I gently opened my eyes from the most peaceful, and relaxing sleep of my lifetime. When my eyes opened, it took me a few moments to realize where I was. My memories came flooding back to me all at once. The airport, my mom, Hecate, the cab driver, the triplets... the pain of being stabbed...and the blood.

Stabbed.

Tristen!

"Tristen!" I called out loud. I sat straight up in my bed, temporarily blinded by the light. Pain shot up my back and into my upper neck. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them back. "Tristen?" I asked. I pulled the sheets off me, and swung my feet around over the edge of the bed. Pain made itself known in my left shoulder as Tristen entered the room, carrying a thermos of liquid.

"Slow down there," She said, quickly making her way to where I sat, placing the thermos on my nightstand and helping me back under the sheets and blanket.

"How long have I been out?" I asked, heart pounding, the tiniest bit of pain in my voice. I was still in the blood-splattered jeans I had been wearing, but Tristen had changed my shirt.

"Close to three days," Tristen said. She was wearing a pair of short-shorts and a light blue skin tight top. She grabbed the thermos and handed it to me.

"Three days!" I cried, beginning to shoot up again, but Tristen pushed me gently back down.

"Jake!" She shouted. "Will you stop doing that? I haven't worked for three days to heal you just to have you wake up and hurt yourself again."

"How could you let me sleep for three days?" I demanded accusingly.

She shrugged. "You lost a lot of blood; I figured you'd need your rest. Drink your nectar."

A wave of realization washed over me. It wasn't Tristen's fault I had gotten stabbed, and she did spend almost a week making sure I got well.

That's what the good side of me said.

The other side said it was her fault, because if she had never picked me for this quest, I wouldn't have ever been in danger.

"We need to get out of here. Tonight." I said suddenly.

"Not tonight. You need to spend at least one more night recovering." Tristen said. For a second, she sounded like a hospital nurse talking to a grumpy emergency-room patient.

"But what if the triplets' master sends reinforcements?" I asked. "They obviously know where we are and what we're doing."

Tristen took a seat in an armchair across the room from me. "Taken care of. The reinforcements came yesterday."

"And you took them alone?" I asked in astonishment. "How many?"

"Six," She replied with a sly smile.

"Six! Tristen...that's... amazing! It's incomprehensible!" I shouted excitedly.

"Well," she said, cheeks flaming red slightly. "I try."

I took the first sip of my nectar. "Any idea who sent them?"

"Hecate." Said Tristen almost immediately. "I'm sure of it."

I nodded, not questioning any farther. "What does the nectar taste like?" Tristen asked, standing up.

I laughed a little. "Do you remember the first-annual camp end-of-the-summer lunch where everyone brought a dish of food for the group to eat?"

Tristen's face lit up with remembrance. She sat at the foot of my bed. "Oh yeah!" She cried. "It was also the last-annual camp lunch, because half of the students went home to their parents with food poisoning, and the cleaning harpies went on strike from cleaning the vomit of the year-rounders." We laughed in unison.

"Do you remember the triple-chocolate and peanut butter fudge surprise you made?" I asked her.

"Yeah, you told everyone that the surprise was a touch of rat-poison." She said, almost bitterly.

I laughed.

"It's not funny!" She said jokingly. "I spent four days on that, and after the lunch there was only three pieces left! And I had eaten two pieces!"

"Yeah? Well would it please you to know I ate the other piece?" I asked.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I thought it was the best dessert I had ever tasted—though I never would've admitted it." I said. "It tasted good then, and it still tastes good."

"Your nectar tastes like my fudge?" She asked. I nodded.

There was an awkward silence.

"Tristen," I began, squirming uncomfortably. "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure," she said seriously.

"I'm afraid of fighting. I always have been. I don't know why, it's just..." my voice trailed off, and my face flamed bright red.

"But... you fought me before we left camp." She stated dully.

"Yeah," I said, sitting up and taking another sip of nectar. "But that's different. I knew you weren't going to hurt me. But when you're fighting an enemy, they want to hurt you. Sometimes they want to kill you." Tristen looked at me, face a tad pale. "And it's not like a video game, where you can come back to life. This is the real world, and death is for keeps."

