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The pale boy's screams were horrible. Sadie had never heard anything like them before. The pain he must have been in to make them must have been unimaginable. Bloody tears spilled out of his eyes as he writhed in agony, and Sadie could take no more.

"Ha-di!" she screamed, targeting the ribbons. The streamer-like weapons exploded in a storm of unraveled threads. Mercifully the boy fell silent at their destruction. Sadie then turned on the magician who'd used the ribbons and gave a wicked smirk. "Turnabout is fair play," she told the woman, and pointed her wand. The hieroglyphics for "mummy" blazed in the air above the woman, and rolls of linen bandages appeared out of thin air and began wrapping the woman up like a spider's supper. Sadie cackled, proud of her spell. When she invented it, it had been half genius and half a joke. Pop culture about Egypt turned into a nonlethal offensive spell. She turned toward the other magician, who wasn't nearly as brave now that his magic jackal had been drug to hell, but found that her brother had beaten her to him.

Death Boy's skeletal minion seemed to have lost whatever magic that reanimated it when its master was taken out of the fight. It lay still now, still half buried in the earth, though one of its severed arms was still clamped around its foe's wrist, impeding the magician's movements as he tried to duel Carter.

Sadie wanted to go to Death Boy and make sure he was still breathing, but resisted the urge. Carter was still fighting. If he slipped up she needed to be ready to pick up his slack, not kneeling on the ground beside some anemic Yank.

But it seemed as though, for once, Carter didn't mess up. He dispatched their enemy with a shallow slice across his stomach that would make every movement painful, then rammed the pommel of his sword against the side of his enemy's head. The man dropped like a sack of bricks and Carter turned around.

They both hurried to Death Boy who lay still on the ground. Too still. And Sadie couldn't hear him breathing. His eyes were wide open and glazed with blood, and the veins in his face were visible through his too pale skin. He looked worse than the corpse that he'd summoned to fight for him and Sadie was almost positive that he was dead.

Carter reached out and held his hand over Death Boy's face, letting his fingers hover right over the kid's lips and below his nose. "He's breathing," he said with obvious relief. "He's alive."

"He doesn't look alive."

"Well he is," said Carter irritably. "And we need to get out of here." He stashed his sword in the Duat and picked Death Boy up bridal style.

"This is going to be real fun," muttered Sadie. "Running all the way to Brooklyn in the middle of the night. What do you think our chances of getting a cab are?"

Carter gave her a dour look. "I can't even get a cab during broad daylight, even without carrying a bleeding, unconscious necromancer. But I've got another idea. Follow me."

He began walking quickly, taking care not to shake Death Boy too much.

"This isn't the fastest way out of here," protested Sadie.

"If I remember right, there's a pond this way," Carter told her. "If we can summon a boat –"

"We can sail it right up beside the mansion! Brilliant!" Sadie gave her brother an excited punch in the arm. Carter stumbled and almost dropped Death Boy.

"Careful!" said Carter. Death Boy didn't complain though. He didn't move, not even a twitch. He just stayed as still as a corpse, staring sightlessly at the sky with his blood glazed eyes. Sadie felt a chill run down her spine and hoped that it was not a portent of things to come.

Percy "borrowed" his stepfather's car. It was an emergency after all. His friend was dying.

No. His friend was probably already dead. The image of Nico writhing in all consuming anguish was seared into his brain. If he was honest with himself, which he generally was, he worried about Nico more than he worried about anyone or anything else. Not that he had a whole lot to worry about these days. The world had been saved, the titans had been turned back, and there were no signs that the next Great Prophecy was going to be realized any time soon. His biggest problems were his English class at school, and the fact that he was one of the few people left in the modern world without a cell phone.

