Chapter 1
"Can I sit here?"
I started and looked up. I was on the underground, coming from Detroit, waiting for my stop in Cleveland. There was a woman towering over me, referring to the empty seat next to me.
"Uh, s-sure," I stammered. I made room for her.
She sat down and didn't say another word. What a creeper. You don't just ask to sit next to a sixteen-year-old punk-looking kid with a gun and a knife in her backpack!
Well, she didn't know that last bit…eh. Sucks for her.
I spent the last few minutes of the ride fidgeting with my ring and trying not to stare at the woman. There was something weird about her face…something missing…
She didn't have eyebrows.
I did a double-take, then immediately averted my eyes so that I didn't seem rude. Well…ruder.
A computerized voice called my stop and I got off the train in a hurry. What was wrong with me? Plenty of people don't have eyebrows…right?
I knew I was overreacting. Loner as I am, I always get nervous when I'm alone in a strange place I don't know with weird no-brow creepers. (Because I've been in that situation a gazillion times before.)
I stepped onto the platform and nearly ran to the stairs. I was eager to be out in the fresh air. Or as fresh as Cleveland air can get. I had to find another underground station, or maybe take another bus to Harrisburg, then a train to Philly. I checked to see how much mortal money I had left—about enough for half a bus ride to Harrisburg. Damn. There went the easy transportation idea.
Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I had to find a school. Where there were schools, there were half-bloods, and where there were half-bloods, there were satyrs. A satyr could probably help me.
I set off at a decently brisk pace to find a coffee shop or somewhere with a phone book. I realized how hungry I was—I hadn't eaten since yesterday's dinner with Lady Artemis, when she'd told me that I had to leave for my mission tomorrow. Thanks a lot (which I mean in the most respectful way possible!).
I shrugged to myself as I stepped inside a coffee shop. If I didn't have enough mortal money for a bus ride, I might as well spend it on something else. I walked up to the cashier at the counter and realized with a jolt that he didn't have eyebrows either! Was this some sort of idiot "style" in Cleveland?
He frowned at me—or, at least, I think he did. It was sort of hard to tell from his lack of eyebrows. "C-can I help you?" he asked, with an air of a person that was new on the job.
"Yeah," I said. "You got a phone booth in the back?"
"Straight down the hallway, to your left, and opposite the bathrooms," he muttered.
"Thanks." This time, I was too scared to care about being rude. I literally knocked over a little kid as I ran down the hallway to the phone booth. I didn't bother to tell him sorry.
I leaned against the wall next to the phone book, trying to catch my breath. What was so horrible about eyebrows? Or, rather, lack of them? I almost felt like I was having déjà vu. Of what? No-brow creepers in Cleveland? My gods, what a joke.
I grabbed the phone book and started flipping through it backwards for no apparent reason. I was out of luck. By the time I had reached Parkinson's Academy, I thought that maybe I should just ask a policeman or something, but I was a half-blood. Half-bloods stay out of other people's business at all costs. So I sighed and kept reading. I was on page four—page four!—before I found something promising: Baker's School for Troubled Individuals. Jackpot. I really wished I'd started from the beginning like a normal person.
"Okay, let's go," I whispered to myself, and turned away from the phone booth. I nearly tripped over my own feet when I saw who had been watching me.
Cashier No-Brow.