Tristen shifted uncomfortably. "So what, you're like a pacifist."

"I'd like to think so... but I think pacifist just refuse to fight." I said.

"Why?" she asked.

"I don't know, just lazy I guess." I said.

"No, I meant why don't you refuse to fight?" She asked, smiling.

"Oh... I don't have a choice." I took a sip of my fudgey-nectar. "It's either do or die... or both."

Tristen lightly placed a hand on my leg, blushing a bit, and took it off quickly. "Jake, you have my word. YOU will make it back to camp. I won't let anything happen to you. I swear on the River Styx."

--1--

Silena rubbed her eye with a tissue, putting a bluish line across it from her running mascara. "I don't get it, Jake, why would you break up with me? Me!"

I rubbed the back of my neck with the palm of my hand. It was early morning, and Tristen was already almost ready to leave for Mount Othrys.

"I told you," I explained, tinge of annoyance in my voice. "I don't want you waiting for me...I'm just slowing you down...and I recently almost died, that gave me the chance to really see the light, Tristen."

She froze, and glared at me through the IM. "Tristen?" she demanded angrily. "Tristen!"

Oops.

"You're leaving me for that... that... gorilla girl?" She asked, hurt in her voice, wiping the last tear from her face.

"Of course not!" I defended, cheeks red. "I just... I...." I looked out the window shyly.

"Jake," Silena began. "I dated you long enough to tell when you're lying."

"Yes, well, it's been a really nice chat Silena, glad you answered." I said frantically.

"But-" she began, I cut her off.

"Sorry, we have to get going, time's wasting. Taa Taa!" I waved my hand through the mist, dissolving the connection.

--1--

"We got everything?" Tristen asked, her backpack and guitar slung over an individual shoulder.

"I think so," I said, holding my items a similar way. Her blue hair was pulled back.

"What are we doing for transportation?" She asked.

"I called my dad," I explained, "He sent a car for us."

"Sweet." Tristen commented. "Let's hit the road!"

"San Francisco here we come!" I said, following Tristen out the door and shutting it behind us.

We walked into the elevator and pressed the DOWN button.

Once in the lobby of the hotel/casino, we marched over to the main desk. A man stood there, about in his early twenties, with a goatee and bleach-blond hair.

"You found everything pleasurable?" He asked as Tristen handed him our room's pass-key.

"Yep," Tristen said. I held out the credit card I had found on the plane with my name on it. He pushed it away.

"You paid for the first day, and the rest of them were free, due to the glass your girlfriend found in her bed." He looked at Tristen again. "And rest assured, the staff member who cleaned your room has been fired."

She nodded, gave me a look warning me to only ask questions later, and pulled me towards the door. When we were out of earshot, I turned to Tristen.

"Glass in your bed?"

"I had to explain the blood-covered sheets somehow, a free day at the hotel was just a perk." She explained as we walked out of the building into the parking lot.

The over-occupied parking lot.

"Um..." Tristen said, looking over the large parking lot filled with hundreds of cars. "Which car did your dad send?"

"The black SUV," I replied, trying to locate it from where we stood.

"There are like, twelve black SUV's in the parking lot, how are we supposed to tell it apart?" She asked, a bit annoyed.

"The front license plate has a sticker that advertises Vortex." I told her, beginning to walk.

"Isn't Vortex the largest electronic engineering company in the world?" Tristen asked, following me.

"Yep," I said, spotting a black SUV near us.

"So, your dad works there?" She asked.

"Well, kind of," I said, looking at the front license plate. There was nothing but black. "More like he's the CEO."

I spotted another black SUV across the parking lot.

"Really?" Tristen asked eagerly. "I hear they make the best laptops on the market!"

"Laptops, cell phones, portable DVD players, iPods..." I said, looking at the license plate. Still not the one.

"Cool," Tristen said enthusiastically, and pointed to another black SUV at the back of the parking lot.

"That's it!" I called, remembering the sticker from when I was younger. I looked at the perfectly washed, and shiny SUV.