Honestly, he didn't think about Nico all that often, but when he did, it was usually with concern. The boy was his friend after all, and he really didn't have anyone else to worry about him. Hades may have become an infinitely better father to Nico than he used to be, but considering what he'd been before, that didn't necessarily mean all that much. Percy knew that Nico continued to train on his own rather than at camp. He'd heard from Grover that Nico came by every once in awhile to catch dinner or spend the night, but for the most part it seemed that he lived in the underworld. Percy didn't know how healthy that really was. True, Nico was the son of the god of death, but he was also half human and being around living things was pretty important to humans. More than that, there was no one around to watch over him and make sure he didn't overdo it with training and kill himself by burning out all his power, and no one around to make sure that he ate well enough . . . with the possible exception of his step-grandmother of sorts, though cereal alone wasn't a balanced diet. Nico probably avoided Demeter anyway, Percy guessed, and he knew for certain that Nico wasn't very health conscious. In his vision his friend looked like he'd lost weight, and the man from the House of Life who'd attacked him really couldn't be blamed for thinking Nico was anemic. The boy looked like he hadn't seen the sun in months.

Now he'd probably never see the sun again.

Percy took out Riptide before entering Central Park and kept it in his hand as he ran at full speed toward the location that he thought was the most probable that Nico's fight had occurred at. He hoped that the sight of the blade would put off the sort of people that would jump a kid for the five bucks in his pocket, and since no muggers approached him, it seemed to work well enough.

Central Park contained more than a square mile of space. If he hadn't had a general idea of the geographic features that Nico had been fighting near, trying to find him would have been like throwing darts in the dark, especially since he doubted Nico was in any shape to answer his shouts. He stuck near the south end of the park, where there were spots where the terrain was rocky and unleveled enough to fit the spot he'd seen in his dream. It took him less time than he thought it would to find the place, since he got lucky and it turned out to be in the first place he checked, but by the time he got there it was already too late. The battle sight was deserted.

There were no people around. No weird kids who'd dragged Nico into their fight, no weird House of Life sorcerers with giant jackals and magic streamers, and no son of Hades. Percy wasn't sure if that last one was a good thing or a bad thing.

I was expecting to find his dead body, Percy reminded himself. Since it's not here, I mean since he's not here, then there's a chance he might still be alive. A good thing then, he decided.

"Nico!" he shouted. "Nico are you out there?"

There was no reply, but he hadn't expected one. In his dream Nico hadn't looked like he'd be in any shape to reply to any call for at least a few hours, or maybe days. If he lived.

Focus, Percy told himself. Nico's missing. Maybe dead, but that's not certain. I have to act like he'd alive. Which means that someone took him. Either those kids, Sadie and Carter, or the people from the House of Life.

The best case scenario, he decided, was if those kids had taken Nico with them. Nico's display had obviously unnerved them a little, but they hadn't treated him like an enemy. Carter had tried to help him when he was being penned in by those fast-growing reed things, and had tried protect him from the male magician before he knew Nico had powers of his own. And Sadie had a wand so it stood to reason that she had some kind of power too.

If the House of Life freaks had overpowered Sadie and Carter then that would be the worst case scenario. It would mean that they had kidnapped Nico while he was unconscious and helpless, maybe even dying. But if they hadn't killed him immediately it must have meant they had some use for him. Percy remembered the man telling his jackal to kill Sadie and Carter but retrieve Nico. He felt a spark of hope at that.

Then he remembered Nico's comment about how many bodies were buried in shallow graves all around New York City. It would be bitter and ironic if Nico had become one of them.

Search the scene, Percy told himself. Look for clues. You've watched enough CSI to know what to do.

And so he began scouring the area with the aid of the flashlight he'd taken from the glove compartment of Paul's car, looking for something that would help him find his friend.

Thankfully, there were no signs of overturned earth or digging anywhere in the vicinity. If the House of Life freaks had disposed of Nico's body they hadn't done it here at least. Percy said a quick prayer of thanks to his father, then another to Hestia, tagging on a request for her blessing in bringing Nico home.

What he did uncover was interesting to say the least. The plants that had grown out of nowhere to trap Nico and trip him up were unfamiliar to Percy. They were some sort of reed, he could tell, and they wouldn't live long where they were now since they weren't rooted in wetlands. He tore off a chunk of one and slipped it in his jacket pocket. Maybe it would prove useful in figuring out what sort of powers those freaks had.

