"All's fair in love and war." -Someone
Scribe: I know that you're a daughter of Ares and everything...
Renee: You want to know why I whack Tyler around so much? I'm teaching him important lessons. Lessons he needs to learn. Like how his ego, and his head, are a little over-inflated. And no, the time I punched him because he kissed me, was not a lesson.
"Where are you going?" Renee confronted me.
"Back to Camp," I said with an implied, no big deal.
"You're leaving me alone with him?" Renee gestured to Eros, who was randomly going through the cupboards. He was still around, but I didn't know why. Renee and I were together; we'd gone on a date; Eros' job was over.
"You could always come back to Camp with me." I ignored the immediate glare.
"Have fun explaining your sudden absence to Chiron and your sisters."
"Yeah, right. It's going to be a picnic." I already knew how nosy and pushy Clara and Casey were going to be about it. Mike would just figure there was something I had to do and if I wanted to tell him I would. In a way, Mike was my favorite sibling.
"Good luck," Renee said. She leaned in and lightly pressed her lips to mine. I responded immediately, encircling her in my arms and returning the kiss. Renee smiled and broke from my grip, walking upstairs and leaving me no choice but to get it over with.
When I stumbled out of the forest a couple minutes later, I was flying high on the feeling of Renee's lips on mine. Gods, I still couldn't think straight.
Camp looked normal enough as I walked through the strawberry patches. Nothing seemed wrong, but the hair on my arms was standing on end.
"What the Hades do you think you are doing? Get out! Get out! Get out!" Katie sprang at me from behind, shoving me off her precious soil.
"It's just strawberries and and dirt," I said.
It was the wrong thing to say because Katie started to blow steam out of her ears. I'd had other experiences like this one with the Demeter kids. They were all prejudiced against me.
"Next time you step on a strawberry, I'll friggin' kill you!"
"Nice to see you too, Katie."
Katie's attack had set me at ease- there was nothing more normal at Camp Half-Blood than Katie yelling at people in her strawberries- but it vanished when I stepped into the circle of cabins. I could see no one. The climbing wall was empty, the pavilion was deserted, the beach and pond were vacant, and it was silent.
I was nearing the arena when I heard a loud bellow of voices. I winced. Hadn't I always said Camp Half-Blood was half a second away from total disaster?
The arena was a mob scene. Everyone was turned to the middle, shouting and cursing at a huddled group of people. People wearing fashionable clothes and cute hairstyles...
People who were related to me.
I squeezed my way through the wall of people. I broke free of the sweaty mass and tripped over a small, black foot. As my back hit the ground, I looked up into Casey's face.
"Case, what the Hades happened?"
"The girls had a makeover contest."
"But then why-"
"Are all these people about to kill us? They did a cabin makeover contest."
"They-"
"Where have you been anyway?"
"I was-"
"Because you could have stopped this and you didn't and now we're in trouble and I want to kill you because they kicked me out while they were 'fixing' our cabin and-"
"- at the house, hanging out with a few soccer friends-"
"-a bunch of angry Ares kids came for me because someone had taken their boar's head and replaced it with-"
"Casey. If you want me to talk to you, then you have to be quiet."
"Duck!"
I ducked and a duck- where the Hades did the duck come from?- flew over my head.
"What the Hades happened to this place? Where is Chiron? Mr. D? Any form of authority or sanity?"
"They're probably trying to stop the climbing wall from overflowing with love potion and perfume instead of lava. Or they might be turning the Big House white again. Or turning the volleyballs and basketballs back into balls instead of the heart shapes. Or they could be-"
"Okay, okay! I get it, Casey. The whole camp fell apart and you didn't stop it or warn me or anything."
"When's the last time you checked your cell, Tyler?"
"Um... the other day?"
"I left you at least twenty messages and texts about this."
"I guess I forgot to check my messages."
"What were you doing, Tyler?"
"Hanging out... with the guys? Playing soccer?"
"Oh, yeah, so busy playing soccer that you forgot to answer your phone."
"So I might have been with this girl..."
"That's what I thought."
Please let Casey assume it was just some random girl. Please, please, I'm begging you, whoever is listening.
"Tyler, you really need to get over mortal girls."
Thank you, o gods, thank you, o whoever-the-hades-is-listening-to-me! I shall be forever in your debt- actually, I'll just be grateful until something bad happens to me and then will blame you. So yeah. Where was I?
"I like mortal girls. They're-" I tried to think of one single thing mortal girls had going for them. I was coming up blank. What had Renee done to me? Only a couple long weeks ago, I could have spent hours explaining to Casey why I like mortal girls. Now, all I could think was that they didn't beat me up. Now whether that's a pro or con is up for debate.
"Yes, Tyler? Can't think of anything?" Casey was smirking. Bad sign.
"Uh, pretty?" was the best I could come up with.
"So you don't think I'm pretty?" Casey was destined to be an actress. No one else could have tears in her eyes within a split second's notice.
"You're a different kind of pretty."
"You think I'm ugly?" Casey's voice was tremulous.
"Of course not. I just wouldn't ever kiss you."
Casey's nose wrinkled as she forgot about her teary facade. "That's disgusting, Tyler."
I was just breathing a sigh of relief, glad the topic of my absence was done with when someone coughed in my ear.
"Gaah!" I whirled around. For the record, I do not scare easily. Clara just has this way of sneaking up on me and scaring the crap out of me.
"Hey, Tyler. Where were you?"
So much for being done with this topic. "At my house, hanging out, doing normal stuff, nothing much."
Casey didn't hold a candle to Clara when it came to interrogations. The person who stood up to Clara's questions and got away with any lies had to be the world's best spy.
"Oh, yeah? Why'd you leave?"
"Just felt like taking a break."
"In the middle of the night?"
Shoot. I'd been hoping she wouldn't have known that.
"Uh, yeah?"
"So why didn't you come back to check in on everything? You do that even in the winter."
"I didn't want to have to deal with my sisters... like I said, I really needed a break. So I just had some quality guy time."
"Didn't you just tell Casey you were hanging out with a mortal girl?"
Clara's interrogations would put the FBI and CIA and like government people to shame.
"Yeah, but that's different. I don't have to deal with mortal girl drama because I am the source of mortal girl drama." I felt fairly proud of that, because it was guaranteed to lead Clara off-track grumbling about egotistical guys.
"You suck at lying."
She couldn't know what I was lying about. She just couldn't.
"I don't know what you're lying about."
Whoa. Total telepathic moment.
Clara narrowed her eyes at me, "But I intend to find out."
Oh just great. I definitely needed a demigod detective on my trail.
A/N: So yeah. Not my longest. But not bad.