The Greenhouse That Wasn't

It was the night the Oracle betrayed her.

Then again, the Oracle usually took the path which would most likely get it throttled for answers, so it was nothing new.

Rachel's favourite painting spot wasn't strictly supposed to exist. But on nights like this one, Rachel felt she deserved something extraordinary, a little mental ice cream to deviate the mind and feed her creativity. Lately, her life had been glued to negotiating the fate of Camp Half-Blood and avoiding a Greco-Roman war between teens and pre-teens. It wasn't a cute summer game, either. The weapons were killer and the bloodlust would lead to real deaths if she let it get too far. It was a difficult place to be for someone as scatterbrained as her. Two years ago, Rachel had refused a goldfish because she was convinced it wouldn't make it; now she was negotiating a tribe war against the barbaros.

Knowing so much was on her plate it sucked that to top it all off Daddy darling didn't approve of her side attachment to paintbrushes and aquarelle. After seven, around the time she'd make it back home, he'd shut off the lights in the loft so she couldn't paint or read, making her jumbled mind an impossible life partner. So here she was, going lengths to sneak out to paint between Camp and Home.

Turning down the block to a side street, in a life of celibacy, Rachel met her only true love. She stretched a grin, standing in the exact spot where she could see the entire sight. It was a quaint place on the sidewalk facing a building that in no way existed and in no way any mundane should see. However, Rachel's eyes weren't mist bound. In fact, they were stronger than the average half-blood's, and they traced with awe and contentment through the mist to the Gothic steeples. The beauty of the steeples negated the grimy dump of a surrounding. As she looked to the rooftops, Rachel's spirit soared in synch to this architectural vision. She knew Annabeth would climb the mountain of Atlas and lift the sky again just to get a floor plan of this cathedral. It was a sketch in the making, a choir of planes and gargoyles, which rose over New York like a forest born of Earth in stone rather than heavy rods of timber. With the wisdom it exuded, the journey of gazing at its peaks filled her with painful wanting, like when she saw something steampunk at a market that she wished she could grab without paying. Rachel wanted this Cathedral. It was crazy, and possibly the sign of a psychotic break but she wanted a piece of it, a stone, maybe a shrink ray so she could get the Cathedral all to herself and keep it in a box (or a shrink, so she'd stop thinking like this, returning to the spot she'd become disposed to see).

The Oracle could go take someone else, Percy could live forever alone, this building was going to steal both of his girlfriends. She knew it.

"Sweet mother of pro-active skin care," whispered Rachel, her breath coming out cold and green, "Where have you been all my life?"

As her pilgrimage to this constant beauty, she sat cross-legged on the dusty New York sidewalk, pulling out her sketchbook, her inking crayons and her tablet and setting them in her lap. After quickly sketching the outlines in a frenzy of awe and scribbles, she realized that she didn't even know the place's age, name or use. How come, it wasn't a recommended tourist destination in New York? She often wondered, tapping a pencil to her lip. From the looks of it, there was even a working greenhouse. Not to mention, it seemed to be as old as America itself (them chil'en dôn make buildin's like dis no more, she thought).

Scrolling through information on her tablet, Rachel Google searched for something to do with the Gothic marvel. Night was a sheen in the horizon, and she needed to get back to the bus station, but not without the name of her new husband. I wonder if I'd have to convert to Catholicism to marry a Cathedral, Rachel pondered.

Internet archives showed that this abandoned 'dump' of a church didn't even have a name. Nobody could record who created it and nobody cared. Old pictures showed a destroyed outer shell but otherwise, nada. It was almost as if only she could see it for it it was. Only too late did Rachel realize that that could only mean—

A voice behind her said, "Look Izzy, she's made herself a habitat," A motion to the paint splatters she'd left on the cement from previous visits, "I've seen this kind of thing happen on the nature channel," A teenager was peering coyly at Rachel.

Rachel peeked over her shoulder, regretting it instantly.

The snide comment came from someone who looked like the slayer of blond jokes everywhere, and he was standing right behind her. A two foot knife spun in his hand, a lovely red lipped side-kick grinned at his left, her own whip afoot. Heavily armed and considerably brutal in their weapons. For all her courage, Rachel may have had let slip a mousy squeak. This was not happening. This was so not happening.

Getting to her feet and backing up, Rachel could hear the light, mental 'Beep, beep, beep' of a vehicle in reverse. Her body shuddered violently, like her stress levels spiked only to stab her heart into an injured run. Never had she felt so cold and in danger than she did now now; not even in the Labyrinth. To put things into perspective, Rachel had done murals in drug addict allies; New York crime wasn't foreign to her. She'd seen more danger from monsters who breathed fire, but it was the pure human cruelty here that froze her.