There was also shredded fabric. Small red tufts that looked like they came from the streamers that had rendered Nico helpless. Somehow someone had reduced them to nothing more than tattered fibers. He was a bit reluctant to touch them, worried that they might still be dangerous, but he took a sample of them anyway, and just avoided letting it make contact with his skin. He needed every scrap of information that he could get right now and couldn't afford to pass up any clues.

Oddly enough, there was another type of fabric, this kind white and not reduced to threads like the red kind. It was still in long thin sheets, like ace bandages, and there was a lot of it. It was in pieces that were about a foot and a half or so long, as though it had been wrapped around something, or someone, and someone else had cut it off of them.

Could this have been from a mummy? wondered Percy warily. It wasn't inconceivable. Not with the giant jackal and the magic weapons carved with hieroglyphics. There were definitely powers at work here that Percy knew nothing about.

Other than the strange fabrics, there was the corpse that Nico had summoned to fight for him, which seemed to have unanimated when its master was rendered unconscious, and, more disturbing, a pool of blood in the spot where Nico had fallen. If that wasn't bad enough on its own, Percy noticed something unusual about the blood when he shone the flashlight over it. Just like Nico's blood in his vision, this blood was darker than normal blood, and Percy was almost positive that it wasn't just a trick of the light.

What is this? he wondered. A side effect of being Hades' son? Or something else?

All he knew for certain is that this was something new. Nico's blood hadn't always been that color, he was positive. He remembered, quite vividly, a construction incident while the new cabins were being built at Camp Half-Blood. On one of the rare attempts that Nico made to mingle with the other campers and be normal, he had been holding boards in place while a son of Ares hammered them in place. That particular son of Ares had been showing off, making a big deal about how he could drive a nail all the way through a board with one hit of his hammer, and was being so obnoxious about it that everyone was getting tired of hearing him sing his own praises.

What finally shut him up was when he accidentally drove a nail through Nico's left hand instead of a board. Even if he'd tried to continue talking about how great his skills were, no one would have heard him as Nico screamed curses in Ancient Greek, English, and, perhaps because some latent memory had surfaced, Italian as well, while blood streamed freely from his hand even before the other campers had pulled the nail out. The Ares' son had managed to tap one of Nico's veins, which had been very painful as well as very, very messy. Percy could recall that incident with great clarity. He'd been one of the only people brave enough to go near the enraged son of Hades while he was swearing in three different languages, so it had fallen to him to bandage Nico's hand, rather than someone from Apollo's cabin who would have done a much better job. He hadn't wrapped it tight enough the first time, and only twenty minutes later, bright red blood was already seeping through the layers of bandages.

Bright red.

Not black tinged.

"Whatever it is," muttered Percy, "it can't be good."

He stood, trying to plan what his next move should be. It was a lot easier to come up with plans when he had more information about what he was up against and what he was trying to accomplish. "Save Nico and put the fear of the Greek gods into those House of Life freaks," sounded like it should be simple enough, but he had no idea who those freaks were or where they'd taken Nico if they even had him.

"I need more knowledge," said Percy. "I need to talk to someone who might know something about this." Luckily he knew where people like that were likely to be. And there was no time like the present to start heading that way.

Before he left something caught his eye. Something gunmetal black glittered from the pool of Nico's dark blood. Percy reached down and gingerly picked it up. He recognized it immediately and a bitter smile twitched on his lips. It was a tiny lead figurine of Hades, a miniature from the Mythomagic game that Nico once loved so much. That figure was the last thing that his sister had ever given him. Percy hadn't seen it since he'd convinced Nico to take it and had never spared much thought wondering what Nico did with it. Now he saw with his own eyes. A thin piece of black wire had been carefully wrapped around the miniature, looping at the top so that it could be strung on a necklace. A broken chain was threaded through the wire loop.

Percy clenched the broken necklace in his hand as he was assaulted by several unpleasant memories connected to the Hades figurine. "I won't fail this time, Nico," he vowed and started walking quickly back toward his car.

