‘Are they any good?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘They taste like cardboard.’
I didn’t have anything against cardboard, so I tried one. Annabeth passed. We promised to see Silena later and kept going.
As we crossed the commons area, a fight broke out between the Ares and Apollo cabins. Some Apollo campers armed with fire bombs flew over the Ares cabin in a chariot pulled by two pegasi. I’d never seen the chariot before, but it looked like a pretty sweet ride. Soon, the roof of the Ares cabin was burning, and naiads from the canoe lake rushed over to blow water on it.
Then the Ares campers called down a curse and all the Apollo kids’ arrows turned to rubber. The Apollo kids kept shooting at the Ares kids but the arrows bounced off.
Two archers ran by, chased by an angry Ares kid who was yelling in poetry: ‘Curse me, eh? I’ll make you pay!/I don’t want to rhyme all day!’
Annabeth sighed. ‘Not that again. Last time Apollo cursed a cabin, it took a week for the rhyming couplets to wear off.’
I shuddered. Apollo was god of poetry as well as archery, and I’d heard him recite in person. I’d almost rather get shot by an arrow.
‘What are they fighting about anyway?’ I asked.
Annabeth ignored me while she scribbled on her inspection scroll, giving both cabins a one out of five.
I found myself staring at her, which was stupid since I’d seen her a billion times. She was about the same height as me this summer, which was a relief. Still, she seemed so much more mature. It was kind of intimidating. I mean sure, she’d always been cute, but she was starting to be seriously beautiful.
Finally she said, ‘That flying chariot.’
‘What?’
‘You asked what they were fighting about.’
‘Oh. Oh, right.’
‘They captured it in a raid in Philadelphia last week. Some of Luke’s demigods were there with that flying chariot. The Apollo cabin seized it during the battle, but Ares cabin led the raid. So they’ve been fighting about who gets it ever since.’
We ducked as Michael Yew’s chariot dive-bombed an Ares camper. The Ares camper tried to stab him and cuss him out in rhyming couplets. He was pretty creative about rhyming those cuss words.
‘We’re fighting for our lives,’ I said, ‘and they’re bickering about some stupid chariot.’
‘They’ll get over it,’ Annabeth said. ‘Clarisse will come to her senses.’
I wasn’t so sure. That didn’t sound like the Clarisse I knew.
I scanned more reports and we inspected a few more cabins. Demeter got a four. Hephaestus got a three and probably should’ve gotten lower, but with Beckendorf being gone and all, we cut them some slack. Hermes got a two, which was no surprise. All campers who didn’t know their godly parentage were shoved into the Hermes cabin, and since the gods were kind of forgetful, that cabin was always overcrowded.
Finally we got to Athena’s cabin, which was orderly and clean as usual. Books were straightened on the shelves. The armour was polished. Battle maps and blueprints decorated the walls. Only Annabeth’s bunk was messy. It was covered in papers and her silver laptop was still running.
‘Vlacas,’ Annabeth muttered, which was basically calling herself an idiot in Greek.
Her second-in-command Malcolm suppressed a smile. ‘Yeah, um … we cleaned everything else. Didn’t know if it was safe to move your notes.’
That was probably smart. Annabeth had a bronze knife that she reserved just for monsters and people who messed with her stuff.
Malcolm grinned at me. ‘We’ll wait outside while you finish inspection.’ The Athena campers filed out the door while Annabeth cleaned up her bunk.
I shuffled uneasily and pretended to go through some more reports. Technically, even on inspection, it was against camp rules for two campers of the opposite sex to be … like, alone in a cabin.
That rule had come up a lot when Silena and Beckendorf started dating. And I know some of you might be thinking: aren’t all demigods related on the godly side, and doesn’t that make dating gross? But the thing is, the godly side of your family doesn’t count genetically speaking, since gods don’t have DNA. A demigod would never think about dating someone who had the same godly parent. Like two kids from Athena cabin? No way. But a daughter of Aphrodite and a son of Hephaestus? They’re not related. So it’s no problem.
Anyway, for some strange reason I was thinking about this as I watched Annabeth straighten up. She closed her laptop, which she’d been given as a gift from the inventor Daedalus last summer.