"I'm sorry, we're cancelling our subscription. There's only so much habitat we can watch you make," the side kick said, her teeth flashing sharply in the feeble light Rachel's cathedral shone. Her voice was lilted with female seduction.

Just then, Rachel realized there was never anyone on this street. That if she screamed, nobody would come. Good time to have your cellphone all the way over there on the pavement. "Are you mercenaries against artists?" Rachel said at break neck speed, a fever coming to her face. She continued to back away, hand slipping into her jean pocket to pull out her 'blue plastic one'. "I wouldn't cancel that subscription just yet." She should have started running. Why hadn't she started to run?

The blond boy's lids were like a lizards, lazy, arrogant, and controlled. "Against artists? No. There's much more to you than your petty creativity. My bet is that you bleed black," he said, holding the knife in front of him with a twisted wrist. "Isabelle, pin her. Let's make this quick."

A crack and Rachel was plummeting towards the pavement. Luckily, her training at camp prevented a concussion but when she looked up, her limbs were tied together in a stinging wire which had painfully beat itself around her entire body. What a sick embrace. Rachel spat on the pavement. That seemed to be what action heroines did. She glared up, mentally thankful that her pink sweater had saved her from scraped elbows and, gods forbid, whip burn. Who even had to dress for that?

The two predators certainly did. By the gods, they looked like they'd bought their getup from the Leather Emporium Closing Sale.

Calm down, Rachel, she breathed quietly, you can only ask the real questions when you don't feel like you're in danger.

At any moment of the day, her body was known to exude green mist from her pores and mouth. The Oracle got especially bad under the pretense of danger. It seemed to think that speaking with three deep voices would save her from harm. Under danger, it became her default, going to such lengths as weaseling out against her will. Green mist began billowing, her eyes become shot with a single colour, her body patiently entranced.

Despite the block of haze in her mind, Rachel still felt the blond in leather kneeling beside her, a grin on his breath. The knife he'd been wielding found itself at Rachel's throat. He spoke down, almost excitedly. "You're under arrest for possession of a mundane red headed girl. By the law of the Angels, either you surrender here or we will have to cut you out." To then be followed by his female companion who said.

"Jace, if it's a Greater Demon, you shouldn't be goading it." The whip, if possible, tightened even more. "My electrum isn't doing anything."

Despite their outer mugger clothes, Rachel saw then a strange need for these people, because even if the Doors of Death had sealed, the sheer backwash of the already escaped would come looking for her friends and any European demi-god within seventy miles. Vivid pictures began forming in Rachel's mind. Damnation wreaking havoc as it broke mighty Hell out of the Doors of Death. These leather wearing tattoo parlour misfits slicing through the Greek Monsters there like arms swinging in circles at the Sound of Music, bringing the newly alive back to death again. A black haired one standing along a beach in cordial meeting with Leo and Piper. A friendship with a redheaded artist like her whose talents were from another world.

She just hoped this was the spirits of the Oracle giving her these visions and not her subconscious brain inventing personalities like it did to strangers in dreams. "I didn't hit my head that hard," Rachel said to herself, the mist gone when she cleared her fear. In her line of sight was a close up of the blond mugger. She pinned him with her eyes.

Rachel said, "Why haven't you taken my stuff yet?" She motioned with her nose to her I-pad, sketchbooks and saddlebag all lying untouched on the pavement, those were costly stuffs, Rachel thought fiercely, they better not take them. Though, it was her last straw for thinking of them petty criminals. Something about the way she was tied up made her guess they really weren't muggers.

So called 'Jace' ignored Rachel, turning to his companion. "She seems conscious again like she's back in control of her own body," That seemed to surprise him. "Unless it's still faking it."

Whip wielder looked over to the Rachel cocoon, her jaw set, black eyes gleaming. "I don't trust her, but she hasn't tried to fight us yet." An admirable point, Rachel thought sarcastically.

"I'm right here," Rachel said, "Pray and tell," she rolled her eyes, "How I'm supposed to fight you with a knife at my throat and whip around my arms and legs?" If you're looking for a fight, you don't go after teenage girls with copic marker arsenals. It's the other way around. If they're looking for a fight, they go after you!

Jace ignored her again, "Maybe she can't. How strong did Magnus make your whip?"

"It should have cut her by now," Izzy said. "Unless she has another kind of protection that isn't demonic."