We hurried over to it. Tristen touched the smooth surface. "Where are the keys?"

I dropped to my knees on the concrete, and pushed my hands under the car, feeling the pavement for the key. Suddenly, my hand brushed over the metal. I closed my fist around it and stood up again.

"Here," I said, holding up triumphantly. "One more thing, though."

"What?" She asked, looking in the window, and then at me.

"Do you know how to drive?"

"No," she replied.

"Want to learn?" I asked, waving the key back and forth.

--1--

As it turns out, there wasn't much to teaching Tristen to drive. After she could distinguish the gas from the breaks, she figured most of the rest out for herself.

She was quite a good driver, actually, and she drove smoothly, even though what we were doing was illegal. But she drove so well and so cautiously, I knew we weren't going to get stopped.

I slept for most of the ride, and we drove all day. When I woke up it was sunset.

Tristen glanced at me really fast, and put her eyes back on the road.

"Hey there, sleepy head." Tristen said.

"Hey," I replied. "Sorry I slept the whole time."

"No biggie," she said. "It was kind of relaxing. I did a lot of thinking. But now that you're awake..."

She turned the wheel and the car eased off the road of the interstate, into a truckers' rest stop. She yanked the keys out of the ignition and exited the vehicle. I followed.

"What are you doing?" I asked as she trailed down the pavement. She said nothing for a few seconds, and when she was sure we were out of sight, she turned around.

"Hit me," she said.

"Huh?" I asked, very much confused.

"Come on, take a swing." She said. "Just do it. I want to see something."

"Alright..." I said unconfidently. I pulled back my fist and pushed it forward as fast and as hard as I could.

Tristen grabbed my fist from the air.

"First of all," she said. "That was way too slow. Second, you hit like a girl."

"Hey!" I protested.

"And third, your fist isn't formed right."

She showed me the proper fist making technique.

And soon, we were in a karate lesson.

Well, not so much a karate class, but she was just showing me basic defensive skills and things like that, simple kicks and punches.

Each time I messed up, she made me do the move over again until I got it perfect three times in a row.

She wouldn't let me use the excuse that I had been injured earlier, and that's why I wasn't doing so good.

She told me no one was perfect, and neither was I.

Neither was I...

--1--

We headed back to the SUV, both of us sweaty and hot. It was at least nine at night, and I for one, who had slept all day, was very tired. I couldn't imagine how tired Tristen would've been.

"You take middle seat, I'll take back," she instructed, laying down on her seat. "I'm pooped."

"Me too," I said. "What was all that even about?" I sat in my seat.

"I just wanted you to be more confident next time you go in a fight," she replied. "Do you feel more confident?"

"Yeah," I said, and smiled. "A little. Thanks."

"No problem." She said, smiling back. She sat back up. "It was fun."

"Yeah," I agreed. "It really was. Maybe I'll start going to karate with you when we get back to camp."

"I'd like that," she said softly, warmly. "But I don't know if Chiron would go for it, he'd be too afraid one of us would kill the other in a sparring 'accident'."

We laughed.

"Look at us." I said after our laughs sobered.

"What?" she asked.

"If it were two weeks ago, and someone would have mentioned your name, I would've cracked a joke about you," I said, almost a whisper. Her eyes went dark. "But now, I think I'd defend you against any and all people who said something about you. Just as I'd do if you were Jeremy, or Jonah."

"Or Silena?" Tristen asked, matching my tone. I hadn't yet told her about our break up.

"Yeah," I said. "Or Silena."

"What made you change your mind?" She asked thoughtfully. "When?"

"I don't know, exactly. " I said. "But somewhere between camp and here, something clicked, and I began to..." My voice trailed off.

There was a few seconds of silence, I tried to form words, but something came over me, my mouth wouldn't move. Before I knew anything was happening, our heads moved in towards the others'. Overcome by emotion, it was like our lips were bound together by an invisible magnet, pulling, pulling. Our lips touched together.

A surge of passion ran down my spine, it was as if all my nerves had been touched by live-wire, and no one else on this earth existed. Just me and Tristen.

It was the greatest feeling that I had ever experienced, and I never wanted it to end.