Chapter 1: I contemplate strangling Uncle Randolph

Annabeth

The last time I saw my cousin Magnus was a just month before I ran away. My father, my stepmother, her twin toddlers and I had gone to the family mansion for Thanksgiving. My grandparents had made a large fortune in the Boston Stock Market. My dad and Aunt Natalie had both been left with a sizable nest egg, but Uncle Randolph as the oldest son had gotten the house. Magnus and I played dominoes and I kicked his butt at them spectacularly, but he was a really good sport at it. I told him he was lucky, because he and his mom were really close and my dad and I were going through a major rough patch at the time. I liked him. He was really smart unlike most boys and could read really fast. I remember thinking he was lucky for that too because my dyslexia had caused a lot of teachers to doubt I was as smart as I talked. Anyway, the adults all got together after dinner and talked to each other about something and then we all abruptly left and no one would tell me why. But somehow, I knew why. Or at least I knew that it was about my mom and Magnus' dad. Magnus had been raised without a dad as I had been raised without a mom. Nobody ever talked about Magnus' dad and when we were leaving Dad abruptly announced that we weren't going to talk to the family anymore. He wouldn't say why, but the way he was looking at me implied that it was all my fault. As usual. That was the first time I daydreamed about that Magnus was one of us. A part of me really didn't want him to be because then there would always be monsters after him. But another part of me, perhaps the selfish part of me, daydreamed for years that he would appear at Camp Half-blood. I knew he couldn't be a son of Athena even though he looked like one because it was his mother not his father who was missing. Instead, I daydreamed that he was a son of Pan, Hermes, Apollo, even Zeus. But Magnus never appeared. This saddened me, but part of me knew that Magnus wasn't a demigod. Part of me had always known. He was in regular classes at school. He got straight-As. He was already through the first Harry Potter book all on his own at six years old. If a child of Athena couldn't have normal reading and learning skills, then what god could. Not a Greek God that was for sure. So on that day, right after the war with Gaia, when Uncle Randolph called right out of the blue, it was like Sleeping Beauty awakening from her 100 year slumber. It was all a punch in the gut. Aunt Natalie was not only dead; she had been dead for two years. And Uncle Randolph hadn't seen Magnus since. If I could count on my hands all the many times I regretted telling Magnus he was lucky, I would lose count pretty quickly. We were all bundled into the car, my dad, Sun-Lee, the boys, me, even our two dogs, Cerberus (Kirby for short) the Pitt Bull terrier and Rommel, the Golden Retriever (it was on too short notice to take them to the kennel and none of our neighbors would take them in the middle of the night), and on the way to the airport in minutes. The whole long car ride there and the long plane ride to Boston, no one said a word.

Uncle Randolph met us at the Airport. After a two hour shouting match between him and Dad, the three of us got everything together and set out to look for Magnus. My dad and I found about three people who had seen him. The librarian at the Public Library, a worker at a local falafel place, and a local police officer (who we went to for help even though Uncle Randolph said not to call the police). Or at least they'd seen a boy who looked a lot like Magnus. They each had a different name for him. The guy at the falafel place said he thought Magnus' name was Jimmy. The librarian said it was Michael. The cop he said the boy he had picked up for petty theft told him his name was Benjamin Franklin Yates. After a homeless African American who looked like a shorter, homeless version of Charles Beckendorf swore up and down that he had never seen Magnus Chase in his life, I felt like I wanted to kill Uncle Randolph.

"How could not tell us for two years." I complained to Dad, "I could strangle him."

"He is your uncle." Dad said, "We should probably try not to kill."

"Dad," I said, "Magnus has been missing for two years. He could be frozen in a ditch somewhere for all we know."

"We don't know that." Dad said there was a brief silence. I turned around. Nothing.

"What's wrong." Dad asked me, "You don't sense….."

"No. Yes." I threw up my hands, "I don't know. It's like something is there, but I don't know what."

"Well we should be careful then." Dad put his arm around me, "We'll find him. At least I hope we will."

"Why did you stop talking?" I asked, "You and Aunt Natalie."

Sun-Lee had told the boys and me at least one hundred versions of why Dad and Uncle Randolph stopped talking, but I had long since worked out that if it wasn't about my Mom, it was probably about the inheritance money. There was some kind of clause in my grandparent's will that stated that any grandchild born out of wedlock would inherit none of the money. My Dad always knew that I was smarter than most kids and he talked all the time about a reading skills tutor for me so I could go to college. My Aunt Natalie had wanted to Magnus to go an Ivy League school. It drove them both crazy that if anything happened to them, then Magnus and I would be on their own. It didn't help that as, Sun-Lee frequently implied, Randolph had always been the favorite son.

"It's complicated."

"It's about Mom isn't it?"

"What makes you say that?"

"That's what 'it's complicated' is code word for in demigod families."

"It's not just about your mother." He shrugged, "It's also about Magnus' father."

Magnus' father. Maybe Magnus' father was one of the Roman gods. Not all of them had dyslexia and ADHD. Maybe we were looking in the wrong place altogether, maybe he was just a few miles away the whole time.

No. No. If Magnus was at Camp Jupiter, he would have reached out. Percy would have met him there, wouldn't he? Besides, apart from the Fifth Cohort, Camp Jupiter just wasn't Magnus' kind of place. Almost every one of the Roman Demigods was too much of a bully. They were so conformist. So prejudicial. They looked down on people for who their godly parent was, or what their hobbies. Percy and I may have considered raising a family in New Rome, but I doubt that Magnus could have lived that way. He was too honest, too soft-spoken. They probably would have mocked him for reading. If Magnus had been at Camp Jupiter, Percy probably would have met in the frequently abused Fifth Cohort.

"Who is Magnus' father?" I looked at my father for a long time.

"It's complicated." Dad looked like he was going to cry

When we came to later that night, Uncle Randolph stood across Sun-Lee and the boys. Sun-Lee was crying hard. Randolph turned toward Dad.

"I have some bad news."

A/N: Sorry about Annabeth's summing up of Camp Jupiter if it offended anyone, but I can't help disliking it and in my defense most of it is true. Rick Riordan owns everything.