Rachel wriggled before finally giving up and casting her eyes to her upside-down Cathedral friend and future husband. "I'M BEING MUGGED!" She went off like a siren, "THEY HAVE KNIVES AND WHIPMmmmmph!" Rachel bit the hand that tried to silence her. "Di immortales, you're breaking the sacred laws," The super sacred sacred laws of sacredness, "Your faces will be on artist blogs everywhere as attackers of the trade-"

"Oh, for the love of, what are you?" Jace asked, yanking her up by her whip bindings and leading her to the Cathedral entrance like a barbarian's new bride. She knew she had to kill him, disarm him or something, she just didn't know how. Girl's self defense class didn't extend to whip bindings and how to break them. "I've never heard Greater Demons so annoying," he went on, "If you were truly the Nature Channel, the least you could do would be to shut yourself off. You'll wake the whole street this way. Oh, wait," he said sarcastically, "There is nobody on this street. For you to stop talking is only a recommendation."

"You're the one leading me to your secret layer, you gorgon," Rachel said, half exasperated from having this always happen to her even as the Oracle, and the other half in electric, excited hysterics in hope that the Cathedral looked as good as it did on the inside as it did on the outside. Jace pulled her through the entrance.

"You've passed the impossible test," Jace said, setting Rachel down. Even the biggest meathead would have been able to tell by her expression that she didn't like being bound and brought into strange churches. "A Downworlder couldn't have gone through these doors, demons are completely unable. I have to say, I'm stumped. I suppose the next step is checking your blood," he said, a knife suddenly twirling in his palm.

The knife flipping, it was distracting.

When Rachel realized what he'd just said after sorting through the senseless blabber about Downtowners or something and impossible tests with dumb words she didn't understand, she realized he was about to draw blood. Her blood. By the gods. She couldn't understand, why she hadn't she screamed yet? The Oracle was making her slow on the get-go, and Rachel had no idea why it wanted her to get killed.

"Jace, stop!" Isabelle said, ramming into Jace's side with her elbow to get to Rachel, "I can't feel my necklace pulse. Maybe she was smoking something, there has to be other reasons that she's exhaling green light. Let her go, Jace. Weird energies or not, she's completely mundane."

Rachel had been called many things in her life but mundane, meaning insignificant and tiresome in one word. That was a huge shot to hipster subculture. Her artist ego was positively indignant. It would have been, if the visions of these freaks fighting on her side didn't show up on continuous replay.

Jace turned to Isabelle, he said coldly. "Iz, we thought of Madame Dorothea wasn't a Greater Demon either and you saw what it did to Alec."

Isabelle looked crestfallen and furious, clenching her fists at the thought.

Rachel took that time to clear her throat, wriggling in the whip binds. "Hey, weirdos? Guys," she rasped, "I know this is going to sound totally bizarre but," Rachel said at top speed, "Would you like to know who I am? You know, since the spirit that's possessing me can see the future, and it's telling me to hire you."


They all sat themselves ways from each other, Rachel on the abandoned steps leading to the non-existent tabernacle, tied up with a different rope now. Jace and Isabelle surveyed her from the church booths. Both were giving her stink eye, and the atmosphere was far from pleasant since no one had dusted in the last eighty years. What a disappointing interior. However, as someone who studied, drew and admired architecture, Rachel could tell that this wasn't the whole castle even with all its immensity.

Rachel's head was held high on her shoulders, her back strait, her appearance regal. She had no fear ever since her epiphany. She knew the future, it was only a matter of convincing them. "What are your opinions of the Olympian gods?" She asked, her voice echoing authority and patience. It would strengthen her to know if they were on Gaia's side, the Greeks, the Romans or the monsters.

"Mythology's not my cup of tea," Jace said at once, his broad shoulders bulbous with the way he crossed his arms, biceps bulging, "Especially fictional stories praising the power of eternal torture machines and serial rapists." Well, Rachel thought, that was blunt. Unfortunately very true, but blunt.

Isabelle cast him a dirty look, which wasn't difficult to do since it had already been present on her face moments ago when staring at Rachel. A look for which Jace brushed off as easily as dust.

"Iz, if you'd read Ovid's Metamorphoses like you were supposed to, you'd have murdered the entire male population of the gods with a lighter," said Jace, then he stopped and smiled a congratulations, "It suddenly makes sense why you never brought it back to Hodge."

"It wasn't a lighter, it was a blender," Isabelle said, she crossed her arms and legs at the same time, "The book was stupid anyway, there's too many names and I don't care who slept with who if it never happened."

