knew that Hunter loved my mom as if she was his own, but I knew that Hunter longed for a connection with his birth mother. Whoever she was.

Uncle Arthur licked his lips and answered slowly, “I never knew your mother personally Hunter, I just know that she is very powerful.”

Hunter frowned at the answer. He stared into the fire as if it held all the answers. He pointed to his burn scar on his face.

“Does she know how I got this?” Uncle Arthur didn’t seem to know what to say. All three of us knew how self conscious Hunter felt about his scar. It was the first thing kids our age pointed at whenever we went to a new school or when we were on the street and people stared at him.

“I don’t know champ.” Was all Uncle Arthur could bring himself to say. I had a gut feeling that it was the truth.

“Are you going to send us away again?” I asked. “To another boarding school?”

My mom pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

“I don’t know, honey.” Her voice was heavy. “I think…I think we’ll have to do something.”

“Because you don’t want us around?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out. Hunter elbowed me in the ribs as my mom’s eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight.

“Oh, Percy, no. I—I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away.”

“She’s right. We don’t have a choice.” Uncle Arthur muttered, looking like he swallowed a lemon.

“Because we’re not normal?” Hunter asked for the both of us.

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing. But you don’t realize how important you two are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. We thought you both would finally be safe.”

“Safe from what?”

She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I’d tried to forget. During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground and nearly had an aneurysm when he saw Hunter. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broadbrimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

Before that—a really early memory, before Uncle Arthur and Hunter came into our lives. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I’d somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and the two of us were forced to move.

I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn’t make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn’t want that.

I could tell Hunter had similar thoughts. This was the one place where he felt he could really be himself.

“We’ve tried to keep you as close to us as we could,” my mom said. “They told us that was a mistake. But there’s only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just…I just can’t stand to do it.”

“My father wanted me to go to a special school?”

“Not a school,” she said softly. “A summer camp.”

Hunter looked at his dad. “Did my mom want me to go there too?”

Uncle Arthur looked pained before admitting, “I imagine that she would have preferred that you went there kiddo.”

My head was spinning. Why would my dad, who hadn’t even stayed around long enough to see me born, talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn’t she ever mentioned it before? And Hunter’s mom, why would she wish Hunter to go there too if she didn’t even want her son in the first place?

“I’m sorry, Percy,” she said, seeing the look in my eyes. “But I can’t talk about it. I—I couldn’t send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good.”

Hunter turned to look at his father in shock, but Uncle Arthur couldn’t meet his eyes.

“For good? But if it’s only a summer camp…”

She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.

That night I had a vivid dream. It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse’s muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagle’s wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder. I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse’s wide eyes, and I screamed, No!

I woke with a start. Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.

I could hear Hunter trying to wake his dad. His instincts must be screaming at him. I felt similar dread down to my bones.

With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, “Hurricane.”

I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end. There was also a rumble, like something was moving under the ground.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door. My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown but Uncle Arthur had beaten her to the lock from his spot on the couch.

Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn’t…he wasn’t exactly Grover. “Searching all night,” he gasped. “What were you thinking?”

Uncle Arthur and my mom looked at both of us in terror, they weren’t scared of Grover, they were scared of why he had come.

“Hunter, Percy,” Uncle Arthur shouted over the typhoon outside, “What didn’t you tell us? What happened at Yancy?!”

I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Hunter was openly gaping alongside me. Glad to know I still wasn’t crazy. “O Zeu kai alloi theoi!” he yelled. “They’re both right behind me! Didn’t you tell them?”

I was too shocked to register that he’d just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I’d understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn’t have his pants on—and where his legs should be…where his legs should be…

My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she’d never used before: “Percy. Tell me now!”

I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, my mom and Uncle Arthur stared at us, their faces deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

She grabbed her purse, tossed Hunter and I our rain jackets, and said, “Get to the car. All of you. Go!”

Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn’t running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked. 

Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.

Chapter Text

We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn’t know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas. Uncle Arthur was holding the handle above the window so tightly I wasn’t sure how it didn’t snap off.

Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I’d gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants. But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo—lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal. That and Hunter was in the same boat as me. He kept his nose covered and looked at Grover's legs in shock.

All I could think to say was, “So, you know my mom and Uncle Arthur?”

Grover’s eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. “Not exactly,” he said. “I mean, we’ve never met in person. But they knew I was watching you.”

“Watching us?”

“Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you both were okay. But I wasn’t faking being your friend,” he added hastily. “I am your friend.”

Hunter piped up from the other end of the back seat. “Um…what are you, exactly?”

“That doesn’t matter right now.”

I met Hunter’s eyes over Grover’s head and sputtered, “It doesn’t matter? From the waist down, one of my best friends is a donkey—”

Grover let out a sharp, throaty “Blaa-ha-ha!”

I’d heard him make that sound before, but I’d always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.

“Goat!” he cried.

“What?”

“I’m a goat from the waist down.”

“You just said it didn’t matter.” Hunter muttered in my defense.

“Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!”

That brought both of us up short. “Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like…Mr. Brunner’s myths?”

“Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, guys? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?”

“So you admit there was a Mrs. Dodds!”

“Of course.”

“Then why—” Hunter didn’t get to finish his question.

“The less you knew, the fewer monsters you’d attract,” Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. “We put Mist over the humans’ eyes. We hoped you’d think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. Hunter, your instincts were too strong, and Percy trusts you more than anyone. You started to realize who you are.”

“Who we—what are you talking about!?” Hunter yelled.

The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Looking out the back windshield I also noticed the ground seemed to be rippling. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.

“Boys,” Uncle Arthur said, “there’s too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety.”

“Safety from what? Who’s after us?”

“Oh, nobody much,” Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. “Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions.”

“Grover!”

“Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?”

I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn’t do it. I knew this wasn’t a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird. Hunter looked back at the road behind us.

“What are those bronze shapes?”

I turned to look too but all I saw was darkness and rain. I said as much to him.

“Dude, I see them. There is a large bronze aura with horns and a bronze aura under the ground slithering.”

Uncle Arthur ripped the handle he was gripping out of the car’s roof. He spun around to look at his son, far paler than he was at the cabin when I told him about Mrs. Dodds and the old ladies.

“You see the auras behind us?”

“Well yes…”

“How long could you do this?!”

“I don’t know… a few months maybe,”

I remembered that’s when Mrs. Dodds first came to Yancy. How Hunter had flinched away from her, how in the museum before she attacked us he was bracing for something that his mind and his body didn’t seem to be on the same page about.

How his instincts were always sharp, far sharper than mine were, because he attacked Mrs. Dodds while I was shaking in my boots.

There was also that one time he stopped me from fighting Nancy at the beginning of the school year. He said my green aura had started to show red. Hunter looked confused at how he knew that. I didn’t think much of it other than slight annoyance that my ‘aura’ wasn’t blue.

Uncle Arthur looked forward again and seemed to be having a crisis. Hunter and I shared a look of worry, we have never seen him like this.

My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The summer camp I told you about.” My mother’s voice was tight; she was trying for our sake not to be scared. “The place your father wanted to send you.”

“The place you didn’t want me to go.”

“And the place my mom would have wanted me to go.”

“Please, boys,” my mother begged. “This is hard enough. Try to understand. You’re in danger.”

“Because some old ladies cut yarn.”

“Those weren’t old ladies,” Grover said. “Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you’re about to…when someone’s about to die.”

“Whoa. You said ‘you.’”

“No I didn’t. I said ‘someone.’”

“You meant ‘you.’ As in me.”

“I meant you, like ‘someone.’ Not you, you.”

“So 'you' as in one of us?” Hunter deadpanned.

“Boys!” Uncle Arthur yelled.

My mom pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she’d swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.

Hunter’s eyes stayed glued to the road behind us then he suddenly leaned forward to look at the ground.

“Left!” He screamed.

My mom didn’t question him, she swerved to the left and something exploded out from under the road where we once were. Lighting flashed and I saw a twin pair of fangs before whatever that thing was burrowed under the ground again. However before it submerged completely I could have sworn that another head was where its tail should be.

“What was that?” I asked.

“We’re almost there,” my mother said, ignoring my question. “Another mile. Please. Please. Please.”

“Come on. Come on. Just let them get there.” Uncle Arthur muttered.

I didn’t know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.

Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she’d changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn’t been human. She’d meant to kill me. Meant to kill Hunter.

Then I thought about Mr. Brunner…and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck, Hunter tensed as well and started to call out something to his dad. He didn’t get the chance. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded.

I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.

I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver’s seat and said, “Ow.”

“Percy!” my mom shouted.

“I’m okay.…”

I faintly heard Hunter as he groaned in pain. I turned as fast as I could to make sure he was okay. His shoulder had crashed into the back of the passenger seat.

“Hunter! You okay?!” Uncle Arthur called.

“I’m fine.” Hunter called back through clenched teeth.

I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn’t dead. The car hadn’t really exploded. We’d swerved into a ditch. Our driver’s-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.

Lightning. That was the only explanation. We’d been blasted right off the road. In between Hunter and I in the backseat was a big motionless lump. “Grover!”

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you’re my other best friend and I don’t want you to die!

Then he groaned “Food,” and I knew there was hope.

Hunter smiled in relief, then he looked out the back windshield again and he froze. Uncle Arthur and my mom didn’t see it though as they worked to get their seatbelts off.

“Percy, Hunter” my mother said, “we have to…” Her voice faltered as she looked back and I’m pretty sure Uncle Arthur whimpered as he saw what had grabbed her attention.

I turned to look too. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns. Behind him the ground exploded again, and something large and scaly came up and started to slither forward.

The head of the creature from the ground was as big as the form marching toward the car.

I swallowed hard. “What is—”

“Everyone,” Uncle Arthur said, deadly serious. “Get out of the car.”

My mother threw herself against the driver’s-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might’ve been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.

Hunter and Uncle Arthur had managed to open their doors on the passengers side. Hunter grabbed the back of Grover's shirt and I pushed his furry hindquarters out before following. Uncle Arthur pulled my mom from the wreck. Then both turned to us.

“Both of you need to run!” Uncle Arthur said. “Do you see the big tree?”

“What?” I asked but Hunter was looking out into the rain, seeing something that I couldn’t.

He turned to his dad, “The one with the sky blue aura?”

Uncle Arthur looked pained, but he nodded.

Lighting flashed again and I finally saw what they were talking about. A huge, White House Christmas tree–sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.

“That’s the property line,” my mom said. “Get over that hill and you’ll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don’t look back. Yell for help. Don’t stop until you reach the door.”

“Mom, Uncle Arthur, you’re coming too.”

Both of their faces were pale, mom mom gazed out at the ocean and Uncle Arthur’s gaze fell to the ground.

Hunter looked furious when he realized what they said without uttering a word.

“No!” I shouted. “You are coming with us. Hunter help me carry Grover.”

“Food!” Grover moaned, a little louder.

The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn’t be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head…was his head. And the points that looked like horns… Like Hunter said he saw in the car…

And the thing behind it slithered closer matching its pace. I saw the fangs again and a hisss! coming from it. It had a large fork tongue… it lifted its tail… except it wasn’t a tail… where its tail should have been was a head that looked just like the one in front… almost like it was making sure we didn’t run behind it…

“They don't want us,” my mother told me. “They want you two. Besides, we can’t cross the property line.”

Hunter threw one of Grover’s arms over his shoulders and glared at both his father and my mother.

“I’m not hearing this, I will not leave you behind!”

“We don’t have time, boys. Go. Please.” My mother begged as Uncle Arthur kept his gaze locked on whatever was stalking and slithering toward us.

I got mad, then—mad at my mother, at Grover the goat, at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull. And mad at the large snake that was moving alongside it. I grabbed Grover’s other arm and helped Hunter lift him.

“We’re going together. Uncle Arthur, Mom, come on.”

“Boys—”

“Enough!” Hunter yelled and started to move forward. I walked with him, Grover between us. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn’t have carried him very far alone.

Uncle Arthur and my mom followed and we all started to stumble through the wet waist-high grass.

Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monsters. The first was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other ’ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear—I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would’ve looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.

His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn’t get from an electric sharpener. 

I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn’t be real.

I blinked the rain out of my eyes. “That’s—”

“Pasiphae’s son,” my mother said. “I wish I’d known how badly they want to kill you.”

“But he’s the Min—”

“Don’t say his name,” she warned. “Names have power.”

The second monster was arguably scarier. Its head alone was as big as the first monster and the length of his body was as long as a New York City bus. However the scariest part was the second head where its tail should have been. Both heads had fangs with dripping venom that were as tall as Uncle Arthur.

Its body rippled from the muscles moving it forward. Then the head at the back moved forward and moved in sync with the first head, making it look like two separate monsters. Its eyes held malice and skin separated from its head making it look like two big King Cobras and made another chilling hisss!

