Paul wasn't sure when exactly he had become the default helpline for demigods in distress, but by his best guess it started not too long after Percy and his girlfriend Annabeth started college in New Rome.

Despite having only been in his life for a few years, Percy had managed to worm his way into Paul's affections. Even if the kid's beautiful single mother hadn't figured into the picture, Paul suspected that he would have felt drawn to Percy in any case. He had a soft spot for lost troublemakers, and Percy Jackson was as lost as they come.

Of course, the reason for his oddities became clear several months into his relationship with Sally. He remembered that night like it was yesterday: sitting on her couch, waiting for their favorite show to come on, and sipping wine while Paul regaled her with tales of construction workers disrupting classes as they hurried to repair the damage caused by the explosion on orientation day. Had he not been so nervous, he might have noticed how uncomfortable the topic was making Sally. As it was, he barely registered what he was saying, focusing mainly on the lump of the velvet box in his pocket. In the space between end of the six o' clock news and the start of the next show, he slid rather ungracefully from the couch and onto one knee, pulling the ring from his pocket as he expressed his love and desire to spend the rest of his life with her.

To say Sally looked stunned would be an understatement. An entire Roman legion could have marched past her and she wouldn't have noticed. When she tried to speak, no words came out, her mouth instead flapping uselessly like a fish. Just when Paul was about to apologize and make his exit, she seemed to find her voice and told him that she would love to marry him but if she were going to do that she would need to be completely honest with him. She said something else about Percy, but Paul was too excited about her tentative yes to really register what she was saying. It wasn't until she started her story about the unusual circumstances of her son's birth that he was snapped back into reality.

Reality, as it turned out, was stranger than fantasy after all. He always knew Sally never liked to talk about Percy's father and after having met the man himself he was beginning to understand why. Something about Poseidon just seemed off, as if he were radiating some form of energy that made Paul want to slam the door in his face and bolt it shut. Occasionally, he would speculate as to the man's identity, considering the possibilities of the mysterious Poseidon being part of a gang and sneaking away to rendezvous with Sally, or a poor fisherman who left to give her a better life, or - on a night when his imagination was particularly active - a sort of Greek James Bond that couldn't stay with his family because of the danger but kept an eye on Percy to make sure his enemies didn't use him against him.

Theory 007 was half right. Poseidon was indeed Greek and there were various rules and dangers that prevented him from seeing his son as much as he would like, but he was far from a spy. He was a god, Sally explained. At first Paul meant she was commenting on his ruggedly handsome appearance (really, the man's jawline was completely unfair), but Sally assured him she meant it in the literal sense. He wasn't just named after the Greek god of the sea. He was the Greek god of the sea, and Percy was actually a demigod, like Hercules or Theseus from the old myths.

Paul sat dumbfounded as Sally went on to explain that while Percy's parentage gave him special abilities, it also brought trouble. Monsters could smell him from a mile away because he was so powerful, and every creature in Tartarus wanted a piece of such a juicy prize. The monsters were why Percy never stayed at the same school for very long. Monsters would attack, things would get messy, and Percy would always get the blame because some magical Mist kept mortals like him from seeing the truth.

Trying not to be offended at being called a "mortal" by the woman to whom he had just proposed, Paul swallowed a few times and asked if there were others like Percy in the world. He didn't know if he was terrified or relieved to find out that the Greek pantheon was procreating with just as much enthusiasm as they had in ancient times. He figured Percy could use the support of people in similar circumstances to his and wondered vaguely if there was a demigod support network.

That was when it hit him that he was taking Sally's bombshell incredibly well. It was almost as if his suspicions were being confirmed instead of his entire world view turning an about face in the course of a single conversation. He never once even considered the possibility that she had lost or mind or that she was lying. And why should he? Sally Jackson was one of the most honest and level-headed people he'd ever met. Even when she wanted to hide something she would never cover it or make excuses. She would just withhold the information and then tell as much truth as she felt comfortable sharing. And she definitely wasn't crazy.