Carter was glad that his plan to summon the boat worked. Death Boy, as Sadie had taken to calling the pale necromancer kid, wasn't heavy, and Carter was fairly fit, but somehow . . . Carter couldn't really explain it. It was almost as if holding the boy was slowly sucking the life out of him. He would never have been able to carry him all the way to Brooklyn.

He was relieved when he was finally able to lay the pale kid down in one of their mansion's guest rooms.

"He looks bloody awful," said Sadie in her usual helpful manner.

Carter couldn't argue. Death Boy was still as pale as, well, death, and his veins were still dark and clearly visible. If he hadn't known better, he would've thought that he was looking at a statue made of marble. Or maybe not. No statue had eyes as disturbing as Death Boy's. They were still wide open and covered with a film of blood. Dark trails of the tacky liquid had dried on his face, spiraling out from around his eyes.

"He looks like one of HR Giger's nightmares," Carter muttered and walked across the room to the kitchenette. The guest room had the basic features that his and Sadies' rooms had, though the fridge and cabinets weren't stocked with food. Carter got a bowl and filled it with water then grabbed a couple towels before returning to were Sadie was studying their guest with great interest.

"You're not really going to give him a sponge bath, are you Carter?" Sadie wanted to know.

"What?" asked Carter. "No. Of course not. Do I look like a candy striper to you?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

Carter rolled his eyes and soaked one of the towels in the water. "I'm not giving him a sponge bath, I'm just going to wash the blood off his face. Maybe try to patch up the gash that he got hitting his head on the ground when you landed on him."

"You say that like it was my fault."

"It was your fault."

"Okay, maybe, but I didn't mean it."

"Still your fault."

"Shut up."

"Whatever," Carter told his sister. "I'm going to lift his head up. Slide the headrest under him, will you?"

Sadie did as he asked without arguing for once. Then she surprised Carter again by soaking a towel in the water and starting to dab it against Death Boy's head wound. He didn't say anything though, because he didn't want her to remember what a brat she was. He started swabbing Death Boy's face with his own towel, scrubbing away the blood.

"That's an improvement," said Sadie once all the ichor had been cleaned away.

"Somewhat," agreed Carter. The boy was still way too pale, his black veins were still freaky, and his eyes were still beyond creepy. "Wait. Should his eyes be open like that? Should we close them for him?"

Sadie shuddered. "I don't want to. That would be too much like closing a corpse's eyes like they do in the movies. Besides, if we closed them the way they are now the blood that's in them would probably cause all kinds of infection. Next time he tried to open them they'd probably be full of pus."

"Thank you for that wonderful mental image," muttered Carter. He lifted the bowl of water and held it aloft above the boy's face. "Put a clean towel against the side of his face. I'm going to try to flush the blood out of his eyes and I don't want the whole bed getting soaked."

That led to an argument about whether it would be better to do it Carter's way, or to put the towels below Death Boy's head, around the headrest. Carter gave in and let Sadie do it her way because it was easier than constantly bickering.

Once the film of blood over his eyes had been washed away, Death Boy definitely looked a whole lot less creepy. Carter carefully closed the boy's eyes with his finger tips and glared when Sadie called him morbid. "I don't care what you say," he told her, "if we just leave his eyes open they'll dry out and he'll go blind."

"How'd we get stuck taking care of a necromancer again?" Sadie asked, perching on the bed beside their guest and pulling her knees up to her chest. "He is a necromancer isn't he?" she asked after a moment. "He has to be."

"I think so too," agreed Carter. "But I doubt he really knows it."

"Don't be so stupid. You don't call up a rotting corpse and have it sick your enemies by accident," scoffed Sadie.

"I don't mean that he doesn't know what he's doing," returned Carter. "I meant that he probably doesn't know how he can do the things he does. You remember how he didn't know what the House of Life is? He probably figured out what he could do all on his own because . . . because his affinity must be for necromancy."

"Freaky-odd," said Sadie.