I cleared my throat. ‘So … get any good info from that thing?’
‘Too much,’ she said. ‘Daedalus had so many ideas I could spend fifty years just trying to figure them all out.’
‘Yeah,’ I muttered. ‘That would be fun.’
She shuffled her papers – mostly drawings of buildings and a bunch of handwritten notes. I knew she wanted to be an architect some day, but I’d learned the hard way not to ask what she was working on. She’d start talking about angles and load-bearing joints until my eyes glazed over.
‘You know …’ She brushed her hair behind her ear, like she does when she’s nervous. ‘This whole thing with Beckendorf and Silena. It kind of makes you think. About … what’s important. About losing people who are important.’
I nodded. My brain started seizing on little random details, like the fact that she was still wearing those silver owl earrings from her dad, who was this brainiac military history professor in San Francisco.
‘Um, yeah,’ I stammered. ‘Like … is everything cool with your family?’
Okay, really stupid question but, hey, I was nervous.
Annabeth looked disappointed, but she nodded.
‘My dad wanted to take me to Greece this summer,’ she said wistfully. ‘I’ve always wanted to see –’
‘The Parthenon,’ I remembered.
She managed a smile. ‘Yeah.’
‘That’s okay. There’ll be other summers, right?’
As soon as I said it, I realized it was a bone-headed comment. I was facing the ‘end of my days’. Within a week, Olympus might fall. If the Age of the Gods really did end, the world as we knew it would dissolve into chaos. Demigods would be hunted to extinction. There would be no more summers for us.
Annabeth stared at her inspection scroll. ‘Three out of five,’ she muttered, ‘for a sloppy head counsellor. Come on. Let’s finish your reports and get back to Chiron.’
On the way to the Big House, we read the last report, which was handwritten on a maple leaf from a satyr in Canada. If possible, the note made me feel even worse.
‘Dear Grover,’ I read aloud. ‘Woods outside Toronto attacked by giant evil badger. Tried to do as you suggested and summon power of Pan. No effect. Many naiads’ trees destroyed. Retreating to Ottawa. Please advise. Where are you? – Gleeson Hedge, protector.’
Annabeth grimaced. ‘You haven’t heard anything from him? Even with your empathy link?’
I shook my head dejectedly.
Ever since last summer when the god Pan died, our friend Grover had been drifting further and further away. The Council of Cloven Elders treated him like an outcast, but Grover still travelled all over the East Coast, trying to spread the word about Pan and convince nature spirits to protect their own little bits of the wild. He’d only come back to camp a few times to see his girlfriend Juniper.
Last I’d heard he was in Central Park, organizing the dryads, but nobody had seen or heard from him in two months. We’d tried to send Iris-messages. They never got through. I had an empathy link with Grover, so I hoped I would know if anything bad happened to him. Grover had told me one time that if he died, the empathy link might kill me too. But I wasn’t sure if that was still true or not.
I wondered if he was still in Manhattan. Then I thought about my dream of Rachel’s sketch – dark clouds closing on the city, an army gathered around the Empire State Building.
‘Annabeth.’ I stopped her by the tetherball court. I knew I was asking for trouble, but I didn’t know who else to trust. Plus I’d always depended on Annabeth for advice. ‘Listen, I had this dream about, um, Rachel …’
I told her the whole thing, even the weird picture of Luke as a child.
For a while, she didn’t say anything. Then she rolled up her inspection scroll so tight she ripped it. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I’m not sure. You’re the best strategist I know. If you were Kronos planning this war, what would you do next?’
‘I’d use Typhon as a distraction. Then I’d hit Olympus directly, while the gods were in the west.’
‘Just like in Rachel’s picture.’
‘Percy,’ she said, her voice tight, ‘Rachel is just a mortal.’
‘But what if her dream is true? Those other Titans – they said Olympus would be destroyed in a matter of days. They said they had plenty of other challenges. And what’s with that picture of Luke as a kid –’
‘We’ll just have to be ready.’
‘How?’ I said. ‘Look at our camp. We can’t even stop fighting each other. And I’m supposed to get my stupid soul reaped.’