“The Amphisbaena?” Uncle Arthur’s hand came down to cover Hunter’s mouth. The snake monster in question looked up when its name was called before starting to move faster toward the car.

“What did she just say about names?” Uncle Arthur whispered furiously.

The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.

I glanced behind me again.

The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. The snake made a big circle around the car and the bull-man, like it was creating a perimeter. I wasn’t sure why they bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.

“Food?” Grover moaned.

“Shhh,” I told him. “Mom, Uncle Arthur, what are they doing? Don’t they see us?”

“The scaly jerk has a hard time coordinating with its two heads. It needs guidance and planning before it strikes. It’s used to fighting large armies, not small groups.” Uncle Arthur whispered as we continued up the hill.

“Pasiphae’s son’s sight and hearing are terrible,” my mother said. “He goes by smell. But he’ll figure out where we are soon enough.”

As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe’s Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.

Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying.

Oops.

“Percy,” my mom said. “When he sees us, he’ll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way—directly sideways. He can’t change directions very well once he’s charging. Do you understand?” Uncle Arthur was speaking before I could respond.

He gripped Hunter’s shoulder to get his attention, not taking his eyes off of the monsters. “The snake may be big, but it’s slow unless it’s rolling and uncoordinated if its target is moving fast. Its body is shared between the heads, that’s its one blind spot.”

Hunter and I looked at them both in shock.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“We’ve been worried about an attack for a long time. We should have expected this. We were selfish, keeping you near us.”

“Keeping us near you? But—”

The bull-man cut Hunter off. With another bellow of rage he started stomping in our direction the snake following behind.

They found us.

The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn’t getting any lighter. My mom and Uncle Arthur took Grover from us as the monsters got closer.

They both must have been exhausted but they pushed through the pain. My mom turned to us and cried, Go! Separate! Remember what we said.”

I didn’t want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. Hunter and I sprinted to the left. The bull-man followed me, but the snake had eyes for Hunter. He kept going further away so we each had space to move.

When I turned the Minotar was bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat. He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest. The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn’t work. I could never outrun this thing. So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side. The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration.

I chanced a glance at Hunter as he dealt with the serpent. It had locked its two sets of jaws together and was rolling around trying to catch him. It looked like a giant donut rolling around on the floor. Hunter was putting his parkour skills to use. He had followed his dad’s instructions and had jumped through the middle of the rolling circle.

It was clear that it couldn’t turn fast and when Hunter outmaneuvered it it unlatched its jaws and hit the ground with a thump! that sent a small shockwave out from the force of its landing.

It also was not happy that it couldn’t catch its meal as it let out an annoyed hisss!

Both monsters turned, but not toward us this time, toward my mother and Uncle Arthur, who were setting Grover down in the grass.

We’d reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We’d never make it.

The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. The giant snake’s skin flared out. Both monsters were eyeing our parents who were now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monsters away from Grover.

“Run, both of you!” my mom yelled.

“We can’t go any further, you have to run!” Uncle Arthur screamed.

But we didn’t run, both of us were frozen in fear as the monsters rushed them. Bull-man charged my mom and the snake did its donut roll at Uncle Arthur. My mom tried to side-step, as she’d told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.

Uncle Arthur dove out of the way from the snake but it was not letting him get away. Instead of rolling past him as it did with Arthur it flopped onto the ground when it got close and caused another mini shockwave. It was Uncle Arthur’s old leg injury that cost him. The shockwave caused him to lose his balance and he cried out in pain when he landed wrong. The snake's tail-head opened its maw as it closed in on Uncle Arthur’s struggling form.

“Mom!”

“Dad!”

Both of them caught our eyes. My mom managed to choke out one last word: “Go!”

Uncle Arthur yelled out, “I love you!”

Then the bull-man closed his fists around my mother’s neck and the snake’s tail-head snapped its jaw shut. They both dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if they were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and they were simply…gone.

“No!” We both screamed.

Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I’d gotten when Mrs. Dodds charged Hunter and I.

Both monsters bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The bull-man hunched over, and the snake formed another perimeter with its body, snuffling my best friend, as if they were about to make Grover dissolve too.

I couldn’t allow that.

Neither could Hunter as I heard him growl in fury.

I stripped off my rain jacket and Hunter started to pound the ground with his feet.

“Hey!” I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the bull monster. “Hey, stupid! Ground beef!”

“Raaaarrrrr!” The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.

Hunter moved away still stomping as hard as he could. It got the snake's attention with a sharp hisss!

I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I’d jump out of the way at the last moment. But it didn’t happen like that. The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.

Time slowed down.

My legs tensed. I couldn’t jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature’s head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.

How did I do that? I didn’t have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster’s head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out. The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils. The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.

I caught sight of Hunter in his own battle, and it killed me that I couldn’t help him, but he seemed to be doing fine from the few seconds I caught of his fight. The snake had lunged for him, jaw wide open, but Hunter used its momentum against it. He jumped through the monster's closing jaw and its head crashed into the ground. Then he charged it and climbed up its head as the other head let out another hisss!

My attention was drawn away as the bull-man amped up his thrashing. Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I’d bite my own tongue off.

“Food!” Grover moaned.

The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—snap!

The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.

I glanced to my side as the bull-man roared in rage. Hunter was on the body of the snake, punching the monster's scales as both heads let out hisss!

Both heads lunged at the same time and I thought: No!

But it seemed that was Hunter's plan. He jumped and the heads bit into their own skin. Both heads pulled back in pain as it was infected with its own venom. In its haste the ends of one fang from each head were left behind in its skin.

He scrambled for his own makeshift weapons as the bull-man finally got its bearings and charged at me. Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage. The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother and Uncle Arthur, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.

I turned at the sound of an antagonized hisss! Hunter had thrown the broken fangs like throwing knives. His aim was spot on, the broken fangs were embedded into an eye on each head, but it seemed to be enough. The snake monster dissolved into golden dust the same way the bull-man had.

The monsters were gone.

The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I’d just seen my mother and uncle vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, and I could see Hunter wanted to throw himself to the ground and rage, but there was Grover, needing our help, so we managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farmhouse. I was crying, calling for my mother, Hunter was crying and cried out for his dad, but we held on to Grover—we weren't going to let him go.

The last thing I remember is the two of us collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above us, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess’s. They both looked down at me, and the girl said, “Two of them? One of them is the one. This is what I’ve been waiting for. I know it.”

“Silence, Annabeth,” the man said. “They’re still conscious. Bring them inside.”

Chapter Text

I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food. 

I must’ve woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blond hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin with the spoon.

When she saw my eyes open, she asked, “What will happen at the summer solstice?”

I managed to croak, “What?”

She looked around, as if afraid someone would overhear. “What’s going on? What was stolen? We’ve only got a few weeks!”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, “I don’t . . . Hunter… Where’s Hunter?”

“He’s fine! He’s in the bed next to you. What’s going on? I need answers, please!”

Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding. 

The next time I woke up, the girl was gone. A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over Hunter and I. He had blue eyes— at least a dozen of them—on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.

When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. Hunter was to my left, he was laying down on a swinging porch bench looking like a disgruntled cat. 

The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.

On the table next to me were two tall drinks. They looked like iced apple juice, one glass had a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry. The other glass had a purple straw with a flower next to it. One for me and one for Hunter. My hand was so weak I almost dropped my glass once I got my fingers around it.

Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. Under one arm, he cradled two shoe boxes. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover. Not the goat boy.

So maybe I’d had a nightmare. Maybe my mom and Uncle Arthur were okay. We were still on vacation, and we’d stopped here at this big house for some reason. And . . .

“You two saved my life,” Grover said. “I . . . well, the least I could do . . . I went back to the hill. I thought you guys might want these.”

Reverently, he placed one shoe box in my lap. Then he walked over to Hunter who had managed to sit up and handed him the other shoe box.

Inside was a black-and-white bull’s horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. I looked at Hunter and he was glaring at the two broken snake fangs inside his shoe box with hatred.

It hadn’t been a nightmare.

“The Minotaur,” I said.

“The Amphisbaena,” Hunter growled.

“Um, Percy, Hunter, it isn’t a good idea—”

“That’s what they call them in the Greek myths, isn’t it?” I demanded. “The Minotaur. Half man, half bull. And the Amphisbaena, the two-headed snake.”

Grover shifted uncomfortably. “You’ve been out for two days. How much do you remember?”

“My dad, Aunt Sally. Are they really . . .” Hunter whispered.

Grover looked down.

I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight. My mother was gone. My Uncle was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” Grover sniffled. “I’m a failure. I’m—I’m the worst satyr in the world.”

He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.

“Oh, Styx!” he mumbled.

Thunder rolled across the clear sky. As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, Well, that settles it.

Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I’d find tiny horns on his head. But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even minotaurs and giant snakes. All that meant was my mom and uncle really had been squeezed and chomped into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.

Hunter and I were alone. Two orphans. We would have to live with . . . Smelly Gabe? No. That would never happen. We would live on the streets first. I knew that much about the one person who I had left from my patchwork family. We wouldn’t leave each other. We would pretend we were seventeen and join the army. We’d become professional thieves. We’d do something.

Hunter shared a look with me and I knew in my gut he was thinking along the same lines. My lips twitched knowing I still had him with me, but with Uncle Arthur and my mom gone I refused to smile.

Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid—poor goat, satyr, whatever—looked as if he expected to be hit.

I said, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect you.”

“Did our parents ask you to protect us?”

“No. But that’s my job. I’m a keeper. At least . . . I was.”

“But why . . .” I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.

“Don’t strain yourselves,” Grover said. “Here.”

He helped us hold our respective glasses and we both put our lips on the straws.

I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn’t that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies—my mom’s homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn’t go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay.

Before I knew it, I’d drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I’d just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn’t even melted. Hunter was the same, he had the glass vertical trying to get every last drop he could.

“Was it good?” Grover asked.

We both nodded.

“What did it taste like?” He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.

“Sorry,” I said. “I should’ve let you taste.”

His eyes got wide. “No! That’s not what I meant. I just . . . wondered.”

“Chocolate-chip cookies,” I said. “My mom’s. Homemade.”

Grover and I turned to Hunter when he set his glass down.

“Barbeque. Smoked ribs straight from my dads grill.” He said wistfully, wiping away the tears gathering in his eyes. I knew how much he loved his dads cooking, Uncle Arthur always took us to the park when he could so he could grill. He was basically magic when it came to cooking meat.

But my moms cookies were still better.

Grover sighed. “And how do you feel?”

“Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards.”

Hunter smirked, “Like I could break every arm on Yancy’s baseball team.”

“That’s good,” Grover said. “That’s good. I don’t think you guys could risk drinking any more of that stuff.”

“What do you mean?”

He took the empty glasses from us gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set them back on the table.

“Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting.”

The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse. My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Hunter was unsteady too but refused help. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn and the Amphisbaena fangs, but Hunter and I held on to them. We’d both paid for these souvenirs the hard way. Neither of us were going to let it go. As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath and Hunter gasped.

We must’ve been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn’t process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture—an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena—except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school–age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover’s were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.

Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl who’d spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.

The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels—what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That’s it. He looked like a cherub who’d turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would’ve fit right in at one of Gabe’s poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could’ve out-gambled even my stepfather.

“That’s Mr. D,” Grover murmured to me. “He’s the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that’s Annabeth Chase. She’s just a camper, but she’s been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron. . . .”

He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.

First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.

“Mr. Brunner!” I cried.

The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers B.

“Ah, good, Percy, Hunter,” he said. “Now we have four for pinochle. Grover can keep track of points.”

He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, and gestured Hunter to the man's left, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. “Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don’t expect me to be glad to see you two.”

“Uh, thanks.” I scooted a little farther away from him because, if there was one thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice. If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr. Hunter squinted at Mr. D with a frown, like he was trying to figure out a puzzle only he could see.

“Annabeth?” Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl.

She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. “This young lady nursed you two back to health, Percy, Hunter. Annabeth, my dear, why don’t you go check on their bunks? We’ll be putting them in cabin eleven for now.”

Annabeth said, “Sure, Chiron.”

She was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.

She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, You killed a minotaur! or Wow, you’re so awesome! or something like that.

Instead she said, “You drool when you sleep.”

“And you’re pushy.” Hunter said back.

Annabeth’s eyes snapped to Hunter and did a quick once over for him too. She looked at his Amphisbaena fangs then back to his face and paused at his burn scar. Hunter flushed and turned away with a sneer.

She huffed at both of us, then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.

“So,” I said, anxious to change the subject. “You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?”

“Not Mr. Brunner,” the ex–Mr. Brunner said. “I’m afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron.”

“Okay.” Totally confused, I looked at the director. “And Mr. D . . . does that stand for something?”

Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I’d just belched loudly. “Young man, names are powerful things. You don’t just go around using them for no reason.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“I must say, Percy, Hunter,” Chiron-Brunner broke in, “I’m glad to see you alive. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a house call for potential campers. I’d hate to think I’ve wasted my time.”