For whatever reason, Sally - being of sound mind - firmly believed that Poseidon was actually an immortal Hellenistic deity and that Percy, being his son, had inherited some of his powers and was in constant danger because of them. It was a lot to swallow but, to his own surprise, not more than he could handle. He had his doubts, of course, and probably always would. But one thing he couldn't doubt was how much he loved the woman sitting next to him, no matter what ancient religions she practiced.

After assuring her that the idea of a half-god for a stepson did nothing to make him what to leave her, Sally gave him a firm yes before pulling out her phone and calling to give Percy the good news. They decided on a December wedding during his and Percy's winter break from school. Over the next few months, he made it a point to spend as much time with the teenager as he could, humoring him when he talked about his life as a demigod and his friends at some demigod camp in Long Island but quietly reserving judgment on the subject until he knew more. He only began to truly believe his stepson's story when Percy and his friend Rachel had gone off for a short drive in Paul's Prius and Rachel returned alone, babbling some explanation about another half-blood coming to get Percy and the two of them flying off on a black pegasus. The four hoof prints on the hood of his car supported her story, but it wasn't until the Jeep sized hellhound had parked herself in his living room along with his stepson and an unconscious pre-teen that he finally accepted the existence of the Greek pantheon as indisputable fact.

Not too long after the Prius incident was the Battle of Manhattan as the demigods called it. Paul himself had actually played a part, using his nearly forgotten fencing skills from his college Shakespearean theatre class. Even though he couldn't see through the Mist like Percy and Sally could, it was still pretty easy to tell which were the monsters and which were the good guys. For starters, the demigods were all wearing some kind of bronze armor that was easy to spot. For another, all the monsters smelled vaguely of sulfur and looked like Arab militants shouting "Death to America!" Afterwards, when it was all over, he chuckled at the Mist's particular choice of disguise. Considering Greece's relationship with Egypt over the years, it was no wonder that the mythical (but surprisingly effective) veil was a little bit racist.

Everything was fine for awhile. Paul started helping Percy find ways to better cope with his dyslexia and ADHD while Sally finally made some serious progress on her novel. Every Saturday Percy's girlfriend from camp, Annabeth, would take the F train uptown to the Jackson apartment for pizza and game night with the family. Most times, she even stayed the night, although Sally insisted she stay on the couch and even went so far as to put a bell on Percy's door so everyone could hear if it opened. Paul found the whole situation pretty funny and after awhile convinced his overprotective wife that the bell wasn't really necessary since Annabeth at least was trustworthy. The comment earned him an annoyed glare from the stepson he was quickly starting to think of as his own, but it was worth it to see the looks on the two kids' faces when he told them that Goode School's winter break was two weeks long that year. Percy and Annabeth were thrilled at the idea of getting to spend two whole weeks together at Camp Half-Blood now that Annabeth's project of redesigning Olympus was finished and she didn't plan on taking a bus all the way back to California on her own. They left for camp at the start of break wearing matching grins like they weren't immersed in a crude Tolkien novel 24/7.

And then Percy disappeared. Gods of Olympus, those first few weeks had to be some of the worst of Paul's life, and that was counting the time he'd been stuck in three consecutive air ports for several days each due to inclement weather. He and Sally were frantic with worry and their friends at Camp Half-Blood weren't much better. Chiron, the director, assured them that they had their best people out looking and that even the Hunters of Artemis, who never lost a trail, had joined in. Funnily enough, as time crawled by and days turned into weeks, the old centaur's words seemed less reassuring and more desperate. Even after they managed to get a general idea of his location - apparently the Roman aspects of the gods were just as promiscuous as their Greek forms - it was still months before they could send a team out to retrieve him and from there they immediately set out on an important quest. It seemed the fate of the world once again hung in the balance and Percy Jackson was a key player.