"Don't treat him like that when he wakes up," admonished Carter. "He didn't chose his affinity. Imagine how freaked out he must have been. Remember what we had to go through when we found out we could work magic and had gods inside of us?"

"Yeah, but he didn't have a god inside him."

"No, instead he woke up corpses. You're right. He really did have it so much easier."

"Whatever," huffed Sadie.

"More than that, look at him. Really look at him."

"I have looked at him," said Sadie. "I see an anemic Yank. Not impressed."

Carter scowled and gave Sadie his insights, using the skills he'd garnered from years of his father's anthropology and archeology lectures. "His skin is too tight around his cheek bones and his arms are rail thin. Signs of malnourishment. There are white spots on his nails which indicate he doesn't get enough calcium. Pale skin which is cold to the touch suggests anemia, like you said. These wouldn't be uncommon in a child from a poor family, or one who lived on the street, but there are things that contradict this conclusion."

Carter tugged one of Death Boy's boots off of his foot. "Like his clothes. His boots are well made and waterproof. His jeans are in good condition, and that jacket is Italian leather. Not sure how he manages to work magic so well wearing animal products, but that's not the issue. If we search his pockets we'll probably find a good amount of money. Hey! I didn't mean you should search his pockets!"

"We'll see if what you say has any merit," sniped Sadie. She turned Death Boy's jean pockets out and came up with nothing. With a smug smile on her face she proceeded to his jacket pockets, then her smirk faded. From one she pulled out two fat wads of cash. One of American twenty dollar bills, the other of twenty euro banknotes. In his other jacket pocket she found a handful of bright gold coins covered in odd symbols, and a gunmetal black switchblade. "What the bloody hell are these?" she asked, holding up one of the coins.

"Not Egyptian," was all Carter knew. He gave his sister a superior smirk before continuing with his educated guess as to what Death Boy's situation was. "All these point to him being from a wealthy family that doesn't give a damn about him. They buy him nice clothes because what he wears reflects on them. They make sure that he stays clean and well groomed, and gets his hair cut regularly so that he doesn't embarrass them. But other than that, they try to avoid him. He probably can't remember the last time he had a meal with his family because they don't want him there. They don't check to make sure that he eats his vegetables or drinks his milk. And if he decides to go for a walk at night in Central Park they're alright with it, because they're secretly hoping that he won't come home. And do you know why that probably is? Because they know what he can do and it scares the crap out of them. So maybe, when he wakes up, we should treat him like an ally who put his life on the line for us, facing down the House of Life. Not like a necromancer who we don't think is as good as us. We are looking for allies, remember? And alienating this kid doesn't seem like a good way to win him over to our side."

"Alright," promised Sadie, "I'll try not to treat him like the freaky-odd emo goth he is."

Carter sighed and pulled off Death Boy's, no, the kid's other boot. He needed to stop thinking of the necromancer in derogatory terms and that meant no using the rude but appropriate nickname Sadie had branded him with. He put the boots on the floor and stood up. "We should leave him in peace for awhile."

"So when do you think he's going to wake up?"

Carter shrugged. "He still looks like he's in pretty bad shape. It might be awhile."

Nico was in hell. Which is not to say that he had somehow been transported back to his father's realm. But it wasn't in the figurative sense either, even though he did have a headache that would have made being lobotomized seem tame, and a fiery burning in his chest that made every beat of his heart pure agony. He was literally in some form of hell. Or at least an afterlife, but nowhere in the afterlife of the Greek gods. He didn't even know how he knew this, but instinctively he did. Anyone else would have probably thought that they were in a tomb, on Earth, or maybe that they were dreaming. Nico knew very well that he was awake and in a place where only the dead were supposed to be, that was somehow foreign and alien to him as the realm of Hades never was.

"Who are you?" a voice demanded from the corridor behind him. "Or rather what are you?"

Nico spun toward the sound, trying not to wince as his skull threatened to shatter into a million pieces and his heart made a desperate escape attempt only to fall up short and smash against his ribs. "What in Dad's name are you supposed to be?" he asked, but even as the words left his lips he knew. "Anubis. Defense 2700, magic 3200, physical attacks 3500. Full resistance to necromancy."