“House call?” Hunter asked, not taking his eyes off Mr. D.

“My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you two were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to . . . ah, take a leave of absence.”

I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.

“You came to Yancy just to teach us?” I asked.

Chiron nodded. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure about you two at first. It is extremely rare for two of your kind to be in the same school. We contacted your parents, let them know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you both made it here alive, and that’s always the first test.”

“You, Henry,” Mr. D said, “are you going to play or not?” Hunter turned around then looked back at the camp director with confusion only to find him shuffling the cards impatiently.

“My name’s Hunter.”

“That’s what I said Hector.”

“Hunter.”

“Homer.”

“Hunter!”

“Howard.”

“Yes, sir! He’ll play!” Grover said, cutting off the exchange. He clearly saw that Hunter’s temper was flaring, but I failed to understand why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.

“You two do know how to play pinochle?” Mr. D eyed us suspiciously.

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“I’m afraid not, sir,” he said.

“Sir,” I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.

“Well,” he told me, “it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young men to know the rules.”

“I’m sure the boys can learn,” Chiron said.

“Please,” I said, “what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brun—Chiron—why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach us?”

Mr. D snorted. “I asked the same question.”

The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed on the table. Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let me know that no matter what our averages were, Hunter and I were his star students. He expected me to have the right answer.

“Percy, Hunter,” he said. “Did your parents tell you nothing?”

“My mom said . . .” I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. “She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn’t leave. She wanted to keep me close to her.”

“Typical,” Mr. D said. “That’s how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?”

“What?” I asked.

He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.

Hunter glared at the table, not even bothering to pick up his cards. “My dad adopted me, but he said that my mother would have likely wanted me to go here. He never said anything else though.”

At that Mr. D paused for a moment. He gave Hunter a closer once over. “Your father was not your blood mortal parent?” He asked.

Hunter looked back at the camp director, his silver eyes flashed, “No, but he raised me. He w-is my father.”

I noticed that he stopped before the word was. No matter what happened, Uncle Arthur would always be his father. Just how my mom would always be my mother no matter what happened.

Mr. D hummed, then went back to the game, but kept giving Hunter glances.

“I’m afraid there’s too much to tell,” Chiron said. “I’m afraid our usual orientation film won’t be sufficient.”

“Orientation film?” I asked.

“No,” Chiron decided. “Well, Percy, Hunter. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know”—he pointed to the horn and the fangs in their shoe boxes—“that you have killed the Minotaur and the Amphisbaena. No small feat, either, lads. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods—the forces you call the Greek gods—are very much alive.”

I stared at the others around the table. Hunter looked just as confused as me, which was a relief that I wasn’t floating around this craziness alone.

I waited for somebody to yell, Not! But all I got was Mr. D yelling, “Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!” He cackled as Grover tallied up his points.

“Mr. D,” Grover asked timidly, “if you’re not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?”

“Eh? Oh, all right.”

Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.

“Wait,” I told Chiron. “You’re telling me there’s such a thing as God.”

“Well, now,” Chiron said. “God—capital G, God. That’s a different matter altogether. We shan’t deal with the metaphysical.”

“Metaphysical? But you were just talking about—” Hunter started to ask but was cut off by Chiron.

“Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That’s a smaller matter.”

“Smaller?”

“Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class.”

“Zeus,” I said. “Hera. Apollo. You mean them.”

And there it was again—distant thunder on a cloudless day.

“Young man,” said Mr. D, “I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you.”

“But they’re stories,” I said. “They’re—myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They’re what people believed before there was science.”

“Science!” Mr. D scoffed. “And tell me, Perseus Jackson”—I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody—“Hunter Wolf”—Hunter glared but kept his mouth shut—“what will people think of your ‘science’ two thousand years from now?” Mr. D continued. “Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That’s what. Oh, I love mortals—they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they’ve come so-o-o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at these boys and tell me.”

I wasn’t liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called Hunter and I mortals, as if . . . he wasn’t. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully tallying points, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut.

“Boys,” Chiron said, “you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?”

I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron’s voice made me hesitate.

“You mean, whether people believed in you or not,” I said.

“Exactly,” Chiron agreed. “If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, Hunter Wolf, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers and fathers?”

My heart pounded. He was trying to make us angry for some reason, but I wasn’t going to let him. Grover put his hand on Hunter’s shoulder to keep him from leaping over the table to try and strangle our former Latin teacher while I said, “I wouldn’t like it. But I don’t believe in gods.”

“Me neither.” Hunter said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, you’d better,” Mr. D murmured. “Before one of them incinerates you.”

Grover said, “P-please, sir. They just lost their parents. They’re in shock.”

“A lucky thing, too,” Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. “Bad enough I’m confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don’t even believe!”

He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.

My jaw dropped and Hunter gaped, but Chiron hardly looked up.

“Mr. D,” he warned, “your restrictions.”

Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.

“Dear me.” He looked at the sky and yelled, “Old habits! Sorry!”

More thunder.

Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.

Chiron winked at me. “Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits.”

“A wood nymph,” I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.

“Yes,” Mr. D confessed. “Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time—well, she really was pretty, and I couldn’t stay away—the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. ‘Be a better influence,’ he told me. ‘Work with youths rather than tearing them down.’ Ha! Absolutely unfair.” Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.

“And . . .” I stammered, “your father is . . .”

“Di immortales, Chiron,” Mr. D said. “I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course.”

I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master.

But Hunter beat me to it.

“You’re Dionysus. The god of wine.” He said it as if he knew the answer before the question was asked.

Mr. D raised a brow at the tone.

“You knew who I was?”

“The whole grape vines, and Thyrsus made it clear.”

The whole table froze.

Mr. D slowly put down his cards and for the first time in this whole conversation gave his full attention.

“And what exactly do you see?”

Hunter explained that Mr. D’s body had this constantly changing purple aura around him that was centered in his chest.

For a few seconds everyone was silent, then Mr. D blurted out, “You should be dead.”

I frowned in confusion and worry. Hunter didn’t have a response so he just sat back a little and looked uncomfortable.

Seeing our expressions he explained, “You are seeing my divine form. That would normally vaporize a mortal, the fact that you are seeing that and not exploding is a first.”

He said that as if being the first in something was a bad thing, but going by Grover’s and Chiron’s faces it probably was.

“Fate favors firsts, for better or worse,” Chiron whispered.

I swallowed and looked at Hunter who matched my uneasy expression. He had heard the line too.

Mr. D was almost leaning across the table scrutinizing every inch of Hunter’s appearance, trying to find something. I didn’t like that, if this was really an Olympian god, then I had the distinct feeling that attention would bring bad news.

So naturally, I opened my big mouth.

“You are really Dionysus?”

Mr. D rolled his eyes. “What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, ‘Well, duh!’?”

“Y-yes, Mr. D.”

“Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?”

“An Olympian. You.”

He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a straitjacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.

“Would you like to test me, child?” he said quietly.

“No. No, sir.”

The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. “I believe I win.”

“Not quite, Mr. D,” Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, “The game goes to me.”

I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.

“I’m tired,” Mr. D said. “I believe I’ll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment.”

Grover’s face beaded with sweat. “Y-yes, sir.”

Mr. D turned to me. “Percy Jackson, Hunter Wolf, enjoy cabin eleven. And mind your manners.” Then he turned to Hunter. He looked at his appearance again, from his hair, to his eyes, to his burn scar. Hunter flushed again and moved a hand up to block it from Mr. D’s gaze.

“Burn scar… can see aura… adopted… auburn hair sprinkled in…” He muttered out loud. He looked away in deep thought, then I could have sworn his eyes widened as if he just had an epiphany.

He snapped his gaze back to Hunter so fast I had the feeling he would have gotten whiplash if he wasn’t a god.

Then he turned away and swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.

“Will Grover be okay?” I asked Chiron.

Chiron looked troubled, whatever Mr. D was muttering he clearly knew about. He looked to both of us with kind but unsettled eyes, but he eventually nodded, though he didn’t do a good job of hiding his troubled look. “Old Dionysus isn’t really mad. He just hates his job. He’s been . . . ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can’t stand waiting another century before he’s allowed to go back to Olympus.”

“Mount Olympus,” I said. “You’re telling me there really is a palace there?”

“Well now, there’s Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there’s the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It’s still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, boys, just as the gods do.”

“You mean the Greek gods are here? Like . . . in America?” Hunter asked.

“Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.”

“The what?”

“Come now, you two. What you call ‘Western civilization.’ Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know—or as I hope you know, since you passed my course—the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps— Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on—but the same forces, the same gods.”

“And then they died.”

“Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they’ve ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, Hunter, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not—and believe me, plenty of people weren’t very fond of Rome, either—America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here.”

It was all too much, especially the fact that Hunter and I seemed to be included in Chiron’s we, as if we were part of some club.

“Who are you, Chiron? Who . . . who are we?” I asked gesturing between Hunter and I.

Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

“Who are you?” he mused. “Well, that’s the question we all want answered, isn’t it? But for now, we should get you both a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be s’mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate.”

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn’t move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn’t underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn’t a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must’ve been magic, because there’s no way it could’ve held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.

I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse’s trunk. Hunter took a step back out of reflex, ready for a fight but when he saw that Chiron wouldn't hurt him he relaxed a little.

“What a relief,” the centaur said. “I’d been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson, Hunter Wolf. Let’s meet the other campers.”

Chapter Text

Once Hunter and I got over the fact that our Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him. I’d done pooper-scooper patrol in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I’m sorry, I did not trust Chiron’s back end the way I trusted his front. Hunter snickered at me as I made grand actions to stay at our teacher's side. I glared back in annoyance and muttered at him to shut up.

We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the minotaur horn I was carrying and Hunter’s Amphisbaena fangs. Another said, “It’s those two.”

Most of the campers were older than us. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn’t normally shy, but the way they stared at me made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting me to do a flip or something. Hunter was no better, he hated when people stared at him as if he was defective because of his burn scar. He made a conscious effort to look away every time someone glanced in our general direction.

I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I’d realized—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. I was checking out the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.

“What’s up there?” I asked Chiron.

He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. “Just the attic.”

“Somebody lives there?”

“No,” he said with finality. “Not a single living thing.”

I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain. Hunter frowned at me and looked at where I had pointed. I don’t know what he saw, but by the way his jaw clenched I had a feeling it was something bad.

“Come along, boys,” Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. “Lots to see.”

We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.

Chiron told us the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. “It pays our expenses,” he explained. “And the strawberries take almost no effort.”

He said Mr. D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr. D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.

I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music. I wondered if he was still inside the farmhouse, getting chewed out by Mr. D.

“Grover won’t get in too much trouble, will he?” I asked Chiron. “I mean . . . he was a good protector. Really.”

Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horse’s back like a saddle. “Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable. To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper, or campers in this case, and bringing them safely to Half-Blood Hill.”

“But he did that!” Hunter said.

“I might agree with you,” Chiron said. “But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I’m afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you two in New York. Then there’s the unfortunate . . . ah . . . fate of your parents. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you both dragged him over the property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover’s part.”

I wanted to protest. None of what happened was Grover’s fault. I also felt really, really guilty, and I could tell that Hunter did too. If we hadn’t given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in trouble.

“He’ll get a second chance, won’t he?” Hunter asked.

Chiron winced. “I’m afraid that was Grover’s second chance, Hunter. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He’s still so small for his age. . . .”

“How old is he?” I asked.

“Oh, twenty-eight.”

“What?! And he’s in sixth grade?” I couldn’t hide my shock even if I tried.

“Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years.”

“That sucks.” Hunter muttered.

“That's one way of putting it,” Chiron agreed. “At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career. . . .”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?”

Chiron looked away quickly. “Let’s move along, shall we?”

But I wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me when Chiron talked about my mother’s and Uncle Arthur’s fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the word death. The beginnings of an idea—a tiny, hopeful fire—started forming in my mind.

“Chiron,” I said. “If the gods and Olympus and all that are real . . .”

“Yes, child?”

“Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?”

Chiron’s expression darkened.

“Yes, child.” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “There is a place where spirits go after death. But for now . . . until we know more . . . I would urge you to put that out of your mind.”

“What do you mean, ‘until we know more’?” Hunter demanded, by the gleam in his eye I knew he picked up on my thought process.

“Come, boys. Let’s see the woods.”

As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in there since the Native Americans.

Chiron said, “The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go armed.”

“Stocked with what?” I asked. “Armed with what?”

“You’ll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you two have your own swords and shields?”

“Our own—?” Hunter tried to ask, but was cut off.

“No,” Chiron said. “I don’t suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I’ll visit the armory later.” 

I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory, but there was too much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range (which Hunter seemed to enjoy), the canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn’t seem to like very much), the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights.

“Sword and spear fights?” I asked.

“Cabin challenges and all that,” he explained. “Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes, and there’s the mess hall.”

Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.

“What do you do when it rains?” I asked.

Chiron looked at me as if I’d gone a little weird. “We still have to eat, don’t we?” I decided to drop the subject. Hunter raised an eyebrow at Chiron’s answer but kept his mouth shut.

Finally, he showed me the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings I’d ever seen.

Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine had smokestacks, like a tiny factory. Number four had tomato vines on the walls and a roof made out of real grass. Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at. They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were more our speed).

In the center of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick. Hunter’s eyes widened at the little girl and I had a distinct feeling she was more than she seemed. He slowly walked up to her, careful of the firepit and asked “Lady Hestia?”

The little girl’s eyes widened in surprise, then she gave a pleased smile.

“It is so very rare to be greeted these days. Many walk past the hearth without seeing it.”

My own eyes widened as I came to stand next to Hunter. Another Olympian was here, but at least this one didn’t seem to hate everything around them.

Hestia looked at Hunter and tilted her head in consideration, similar to Mr. D, but with more affection.

“Oh a wandering soul that wishes to stay where you are. To think that you were alive for all these years. Oh the pain your mother was in child.”

I’m surprised Hunter’s eyes didn’t pop out of his head.

“You know who my mother is?” He asked in a fragile voice.

Hestia gave him a small but sad smile.

“Yes, child. The hearth of the family sees all. It is quite clear that she missed you.”

Hunter looked down, deep in thought. I couldn’t blame him.

“My father, he said that my mother wasn’t ready for a child. How could she miss me if she didn’t want me?”

The goddess seemed to sag a little at the question.

“Only your mother can tell you why. It is not my place.”

Hunter scowled at the non answer but didn't say anything. I frowned a little too. Why couldn’t she just tell us?

As if reading my thoughts Hestia turned to me and gave me a smile that was almost on par with my mom’s.

“Be strong Percy Jackson. Know that your father will always stand with you. Never doubt that.”

Before either of us could say anything else Hestia stepped into the hearth and disappeared into smoke, leaving behind the scent of home.

The two of us stood there like buffoons for a few minutes before Chiron broke us out of our stupor.

“Hestia is always here for the campers, but very few have ever stopped to speak with her. I dare say you two made her century.”

“Right.” Hunter said, not looking away from the firepit.

I took the chance to look around at the cabins again. The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front. Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to streak across them. Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of peacocks.

“Zeus and Hera?” I guessed.

“Correct,” Chiron said.

“Their cabins look empty.”

“Several of the cabins are. That’s true. No one ever stays in one or two.”

Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot.

Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty?

I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.

It wasn’t high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. I peeked inside the open doorway and Chiron said, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that!”

Before he could pull me back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Come along, Percy.”

As we moved out of cabin three I noticed Hunter wasn’t there. I said as much to Chiron and the centaur’s head looked around until he seemed to spot my friend. I followed his gaze and saw that Hunter was looking up at cabin eight. The whole building seemed to be made out of moonlight, it also pulsed with power every few seconds, like a heartbeat.

That had to be the cabin for Artemis. And like cabin three, it was completely devoid of campers.

I frowned in confusion and looked up at my Latin teacher in question but he seemed to be frozen with fear. Several campers, mostly male ones, who were hanging around were looking at Hunter as if he was suicidal.

Hunter reached out to push open the door and that shocked Chiron into action. He started to gallop full speed with a shout of, “Hunter don’t!”

Chiron only got halfway there before Hunter touched the door and the cabin shuddered.

Hunter leaped back in surprise and Chiron skidded to a stop. I stayed where I was in confusion and fear. Based on everyone's reactions, that was not normal around here.

Everyone held their breath, then cabin eights' door swung open with so much force I wondered how the piece of wood didn’t fly off its hinges.

All the male campers flinched as if they expected monsters to start flooding out of the cabin to murder them.

I didn’t know what Hunter was seeing in the cabin, but it must have been welcoming because he made to step inside but Chiron had snapped out of his funk and reached Hunter before he could take another step closer.

The woods seemed to darken when he did that however, as if it was angry about something. Several women emerged from the trees in shock. They kneeled to the woods then turned and looked at Hunter and Chiron. I could vaguely see them whispering to each other and pointing at him.

I swallowed my nerves and started to walk towards them. I didn’t understand what just happened, but clearly it was a very big deal. Almost as big as…as the Fates cutting the yarn.

As I walked I noticed that most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.

Number five was bright red—a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been splashed on with buckets and fists. The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed wild boar’s head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALFBLOOD T-shirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red.

I hurried over to Hunter, who Chiron was lightly pushing away from cabin eight. Hunter glared at our teacher but finally relented. He turned around and everyone in the vicinity of the moonlight building jumped when the door slammed closed, almost in frustration. The woods also darkened and everyone eyed Hunter and I with interest.

Neither of us liked it, so I tried to change the subject to avoid any more awkward silence. “We haven’t seen any other centaurs,” I observed, trying to stay clear of Chiron’s hooves.

Our teacher's face was pale, but he made an effort to smile at the two of us. “No,” said Chiron sadly. “My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I’m afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won’t see any here.”

“You said your name was Chiron. Are you really . . .”

He smiled down at us. “The Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and all that? Yes, Percy, I am.”

“But, shouldn’t you be dead?” Hunter asked.

Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. “I honestly don’t know about should be. The truth is, I can’t be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish . . . and I gave up much. But I’m still here, so I can only assume I’m still needed.”

I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn’t have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.

“Doesn’t it ever get boring?”

“No, no,” he said. “Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring.”

“Why depressing?”

Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.

“Oh, look,” he said. “Annabeth is waiting for us.”

The blond girl we’d met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven. When we reached her, she looked me over critically, like she was still thinking about how much I drooled.

I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn’t make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn’t even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek. There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book.

“Annabeth,” Chiron said, “I have masters’ archery class at noon. Would you take Percy and Hunter from here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cabin eleven,” Chiron told me, gesturing toward the doorway. “Make yourselves at home.”

Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on old. The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor’s symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it . . . ? A caduceus.

Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center. Chiron didn’t go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.

“Well, then,” Chiron said. “Good luck, Percy, Hunter. I’ll see you at dinner.”

He galloped away toward the archery range.

I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren’t bowing anymore. They were staring at us, sizing us up. I knew this routine. I’d gone through it at enough schools with Hunter.

“Well?” Annabeth prompted. “Go on.”

So naturally I tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of myself. There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything. They all stopped laughing when they looked at Hunter though. I didn’t see but I guessed they saw his legendary glare.

Annabeth announced, “Percy Jackson, Hunter Wolf meet cabin eleven.”

“Regular or undetermined?” somebody asked.

Hunter and I didn’t know what to say, but Annabeth said, “Undetermined.”

Everybody groaned.

A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward. “Now, now, campers. That’s what we’re here for. Welcome, Percy, Hunter. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there.”

The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.

“This is Luke,” Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could’ve sworn she was blushing. Hunter raised an eyebrow. She saw us looking, and her expression hardened again. “He’s your counselor for now.”

“For now?” I asked.

“You’re undetermined,” Luke explained patiently. “They don’t know what cabin to put you in, so you’re here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers.”

I looked at the tiny section of floor they’d given us. We had nothing to put there to mark it as our own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur’s horn and the Amphisbaena fangs. I thought about setting my horn down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves. I saw Hunter clutching his trophies but he seemed to be more focused on the campers around him. He kept looking at everyone and glancing out the door at the other cabins.

I looked around at the campers’ faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eyeing Hunter and I as if they were waiting for a chance to pick our pockets. I know Hunter saw it too, but he kept looking around and back out the door. I had no idea what he was thinking about, but I had the feeling it was gonna be something big. It always was with him.

“How long will we be here?” I asked.

“Good question,” Luke said. “Until you’re determined.”

“How long will that take?” Hunter asked.

The campers all laughed.

Hunter’s gaze burned. 

“Come on,” Annabeth told me. “I’ll show you two the volleyball court.”

“We’ve already seen it.”

“Come on.”

She grabbed our wrists and tried to drag us outside. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven laughing but Hunter ripped his hand free of Annabeth and said, “No.” Several kids snickered, but they didn’t know that tone. It was Hunter’s best impression of Uncle Arthur’s command voice.

“Why did you laugh at that?” He demanded. Annabeth tried to grab his wrist but I stopped her and shook my head.

No one answered him. I picked up where he left off.

“Why is everyone so crowded together here? Why do we need to stay in cabin eleven? There are plenty of bunks over there.” I pointed to all the other buildings we passed, some with campers and some that were completely empty.

The whole cabin seemed to look away and Luke’s eyes flashed, as if I asked something with an answer that made him very angry.

Annabeth paled but answered us slowly, like she was talking to a pair of toddlers. “You don’t just choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or . . . your parent.”

Hunter raised a brow, silently asking for more information and Annabeth sighed.

“The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids, and they sometimes… Well sometimes they don’t care about us. They ignore us.”

All the kids in cabin eleven nodded, Luke being the most fierce. Hunter and I looked at the kids around us again. Teenagers to little toddlers all looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I’d known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn’t have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.

Hunter’s eyes hardened.

“That ends now.” He said, but in the quiet depressed cabin everyone heard it. Some campers started to laugh again and I felt rage flow through me. I didn’t like that they laughed at Hunter as if what he said didn’t matter. I wanted to do something that would make them stop, but it turned out I didn’t need to.

Hunter shoved his shoe box into my arms, then reached out and grabbed two campers, one twelve year old girl and a boy that looked about sixteen. Both let out surprised yelps as Hunter dragged both of them out of the cramped cabin. He ignored their yells to let them go. I followed them out to watch and cabin eleven followed in curiosity. The commotion was causing several of the other cabins to stop what they were doing and watch.

Both the girl and the boy tried to pull out of Hunter’s grip, which I knew was a lost cause, as he forced them to cabin four. The campers that were there watched in confusion as one of the new guys was forcing two screaming children to go to them.

He tossed both to the ground in front of cabin four’s door, then two glowing shapes appeared on top of their heads. It was a green hologram of sheaves of wheat that appeared over their heads for a few seconds  then faded. The shocked gasps that followed echoed around the camp. Hunter didn’t stay as the two kids he’d kidnapped gaped at him. He marched back to cabin eleven with purpose before grabbing three different boys and pulled them to cabin seven. This time when Hunter threw them at the door of the cabin the golden symbol of a sun appeared above their heads.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the holograms that kept appearing over everyone's heads.

Luke watched on in pure joy, “That Percy, is getting claimed.”

Back and forth Hunter went. Two girls and a boy for cabin ten that got symbols of doves, that sent that cabin into excited squeals. There was one girl for cabin nine. Right when Hunter dropped her off and a symbol of a flaming hammer faded, the only other girl there grabbed her new cabinmate with an excited yell of, “I finally have a sister!”

Then Hunter grabbed three guys and a toddler girl and marched them to cabin five. The big mean girl I spotted earlier looked on in shock as Hunter pushed the three teen boys next to her and handed her the little girl in his arms. All four of them had red boars float over their heads causing the little girl to laugh in joy. The big girl from earlier fumbled with her new sibling for a moment before setting her on the ground.

Hunter walked away but not before the little girl gave him a big hug around his legs with a cry of, “Thank you!”

Hunter patted her on the head then left, leaving the campers behind and making his way back to me.

The whole camp was looking like Hunter just won them the lottery. The rest of cabin eleven was no better and a boy around my age, who looked like a Japanese-American pushed his way forward.

“How did you do that?” He asked.

“I can see your auras. There are different auras from the cabins, why?”

The boy scowled, “The minor gods and goddesses don’t have thrones on Olympus, or cabins for their kids here.”

“Who is your parent?”

“Nemesis.”

Hunter frowned then took two girls and two boys one at a time from the remaining unclaimed children.

“Alright then, take this,” He pushed the first girl at the Japanese-American boy who he wrapped his arms around, “this,” Hunter pushed the other girl at him, “this,” the first boy who was around ten joined the cluster of children Hunter had created, “and this!” Hunter yelled, picking up the last boy and throwing him towards the group. The five kids all hit the dirt with holograms of a set of scales over their heads, and Hunter turned to let the new siblings get acquainted with one another.

He sorted through the last of the Hermes cabin, and the last of the unclaimed, all had the symbols of the minor gods and goddesses above their heads.

Everyone looked elated, Annabeth and Luke were in shock. Luke laughed in disbelief then raced to help organize the chaos Hunter just unleashed. Annabeth spluttered then grabbed our wrists again in a panic. Hunter let himself be dragged away this time and I followed struggling to balance both shoe boxes in one arm.

The rest of the camp was working on integrating the new campers into the cabins Hunter dropped them at so it was easy to slip away.

“Do you know what you two just did?!” She shrieked at us.

Hunter and I looked confused but I managed to say, “Uh, something good?”