He handled Percy's absence far better than Sally did, which he supposed was appropriate given that he was her son that she'd taken care of his whole life and he was just a stand-in for an absentee sea god that had really only come into the picture a few years earlier. He comforted her as best he could and encouraged her to write some of her feelings and experiences into her novel to make them seem a little less real and powerful. When that stopped working, he asked her to help him see through the Mist like she could. It was a longer and more complicated process than he had expected and he always passed out for seven or eight hours after each lesson but it seemed to take Sally's mind off the danger Percy could be in, at least for a little while. After a few months, he made some progress in his training. Catching occasional glimpses of satyrs and sluggish monsters on the way to work was a little unnerving, but at least it gave him a better understanding of his stepson's world. Well, that and the Greek mythology textbooks he'd been obsessively reading since Percy's disappearance.

Percy finally came home on his seventeenth birthday, Annabeth and two other teenagers in tow. For the first time in their three year relationship, Paul saw Sally cry as she leaped from her seat at her computer and sprinted across the apartment to wrap her arms around her son. Once he recovered from his shock, Paul joined them, pulling Annabeth into their little group hug. He was almost as relieved to see her again as he was Percy.

Sally made dinner while Percy, Annabeth, and their two demigod friends they introduced as Jason and Piper sat around the kitchen table and recounted their adventures. Paul was fairly certain they were leaving big details out, but he didn't say anything. He had a feeling that if he learned what demigod quests were really like he'd lock Percy in his room and only let him out for meals and bathroom breaks. Even with the heroes' bare bones account of the voyage of the Argo II, Sally looked like she was seriously considering that possibility.

Thankfully, Percy and Annabeth waited until dessert to make their big announcement. Any sooner and Sally would have likely marched on Olympus herself with nothing but a double-barrel shotgun and her motherly rage. After all, she had only just gotten her boy back. She didn't even want to think about him leaving for college on the other side of the country.

That was their plan. Annabeth would spend the next year in New York with them and after that the two of them would head off the Roman demigod camp in California. Apparently, the Romans had built a sort of safe-haven for demigods that were no longer a part of the legion but didn't want to deal with the harsh reality of a demigod's life on the outside. New Rome was an entire city, completely shielded from mortals and monsters by the Mist and powerful magic. Percy and Annabeth could go to college in peace, and after that they could spend the rest of their lives in peace; getting jobs in New Rome, finding friends in New Rome, living the normal life that they'd never gotten to experience as teenagers. Maybe, they could even get married and start a family (but that was way in the future, right?)

Paul was happy for them. He really was. The distance didn't bother him nearly as much as it bothered Sally. Annabeth's dad lived in San Francisco, practically spitting distance from Camp Jupiter. From the stories Percy had told him about Frederick Chase, the eccentric military history professor would be more than capable of looking after the two half-bloods if things went south. But he still felt a twinge of sadness. Percy was leaving again in a little over a year. He wasn't a kid anymore, and Paul was beginning to wonder if he'd ever known him as one.

The next year past quickly and soon Paul's melancholy was replaced by mild irritation as boxes started piling up in the apartment during the last weeks of Percy and Annabeth's senior year. By the time they put on their caps and gowns, all their belongings had been packed away. They left for Camp Half-Blood that night, allotting two weeks to say goodbye to their friends, enemies, and old haunts before climbing Half-Blood Hill for the last time and climbing into the truck Paul had rented for their drive to California. Getting there was the easy part. Getting the two of them unpacked and settled into their respective dorm rooms was another story. The rooms were smaller than Paul's had been and seemed to shrink when Percy's roommate - a wild-eyed blond who was so hyped up he was literally vibrating named Dakota - arrived. Percy seemed to recognize him since he immediately jumped up and hugged the kid, but even he seemed overwhelmed after a couple minutes of Dakota's endless chatter. He looked at Paul like he was wondering what the Roman penalty for killing your roommate was.

Yeah, looking back, that was where it started, Paul thought to himself as he absentmindedly graded tenth grade essays on Romeo and Juliet. Honestly, they were probably all getting A's on the assignment since he was too distracted to read more than two or three sentences of each essay. Usually, he enjoyed grading this assignment because while there were usually several well-written essays, there was always inevitably the handful of students who either missed the point entirely or didn't even bother to read the place because they "already knew how it ended." Truth be told, cocky tenth graders waxing poetic about the star-crossed lovers' happily ever after was at least twenty-five percent of the reason he loved his job so much (the other seventy-five percent was because his eleventh grade Macbeth unit gave him the perfect excuse to haul out the swords and armor from his own Shakespeare days). But not even the Bard - or his students' gross misunderstanding of the Bard's work - could hold his attention after his earlier Iris Message chat with Percy and Annabeth. He glanced uneasily at the spiral bound notebook sitting a few feet away from him, looking perfectly innocent in the dim light.