Anubis stared at him for a moment and then changed. One minute he was a tall man with a black jackal's head, the next he was a boy in his mid teens who looked enough like Nico that he could have been his big brother. "Mythomagic," he said dryly. "That game got it all wrong, you know."

"Believe me, I know," Nico told him, feeling a bit of enthusiasm despite himself. "Hades' stats are majorly gimped compared to his real power. He should have full resistance to all undead, not just doubled defense against zombie units."

"Demigod," Anubis said, looking half amused, half wary. "A son of Hades, I presume?"

"Nico di Angelo," he introduced himself.

"You're not supposed to be here," Anubis told him.

"Point me toward the exit and I'll leave."

"I'm afraid it's not that easy," Anubis told him, now just weary and no longer amused.

"Why?" asked Nico warily. "You're going to try to stop me leaving?"

"If you had come here with your body, I would gladly escort you out and into any graveyard in the world that you liked. However . . ."

Nico looked down at his hands and realized that he could see through them, as though they were a hologram. "Oh man . . ."

"And now we are faced with a unique situation," Anubis said, not looking happy about it at all. "My pantheon has no jurisdiction over demigod souls-"

"Which is good because I doubt I'd pass your heart-feather-scale test."

"- but untethered souls cannot leave the Land of the Dead. Attempting to do so would burn out all the energy that makes up your very being. It wouldn't kill you; if you're here you're already dead. It would obliterate your soul."

"And if I tried to make my own way out?" Nico asked, wondering if it would be possible to shadow travel out of this place.

"You may try, but I doubt it will work."

Anubis was right. Nico focused on joining himself with the darkness but his powers didn't seem to be working. But his headache increased sevenfold and the pain in his chest drove him to his transparent knees. A cry of agony found its way to his lips, followed by something that sounded scarily like a sob.

"Nico?" Anubis didn't seem to know what to do. "Are you . . . okay?" He moved to stand in front of the demigod, hovering awkwardly. Nico tried to respond but another flash of pain rendered him silent. Anubis, looking as though he'd never made a comforting gesture before in his life, reached out tentatively to touch his shoulder. The moment his fingers made physical contact everything changed.

Neither the death god nor the demigod would be able to describe the situation later to anyone if they had tried. It felt almost like their souls had been fused together with white hot electricity. Anubis' godly energy melded with the energy that made up Nico's soul, and filled the raw, aching abyss of pain that was in his chest. Then something seemed to snap like a rubber band and shot Nico back into his own body, wherever it was.

Nico sat bolt upright and screamed; not in pain this time. Not quite in ecstasy either. The power that coursed through the veins of his half immortal body burned, like an adrenaline rush. For several scary seconds he didn't think that his body would be able to handle it and was certain that he was going to break apart, but the moment passed and the sense of danger subsided. The energy however remained.

A baboon that had been affixing a bandage to his arm screamed right back at him, then jumped backward and up and down in a fit.

"Huh! Wha? Monkey?" Nico asked, feeling drunk on power and too wired to think straight.

"Monkey? You pass out for a week and that's the first thing you can think of to say when you wake up?" a voice with a British accent asked.

Nico turned his head toward the speaker and quickly took in her appearance. It was a girl, a little younger than him probably, but taller than he would be when he was standing. It took him a moment to remember where he'd seen her and what had happened, but only a moment. "What happened to that hag with the burning ribbon things?" was his immediate concern.

The girl smirked. "I gave her a taste of her own medicine. I devised a clever little spell that summons linen bandages and wraps my target up like a mummy."

"Spell," he muttered. Then words came into his mind unbidden. Sadie is a powerful magician who honors the old ways.

Nico's jaw dropped as he recognized the voice. "Anubis?" he asked, looking from side to side for the death god, even though deep down he knew that the voice was only in his head.

"I know Anubis," said Sadie cautiously. "But we can talk about him later. Who are you? And how did you do . . . whatever it was you did back in the park?"