Annabeth looked like she wanted to smash her head against the nearest hard surface at my answer.

“You got them claimed! You told the gods what to do! Everyone in cabin eleven has been waiting months, even years for a sign from their godly parent and you two got it for them.”

“Well, Hunter did most of the work…” I said, not wanting to take credit for something I didn’t do, but that didn’t seem to matter to Annabeth.

She rolled her eyes at me, “Now I know that one of you is the one I’ve been waiting for, but do you have to be clueless?”

Hunter narrowed his eyes at the subtle insult and I felt my temper rise.

“What’s the problem?” I was getting angry now. “All I know is, Hunter and I kill some bull guy and giant snake—”

“Don’t talk like that!” Annabeth told me. “You know how many kids at this camp wish they’d had your chance?”

“To get killed?”

“To fight the Minotaur and the Amphisbaena! What do you think we train for?”

I shook my head. “Look, if the things we fought really were the Minotaur and the Amphisbaena, the same one from the stories...”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s only one, one bull-man and one big snake.”

“Yes.”

“And the Minotaur died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. And the Amphisbaena was killed by an army, also a gajillion years ago. So . . .”

“Monsters don’t die, you two. They can be killed. But they don’t die.”

“Oh, thanks. That clears it up.” Hunter muttered.

“They don’t have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you’re lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them archetypes. Eventually, they reform.”

I thought about Mrs. Dodds. “You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword—”

“The Fur . . . I mean, your math teacher. That’s right. She’s still out there. You just made her very, very mad.”

“How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?”

“You talk in your sleep.”

“You almost called her something. A Fury? They’re Hades’ torturers, right?”

Hunter rubbed at his shoulder where Mrs. Dobbs dug her talons into him and Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her. “You shouldn’t call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all.”

“Look, is there anything we can say without it thundering?” I sounded whiny, even to myself, but right then I didn’t care. Hunter did though and he smacked me upside the head.

Annabeth rolled her eyes again. Annoyed that we weren’t getting it. “You two just changed things here. I know it has to do with your parents.”

She stared at the two of us, waiting for an answer.

“My mom is Sally Jackson,” I said. “She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to.”

Hunter glared at the grass, “My father is Arthur Wolf. He’s a former Army veteran and a construction worker in Manhattan." He refused to say used to, I didn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry about your mom, Percy, and your dad, Hunter. But that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about your other parent. Your dad,” She pointed at me, “and your mom.” She pointed at Hunter.

“He’s dead. I never knew him.”

“And my mom didn’t want me.”

Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she’d had this conversation before with other kids. “Your father’s not dead, Percy.” She looked at Hunter, “And your mother did want you Hunter, she wouldn’t have had you otherwise.”

“How can you say that? You know them?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then how can you say—”

“Because I know you. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t one of us.”

“You don’t know anything about us.”

“No?” She raised an eyebrow. “I bet you two moved around from school to school. I bet you both were kicked out of a lot of them.”

“How—” Hunter tried to ask but Annabeth was on a roll.

“Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too.”

I tried to swallow my embarrassment. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Taken together, it’s almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That’s because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you’re impulsive, can’t sit still in the classroom. That’s your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they’d keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that’s because you see too much, Percy, Hunter, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal’s. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don’t want you seeing them for what they are.”

“You sound like . . . you went through the same thing?”

“Most of the kids here did. If you weren’t like us, you couldn’t have survived the Minotaur and the Amphisbaena, much less the ambrosia and nectar.”

“Ambrosia and nectar?”

“The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would’ve killed a normal kid. It would’ve turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you’d be dead. Face it. You both are half-bloods. And after that performance, it’s clear you two belong here.”

A half-blood.

I was reeling with so many questions I didn’t know where to start.

Then a husky voice yelled, “Well! The newbies!”

I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us. She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.

“Clarisse,” Annabeth sighed. “Why don’t you go polish your spear or something?”

“Sure, Miss Princess,” the big girl said. “So I can run you through with it Friday night.”

“Erre es korakas!” Annabeth said, which I somehow understood was Greek for ‘Go to the crows!’ though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded. “You don’t stand a chance.”

“We’ll pulverize you,” Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn’t sure she could follow through on the threat. She turned toward Hunter and I. “So these are the newest runts?” She tried to sound mean, but I could hear that she was curious. I could still hear yelling from the common area of camp where everyone was still in shock and settling the previous unclaimed campers into their new cabins.

“Percy Jackson, Hunter Wolf,” Annabeth said, “meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares.”

I blinked. “Like . . . the war god?”

Clarisse sneered. “You got a problem with that?”

“No,” I said, recovering my wits. “It explains the bad smell.”

Clarisse growled. “We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy.”

“Percy.”

“Whatever. Come on, I’ll show you.”

“Clarisse—” Annabeth tried to say.

“Stay out of it, wise girl.”

Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it, and I didn’t really want her help. I was the new kid. I had to earn my own rep.

I handed Annabeth both shoeboxes and got ready for a fight, but before I knew it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building that I knew immediately was the bathroom. I was kicking and punching. I’d been in plenty of fights before, but this big girl Clarisse had hands like iron.

But there was one thing she didn’t consider, Hunter. He always had my back and now was no exception. Even though he had given her several new campers, and her new little sister had given him a hug a few minutes ago, Hunter didn’t hesitate to fight her in my defense.

Before Clarisse could drag me into the girls bathroom, Hunter wrenched one of her arms free of my neck. She was caught off guard by him and I pulled free. Hunter shoved her away and we stood side by side ready to face her and her friends.

She suddenly looked less confident facing both Hunter and I. She sneered at us, “Like they’re ‘Big Three’ material,” She called back to her friends, “needing help and all that. Bet the Minotaur fell over laughing, and the Amphisbaena died from boredom.”

Her friends snickered, but they didn’t seem to be into it.

Hunter sneered back and I bounced on my toes ready for what would come next. Off to the side Annabeth was hiding her face behind the boxes, occasionally peaking around to make sure we weren’t pulverized.

Hunter didn’t rise to the bait, he waited for Clarisse to make the first move, same with any other fight we had been in together.

“Don’t!” A tiny voice shouted. All of us looked over to see the little girl Hunter gave to Clarisse running over with tears in her eyes.

Clarisse's gaze softened for a second, before her sneer was back, but it looked almost… forced.

“Children of Ares don’t cry!” She yelled at the little girl. Her new sibling stopped and sniffled looking away in shame.

“Don’t talk to her like that!” Hunter snapped.

For a second Clarisse looked embarrassed, but then she yelled back, “Don’t tell me how to run my cabin scarface!” Then she threw a fast punch and hit Hunter right on his burn scar.

Hunter’s head snapped to the side and he took a few steps back, in more shock than pain. It’s not the first time he had been made fun of because of his scar, but that was the first time someone hit him there. I knew that even though he got it as a baby it still ached, and any aggravation put him in a lot of pain.

Everyone around us looked shocked at what Clarisse did, including the girl in question. Her eyes were wide and she looked a little regretful, but I didn't care. I was not going to let her do that again. I only saw red.

Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shuddered. Clarisse and her friends backed up as the bathroom seemed to explode. The door blasted off as water raced past me and slammed into Clarisse and her lackeys like a tidal wave.

They all screamed as they were pushed onto their backs by the force of it. The water kept coming and coming until Hunter grabbed my shoulder and pulled me out of my rage. The water stopped as I calmed down.

Hunter and Annabeth hadn't been spared from the flood, both were dripping wet and I felt a little bad, especially since I was bone dry. Annabeth was staring at me in shock, while Hunter tried to shake some of the water off him. It was then that I realized that the water was a little murky. Bathroom plumbing seemed to be gross no matter where someone was, and I felt even worse.

I gulped as Annabeth asked, “How did you…”

“I don’t know.”

All of us turned to Clarisse and her friends as they sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse’s hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage. She gave me a look of absolute hatred.

“You are dead, new boy. You are totally dead.”

I probably should have let it go, but I said, “You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth, and watch who you mess with.”

Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her rage. The little girl following reluctantly.

Annabeth stared at Hunter and I. I couldn’t tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at me for dousing her.

“What?” I demanded. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” she said, “that I want you two on my team for capture the flag.”

Chapter Text

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth and Hunter, who were still pretty much dripping wet.

They all also pointed at Hunter and gave him large smiles like they were old friends. A few had given him a pat on the shoulder as we walked by, ignoring the sewage smell.

Annabeth showed us a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn’t get to the top fast enough.

Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.

“I’ve got training to do,” Annabeth said flatly. “Dinner’s at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall.”

“Annabeth, I’m sorry about the toilets.”

“Whatever.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

She looked at me skeptically and Hunter gave me a slow raised eyebrow, and I realized it was my fault. N I’d made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn’t understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.

“You two need to talk to the Oracle,” Annabeth said.

“Who?”

“Not who. What. The Oracle. I’ll ask Chiron.”

I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once. I wasn’t expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.

I didn’t know what else to do. I waved back.

“Don’t encourage them,” Annabeth warned. “Naiads are terrible flirts.”

“Naiads,” Hunter repeated in a complete deadpan, “That’s it. I want to go home now.” I nodded my agreement still not taking my eyes off the water spirits.

Annabeth frowned. “Don’t you two get it? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us.”

“You mean, mentally disturbed kids?”

“I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human.”

“Half-human and half-what?”

“I think you know.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad, or when Uncle Arthur mentioned Hunter’s mom.

“God,” Hunter said. “Half-god.”

Annabeth nodded. “Your father isn’t dead, Percy. And your mother did want you Hunter. They’re both Olympians.”

“That’s . . . crazy.”

“Is it? What’s the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they’ve changed their habits in the last few millennia?”

“But those are just—” I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron’s warning that in two thousand years, Hunter and I might be considered myths. “But if all the kids here are half-gods—”

“Demigods,” Annabeth said. “That’s the official term. Or half-bloods.”

“Then who’s your dad?”

Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I’d just trespassed on a sensitive subject. Hunter smacked me upside the head for it, but I was too overloaded about everything I was just told to try and hit him back.

“My dad is a professor at West Point,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history.”

“He’s human.”

“What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that? Hunter’s Olympian parent is a goddess.”

“Who’s your mom, then?” Hunter asked.

“Cabin six.”

“Meaning?”

Annabeth straightened. “Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle.”

Okay, I thought. Why not?

“And my dad?”

“And my mom?”

“Undetermined,” Annabeth said, “like I told you before. Nobody knows.”

“Except my mother. She knew.”

“Maybe not, Percy. Gods don’t always reveal their identities.”

“My dad would have. He loved her.”

“My dad knew who my mother was. He always avoided the subject as best he could when I asked. He adopted me and said my birth mother wasn’t ready for a child.”

Annabeth gave us a cautious look. Hunter got an analytical gaze, as if Hunter was a case she never heard of before. I only got a look of masked pity. She didn’t want to burst my bubble. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe they’ll send a sign. That’s the only way to know for sure: your parents have to send you a sign claiming you as their child. Sometimes it happens.”

“You mean sometimes it doesn’t?”

Annabeth gave us a look of exasperation. “Before you two showed up, all the unclaimed campers who were in cabin eleven were there for a long time. I told you this already, the gods are busy and they sometimes forget about us. But you two? You made them look at us for the first time, well maybe ever.”

Hunter and I looked at each other. Then Hunter shrugged with obvious false bravo.

“They had children, they should have paid more attention on their own. I just… helped?”

“You did a lot more than that.” Annabeth muttered. Then she straightened and glared at Hunter. He took a step back bracing for a fight while I subconsciously moved in front of him. If Annabeth noticed then she didn’t mention it, but she didn’t back down.

“Do you know who your parent is? Who Percy’s is?” She asked.

“No…”

“What? You knew who everyone else’s parents were.”

“Well the auras matched to certain cabins, I just took them there.”

“Auras?”

“Yeah I can see the grey aura around you, it matches the cabin over there.” Hunter pointed to a sturdy cabin with a bronze six that looked like it could pass as a public library. It had strong Greek columns and was surrounded by a bunch of blond kids reading books or scrolls.

Annabeth looked back at Hunter with a calculated gleam in her grey eyes, “So can you match Percy’s aura with a cabin?”

I stepped in before she could finish her interrogation. I could tell Hunter was fighting the urge to bolt, he hated attention.

“Even if he could, it would matter right? Whoever our parents are, we’re still stuck here. Right? For the rest of our lives we live here?”

“It depends,” Annabeth said. “Some campers only stay the summer. If you’re a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you’re probably not a real powerful force. The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it’s too dangerous to leave. We’re year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they’ll ignore us until we’re old enough to cause trouble—about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you’d know them. Some don’t even realize they’re demigods. But very, very few are like that.”

“So monsters can’t get in here?”

Annabeth shook her head. “Not unless they’re intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside.”

“Why would anybody want to summon a monster?”

“Practice fights. Practical jokes.”