Surrendering to the inevitable, he yawned, stretched, and abandoned his papers for the night. Shakespeare could wait. Percy could not. He'd been trying to keep his expression neutral throughout the duration of the call, but Paul knew him well enough to recognize how freaked out he was. The instant his face had appeared in the vapor cloud, it was obvious this wasn't his usual call about a difficult essay or trouble in Latin class. There were dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn't slept in days, and Annabeth's hair was greasy, like she'd forgotten to wash it.

"Don't tell Mom," Percy had said, lowering his voice and glancing behind Paul to make sure Sally wasn't eavesdropping. "It's probably no big deal and I wouldn't want her to worry about nothing, but I need to be sure."

"Then why are you calling me?" Paul had asked. Percy glanced at Annabeth who nodded her encouragement, but her expression was pretty grim.

"You know how it is with demigods and technology," he said. "We can't really just Google something like this without some serious consequences."

"Probably deadly," Annabeth chimed in. Paul chose to ignore her.

"Doesn't your Roman college have a library or something?"

"Yeah," said Percy. "It's huge. The thing is, their selection of Greek lore is kind of..." He trailed off, clearly struggling to find the right word.

"Pathetic," Annabeth chimed in bitterly. "They have the basics and how it relates to the Roman religion, but that's about it. You know, you'd think for such an advanced civilization they'd keep better records."

"Yeah, well the Roman reputation with libraries isn't exactly the greatest," said Paul, thinking about the famed Library of Alexandria and its tragic fate. From the way Annabeth flinched, he guessed she was thinking the same thing.

"That's why we need you," Percy cut in, pulling both the bookworms' minds out of the fourth century and into the twenty-first. "Annabeth has an idea of what we're dealing with, but we need to be sure. Can you do some research for us?"

Paul sighed. Sally was going to kill him if she found out he was helping get Percy involved in yet another dangerous save-the-world-or-die-trying quest, but what could he do? He knew Percy too well to think he would just leave it alone if he didn't have the information, and if he couldn't stop him, he might as well make sure he wasn't running in half-cocked without a clue of what he was up against. Finding him the information he needed couldn't hurt, right? After all, Percy said it probably wasn't anything really and that the research was just a precaution. And Percy was the expert on all things demigod, right?

That sounded pathetic even in his head. If Percy survived whatever the next quest was, the two of them were going to sit down and have a serious talk. Paul was beginning to worry that Sally was going to die of early heart failure if Percy didn't let someone else handle the quests once in awhile. But for now, there was only one thing to do.

"What do you need?"

For the first time during the entire call, Percy smiled. "Do you have a pen and paper? You'll want to write this down."

Paul grabbed a spiral bound notebook from his work area and opened to a fresh page. "Go ahead," he said.

Hours later, he held the same notebook in his hands. He heard Sally sigh and turn over in her sleep from their bedroom, but he couldn't join her, at least not yet. There was no way he'd be able to sleep with Percy's request hanging over his head. As he booted up his laptop, he read over the cryptic words a few more times, trying to glean some meaning but failing miserably:

Who dances in the blood-stained field,

Where beaten dog was made to yield?

Who stalks the heroes bound for war,

To relish in the death and gore?

Whose coming can all men foretell,

As most descend to Asphodel?

Whose mother leads them from the pit,

To seek revenge on sea and wit?

The four will drain the day of light

The day alone too weak to fight.

Unless a victor chains the dog,

The night will have no epilogue.

Paul felt a chill run down his spine. This looked suspiciously like one of those prophecies Percy always seemed to get caught up in. He didn't know where it came from. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. But he promised Percy he'd help anyway he could.

With another weary sigh, he opened a search engine and began to type. It was going to be a long night.