Author's Note:

ACKKK! I just realized that I got some facts wrong in the first chapter! Paul didn't use a baseball bat, he used a sword! And Percy had already gone through a full year of school successfully! I already edited the sword part but for the school year issue I'll have to re-write everything and I'm too lazy to! FORGIVE ME!

Chapter 10: Nico Gives us a Ride

When Nico told us he had an idea of where this person who could remove the curse was, we didn't believe him.

"How in Hades would you know where this guy is?" Thalia demanded, ignoring the fact that she had just used Nico's own dad's name as a curse in her question. The son of Hades frowned, but he patted Mrs O'Leary.

"If you don't believe me," he said, "just get on and I'll show you."

"Have you even met this person? And how did you know about the quest in the first place?" I asked. Nico shrugged and told me he had visited camp, to stay for the summer, but once he heard of our quest and what happened to me, he sneaked off with my pet hellhound. I scratched her ears as Nico told us all this. Then he told us that he had asked some of the dead for information on this guy. None of them knew anything in detail, but they knew where this guy resided. But the dead didn't know him and neither did Nico. They haven't met.

"Alright fine." I said, climbing onto Mrs O'Leary's back. The others did so too, though Grover looked hesitant for a moment. My dog was just big enough for everyone. Nico was still on the ground, and I assumed that he decided to do the shadow-travelling himself.

"Okay then. Now girl, take them to Maine. House of Mageia." he told Mrs O'Leary, and I swear she groaned, probably due to having to shadow-travel again. I knew from personal experience it drained her drastically. But she did as she was told and immediately, we sped into a brick wall. It became pitch-black before impact and the next second, we were at our destination. In the east. I dismounted and so did the rest. Thalia was grumbling something about losing her new car. I was thinking that that was barely anything to worry about.

Nico fell flat on his face next to us a few seconds later. He got up and brushed the dirt off his clothes. Then he pointed at a wide-open desert. Strange, I didn't know that there was a desert in Maine. Then again, my geography isn't really award-winning...

"There." Nico said, looking pale. Shadow-travelling drained him as much as Mrs O'Leary, if not more. I gave him some water, from a bottle Annabeth packed for me, before I looked towards where he was pointing, but I saw nothing.

"There's nothing there Nico." Annabeth said matter-of-factly. Nico told us to take a closer look. I squinted and began to see a shimmery outline of a mansion hidden near some trees. The Mist was really strong here, but as I became more aware of the house being there, the clearer it became. On its front door was the Greek word μαγεία, mageia, the word for magic. There was also a word in Latin, magicis I think. It also means magic.

"This is it?" I asked, and Nico replied with only a nod. I walked up to the doors, not knowing what to expect. I hesitated there, wondering if I really should knock or not. After all, I could be walking into a trap for all I know. But Annabeth came closer to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked into her intense gray eyes and I could see they were unsure as well. But they were also determined.

"We need to break the curse Percy. We need to take this risk." she said, trying her best to look confident. I nodded my head. She was right. I had to find a way to break the curse. I pushed open the doors and we walked inside. The inside of the house seemed bigger than the outside, and it was amazing. There were six floors and you could see the top floor from the ground floor. It was like a huge hotel or something. There were extra rooms on each floor, but strangely, two of them on the third floor were heavily chained up. I decided not to figure out why.

We explored the ground floor, and found a kitchen, living room, game room, training room and even outdoor hot springs! Like those you see in Japan or China. It was really so grand and amazing it almost made Olympus look like an ordinary conference hall with thrones instead of a bunch of chairs and podium. We were so awed by the surroundings we barely noticed an arrow coming at us. Mrs O'Leary howled and snapped us back to our senses. Luckily I was standing in front and the arrow bounced off my chest harmlessly. I looked up.

In front of us holding a silver bow was a young woman glaring at us. Her eyes were young and multi-coloured. She had really beautiful dark hair and looked about 25. But I felt fear, like this woman was dangerous. Her aura itself gave off a hostile feeling. Oh boy, did we really just run into another enemy?