“Practical jokes?” Hunter whispered in disbelief.

“The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm.”

“So . . . you’re a year-rounder?”

Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke’s, except Annabeth’s also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.

“I’ve been here since I was seven,” she said. “Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I’ve been here longer than most of the counselors, and they’re all in college.”

“Why did you come so young?”

She twisted the ring on her necklace. “None of your business.”

“Oh.” I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. “So . . . we could just walk out of here right now if we wanted to?”

“It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D’s or Chiron’s permission. But they wouldn’t give permission until the end of the summer session unless . . .”

“Unless?”

“You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time . . .”

Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn’t gone well.

“Back in the sick room,” I said, “when you were feeding me that stuff—”

“Ambrosia.”

“Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice.”

Annabeth’s shoulders tensed. “So you two do know something?”

I gave Hunter a look and I could tell Annabeth grilled him for answers the same way she grilled me.

“I only know what Percy overheard.” Hunter muttered.

Annabeth’s head snapped to me and I knew she wouldn't let me go until I gave her something to work with.

“Well . . . no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn’t have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?”

She clenched her fists. “I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won’t tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so normal.”

“You’ve been to Olympus?”

“Some of us year-rounders—Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others—we took a field trip during the winter solstice. That’s when the gods have their big annual council.”

“But . . . how did you get there?”

“The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor.” She looked at us like she was sure we must know this already. “You two are New Yorkers, right?”

“Oh, sure.” As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out as Hunter grumbled under his breath about moving too fast for the new people.

“Right after we visited,” Annabeth continued, “the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I’ve overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn’t returned by summer solstice, there’s going to be trouble. When you came, I was hoping . . . I mean— Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she’s got the rivalry with Poseidon. But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something.”

Hunter frowned and I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.

“I’ve got to get a quest,” Annabeth muttered to herself. “I’m not too young. If they would just tell me the problem . . .”

I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must’ve heard my stomach growl and saw Hunter’s head snap up. She told us to go on, she’d catch us later. We left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.

Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. The atmosphere was much lighter and happier than it was earlier. There was also a lot more room with the previous unclaimed campers now in their right cabins. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to Hunter and I as we walked over to our spots on the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn and Hunter’s Amphisbaena fangs. There were a lot less kids so the two of us could stretch a little.

The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.

“Found you two sleeping bags,” he said. “And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store.”

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.

I said, “Thanks.” While Hunter just nodded.

“No prob.” Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. “Tough first day?”

“We don’t belong here,” I said. “I don’t even believe in gods.”

"This is ridiculous," Hunter said.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn’t get any easier.”

The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.

“But you both do belong here.” Luke assured us. When Hunter and I looked at him he gave us an easy grin.

“You two changed everything. You got the unclaimed sorted, this place has never been so open.” He gestured around us.

The cabin was still stuffed with kids and there still wasn’t enough bunks for everyone, but everyone had a smile on their face. I didn’t know what to say and Hunter was trying to hide a flush so I tried to change the subject.

“So your dad is Hermes?” I asked.

He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. “Yeah. Hermes.”

“The wing-footed messenger guy.”

“That’s him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That’s why you’re here, enjoying cabin eleven’s hospitality. Hermes isn’t picky about who he sponsors.”

I figured Luke didn’t mean to call us nobodies. He just had a lot on his mind.

“You ever meet your dad?” I asked.

“Once.”

I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he’d tell me. Apparently, he didn’t. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar.

“That kid from before, said his mother was Nemisis and that she doesn’t have a cabin for her kids.” Hunter said from my other side looking at something Luke and I couldn’t see.

Luke frowned a little, “Ethan, yeah. The minor gods have half-blood children too, but the twelve Olympians are the only ones with cabins. The minor gods just weren’t important enough to have cabins here so Hermes lets their kids stay under his hospitality.”

Luke looked up and managed a smile. “Don’t worry about it, Percy, Hunter. The campers here, they’re mostly good people. After all, we’re extended family, right? We take care of each other.”

He seemed to understand how lost we felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him—even if he was a counselor—should’ve steered clear of uncool middle-schoolers like Hunter and I. But Luke had welcomed us into the cabin. He’d even stolen some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for us all day.

Luke gave Hunter and I a mischievous grin, “I got the feeling you two won't be here that long. With an open day performance like that, you two showing up the gods, you’ll get claimed in no time. Or right now maybe?” Luke said pointedly looking at Hunter. I snorted but Hunter didn’t laugh with me like he normally did. He was looking at Luke, his forehead was scrunched up, kind of like when he was struggling to read the board in school. As if he couldn’t understand what he was looking at. I shoved my elbow into his gut to get him to say something. Hunter let out a wheeze but only grunted that Luke might be right.

If Luke was bothered by Hunter’s sudden cold demeanor he didn’t show it. He leaned back a little and watched the rest of the cabin.

After a few minutes I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon.

“Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about us being ‘Big Three’ material. Then Annabeth . . . twice, she said one of us might be ‘the one.’ She said we should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?”

Luke folded his knife. “I hate prophecies.”

“What do you mean?”

His face twitched around the scar. “Let’s just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn’t allowed any more quests. Annabeth’s been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He’d had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn’t tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn’t destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until . . . somebody special came to the camp.”

“Somebody special?” Hunter asked.

“Don’t worry about it, guys,” Luke said. “Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she’s been waiting for. Now, come on, it’s dinnertime.”

The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I’d never heard one before.

Luke yelled, “Eleven, fall in!”

The whole cabin, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course Hunter and I were dead last. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which changed from when Hunter looked at it earlier, as it was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.

We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods— and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill. They looked very similar to the girls who melted from the trees earlier when Hunter touched cabin eight.

In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.

At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven’s was way overcrowded. Less so than this morning but Hunter and I had to squeeze onto the edge of a bench.

I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.

Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.

Clarisse sat behind me at Ares’s table. She’d apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.

Everyone at each table was hugging the previous unclaimed campers, who looked so happy to be with their siblings, or they were happy about the leg room at their new tables. Either way the brazier was roaring with life.

Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. “To the gods!”

Everybody else raised their glasses. “To the gods!”

Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, “Speak to it. Whatever you want—nonalcoholic, of course.”

I said, “Cherry Coke.”

The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.

Then I had an idea. “Blue Cherry Coke.”

The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.

I took a cautious sip. Perfect.

Hunter rolled his eyes at me then said to his glass, “Lemonade.”

“Boring,” I couched into my hand and Hunter smacked me upside the head. I threw an elbow into his gut again, but before things could get more hectic Luke smacked both of us.

Hunter growled and I groaned, while the kids around us slumped into the seats, upset that there wouldn’t be a fight.

We all settled down and I drank a toast to my mother and Uncle Arthur. I saw Hunter doing the same out of the corner of my eye and I felt grateful that he was with me. Both of us entered this crazy new world together and we were with each other for the long haul.

My mother and Uncle Arthur weren’t gone either, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. They’re in the Underworld. And if that’s a real place, then someday...

“Here you go, guys,” Luke said, handing us a platter of smoked brisket.

Hunter salivated as he grabbed the whole platter from Luke who made an affronted sound and flinched back as if Hunter was a wild animal. I managed to scoop a large piece onto my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion. Hunter looked confused and I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.

“Come on,” Luke told us.

As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.

Luke murmured in my ear, “Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell.”

“You’re kidding.”

His look warned us not to take this lightly, but I couldn’t help wondering why an immortal, allpowerful being would like the smell of burning food.

Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. “Hermes.”

I was next.

I wished I knew what god’s name to say.

Finally, I made a silent plea. Whoever you are, tell me. Please.

I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames. When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn’t gag. It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn’t have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.

Then it was Hunter’s turn.

He stepped up with a buttered role, and paused. He looked at the fire for a long moment, touched his burn scar, then tossed it in. I don’t know what he said when he did so, but I felt the pleasant breeze come from the woods. The nature spirits stopped what they were doing, then they all looked at Hunter with trepidation and excitement.

Hunter likely felt all the eyes on him and quickly shuffled until he was sitting next to me again.

When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.

Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. “Yes, I suppose I’d better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels.”

A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.

“Personally,” Mr. D continued, “I couldn’t care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have two new campers today. Peter Johnson and Homer Welch.”

Chiron murmured something.

“Er, Percy Jackson and Hunter Wolf,” Mr. D corrected. “That’s right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on.”

Everybody cheered. We all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo’s cabin led a singalong. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s’mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn’t feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home. Hunter felt the same way from the small smile on his face. Several campers from the cabin came up to us, to say thanks, give us a side hug, or to just say that if we needed anything they would be there. The only two daughters of Hephaestus came up to give us a ticket that we could cash in for them to make us anything. Hunter flushed a little but took the ticket when he was glared at.

Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag.

My fingers curled around the Minotaur’s horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite. Before I nodded off I saw Hunter curled around his trophies, out like a light.

When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly. That was our first day at Camp Half-Blood.

I wish I’d known how briefly we would get to enjoy our new home.

Chapter Text

The next few days Hunter and I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don’t count the fact that we were getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.

Each morning the two of us took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn’t that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English. After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache. Hunter scowled in annoyance at Annabeth’s smug expression when she managed to get him through the first chapter of the book after a few hours. She was a harsh taskmaster.

The rest of the day, we’d rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something we were good at. Chiron tried to teach me archery, but we found out pretty quick I wasn’t any good with a bow and arrow. He didn’t complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.

But what I lacked in skill at archery, Hunter made up for in spades. He hit a bullseye every time he took a shot. The Apollo cabin were watching with their jaws on the ground after Hunter beat their counselor, a boy who looked around sixteen, in an archery shootout.

They all looked above Hunter’s head, waiting for something. One by one their excited looks morphed into confusion when nothing happened.

I heard two Apollo campers behind me whisper, “He’s an archery prodigy, how can dad not claim him after he beat Lee?”

“I don’t know, it’s so weird… First the whole claiming thing, then this?”

I frowned in confusion, but I suppose it made sense. Apollo was one of the twin gods of archery, but Hunter’s godly parent was his mother.

If Hunter heard the whispers he didn’t show it. But Chiron’s face was etched in worry. He kept looking past the archery range into the forest. I followed his gaze and saw some brush rustle, but nothing else. Our teacher was quick to end his lesson to the confusion of the Apollo cabin, but he ignored their stares as he pushed us away to our next activity.

When I brought it up to Hunter he said, “It was wolves. I’ve seen them the past few days. I feel like they're watching me.”

I swallowed my worry.

We moved onto foot racing next. But I was no good at that either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They’d had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.

However, the nature spirits seemed to take it easy on Hunter. Especially the female ones. They seemed to swarm him like piranhas when he got close to catching them. Even I could tell they were intentionally slowing down for him. Hunter seemed weirded out by their behavior and made a conscious effort to avoid them after that.

And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize me. It seemed a one-on-one fight against me boosted her confidence when Hunter couldn’t back me up.

“There’s more where that came from, punk!” She’d tell me when I got off the mat after every defeat.

When Hunter got on the mat, he did better than I did because of Uncle Arthur, but he still lost. Every single time. However, after their last match was over he held out a hand for Clarisse to shake. She didn’t seem to know what to do, as if no one before Hunter had actually wanted to shake her hand. She looked confused and suspicious, which was ridiculous because Hunter was his father’s son. He always showed respect to people, except Gabe.

“What are you doing?” She growled.

“It was a good match.” Hunter responded and gestured to his hand.

I expected her to walk away with a sneer, or maybe even shake Hunter's hand. What I didn’t expect her to do was grasp Hunter's arm, pull him towards her and smash her fist into his face.

Hunter hit the ground with a cry and I didn’t hesitate to run to his side. Hunter was clutching his face in pain. And when I moved his hands it showed that his nose was broken. I turned and gave Clarisse my worst glare as I helped Hunter sit up. He was still holding his nose and when he fully sat up glared at Clarisse as well.

She looked similar to when she hit Hunter in his burn scar the other day, plus the fact that her cheeks were a light shade of red. She looked around at the other campers, then Hunter as I helped him stand up. She gave us one last glance, then stormed away.

I glared after her, but turned to help Hunter to the infirmary where an Apollo kid named Michael Yew was on-duty for the day. I put Hunter on a bed while Michael handed Hunter a tiny square.

“Ambrosia square.” He explained when all we did was look at it for a few seconds.

Then Michael leaned toward Hunter and reset his nose before we could do anything. Hunter let out a surprised shout and took a swing at the other boy but he moved too fast to get hit. Hunter ate his ambrosia quickly after that.

“How’d that happen?” He asked.

“Clarisse broke my nose when I tried to shake her hand. She stormed away after.”

Michael raised an eyebrow.

“It’s quite a walk from the training grounds to here, word travels fast. Apparently Clarisse is acting weird, snapping at everyone around her, punching a hole in a tree, and pacing like a wild animal.”

“Sounds like she’s her normal self.” I muttered.

