Percy didn't have any dreams, which was refreshing and unusual. Maybe it's because we're in the past? He wondered.

As he woke up early, no one else was up in his room. He didn't have any time to notice anything in the room before he fell asleep, but now he sees a light on every bed, a drawer, two desks, six chairs, two closets, and he looked for the bathroom. The door was painted white wood, with fancy silver engravings on the door and handle. As Percy opened it, he gasped. It was the size of the kitchen, but a tad bit smaller.

It was a bathroom— the size of his apartment!

There were rooms in the bathroom, a room with toilets and sinks, a room for grooming and stuff, and a room that made Percy want to stay here forever. There was a shower the size of a king bed, and a huge hot tub time machine~ that fitted the situation perfectly.

As Percy was gaping at everything, he didn't notice the door open and Jason coming in. He too stopped next to Percy and joined in on the mouth-gaping-at-the-bathroom-game. Or could you even call it a bathroom? Like bath suite!

"So, uh, let's go to it?" Jason offered.

Percy didn't have to be told twice, as he got himself ready, better than ever before.

As all the boys took turns gaping at the bathroom and got ready, they then all went together to the main room.

Hermes was busy on his caduceus when the boys walked in, and none of the other gods were present. Or the girls, for that matter.

"Where is everyone?" Percy asks Hermes, who was tapping away on his caduceus.

"Oh, huh? Oh, yeah," he said, stamping his caduceus on a box. "They're in the kitchen."

"I'll go ask them," Jason offered, so the rest stayed behind with Hermes.

"Hello?" Jason asked, walking under the beautiful celestial bronze archway. It was like the bathroom door, engraved with fancy Greek letterings and symbols matched in imperial gold.

"Oh, hey, Jason!" Piper greeted.

"Hey," he replied, kissing her cheek. "What's up?" Then he saw the mess. Everywhere, painted white wood counters with silver knobs, steel sinks that you could use to have a toy battleship war, white painted matching wood tables and chairs all perfectly sanded were covered in globs of pale slime butter.

"Uhm, we tried to make some breakfast for you all," she smiled sheepishly.

Jason looked around, and the people trying to attempt to make breakfast was all the gods minus Hera and Hermes and Piper and Thalia.

Suddenly he burst out laughing. "W-Wha—How did you fail like this?"

Piper turned red, and so did some of the gods. "Uh, I guess none of us has good baking skills?"

"What about Demeter? Isn't she all about farming and nature and stuff?"

"I guess I—we were so used to not needing to eat or cook," Demeter said.

Poseidon and Zeus were in a corner, playing tug-of-war with a bowl.

"Give me— this is my part to do!" Poseidon yelled.

"No! I know how to do it better than you!" Zeus thundered back.

"Stop!" Demeter yelled. They both stopped. "You two are arguing like little kids! Or worse, a married couple!"

That immediately took effect. They dropped the pot which resounding in a big CRACK! And they looked at each other, shocked and embarrassed.

"So... what are we going to eat for breakfast?" Jason asked.

They gathered around the hearth, ready and refreshed. "So, who will read this chapter?" Percy asked.

"I guess I'll," Thalia offered. She grabbed the book and opened up to the bookmark.

Chapter 3

Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants

Grover blushed down to furry goat legs.

"Uh, how'd you lose your pants?" Thalia wondered, trying not to laugh.

"It's not that... weird, for a satyr," Grover breathed.

Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.

"Why?" Poseidon asked, but more of a statement than a question.

I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to he sixth grade?"

"'Cause you are a dead man, man," Grover said.

"Yeah, I know that already. I've been in, what, four, five prophecies already?"

Jason sighed. "Probably more to come, man."

Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.

Grover blushed again, then hung his head. "How could I have just let you run off?" he kept muttering.

Percy felt bad for him, making his job ten times harder, so he patted Grover on the back and said, "Don't worry, you were fine. It's my fault, I shouldn't have tried to run and get myself killed."

"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.

A word about my mother, before you meet her.

"Ooh!" Poseidon said, waving his hands in fists.

Everyone's eyes were on him. Aphrodite was giggling with Demeter, which was weird. Demeter?

Poseidon blushed, an unusual sight.

"Please keep reading," he squeaked.

Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.

"Is that even a word?" Annabeth stared at Percy.

"For me, I guess."

Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.

"So sad," Aphrodite said, shaking her head sadly. "Good people like her should be more fortunate."

Poseidon nodded, agreeing with her.

"Of course," she said, making Poseidon open his eyes in fear. "It also makes for an interesting story!" she squealed.

Athena sighed. "The only one worse than you is Cupid," she said.

Hades had to agree one hundred percent on that. Cupid was absolutely dreadful! He hoped nobody has to go through with Cupid. If he was completely honest, he preferred Aphrodite.

The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.

Aphrodite giggled and Poseidon blushed with pride.

"You were definitely better than Smelly Gabe," Percy said.

I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.

"How?" Piper asked. "Wouldn't he have left before you were born?"

"I don't know, I just felt... connected somehow," Percy answers.