Nico only half heard her. You're in my head, he thought at Anubis, hoping that the god would hear him so that he didn't have to talk out loud and start sounding like a schitzophrenic.

Somehow, Anubis confirmed. It seems that you're rather well suited to be a vessel. A little too well suited, actually.

Vessel? What? Are you . . . possessing me?

It appears so, though this was never my intention, Anubis told him.

"Hullo? Death Boy? Are you listening to me?" Sadie was waving a hand in front of his face, trying to get his attention.

"Cut him a break, Sadie," said the boy who Nico had seen in the park the other night. Carter, Anubis supplied when he drew up a blank on the boy's name, though he knew he had heard it. "Here," said Carter, holding out a mug of something that smelled like Nilla wafers. "You must be thirsty."

Nico took the cup, but Carter kept a hand out, steadying it because his hands were shaking. Not shaking because they were weak, but more because of an excess of energy flowing through them, like when he got really buzzed off of caffeine. He sipped the warm liquid inside the mug cautiously, then threw caution to the wind after the first taste and downed the rest in several gulps. "It's good," he told Carter. "What was it?"

Sahlab, Anubis told him only a second before Sadie gave him the exact same answer. "Sahlab. It's kind of like hot chocolate, only it's vanilla instead of chocolate."

"I didn't ask you," Nico told Anubis.

"Well excuse me!" said Sadie.

"No, not you," Nico hurried to clarify. "The voice in my head. Wait. I shouldn't have said that, I didn't mean it like that –"

"Voice in your head?" asked Carter, catching on immediately. "Are you the host of a god then?"

"No," Nico told him, but then Anubis seemed to wrest control of his body from him. "Yes," Anubis told them using Nico's lips and Nico's voice. "I have somehow gotten part of my soul stuck in this demigod's body."

"Demigod?"

"Who are you?"

Both Kane siblings spoke at once.

"It's me, Sadie." Anubis chose to address the girl for some reason. "Anubis. And this boy is Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, the Greek god of the dead."

Thanks a lot for respecting my privacy and not revealing my identity. Why don't you tell them my elemental weakness and how many HP I have left while you're at it?

Sadie and Carter seemed to start to relax when he introduced himself, but tensed again as he introduced Nico.

"He's the son of a god?" Sadie asked. "So that makes him a god too?"

"No. He is a demigod."

"Like Hercules, from the Disney movie," Carter tried to explain to his sister.

Nico's temper flared and he managed to wrest control of his mouth back. "Speak not of that travesty!" he managed to shout before Anubis got control back.

"My host is not very fond of that movie or its portrayal of his father," he said drily.

That gibbering moron is not fit to be called even a portrayal of my father! It was even worse than the Clash of the Titans remake!

"What I would like to know," Anubis said to the Kanes, "is how his soul came to be in my domain. Even with my power added to him it took him . . . a week you said? A week for his soul to return and fit back into his own comatose body."

"Comatose?" Carter looked shocked and guilty. "Er, sorry Nico. I mean we were hoping that it was just a deep sleep. And it was actually only four days, not a whole week."

Four days, Nico thought glumly. He hated losing time. After losing close to sixty years in the Lotus Hotel and Casino he was reluctant to even nap during the day and let time pass him by.

"What happened before that?" prompted Anubis.

"Well, we were in Central Park, running from a couple magicians from the House of Life," explained Sadie. "We ran into Death Boy – er, I mean Nico-"

"She actually landed on top of him."

"Shut up, Carter! Anyway, we ran into him and the magicians caught up to us. The guy tried to send Death Boy home using a touch of hypnotism, but Death Boy resisted it and was able to see through the veil and knew that the magician's familiar was a jackal, not a wolf or a dog. So the magician assumed that Death Boy –"

"My name is Nico!"

"Right. Assumed that Nico was a magician that we were recruiting and sicked his pet Cujo on us. But Death Boy, I mean Nico, opened up some kind of rift in the ground and the jackal got sucked into it along with some flames."