Michael sighed and leaned forward to address Hunter, completely ignoring me, “Dude, she likes you.”

Hunter choked on his spit and my jaw dropped.

“There is no way she likes me! She just broke my nose! What part of that sends the message "I like you?”” Hunter stood up and marched out of the building and I followed him to our next activity not looking back at the smug boy behind us.

The next activity on the list was canoeing, which seemed to be the only thing I excelled at. And that wasn’t the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur. Hunter was amazing at archery, but not much else because he glared at the one camper who said he was good at foot racing. But at least he had a cool skill going for him, the slayer of the Amphisbaena.

I knew the senior campers and counselors were watching us, trying to decide who our parents were, but they weren’t having an easy time of it.

I wasn’t as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. I didn’t have Hephaestus’s skill with metalwork or—gods forbid— Dionysus’s way with vine plants. Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better. He really didn’t know what to make of me either.

As for Hunter, he wasn’t as smart as Athena’s children, trust me on that Annabeth spent a whole afternoon making Hunter go through trivia challenges to gauge his intelligence that she and her siblings had. She walked away disappointed and Hunter scowled for the rest of the day as he recovered from the onslaught to his brain. He didn’t have a way with plants like Demeter’s children. Hunter was an outdoorsy guy, but he very much lacked a green thumb. And Hunter hated going near the Aphrodite cabin, he said he could smell the perfume from the pavilion and that it made his nose burn. Luke was stuck on Hunter too, he suggested that he was the child of a minor god, but he didn’t seem confident in that statement.

Despite all that, I liked camp and I could tell that Hunter did too, but he would never admit it aloud. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with Hunter at cabin eleven’s table, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling I’d always had, like the memory of his smile. Hunter did the same and without fail the forest would glow in what felt like happiness every time he dumped food into the fire. I tried not to think too much about my mom or Uncle Arthur, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save them, to bring them back. . . .

I never brought it up to Hunter aloud, we knew each other well enough to know what we were thinking. He would squeeze my shoulder but that was it. I never minded, that one squeeze was worth a thousand smiles.

I started to understand Luke’s bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn’t they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn’t my dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?

I knew that Hunter could point me in the right direction, like he did with everyone else, but that didn’t feel right. Before Hunter and I came, kids here were waiting for years, we had only been here a few days. Plus if Hunter helped to sort me, it would feel like cheating. I felt the need deep inside to prove myself, so I refused to ask. Plus even if Hunter sorted me, it would leave him alone. Hunter couldn’t sort himself from what I understood, and I also didn’t want to be in a different cabin than him. So I held off.

Thursday afternoon, three days after I’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.

We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armor. I guess I did okay. At least, I understood what I was supposed to do and my reflexes were good. The problem was, I couldn’t find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either they were too heavy, or too light, or too long. Luke tried his best to fix me up, but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me.

Hunter seemed okay too, but he didn’t seem happy with the weapon choice. He leaned toward smaller blades, but even then he seemed uncoordinated, probably for the first time in his life. I could tell Hunter was getting mad, but he continued the lesson anyway until Luke came in to see what was wrong. Like me, Luke agreed that none of the swords matched him.

“Perhaps you're not a sword guy. Maybe you just need to use a different weapon. Ares kids are master spear fighters. You likely just need to look elsewhere.”

Hunter gave a nod but didn’t say anything.

We moved on to dueling in pairs. Well everyone else would be in pairs. Luke announced he would fight both Hunter and I at the same time, since it was our first time.

“Good luck,” one of the campers told me. “Luke’s the best swordsman in the last three hundred years.”

“Maybe he’ll go easy on us,” I said.

The camper snorted.

Luke showed us thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With every swipe, we got a little more battered and bruised despite our best effort to fight together. “Keep your guard up, Percy,” he’d say, then whap me in the ribs with the flat of his blade. “No, not that far up!” Whap! “Hunter! Lunge!” Whap! “Now, back!” Whap!

By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the drinks cooler. Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good idea, I did the same. Instantly, I felt better. Strength surged back into my arms. The sword didn’t feel so awkward.

“Okay, everybody circle up!” Luke ordered. “If Percy doesn’t mind, I want to give you a little demo.”

Great, I thought. Let’s all watch Percy get pounded.

The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured they’d been in my shoes before and couldn’t wait to see how Luke used me for a punching bag. Hunter glared at them and looked at me, but I waved him off. I didn’t want to see Luke whack him all day with a weapon that he hated.

Luke told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming technique: how to twist the enemy’s blade with the flat of your own sword so that he had no choice but to drop his weapon.

“This is difficult,” he stressed. “I’ve had it used against me. No laughing at Percy, now. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique.”

He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword clattered out of my hand. “Now in real time,” he said, after I’d retrieved my weapon. “We keep sparring until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?”

I nodded, and Luke came after me. Somehow, I kept him from getting a shot at the hilt of my sword. My senses opened up. I saw his attacks coming. I countered. I stepped forward and tried a thrust of my own. Luke deflected it easily, but I saw a change in his face. His eyes narrowed, and he started to press me with more force.

The sword grew heavy in my hand. The balance wasn’t right. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before Luke took me down, so I figured, What the heck?

I tried the disarming maneuver.

My blade hit the base of Luke’s and I twisted, putting my whole weight into a downward thrust.

Clang.

Luke’s sword rattled against the stones. The tip of my blade was an inch from his undefended chest.

The other campers were silent.

Hunter smirked.

I lowered my sword. “Um, sorry.”

For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak.

“Sorry?” His scarred face broke into a grin. “By the gods, Percy, why are you sorry? Show me that again!”

I didn’t want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned me. But Luke insisted. This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor.

After a long pause, somebody in the audience said, “Beginner’s luck?”

Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised at me with an entirely new interest. “Maybe,” he said. “But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced sword. . . .”

Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Hunter and Grover at the lake, resting from a near-death experience on the climbing wall. Grover had scampered to the top like a mountain goat, and Hunter’s parkour training and grip strength made the climb a piece of cake for him, but the lava had almost gotten me. My shirt had smoking holes in it. The hairs had been singed off my forearms.

We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket-weaving, until I got up the nerve to ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr. D.

His face turned a sickly shade of yellow.

“Fine,” he said. “Just great.”

“So your career’s still on track?” Hunter asked.

He glanced at us nervously. “Chiron t-told you guys I want a searcher’s license?”

“Well . . . no.” I had no idea what a searcher’s license was, but it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. “He just said you had big plans, you know . . . and that you needed credit for completing a keeper’s assignment. So did you get it?”

Grover looked down at the naiads. “Mr. D suspended judgment. He said I hadn’t failed or succeeded

with you two yet, so our fates were still tied together. If one of you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we came back alive, then maybe he’d consider the job complete.”

My spirits lifted. “Well, that’s not so bad, right?”

“Blaa-ha-ha! He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty. The chances of one of you getting a quest . . . and even if you did, why would you want me along?”

“Of course I’d want you along!”

“You’re our friend, neither of us would leave you.” Hunter said.

Grover stared glumly into the water. “Basket-weaving . . . Must be nice to have a useful skill.”

I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look more miserable. We talked about canoeing, archery, and swordplay for a while, then debated the pros and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the four empty cabins.

“Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis,” he said. “She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she didn’t have one, she’d be mad.” I had a gut feeling that that statement wasn’t entirely true based on Grover’s pinched face. Hunter frowned as well and looked at cabin eight. I remembered that it shuddered when Hunter had touched the door, the way the cabin had almost seemed to want Hunter to walk inside.

Grover muttered under his breath so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him, “Well, no kids except for that one time…”

I raised an eyebrow and Hunter looked at Grover in confusion. When he saw us looking he flushed in embarrassment and I changed the subject to avoid an awkward silence.

“Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big Three?”

Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. “No. One of them, number two, is Hera’s,” he said. “That’s another honorary thing. She’s the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn’t go around having affairs with mortals. That’s her husband’s job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos.”

“Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.”

“Right. You know. After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what.”

“Zeus got the sky,” I remembered. “Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But Hades doesn’t have a cabin here.” Hunter pointed out.

“No. He doesn’t have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here . . .” Grover shuddered. “Well, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Let’s leave it at that.”

“But Zeus and Poseidon—they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths. Why are their cabins empty?”

Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably. “About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn’t sire any more heroes. Their children were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades on the other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx.”

Thunder boomed.

I said, “That’s the most serious oath you can make.”

Grover nodded.

“And the brothers kept their word—no kids?”

Grover’s face darkened. “Seventeen years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon. There was this TV starlet with a big fluffy eighties hairdo—he just couldn’t help himself. When their child was born, a little girl named Thalia . . . well, the River Styx is serious about promises. Zeus himself got off easy because he’s immortal, but he brought a terrible fate on his daughter.”

“But that isn’t fair! It wasn’t the little girl’s fault.” Hunter cried in outrage.

Grover hesitated. “Percy, Hunter, children of the Big Three have powers greater than other half-bloods. They have a strong aura, a scent that attracts monsters. When Hades found out about the girl, he wasn’t too happy about Zeus breaking his oath. Hades let the worst monsters out of Tartarus to torment Thalia. A satyr was assigned to be her keeper when she was twelve, but there was nothing he could do. He tried to escort her here with a couple of other half-bloods she’d befriended. They almost made it. They got all the way to the top of that hill.”

He pointed across the valley, to the pine tree where I’d fought the minotaur. “All three Kindly Ones were after them, along with a hoard of hellhounds. They were about to be overrun when Thalia told her satyr to take the other two half-bloods to safety while she held off the monsters. She was wounded and tired, and she didn’t want to live like a hunted animal. The satyr didn’t want to leave her, but he couldn’t change her mind, and he had to protect the others. So Thalia made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill. As she died, Zeus took pity on her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of the valley. That’s why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill.”

I stared at the pine in the distance. I turned and saw Hunter looking at the tree too. Then I remembered what he said before we crossed the border into camp, when our parents were still with us. How the tree had a sky blue aura.

“I was seeing Thalia.” Hunter whispered.

The story made me feel hollow, and guilty too. A girl my age had sacrificed herself to save her friends. She had faced a whole army of monsters. Next to that, my victory over the Minotaur didn’t seem like much. I heard Hunter huff in sadness and I knew he felt the same. I wondered, if I’d acted differently, could I have saved my mother? Saved Uncle Arthur?

“Grover,” I said, “have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini.”

“And have they ever returned somebody from the dead?”

“No. Never. Orpheus came close. . . . Percy, you’re not seriously thinking—”

“No,” I lied. “I was just wondering. So . . . a satyr is always assigned to guard a demigod?” Hunter raised an eyebrow at me that I refused to look at. He had nothing to stand on, I know he’s been thinking the same thing.

Grover studied us warily. I hadn’t persuaded him that I’d really dropped the Underworld idea. “Not always. We go undercover to a lot of schools. We try to sniff out the half-bloods who have the makings of great heroes. If we find one with a very strong aura, like a child of the Big Three, we alert Chiron. He tries to keep an eye on them, since they could cause really huge problems.”

“And you found us. Chiron said you thought we might be something special.”

Grover looked as if I’d just led him into a trap. “I didn’t . . . Oh, listen, don’t think like that. If you were—you know—you’d never ever be allowed a quest, and I’d never get my license. You’re probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don’t worry, okay?”

“And me?” Hunter asked.

Grover flushed red, “I wouldn’t worry about it Hunter. Your mom is likely a minor deity.” He rushed to say.

Grover really was a terrible liar. But I got the idea he was trying to reassure himself more than us.

That night after dinner, there was a lot more excitement than usual.

At last, it was time for capture the flag.

When the plates were cleared away, the conch horn sounded and we all stood at our tables. Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about ten feet long, glistening gray, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar’s head. 

I turned to Luke and yelled over the noise, “Those are the flags?”

“Yeah.”

“Ares and Athena always lead the teams?” Hunter asked.

“Not always,” he said. “But often.”

“So, if another cabin captures one, what do you do— repaint the flag?”

He grinned. “You’ll see. First we have to get one.”

“Whose side are we on?”

He gave me a sly look, as if he knew something I didn’t. The scar on his face made him look almost evil in the torchlight. Hunter frowned at him and squinted, but Luke was talking before anything happened. “We’ve made a temporary alliance with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And you two are going to help.”

The teams were announced. Athena had made an alliance with Apollo and Hermes, the two biggest cabins. Apparently, privileges had been traded—shower times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities—in order to win support.

Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. From what I’d seen, Dionysus’s kids were actually good athletes, but there were only two of them. Demeter’s kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff, but they weren’t very aggressive. Aphrodite’s sons and daughters I wasn’t too worried about. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped. Hephaestus’s kids weren’t pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem. That, of course, left Ares’s cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet.

Plus with Hunter helping out with sorting, the Hermes cabin had lost a lot of members so Ares had the much bigger team. 