See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.

"And sank into the sea," Poseidon said sadly, remembering Sally.

Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.

"Yep," he confirmed.

She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.

"She deserves so much better," Hades whispered so no one could really hear. "I'll put her into Elysium," he promised Poseidon. This was a weird conversation, the Big Three getting along? Especially Hades?

Percy thought he was dreaming. Then he noticed how the gods may be getting along but maybe Hades just knew how everything was going to turn out.

Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano,

Thalia laughed. "Ugliano? Really?"

who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.

"Blegh!" Aphrodite belched.

Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along... well, when I came home is a good example.

I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.

Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."

"Ugh, he is so bad!" Demeter said.

"What do you mean?" Poseidon asked. "I mean, I can totally see that he's... not deserving of Sally," he whispered the last part.

"He bets, he has no life, he drinks, and he smokes!" Demeter cried. "No tact, no... life, and a terrible influence on the world!"

Poseidon smiled but shook his head. He knew Smelly Gabe was bad, and he totally didn't deserve Sally. It was just amusing to him but understandable that Demeter cared about the horrible effects on nature that he was causing.

"Where's my mom?"

"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"

That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?

Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.

Thalia laughed, and Hazel and Piper joined in. "Wow Percy, a walrus?"

"Actually, that's a pretty good description of him," Annabeth smirked.

He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.

"Splash him with salt water!" Leo advised. "Throw some sharks! Or, better yet, some crazy dolphins!"

Maybe it was just Percy's imagination, but did Leo look at Frank weird when he said that?

"I don't have any cash," I told him.

He raised a greasy eyebrow.

Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.

What if he's really a monster? Poseidon worried. Then he reassured himself that Percy and Sally were going to be fine— was fine.

"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"

"Would have been a money god," Artemis grumbled.

Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."

"Am I right?" Gabe repeated.

Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.

"Eeeeeeew!" Aphrodite shrieked. Piper wasn't a beauty diva like her mom, but she definitely agreed.

"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."

"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"

I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.

"Ugh!" Thalia shouted in exasperation. "Who does this guy think he is?"

"Calm down Thalia, I know he wasn't the nicest—"

"Nice?" Thalia said, her eyes widening.

Percy shifted, uncomfortable, and continued. "My mom married him to protect me. Look, it's all fine now," he reassured her. Thalia dropped it, fortunately.

I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.

Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.

But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.

Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"

She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.

Percy smiled fondly and sadly at the mention of his past encounter with his mom.

My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.

"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"

Percy blushed, and Thalia smirked, remembering how she had told her and Annabeth stories from when he was little.

She sighed, remembering the fond memories.

Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.

We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?

I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.

From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"

I gritted my teeth.

A lot of people in the room gritted their teeth too.

"If you want I can make sure that he won't be getting anywhere in traveling," Hermes offered.

My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.

Poseidon felt guilty (like the 10th time that day) about leaving Sally, but he knew he couldn't stay and interfere.

Hermes remembered in the beginning Luna said the demigods traveled to the year before Luke stole the master bolt and darkness helm, and he had a feeling that it was his Luke, the one he abandoned, just like Poseidon's kid.

For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.

"School can be great," Annabeth offered. "Except when you are a demigod, of course," she added.

Until that trip to the museum...

"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"

"No, Mom."

"You should have told her," Grover said, with a disappointed look.

Percy sighed. "I know, I just... didn't feel like sharing everything. I thought I was going haywire."

I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.

"It does," Athena said.

Everyone turned to look at her. Poseidon glared confusedly at the wisdom goddess. "Are you trying to make him feel worse—"

"But she would have understood," she finished, glaring pointedly at Poseidon.

Poseidon looked down, and through his tan skin looked a tad bit redder, gods don't feel the same way demigods and mortals do.

She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.

"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."

My eyes widened. "Montauk?"

"Three nights—same cabin."

"When?"

She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."

Percy remembered the time, and how his mother got squeezed, almost dying. He shuddered and bent his head down, trying to escape from the memories. Maybe Nico can show me how he goes into shadows because I really need that ability.

I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.

"Damn right there's no money," Thalia growled. "Because he used it all!" she accused Gabe.

Percy couldn't blame her for being so angry at him, he was a terrible person. A terrible step-father and a terrible husband.

Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"

"Ahhhg!" Thalia screamed and threw the book across the room, which almost hit Zeus in the face.

She blushed but then she screamed, "I HATE THAT GUY! I'm going to find him and ki—"

"Thalia calm down," Percy said.

She blushed but went to retrieve the book and continued to read.

I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.

"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."

Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"

"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."

"Let them go," Piper said.

"He can't hear you," Demeter said, confusedly.

Piper blushed and nuzzled herself in Jason's chest.

Aphrodite smiled weirdly and put her hands over her mouth to keep from giggling.

"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your stepfather is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."

Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"

"Yes, honey," my mother said.

"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."

"We'll be very careful."

Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."

Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.

"Oooh!" Jason cried. "That would be very unfortunate for him! The bifurcum is a very sensitive place, and not just for certain monsters," he stated, sounding a lot like Annabeth.

