Chapter One
Ailee woke up early. She opened her eyes and was instantly alert and ready to move. She hopped out of bed and yanked off her pajamas. She pulled on a T-shirt and shorts without really looking at them and ran downstairs, barefoot.
In the sunlit kitchen, Ailee glanced at the clock. It read just past seven. Good. Since it was a Saturday and she didn't have school, she had time to run to the café.
Ailee's dark eyes jumped unconsciously towards the ceiling. Her twin sister, Anna, would still be asleep, and her mom usually left for work at around 6 on the weekends. Their father was supposedly dead. Ailee didn't like to think about it too much. Their au pair, Miss Emmons, wouldn't arrive until 8, by which time Ailee planned to have a fever, a throat ache, and a great excuse to stay home from old lady bingo.
Ailee shook herself out of her reverie and shoved her feet into the nearest pair of sandals. She and Anna were identical except for their haircuts—Anna only cut her dark hair for trims, and it was nearly to the backs of her knees, while Ailee kept hers just long enough to pull back into a suitable ponytail, which she did then as she shut the door behind her.
Ailee took a long, deep breath. The air smelled fresh and clean. She began to run.
Her music was the pounding of her soles on pavement, her mind empty. This was her meditation.
After about ten minutes of moderate running, Ailee had arrived at the café. Some mornings she took it at a sprint, and some she jogged, but today she had just wanted to run, like normal.
Like normal. The café was not looking "like normal". In fact, it looked—what was the word? Oh, yes. Trashed. The place looked trashed.
The window was shattered and the door was hanging crazily off its hinges. The pastries had been smashed and the chairs and tables were knocked over. The chalk writing on the menu board was gone; in fact, the menu board itself looked like it had been melted with some sort of acid. A breeze drifted by and Ailee nearly vomited. The smell was horrendous. Like puke and sweat and dirty socks all together. With a hint of 'warm trash' and a bit of 'wet dog'.
Ailee looked incredulously around at passerby. Nobody batted an eye. Ailee heard one elderly woman say to her two companions, "Shame it's closed. Heard the owner took a holiday. Gone fishing. Heh heh heh." As the woman laughed, Ailee felt chills up and down her spine. She glanced at the woman—and nearly fainted.
She wore sunglasses, but it felt like her eyes were burning through Ailee. Her head was wrapped in a turban, and there was a thick scar on her neck that suggested her head had been cut off and reattached—though that wasn't possible. The two women, one on either side of her, were glaring hungrily at Ailee. As she watched, a thin line of drool traced its way down one's chin. The other smacked her lips and straightened her Bargain Mart apron.
Ailee took a step backwards, then another. The women glided slowly towards her. Ailee wanted to run, but she was afraid to turn around. Help! Ailee wanted to scream, but it was like they were in a bubble. None of the people walking by seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
Ailee plunged her hand into her pocket, hoping for a weapon, and came up with a handful of stale Goldfish, which she threw feebly at the women.
"Tsk, tsk," the one on the left said.
"So rude," said the one on the right.
The middle one cackled. "She will have to be taught some manners. Heh heh heh!"
Then a voice came from behind Ailee. "What in the name of Zeus' trousers—Lucy, hand me that dagger!"
And then three people burst into Ailee's line of sight. A dark-skinned woman shot the Bargain Mart lady in the chest. The man who had spoken sliced off the turbaned woman's head in one smooth motion. And a third person, a blond woman, stabbed the drooler in the stomach. The three creatures crumbled into dust.
Then the world swam and went dark.
Anna was just waking up. She moaned and rubbed her eyes. She was definitely not a morning person.
Sleepily, Anna dragged herself into the bathroom and started the water. She emerged ten minutes later, looking more coherent.
Anna pulled on a pair of jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. Then she grabbed her hairbrush and a handful of rubber bands and padded downstairs.
In the kitchen, Anna looked at the clock. It was about seven-thirty. Ailee would be back soon, surely just in time to catch a mysterious ailment. She would almost certainly be bedridden by the time Miss Emmons arrived.
Anna grabbed a muffin and the newspaper and sat at the table. While she brushed her hair (a long process), she would read the news.
Twenty minutes later, Anna's hair was tamed and pulled into a neat pair of French braids, Anna had finished skimming the pages, and Ailee still hadn't returned. Anna frowned worriedly and stuck her feet into a pair of Converse, slamming the door shut behind her.
As she ran, Anna realized she had forgotten to leave a note for Miss Emmons. Oh well. Ailee had probably just gotten held up by something or other, and they might even run into each other on the way, right? Right.
By the time Anna reached the café, she had almost convinced herself that everything was fine. Then she saw the wreckage.
Anna dropped to her knees. She felt the blood drain from her face. If Ailee had been here when this happened… Anna couldn't think about it. That wasn't possible. No, no, no.
"Hey," came a voice.
Anna sprang to her feet. "What? Who said that?"
"Over here," the voice spoke again.
"Where? There's nobody here, I must be imagining it—not enough breakfast or something—"
The voice sounded exasperated. "Look up," it said.
She did. "What are you doing up there?!"
Above her hovered a boy. He was, Anna was abashed to admit, extremely good-looking. He had carefully disheveled blond hair, tanned skin, and amazing blue eyes. He was also smirking knowingly at her.
The blood rushed back into Anna's cheeks, and her face felt warm. Then reality came crashing down, and she remembered that he was breaking the laws of nature. "Why are you flying?" she blurted.
"Magic," he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Anna felt her cheeks redden even more. "No, seriously, why are you flying?"
The boy's grin got a bit smaller and he sighed exasperatedly. "Gods, where's Chiron when you need him?" he muttered to himself.
Anna cleared her throat. "Also, not to overwhelm you or anything, but why is the building…" She gestured grandly towards the ruins of the café. "Er…trashed?"
"Chanelling your inner Brit, are you?" he asked amusedly. "That, to answer your question, happened because of a monster. Most likely the Gorgons, though Dad'll want a word with Percy about that. They're gone now, though. Wish communication was working."
Anna gave him a blank stare.
"Communication," he said. "We can't use phones, so we do IM'ing? Iris Messages? No? Well, I'm not doing it, that's Chiron's job. Anyways, Iris must have a head cold or something. It's annoying, we can't get in two words strung together with the praetors."
"Yes, well, great," Anna said impatiently. "Where's Ailee though?" She was embarrassed to hear her voice wobble on her sister's name. She rubbed her eye furiously. Something must have flew into it.
The boy was looking at her with a mixture of confusion and sympathy. "Who's Ailee?"
"My—my sister, where is she? She comes here in the morning and she never got back and now the café's trashed and there were monsters and is she okay?!" Anna felt oddly light-headed.
The last thing she saw was the boy's concerned face...and then everything went dark.