She threw down her scroll. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have shown you the prophecy.’ Her voice was angry and hurt. ‘All it did was scare you. You run away from things when you’re scared.’
I stared at her, completely stunned. ‘Me? Run away?’
She got right in my face. ‘Yes, you. You’re a coward, Percy Jackson!’
We were nose to nose. Her eyes were red, and I suddenly realized that when she called me a coward maybe she wasn’t talking about the prophecy.
‘If you don’t like our chances,’ she said, ‘maybe you should go on that vacation with Rachel.’
‘Annabeth –’
‘If you don’t like our company.’
‘That’s not fair!’
She pushed past me and stormed towards the strawberry fields. She hit the tetherball as she passed and sent it spinning angrily around the pole.
I’d like to say my day got better from there. Of course, it didn’t.
That afternoon we had an assembly at the campfire to burn Beckendorf’s burial shroud and say our goodbyes. Even the Ares and Apollo cabins called a temporary truce to attend.
Beckendorf’s shroud was made out of metal links like chainmail. I didn’t see how it would burn, but the Fates must’ve been helping out. The metal melted in the fire and turned to golden smoke that rose into the sky. The campfire flames always reflected the campers’ moods, and today they burned black.
I hoped Beckendorf’s spirit would end up in Elysium. Maybe he’d even choose to be reborn and try for Elysium in three different lifetimes so he could reach the Isles of the Blest, which was like the Underworld’s ultimate party headquarters. If anyone deserved it, Beckendorf did.
Annabeth left without a word to me. Most of the other campers drifted off to their afternoon activities. I just stood there, staring at the dying fire. Silena sat nearby crying while Clarisse and her boyfriend Chris Rodriguez tried to comfort her.
Finally I got up the nerve to walk over. ‘Hey, Silena, I’m really sorry.’
She sniffled. Clarisse glared at me, but she always glares at everyone. Chris would barely look at me. He’d been one of Luke’s men until Clarisse rescued him from the Labyrinth last summer, and I guess he still felt guilty about it.
I cleared my throat. ‘Silena, you know Beckendorf carried your picture. He looked at it right before we went into battle. You meant a lot to him. You made the last year the best of his life.’
Silena sobbed.
‘Good work, Percy,’ Clarisse muttered.
‘No, it’s all right,’ Silena said. ‘Thank … thank you, Percy. I should go.’
‘You want company?’ Clarisse asked.
Silena shook her head and ran off.
‘She’s stronger than she looks,’ Clarisse muttered, almost to herself. ‘She’ll survive.’
‘You could help with that,’ I suggested. ‘You could honour Beckendorf’s memory by fighting with us.’
Clarisse went for her knife, but it wasn’t there any more. She’d thrown it on the ping-pong table in the Big House.
‘Not my problem,’ she growled. ‘My cabin doesn’t get honour – I don’t fight.’
I noticed she wasn’t speaking in rhymes. Maybe she hadn’t been around when her cabinmates got cursed, or maybe she had a way of breaking the spell. With a chill, I wondered if Clarisse could be Kronos’s spy at camp. Was that why she was keeping her cabin out of the fight? But, as much as I disliked Clarisse, spying for Titans didn’t seem like her style.
‘All right,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t want to bring this up, but you owe me one. You’d be rotting in a Cyclops’s cave in the Sea of Monsters if it weren’t for me.’
She clenched her jaw. ‘Any other favour, Percy. Not this. The Ares cabin has been dissed too many times. And don’t think I don’t know what people say about me behind my back.’
I wanted to say, Well, it’s true. But I bit my tongue.
‘So what – you’re just going to let Kronos crush us?’ I asked.
‘If you want my help so much, tell Apollo to give us the chariot.’
‘You’re such a big baby.’
She charged me but Chris got between us. ‘Whoa, guys,’ he said. ‘Clarisse, you know, maybe he’s got a point.’
She sneered at him. ‘Not you too!’
She trudged off with Chris at her heels. ‘Hey, wait! I just meant – Clarisse, wait!’
I watched the last sparks from Beckendorf’s fire curl into the afternoon sky. Then I headed towards the sword-fighting arena. I needed a break, and I wanted to see an old friend.
5 I Drive My Dog Into a Tree
Mrs O’Leary saw me before I saw her, which was a pretty good trick considering she’s the size of a garbage truck. I walked into the arena and a wall of darkness slammed into me.
‘WOOF!’
The next thing I knew I was flat on the ground with a huge paw on my chest and an oversized Brillo-pad tongue licking my face.
‘Ow!’ I said. ‘Hey, girl. Good to see you, too. Ow!’
It took a few minutes for Mrs O’Leary to calm down and get off me. By then I was pretty much drenched in dog drool. She wanted to play fetch, so I picked up a bronze shield and tossed it across the arena.
By the way, Mrs O’Leary is the world’s only friendly hellhound. I kind of inherited her when her previous owner died. She lived at camp, but Beckendorf … well, Beckendorf used to take care of her whenever I was gone. He had smelted Mrs O’Leary’s favourite bronze chewing bone. He’d forged her collar with the little smiley face and crossbones nametag. Beckendorf had been her best friend next to me.
Thinking about that made me sad all over again, but I threw the shield a few more times because Mrs O’Leary insisted.
Soon she started barking – a sound slightly louder than an artillery gun – like she needed to go for a walk. The other campers didn’t think it was funny when she went to the bathroom in the arena. It had caused more than one unfortunate slip-and-slide accident. So I opened the gates of the arena and she bounded straight towards the woods.
I jogged after her, not too concerned that she was getting ahead. Nothing in the woods could threaten Mrs O’Leary. Even the dragons and giant scorpions ran away when she came close.
When I finally tracked her down, she wasn’t using the facilities. She was in a familiar clearing where the Council of Cloven Elders had once put Grover on trial. The place didn’t look so good. The grass had turned yellow. The three topiary thrones had lost all their leaves. But that’s not what surprised me. In the middle of the glade stood the weirdest trio I’d ever seen: Juniper the tree nymph, Nico di Angelo and a very old, very fat satyr.
Nico was the only one who didn’t seem freaked out by Mrs O’Leary’s appearance. He looked pretty much like I’d seen him in my dream – an aviator
’s jacket, black jeans and a T-shirt with dancing skeletons on it like one of those Day of the Dead pictures. His Stygian-iron sword hung at his side. He was only twelve, though he looked much older and sadder.
He nodded when he saw me, then went back to scratching Mrs O’Leary’s ears. She sniffed his legs like he was the most interesting thing since rib-eye steaks. Being the son of Hades, he’d probably been travelling in all sorts of hellhound-friendly places.
The old satyr didn’t look nearly so happy. ‘Will someone – what is this Underworld creature doing in my forest!’ He waved his arms and trotted on his hooves like the grass was hot. ‘You there, Percy Jackson! Is this your beast?’
‘Sorry, Leneus,’ I said. ‘That’s your name, right?’
The satyr rolled his eyes. His fur was dust-bunny grey and a spider web grew between his horns. His belly would’ve made him an invincible bumper car. ‘Well, of course I’m Leneus. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten a member of the council so quickly. Now call off your beast!’
‘WOOF!’ Mrs O’Leary said happily.
The old satyr gulped. ‘Make it go away! Juniper, I will not help you under these circumstances!’
Juniper turned towards me. She was pretty in a dryady way, with her purple gossamer dress and her elfish face, but her eyes were green-tinted with chlorophyll from crying.
‘Percy,’ she sniffled. ‘I was just asking about Grover. I know something’s happened. He wouldn’t stay gone this long if he wasn’t in trouble. I was hoping that Leneus –’
‘I told you!’ the satyr protested. ‘You are better off without that traitor.’
Juniper stamped her foot. ‘He is not a traitor! He’s the bravest satyr ever and I want to know where he is!’
‘WOOF!’
Leneus’s knees started knocking. ‘I – I won’t answer questions with this hellhound sniffing my tail!’
Nico looked like he was trying not to crack up. ‘I’ll walk the dog,’ he volunteered.
He whistled and Mrs O’Leary bounded after him to the far end of the grove.
Leneus huffed indignantly and brushed the twigs off his shirt. ‘Now, as I was trying to explain, young lady, your boyfriend has not sent any reports since we voted him into exile.’