Rachel meanwhile was processing what they'd said. In her vision, people dressed as them, tattooed like them were slaughtering monsters at The Doors of Death, yet, these two treated Greek mythology like bad reading. They'd mistaken her for a monster, but earlier had said that they thought she bled black. Not such, the blood of monsters if there ever was any was golden ichor. Jace's words came back to her: 'By the Law of the Angels', plus she was in an abandoned church. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they weren't of the Ancient Greek mind. Maybe they were a little more recent. Whatever. Whether they considered themselves Greek, Roman or not, Rachel couldn't deny she was persuaded to get those biceps on her side. These were some dangerous mortals, they were like their own slasher movie, brimming with monster killing potential.

"Do you work for the world government?" Rachel asked, interrupting their squabble.

Jace smiled candidly, "If I'm not mistaken, you're supposed to be the one answering our questions." But the disgust behind his eyes said he wasn't.

"You haven't asked any." Rachel said, leaning her chest forward (it was the only thing she could do in these ropes), "Gang, Mafia, religious extremists, drug lords? You have to use those weapons for something. I can't believe I'm your statistical norm of a victim," Well, she hoped not, anyway.

"If you don't give us your name, we'll have to call you solely 'Ginger'," Jace said, amused as Rachel's face morphed to spit poison.

"My name is Rachel," she said snootily, "And you are Jace and Isabelle. Don't you change the subject!"

"Good to know you caught on," said Jace, doing exactly the opposite, "Now, to the important bit. Most people of stable mind would not stay with their attempted murders in a cryptic building with no lights, willingly," Rachel was about to cut him off, but he raised his index finger, "Let me finish - Then start a benignant conversation about fictional gods. I have assumed that you are not of stable mind, Ginger Miss Rachel. It makes me wonder why you're wasting our time." He smirked suavely, "Are you really so lonely?"

"I'm here because I need your help to kill monsters," Rachel said.

"You mean the one within you?" Isabelle piped up pseudo-innocently.

Rachel's fingers longed to curl around her eye crushing blue brush, "No. The thing within me is harmless. Sure, it takes my mouth, brain and body for a joyride once in a while but usually it's just there to predict the future."

"Please, don't tell me you're part of a cult that believes in the Greek gods," Jace said suddenly as it occurred to him. "Cults like those are so tiresome."

"Does a summer camp full of weapon teens count as a cult?"

"Did you hear that, Isabelle?" Jace said, "She said weapon. I'm suddenly inclined to be interested."

"You're the ones who went on about the law of the angels and demonic energies!" Rachel said, "The fact that you stumbled over the Oracle of Delphi and tried to kill her, isn't that just as easy to believe?"

"You think you're the Oracle of Delphi," Jace said.

"I know I am!" Rachel said. "I am possessed by the spirit of Phoebus Apollo! The Doors of Death just let a ton of monsters out into the world and I happen to meet you with visions of your people slaying them? No, that's not a coincidence. That's prophecy."

"I really wish the mortal sword worked on mortals," Isabelle said.

Jace was inclined to agree, "The mortal sword has many uses. One of them sounds better than the practical."

Isabelle elbowed him, snickering while Rachel cast down her head and moaned in frustration. The frustration soon gave into mist and before their eyes, Rachel's smoky green aura crept around the fill the empty church with images like candlelight. Alec on the beach accepting a letter, shadowhunters from Europe, Africa and the Middle East all working as one great entity. A beautiful almond eyed girl in Greek robes watching the sky open and at last calm. Rachel muttered words like tu oinou and aypeepaympsoo.

"This is all very creepy," Jace said, "But you've managed to suspend my disbelief … for the moment," he said, "What do you expect us to do for you?"

Rachel's brain hurt, "Two advils would be nice right about now." When the shadowhunters looked like they were actually going to get up, Rachel quickly said, "What would you do?"

"Contact the Institute nearest to these infamous doors, probably," Jace said.

"I have people in Europe," Rachel said, "They could stop by that Institute if you gave me the coordinates."

"Alec was in the vision. He was receiving a letter," Isabelle said, "You saw that, right?"

"If you mean the boy on the beach," Rachel said, "It was my friends giving him the letter."

"Then it's simple," Isabelle said impatiently. "All they need is a place to meet up. The beach that we saw, for example, and then Alec brings the letter to the nearest Institute and voila. There's not much to it," Isabelle said, "He's already on a romantic vacation in Italy right now, and it would only take him like twenty minutes, two minutes if Magnus makes a portal."

"So it's settled then," Jace said, "We deliver your message to the Institute nearest to the disaster zone. They look it over, they make a decision based on the evidence rather than flying mist pictures, patrol the area and perhaps call in reinforcement. It can't get much simpler."