But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.

"Yep, knowing you, you would probably blow up the house," Grover bleated.

Poseidon's worry of his kid came back.

Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."

Grover bit back a laugh. He wasn't very good at hiding it, though, his goatee on his chin swished back and forth as his chin trembled.

Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.

"Yeah, whatever," he decided.

He went back to his game.

"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"

For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.

"She knows, too!" Leo said, using the same gesture when he said Grover knows.

But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.

An hour later we were ready to leave.

Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.

"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."

"Definitely not just a scratch," Grover mumbled.

Like I'd be the one driving.

"That sounds like you're putting the blame on your mom," Hephaestus commented. Which was weird coming from Hephaestus.

I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.

Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.

They started laughing at the image.

I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.

Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

Annabeth shuddered. "Spiders..." she whispered.

I loved the place.

We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.

As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.

We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.

"Blue food..." Poseidon smiled at the thought of having blue food.

I guess I should explain the blue food.

See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.

"Yep," Percy agreed with himself. "Plus, you know, Poseidon stuff and everything," he added.

When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.

Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.

"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."

Poseidon swelled with pride, and Zeus gave him a death glare at the mention of the beginning of him breaking the oath.

Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."

I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.

"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean... when he left?"

She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."

"But... he knew me as a baby."

"Bay," Leo said weirdly, opening his palms and fire danced on it. He quickly shut it off before any of the gods noticed what he did. "Sorry," he quickly muttered.

"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."

I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.

I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...

I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.

Poseidon sighed, and Zeus stopped glaring at him.

"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"

Grover sucked in a breath. "Not a good subject..."

She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

"Mmmm," Leo rubbed his belly.

Hazel stuck out her tongue at him.

"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think... I think we'll have to do something."

"Because you don't want me around?" I regretted the words as soon as they were out.

A few gasped.

My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."

Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.

"Because I'm not normal," I said.

"No, very far from it."

"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."

"Safe from what?"

"Never!" Leo said, imitating the Fates.

"Why do they have to be so cruel?" Annabeth cried, which was unlike her, but she put her face in her hands and Percy wrapped his arms around her. Even the toughest have to break...

She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.

During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

"Tyson?" Percy asked. But he knew that this Cyclopes wouldn't be friendly.

Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.

Hephaestus made a strange face.

"Now that... that I don't know why that has to do with being a demigod," Athena said confusedly.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.

I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.

"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."

"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"

"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."

"Camp Half-Blood," Annabeth said, smiling.

Percy's heart swirled when seeing Annabeth smiling.

My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?

"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying goodbye to you for good."

"For good? But if it's only a summer camp..."

She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.

That night I had a vivid dream.

It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse, and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagle's wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.

"Kronos is the voice," Annabeth noted.

"Then, the eagle is Zeus and the horse is Poseidon," Percy finished.

Zeus and Poseidon looked at each other nervously.

I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, No!

I woke with a start.

Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.

"So they aren't fighting, but they are fighting," Piper said.

With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."

I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.

"Hurricanes are water with warm and cold winds, right?" Hazel asked.

"Uh, kind of?"

"So it's Zeus' fault?" Piper shot back.

Some did an intake on breath. Percy expected the god to explode, but he didn't. He just stared, possibly debating on how he felt.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.

My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.

Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.

"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"

My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.

"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"

I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.

"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?"

"Ο Ζευ και άλλοι θεοί!" Athena randomly shouted. "Zeus and the other gods," she translated when everybody started looking at the wisdom goddess. She gave her father a glare that would have had anybody running.

"Wait, Zeus and the other gods are behind Grover?" Piper again asked, obviously confused.

"I think it's just a curse. Something is behind Grover. Maybe Mrs. Dodds?" Jason said.

"That's not possible. I thought Percy killed her?" Frank said.

I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—and where his legs should be... where his legs should be...

"Is naked body!" Leo burst out.

Despite the panic in the situation, everybody laughed.

"Hm, so that's the name of the chap—" Apollo realized, but Thalia cut in front of the sun god.

My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: "Percy. Tell me now!"

Annabeth started shaking Percy, yelling at him of why in Hades would he have kept such an important deal a secret.

I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"

Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.

Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.

Grover made a derp face.

"Ohh," Apollo realized. "He lost his pant— oh, okay, yeah I get it now," he said, rubbing his neck awkwardly.

"So, uh, are we going to get lunch?" Leo asked, breaking the silence.

Hazel punched him on the arm. "We've only been reading for 30 minutes! Lunch is in more than two hours!"

Leo laughed then started playfully fighting with Hazel. Frank felt a twinge of jealousy, and told himself that he knew Hazel would be there for him and would never leave him alone.

Suddenly everybody just started playfully freaking out.

"Uh, is this normal?" Athena asked her daughter. She shrugged. "Maybe, we haven't really have had much time with each other so it's kind of like a break for us."

"So. Uh, who will read next?" Thalia said.

Jason opened his mouth but before he could speak, Thalia threw the book at him.