A.N. special Thanks to Neohtan the Wise for his help on this chapter :) I do not own Percy Jackson and Olympians. enjoy and peace.

Percy Jackson was dead. Dead as a doornail. It was the type of thing that most people around the camp didn't prefer to speak of, but they all remembered the fateful day when their leader had been summoned to Olympus, never to return again.

It was the type of thing where, at a casual utterance, all you'd get in return was a couple of downcast eyes, maybe a mumbled excuse that the subject had to use the bathroom, or that old catch: "oh, sorry, what were you talking about again? I didn't catch that…"

The trouble with phrases like that was the peculiar breed of people called Detectives, particularly unemployed detectives, with far too much time on their hands, and a high-profile murder case that no one wants to mention.

All right, there was a bit more than curiosity in the pot, but everyone needs to eat, and sacrifices to the God of Casual Snooping were far from any sort of high point.

Ah, I remember the day like it was yesterday, I reclining in the lumpen folds of my overused office chair, the casually swirled wafts of gently-glowing cigarette smoke twirling from between my lips, the faint drum of the grey Manhattan rain barely audible outside the thick-set glass of my specially-imported bulletproof windows. It was a day to feel a bit lonely, maybe dig up some old memories and have a nonexistent cookout with friends long past.

But enough of my nostalgia. Casting aside all these things, it was the day I got a very special knock on my office door, a knock so hard it almost rattled the hastily-nailed notification of Leonidas Bennett: Private Eye off its hinges.

"Come in," I said, blowing a practiced stream of smoke into the twilight interior of the office. I liked things dark, mysterious.

Burst in, rather. My client that evening was not in a good mood. Then again, none of ever are.

"You've got to save him!" she shouted, slamming her fist down onto the cluttered jungle of my desk.

I raised by eyebrows, lifting my immaculately-dressed feet casually off the top of the jungle, the favored cigarette hanging from the right hand corner of my mouth, "Easy, sister," I said, sounding the part of a '30's gangster far too well for my taste, "I investigate, I get answers. I'm not a S.W.A.T. team."

My client humfed, setting herself not-so-gently down in the ancient armchair that I reserved for the desperate. She gave a quick cough, and I half-smiled, inhaling deeply through my nose. Not used to the smoke, then. Good. She couldn't have been more than sixteen.

"Have you heard of Percy Jackson?" She said, her voice more measured, blunt but yet subtle, not a surprising fit, coming from the carefully mechanized workings of a strategist's mind.

"Who hasn't?" I replied, deciding that my feet really should be on top of the desk, "Kid got himself murdered, didn't he? That what you're telling me?"

A pained expression flitted across her face. My eyebrow raised itself again on reflex, from what I'd heard, she had more control than I'd cared to give her credit for.

"Yes…" she said, her eyes downcast.

"No other reason to come to me, is there? I'm guessing the feds haven't touched this…" I let the half-smile return as a characteristic dose of Athenian temper flashed across her grief-stricken eyes.

"No," she answered.

"Typical. Not like them to get involved with demigods."

"I want you to find them," she breathed, her teeth clenched.

"Ah, but who, darling? Who? That's my job…" I grinned once more, eyeing the flask of Theban Red, 410 BC, beckoning to me from the dusty corner nearest the window.

"Look," she said, raising her eyes once more, "Chiron told me to look you up in case of… emergency. He said you're the best. And I've got cash."

"I am the best," I smiled. No, I thought, it can wait.

"So will you help me?" she asked.

"No," I said, taking another deep draw from the cigarette.

My reply hit her like Zeus's own lightning bolt. She seemed to stagger for a moment, not entirely sure where she was in her chair. Her mouth opened and closed, the words clearly forming but not able to work up the courage to get out.

"I'm the best," I continued, "because I choose my clients. Job like this? Bound to be messy, and messy jobs means messy life. Last time I took a job like this I was kicked out of Olympus. You want to bring that down on my head again?"

Her head hung, her hand drifting dangerously to the ballpoint pen I knew was in her pocket.

"Look kid, this smells like the big top. The Powers That Be. I don't do shit like that. Politics is out, you hear me? Out." I sighed, realizing with a start that I'd tensed up again. When you fall out of the City of the Gods, there's no parachute, guaranteed.

"True," she said, a slightly smug expression crossing her face, "this does involve the Big Three, but what doesn't? They're everywhere. They see everything."

It was my turn to have a staring contest with the floor. Where in Hades had she gotten those files?

"I can get you an acquittal," she almost whispered, the words seemingly carried to me on a pillow of my own smoke, "I can get you you're life back."

"Believe me, kid, I go back there, and you couldn't bust me out of Tartarus if you were Hades himself." I paused, by eyes darting to my tobacco-stained hand that, for some reason, was trembling.

"You don't know Percy," she said, "You don't know what I know. You find out who killed him, and we've got Zeus by the balls."

I bit my lip, thinking, imagining the halls of Olympus stretching before me. How many lifetimes could I possibly endure as an out-of-luck Manhattan Private Eye? How many times could I dodge harpies and furies and every other godsdamned monster Tarturus could shit out at me? How long until one finally found me? I let my eyes drift shut, the prospect of freedom flitting in front of the grasping hands of my imagination.

"How do I know you can deliver?" I asked; my voice low.

"You don't," she said, her hands folding themselves exactly the way her mother's did, "but I can."

"So I'll just have to trust you?" I snorted, letting the cigarette spin through my outstretched fingers.

"Yes," she shrugged, "but what's the point of doing otherwise? After all…" she paused, her casual hand sliding a practiced finger over the surface of a polished gold drachmae, revealing the nine digits I dreaded above all else: the Olympus security hotline. Just a quick flick of her wrist and every harpy within a hundred Roman miles would get an iris message that Zeus's Most Wanted was just a short flight away.

I sat back deeper into the comforting depths of my chair. She was good. Real good. "Alright," I said, my head shaking silently, "I'll do it… Annabeth Chase."

A.N. So there it is please like and review for more. Thanks and peace