Three months later

When you're a demigod, you don't call your godly parent, they call you. I mean, when I'm at Camp Half-Blood I always burn a portion of my meals to Poseidon (my mom's put her foot down about open fires in the dining room at home. Plus, I think she doesn't want her ex invoked every time I have a snack. Would you?) but I don't expect him to answer or anything. The only time I seriously tried to get his attention, he almost zapped me into a pile of cinders. He didn't, and it turned out for the best in the end, but it wasn't an experience I was real keen to repeat.

I wasn't planning on anything as drastic as sitting on his throne on Mount Olympus this time, though. And I'd been putting this off long enough. I'd made promises, and I owed a lot of people more than I could ever repay, and the least I could do was make a lousy phone call. It wouldn't kill me. Probably.

I fingered the drachma in my pocket, watching the sun rise over Long Island Sound. We'd come up to the cabin on Montauk for Thanksgiving, and my mom and Paul were still asleep, so I had some time to myself. The wind cut through my jacket and jeans, and the surf that washed over my bare feet was ice-cold. A wave hit the shore, threw up a spray of water, and I tossed the drachma into it.

"O Fleecy, do me a solid," I said. As a prayer, it lacked a little dignity. But when you've got a cloud nymph's personal extension I figure it doesn't hurt to use it. "Show me Poseidon."

My father's face resolved in the mist. He looked irritated, but he knows by now that I don't bother him with stuff that's not important, and honestly since I have saved his ass several times, not to mention Western civilization and the world, he can afford to cut me some slack. "My son," he said. "What is it?"

Hi, Dad. Nice to see you, too, I thought. But whatever. If he wanted to get straight down to business, that was what I had called for. "The winter council of the gods is coming up," I said. "I need-there's something I'd like you to bring up with the other Olympians. Please." He was starting to look more than a little irritated, like I was trying to make him my messenger boy, even though I was being as polite as I knew how. "It's Calypso. She's been a prisoner long enough, and she helped against Gaea, maybe not a lot but she did what she could, and you guys need to let her go."

"I can't do that," said Poseidon with a troubled frown.

"You promised." I'd told myself I'd keep calm during this conversation no matter what, but the sea started to churn around my feet. "The gods swore on the River Styx to grant my reasonable request. What's so-" I had to bite back a swear. "What's so unreasonable about setting free a woman who's never done any harm to anyone?"

Poseidon's eyes flashed furiously like the surface of the sea in a storm, and I knew this was it, I'd gone too far. "Percy. You're not listening to me. I said I can't." He gave an exasperated sigh. "Maybe it would be simpler to show you."

Then he cut the connection and I was torn between relief that he hadn't actually struck me down and frustration at what had to be my most unsatisfying conversation with my dad ever, and the bar was already pretty high on that one. And then I saw something coming towards me, along the water. It was a raft.

Now, I don't want to brag, but I've faced down Titans and giants and dragons and angry goddesses. But at the sight of that crude wooden raft nosing gently at the beach, I almost turned around and ran back to the cabin. I remembered the curse Calypso had flung at me, that I'd heard echoed in Tartarus, the despair in her voice. I remembered the fiery ball of death in the sky over Camp Half-Blood, and I'd have to tell her about that too, and how the gods were once again calmly planning to screw her over, and I couldn't. But I got on the raft and let it carry me wherever it was going.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I landed on Ogygia. It was still the same beautiful, sun-kissed island with the same rocky beaches, but the life had gone out of it, somehow. I walked further up the shore to utter, disconcerting silence. There was Calypso's garden, some of the plants growing riotously, overspilling their beds, and others looking sad and wilted like no one had taken care of them for a long time. My chest felt tight. What had happened here?

Calypso's cave had been ransacked, furniture overturned, stuff thrown all over the floor. The big loom that used to sit in one corner was just gone. And where it had been, held in place by a chunk of rock, a piece of paper fluttered. A note?

It took me a long time to read. Partly because my dyslexia was acting up, and partly because the handwriting was terrible, but mostly because I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Hi, Percy! it said.

If you're reading this, that's really great, because for one thing you remembered to come back and help Calypso. Also, it means that Festus hasn't accidentally jumped a hundred years into the future or something. I really hope he hasn't, although I guess I can still look up Jason's hot sister and she can sneer at me some more, so there's that.

Anyway! As you've probably figured out by now, I didn't die. I mean I did, and here's a piece of advice, if you ever have to come back from the dead you should probably try to do it some other way than the Physician's Cure, because that is not fun. But Festus was able to give it to me, and you can tell Piper that she really did have the cure all along, because if she hadn't talked him back to life it never would've worked.

I'm really sorry that I couldn't stop by Camp Half-Blood and tell you guys I was okay first, but I needed the power of the explosion to make the astrolabe-

And that was where my brain completely gave up processing. There was like half a sheet more of word salad, interspersed with mathematical symbols and some diagrams that were a lot neater than the writing, and were probably supposed to make some sort of sense to somebody. My eyes skipped down the page until they met something they recognized again.

Tell Piper and Jason and Hazel and Frank and Annabeth and everyone hi, and I'll see you guys as soon as I can, but I really don't know when that'll be.

Unless it really is a hundred years in the future.

Calypso sends her love.

There was a scrawled, illegible, and completely unnecessary signature across the bottom.

I . . . kind of lost a few seconds. I honestly don't know what I did with them. When I came back to myself, I was laughing, and sobbing, and Calypso's cave was ankle-deep in water. I was drenched from head to foot, but the piece of paper I was clutching in my hand was still dry. And I was angrier than I can ever remember being.

"Leo Valdez," I said. "You absolute, utter little shit."