He's a chew toy for Cerberus by now, Nico couldn't help thinking with a small touch of glee.

"Then the other magician appeared," Carter took over. "She bound Nico with the Ribbons of Hathor and tried to banish him."

"I see," said Anubis. "That must have been it."

"What must have been it?" both Kanes asked out loud, while Nico asked the same question in his mind.

"The magician tried to banish any traces of divinity in his body," explained Anubis. "The ribbons of Hathor are intended to expel a god from his human host. It banishes the divine energy inside of the human and leaves the vessel in tact. But half of Nico's genetic makeup is divine. To banish the essence of divinity in him would be equivalent to dissecting him on the cellular level, or trying to unravel his genes and eliminating any traces of his father's DNA."

Greek gods don't have DNA, stupid.

Anubis ignored the insult. "But that alone would not have been enough to hurt most demigods. Hathor's power stems from life, and most of the powers of the Greek gods are linked to some form or element relating to life. In a sense, it would usually be like literally fighting fire with fire. Rather ineffective. But Hades powers are all linked to death, so in this case it was like fighting fire with water. It all but snuffed out his life. Hathor's power cast his soul into the Egyptian Pantheon's netherrealms, and left him stranded before the Hall of Judgment," continued Anubis. "He collapsed while attempting to use his demigod powers. When I went to check and see if he was alright, I touched him and somehow part of my soul was embedded into his. It seems that he is my vessel now, whether I want this or not. I can't seem to separate from him."

What? You're stuck here with me?

Not twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Anubis told him. The gods of my pantheon have the power to be in several places at the same time. Right now the majority of my soul is still in the Hall of Judgment, weighing the hearts of the dead. I intend to return my consciousness there as soon as we have sorted this situation out. I just am not able to completely withdraw all of my power from you, and will be able to hear your thoughts when you think them loud enough.

And take me over like this again? demanded Nico. He didn't like the feeling of being a prisoner in his own body. Only someone who was crazy or really freaking stupid would.

Not unless it seems necessary. Anubis gave a sort of mental sigh. I'm sorry for this, but unless I had intervened, this confusion could have gone on for hours. I wanted to get this sorted as quickly as possible, and Sadie and Carter know me. This way was faster.

When can I have my body back?

In a few minutes.

"So does that mean you're here with us now?" Sadie asked sounding eager. "You're welcome to stay here with us. There's plenty of rooms here."

"Nico is not any happier at the idea of me possessing him than the two of you were when you found out that Horus and Isis were residing in you," Anubis told her evenly and Sadie looked sheepish. "I do not intend to interfere more than I have to. I think that Nico will need your hospitality for a few days, however. This body feels extremely weak and fragile."

Hey!

"Probably because it has gone without food, or water, or a soul residing in it for four days. Even after being infused with divine power he will still need rest. Can I trust you to look after my vessel in my absence?"

"Of course," said Sadie enthusiastically.

"We owe you one for helping us with that feather," Carter said, a bit more practically. "And we owe him since we got him into this mess. We'll look after him."

I don't need a babysitter, Nico grumbled.

"Thank you, Carter. Sadie." Anubis bowed slightly to Carter then turned to Sadie. Nico felt the corners of his mouth curl into a smile, though he personally had nothing to be smiling about, and his eyes lingered on Sadie longer than was necessary. "Until we meet again," Anubis said, and Nico suddenly felt like something was tugging at a loose thread in his soul, pulling it so far that the threads surrounding it began to unravel. He felt Anubis's consciousness and the wellspring of his power at the far end of that thread, leaving him alone in his own head again. Nico opened his mouth to tell Sadie and Carter exactly what they could do with their promise to babysit him . . .

. . . and promptly passed out.

Wow, this is the longest thing I've ever written for fun (I've written some longer school papers but they're not fun). I hope that you like what I've written so far. I tried to keep everyone in character the best that I could. Sorry if I slipped up anywhere with that.

In the next chapter Nico discovers some drastic changes to his body that have absolutely nothing to do with puberty, and we see what Percy has been up to at Camp Half-Blood.