I narrowed my eyes at Clarisse, bigger team or not I wanted to win, if nothing else to knock her down a few pegs.

Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble. Bringing me back to the present.

“Heroes!” he announced. “You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!” 

He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxhide shields coated in metal.

“Whoa,” I said. “We’re really supposed to use these?”

Luke looked at me as if I were crazy. “Unless you want to get skewered by your friends in cabin five. Here—Chiron thought these would fit. You two will be on border patrol.”

My shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the middle. It weighed about a million pounds. I could have snowboarded on it fine, but I hoped nobody seriously expected me to run fast. The armor I was wearing fit okay, but it felt weird. I also had a new sword, but like all the others it didn’t feel balanced.

Hunter immediately ditched his shield and sword to Luke’s displeasure. He didn’t let that bother him though. He grabbed a bow and a quiver of arrows and slid it on over his armor that seemed to always be poking him. Luke rolled his eyes, but slapped a knife into Hunter’s hand.

“At least take this. In case you get into close combat at the border.”

Hunter glared, but accepted the knife anyway. He twirled it a few times and a tiny smile appeared. Luke saw it too.

“Huh, so you’re a knife guy.”

Hunter kept looking at the knife in his hands as if it held the secret to the universe.

“I guess so. But it doesn’t feel right.” He muttered, as he strapped the blade to his side.

“Tell me about it.” I deadpanned, getting a small eye roll in response.

Our helmets, like all the helmets on Athena’s side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes.

Annabeth yelled, “Blue team, forward!”

We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off toward the north.

I managed to catch up with Annabeth without tripping over my equipment, while Hunter lightly jogged beside me, the jerk. “Hey.”

She kept marching.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “Got any magic items you can loan me?”

Her hand drifted toward her pocket, as if she were afraid I’d stolen something.

“Just watch Clarisse’s spear,” she said. “You don’t want that thing touching you. Otherwise, don’t worry. We’ll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you two your jobs?”

“Border patrol, whatever that means.” Hunter said.

“It’s easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan.”

She pushed ahead, leaving us in the dust.

“Okay,” I mumbled. “Glad you wanted us on your team.”

It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view. Annabeth stationed Hunter and I next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.

Standing there alone, with my big blue-feathered helmet and my huge shield, I felt like an idiot. The leather grip of my sword was pulling on my hand like a bowling ball.

“Screw this, I’m climbing the tree.” Hunter muttered then started to walk away.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Dude, don't just leave me here.”

“I’m not. I want higher ground with my bow. You’ll be fine, I always have you back.”

He did. Hunter never let me down. I didn’t like the idea of just standing here, but I did like the idea of cover fire. So I nodded my head.

Hunter smiled at me, then turned and started to climb the tree to my right like he was a squirrel.

Then I was alone on the ground next to the creek. There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? I mean, Olympus had to have liability issues, right? The only thing that kept nervous sweat from breaking out was the fact that Hunter had the high ground.

Far away, the conch horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue-plumed ally from Apollo raced past me like a deer, leaped through the creek, and disappeared into enemy territory.

Great, I thought. I’ll miss all the fun, as usual. I looked up and Hunter was there, almost hidden in the branches looking put out.

Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up my spine, a low canine growl, somewhere close by. Hunter knocked an arrow and pulled back his bowstring and I raised my shield instinctively; I had the feeling something was stalking me.

Then more growls, something smaller was moving around in the brush. A lot of somethings. They were fast and I couldn’t make out anything other than some tails before they vanished, blending into the forest.

I looked up again, Hunter still had his bow drawn. He had seen them too. They must have been wolves. I started to back up toward the tree Hunter was in, wanting to at least have my back completely covered. Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating.

On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. At first I thought it was the wolves but no. Five Ares warriors came yelling and screaming out of the dark.

“Cream the punk!” Clarisse screamed.

Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a five-foot-long spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had only the standard-issue bronze swords—not that that made me feel any better.

They charged across the stream. There was no help in sight other than Hunter. I could run. Or I could defend myself against half the Ares cabin.

I managed to sidestep the first kid’s swing, but these guys were not as stupid the Minotaur. They surrounded me, and Clarisse thrust at me with her spear. My shield deflected the point, but I felt a painful tingling all over my body. My hair stood on end. My shield arm went numb, and the air burned.

Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric. I fell back.

Another Ares guy slammed me in the chest with the butt of his sword and I hit the dirt. They could’ve kicked me into jelly, but they were too busy laughing.

“Give him a haircut,” Clarisse said. “Grab his hair.”

That seemed to be Hunter’s last straw. He let his arrow fly and it slammed into the Ares camper to Clarisse’s left.

He fell to the ground with a cry of pain and an arrow in his thigh. The rest of them backed off, not knowing where the arrow came from.

It bought me time to get to my feet. I raised my sword to attack, but Clarisse slammed it aside with her spear as sparks flew. Now both my arms felt numb.

“Oh, wow,” Clarisse said. “I’m scared of this guy. Really scared.”

“The flag is that way,” I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid it didn’t come out that way.

“Yeah,” one of her siblings said. “But see, we don’t care about the flag. We care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid.”

“You do that without my help,” I told them. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say.

Two of them came at me. I backed up toward the creek, tried to raise my shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn’t been wearing an armored breastplate, I would’ve been shish-ke-babbed. As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-size cut.

Seeing my own blood made me dizzy—warm and cold at the same time.

“No maiming,” I managed to say.

“Oops,” the guy said. “Guess I lost my dessert privilege. Plus your friend broke that rule first.” Gesturing to his sibling still on the ground with Hunter’s arrow in his leg.

That was a good point. I thought to myself.

No sooner had I thought that Hunter’s next arrow hit the jerk’s arm. He let out a cry of pain as he went down.

“Who’s doing that!? Show yourself coward!” Clarisse screamed, using her shield to push me into the creek, landing with a slash, while looking for who was shooting at her teammates.

Through the haze I saw Hunter knocking another arrow from his hidden nook and smirked. But then something happened. The haze from the shocks I got from Clarisse’s spear melted away. The water seemed to wake up my senses, as if I’d just had a bag of my mom’s double-espresso jelly beans.

Clarisse and her last two lackeys saw me stand and moved to push me down again. But I knew what to do. I swung the flat of my sword against the first guy’s head and knocked his helmet clean off. I hit him so hard I could see his eyes vibrating as he crumpled into the water.

Then I slammed my shield into the face of the last friend Clarisse had. She looked murderous. She went to stab me again but when she thrust her spear at me again I dodged and caught the shaft between the edge of my shield and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig.

“Ah!” she screamed. “You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!”

She probably would’ve said worse, but I smacked her between the eyes with my sword-butt and sent her stumbling backward out of the creek.

Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing toward the boundary line with the red team’s banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat, and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.

“A trick!” she shouted. “It was a trick.”

They staggered after Luke, but Hunter had it covered. He fired a few arrows in front of them, stopping their advance. Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn.

The game was over. We’d won.

Clarisse was seething, but flinched back in shock when Hunter jumped from his tree and landed next to me. He gave me a high-five.

“Hey there.” Hunter said. Clarisse flushed red.

Before she could hit Hunter he jumped back. For a second Clarisse floundered, then she kicked a rock and stormed over to her cabinmates to nurse her pride.

I felt great that we beat her and I was about to grab Hunter and join the celebration when Annabeth’s voice, right next to me in the creek, said, “Not bad, heroes.”

I looked, but she wasn’t there.

“Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?” she asked. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she’d just taken it off her head.

I felt myself getting angry. I wasn’t even fazed by the fact that she’d just been invisible. “You set me up,” I said. “You put me here because you knew Clarisse would come after me, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all figured out.”

“She set both of us up, Percy.” Hunter said, giving Annabeth an unimpressed stare.

Annabeth shrugged. “I told you. Athena always, always has a plan.”

“A plan to get us pulverized.”

“I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but . . .” She shrugged. “You didn’t need help. You also had Hunter. You two work well together.”

Then she noticed my wounded arm. “How did you do that?”

“Sword cut,” I said. “What do you think?”

“No. It was a sword cut. Look at it.”

The blood was gone. Where the huge cut had been, there was a long white scratch, and even that was fading. As I watched, it turned into a small scar, and disappeared.

“What the?” Hunter whispered.

“I—I don’t get it,” I said.

Annabeth was thinking hard. I could almost see the gears turning. She looked down at my feet, then at Clarisse’s broken spear, and said, “Step out of the water, Percy.”

“What—?”

“Just do it.”

I came out of the creek and immediately felt bone tired. My arms started to go numb again. My adrenaline rush left me. I almost fell over, but Annabeth steadied me.

“Oh, Styx,” she cursed. “This is not good. I didn’t want . . . I assumed it would be Zeus. . . .”

Before I could ask what she meant, I heard that canine growl again, but much closer than before. Then a series of wolf howls ripped through the forest. The campers’ cheering died instantly and every male camper paled. They looked like they wanted nothing more than to run out of the woods like their lives depended on it. 

Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly: “Stand ready! My bow!”

Annabeth drew her sword.

There on the rocks just above us were two black hounds the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.

They were looking straight at Hunter and I.

Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, “Percy, Hunter, run!”

She tried to step in front of us, but the hound was too fast. Both of them leaped over her—two enormous shadows with teeth— Hunter managed to dive out of the way but I wasn’t fast enough. Just as it hit me, as I stumbled backward and felt its razor-sharp claws ripping through my armor, Hunter got to his feet and faster than anyone else let three arrows fly. One hit the beast’s eye and the other two hit its neck with a solid thwacking sound, like pieces of paper being ripped one after the other. The monster fell dead and disintegrated, but the second one charged at Hunter. Chiron and the Apollo cabin let their arrows fly but they hit the monster's backside, it made it look like a porcupine, but it wasn’t enough to kill it.

Hunter started to move back but then the mood of the forest seemed to change in a split second. As if it was mad, protective, and worried all at the same time. A group of six wolves the size of Great Danes exploded out of the brush and tackled the second monster.

They ripped it to shreds and in seconds the other black beast was dead too.

The wolves circled Hunter growling, as if they were his personal bodyguards. I didn’t get much of a chance to think about it because I could feel my shirt covered in blood. By some miracle, I was still alive. I didn’t want to look underneath the ruins of my shredded armor. I knew it was really bad. If Hunter had been any slower the monster would’ve turned me into a hundred pounds of delicatessen meat.

Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.

“Di immortales!” Annabeth said. “Those were hellhounds from the Fields of Punishment. They don’t... they’re not supposed to...”

“Someone summoned it,” Chiron said. “Someone inside the camp.”

Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone.

Hunter slowly walked past the group of wolves who were all looking at him as if waiting for him to pet them. The moved to the side when he walked through, right past a stupefied Clarisse. He fell to his knees next to me and I lifted my hand to squeeze his shoulder in thanks.

We watched the body of the hellhound that almost got Hunter melt into shadow, soaking into the ground until it disappeared. The wolves around it growled at the spot where its body once was, then moved toward Hunter again.

Campers jumped out of the way as the wolves circled Hunter, Annabeth, and I, forming what seemed to be a barrier between us and any threats. Chiron wasn’t spared, when he made to walk forward the wolves growled. He backed off immediately.

“You’re wounded,” Annabeth told me. “Quick, Percy, get in the water.”

“I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not,” Hunter said. If I had the strength to stand up I would be slapping him for that.

“Chiron, watch this.” Annabeth called to our teacher, ignoring our bickering.

I was too tired to argue and Hunter was too worried about me to question Annabeth. He helped me step back into the creek, the whole camp gathering around me. Instantly, I felt better. I could feel the cuts on my chest closing up. Some of the campers gasped.

“Look, I—I don’t know why,” I said, trying to apologize. “I’m sorry. . . .”

But they weren’t watching my wounds heal. They were staring at something above my head.

“Percy,” Annabeth said, pointing. “Um . . .”

By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident.

Then the rest of the camp gasped at the same time. Others even flinched back and Chiron’s face went whiter than snow. I looked over to Hunter who was just as confused as I was. But then I noticed how the wolves were bowing to my friend.

Their heads were low and submissive. Hunter and I shared a glance but my eyes snapped to the spot above Hunter’s head. He followed my eyes and saw the spinning hologram of a full moon with a bow and arrow next to a wolf.

“Your father, Percy. And Hunter your mother is…” Annabeth gasped out between breaths. “This is really not good.”

“It is determined,” Chiron announced, still looking pale.

All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn’t look happy about it. Clarisse was completely shocked and any other time it would have been funny but my gut was twisting with nerves.

“My father?” I asked, completely bewildered.

“My mother?” Hunter questioned in shock.

“Poseidon,” said Chiron. “Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Artemis, Mistress of Animals, Queen of the Wilds, Helper of Childbirth. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God. Hail, Hunter Wolf, Son of the Moon Goddess.”

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Artemis's claim: