Chapter 2

Annabeth was on her phone the entire way back to Manhattan. It seemed like she was attempting to call everyone either one of us had ever known. She called Grover in New York, Jason and Piper in LA, Frank and Hazel in New Rome, Leo in old Rome, almost all of her siblings that were currently living in America, my mom, her dad and she even managed to somehow get hold of Thalia and the hunters down in Canada.
Not a single one of them had heard from Malcolm since Annabeth had driven him to the airport in Amsterdam a day ago.
Annabeth was in a serious manic-panic mode. I had only ever seen her like this before when she briefly lost Daedalus' laptop at the Athena cabin reunion last month. Except that this time was worse…way worse.
The drive should've taken us forty minutes. Instead, under Annabeth's rapid instruction, I ran every stop sign, traffic light and blatantly disregarded any and all speed limits. We arrived back at our apartment block in a quarter of an hour.
I pulled into the parking lot below our place and before I had even put the car into park Annabeth was out of the car and running towards the elevator. I locked our SUV and sprinted after Annabeth, only just making it through the doors before they closed behind me.
'Perce?' Annabeth's voice startled me. She hadn't said anything to me apart from 'step on it' since she found out Malcolm was missing.
'Yeah?'
'I'm worried about Malcolm.' Tears—that I knew she had been holding back sine the airport—welled up in her eyes.
The elevator started to move agonizingly slowly. I pulled Annabeth into a hug but the warmth and comfort usually accompanied by that movement was gone. Her head still fit snugly under my chin but she was cold and shaking. Tears rolled off her cheeks onto my t-shirt as she sobbed silently.
Normally Annabeth wouldn't have gotten worked up so easily but the exhaustion from jet lag and not having seen Addy nor me in the past two weeks must have taken its toll on her.
'I know, Sweetie. We'll find him. I promise.' I say as the elevator draws to a stop and the doors open.
We walked in silence down the corridor towards our apartment. Usually Annabeth would have been excited at the prospect of seeing her daughter again, but under the circumstances, not so much.
'When we get in can you grab some drachmas from our bedroom, I want to IM Chiron at camp,' said Annabeth as we approached the door.
I jiggled the key in the lock and opened the door. The muted TV was playing My Little Pony (no surprise there) and Addy was lying, asleep with a blanket thrown over her, on the couch and Jesse was sat on the floor surrounded by a multitude of Latin, Greek and . text books. As soon as Annabeth and I walked in he stood up.
'Sorry,' he whispered, 'She fell asleep around half an hour ago and I didn't want to wake her.'
'That's fine,' Annabeth replied. 'Percy and I actually have a matter to attend to.' She choked on the word 'matter' and Jesse, noticing her red eyes, started to look very awkward. 'Would you mind staying for another hour or two?'
'I don't know… I've got to drive to Vermont pretty early tomorrow.'
I casually snuck past Jesse and Annabeth towards the bedroom as they haggled over pay in whispers.
'We'll pay you double your hourly.'
Annabeth's voice faded as I shut the bedroom door behind me.
I opened our wardrobe and felt around for the latches hidden under a stack of shoe boxes on the floor. Finding them, I lifted away the false bottom.
I surveyed the weapons and other demigod-esque items—nectar, ambrosia, a couple of spare swords and a spear, spare armour and Annabeth's personal Empire State 600th floor key card. The only things that we didn't hide in there were Riptide and Annabeth's knife and cap as we kept them on us at all times.
I grabbed a pouch of drachmas, replaced the false bottom and headed back out.
It seemed silly that we had hid this from Addy, considering that she already knew about the whole 'Greek and Roman gods' thing. But she was only seven (Annabeth and I tactfully ignored the fact the she went to camp when she was only seven) and we weren't quite ready for Addy to know exactly how much danger she was in.
Jesse was back sitting on the floor scribbling Greek translations in the margin of his textbook and I resisted the urge to point out the two plurals he missed. Annabeth gave Addy a quick kiss on the forehead—she stirred in her sleep, but did not wake.
'You ready to go?' I asked and Annabeth nodded in reply. I locked the door behind us and we rode the elevator silently down to ground floor.
To the back of the lobby there was a set of double doors leading to a little garden and patio. It was mostly used by Mrs. Pettifeather—the woman who lived across the hall—for her gardening addiction. Fortunately, the hose she used had a mist setting on it and she had UV lights installed in the green house.
'Oh Iris, goddess of the rainbow, accept my offering.' Annabeth spoke, while I held the hose. 'Show me Chiron, activities director at Camp Half-Blood.'
The water droplets drew together and flickered different colours to show and image—Chiron was standing behind the ring of young demigods who were singing around the campfire.
'Chiron, Chiron. Chiron!' Annabeth yelled.
Chiron finally turned around, 'Ah, Annabeth, and is that Percy's arm I see? It's good to see you again.' He yelled over the chaos of campfire songs, he then noticed the pained expression on Annabeth's face, 'Or perhaps not… maybe we should take this elsewhere.'
Chiron started to trot away from amphitheatre and the misty image followed him. When he was close to the Big House and the noise had faded he stopped and turned back to face us. 'What's the problem?'
Annabeth swallowed. 'Malcolm, he… he's missing. I was wondering if you had heard from him at all.'
'Malcolm? No, sorry. But he and Kayla will be here tonight to drop off Michael if you want to speak to him then.' Chiron swung his tail nervously. He knew from Annabeth's expression that that wasn't true. He was just still hoping that maybe, after all we had been through, his old campers could have their happily-ever-after.
'Ok, Chiron…maybe I'll IM you again then. Bye.'
Annabeth stepped away from the image. I muttered, 'Bye Chiron,' and shut off the hose.
I turned around, expecting to find Annabeth in varying degrees of panic. But instead she was marching out with her 'serious business' walk like it was Armageddon hour.
'Annabeth, wait, where are you going?' I chased after her but she carried on towards to stairwell.
'We're going to JFK. I want to check their surveillance for any sign of Malcolm.' She marched down the stairs and out into the parking lot.
I tried not to trip following her. 'Annabeth, wait! Let's talk about this first, shall we? Make some more calls…this wouldn't be the first time Malcolm's gone missing. He's a loose canon; probably passed out in some bar somewhere or touring museums in London. I'm sure he'll be back in a matter if days.' Annabeth knew that wasn't true and so did I. I was grasping at straws.
'Make some calls?' Annabeth spat, 'I've called almost everyone we know—'
A cool voice that, for once, I was glad to hear spoke from across the parking lot. 'Clearly you didn't call absolutely everyone.' Clarisse was dressed in her navy-blue NYPD uniform and leant casually against the boot of her police car.
'Clarisse.' Annabeth narrowed her eyes. I guess you could say that she and Clarisse were on good terms. It was just they were generally on better terms when they weren't any where near each other. I almost expected her to tell Clarisse to go to the crows but she said, through gritted teeth, 'What are you doing here?'
Clarisse smiled a grim, sad smile. 'I think you now what I'm doing here. You are the smart one after all.'
'Hey, whatever genius, mind conversation you two are having I am not following.' I looked to my wife to explain, as I had to do with most things (it really did get embarrassing at times).
'Malcolm's either lying in an alley with crime scene tape surrounding his body. Or he's on a slab at the city morgue.' She explained it calmly as if we were back in high school and she were tutoring me on trigonometry.
My brain went through the three stages of melting. First it heated to boiling temperatures then it started to liquefy and then my brain exploded. Annabeth Julie Chase, the woman who on our wedding day threatened a six year-old flower girl with disembowelment because she lost the veil, was standing here calmly discussing the death of her elder brother.
'Wait, huh? Malcolm can't be dead! I just spoke to Kayla, they're dropping Michael off at camp...'
And as Annabeth jumped back into our car, ordering an unimpressed Clarisse to lead the way to the crime scene I realised that Annabeth wasn't not caring. The order of events would be Nancy Drew, kill Malcolm's murderer and them go ape-shit mental. (And somewhere along the way somebody would have to tell Kayla and his four children.)