Chapter 13

This could sound weird, but Blair looked really cute curled up in the sand. I had given her my jacket, but now I was cold, and even though it was around one in the morning, I couldn't sleep. I took off my black chain necklace and looked at it. The chain seemed to glow a little in the moonlight. I kept thinking about what Blair had said earlier. She had hinted that whatever she was hiding was pretty horrible, and I wondered if the secret behind my necklace was anywhere close to as big as hers.

I sat there in the cold night air, watching Blair and Hunter sleep. The cold air reminded me of Camp Half-Blood the last time I had been there. I thought about the few people that I still had left. How this quest was turning out... I lost Denny, but gained Blair, but what if Blair wasn't who she seemed. I diverted my focus back to Blair. What if the secret she was talking about was that she was working for some force against demigods. What if she was going to kill me and Hunter before we get back to Camp. I looked at her. No, she couldn't be against us. All the things she had done; saved us from the Clazmonian Sow, being willing standing up to the drakon, just to protect Hunter from harm. She'd had multiple chances to kill us before; that morning in the field before she poured water on Hunter's face to wake him up, the days leading up to now, and about an hour ago, before I gave her my jacket. What had I been thinking. Blair was a good person, willing to die for the sake of her friends... like Denny. I tried to imagine what she could be hiding, but all I could think of was that she was some sort of evil person, which I knew wasn't true.

Eventually, I must've fallen asleep, because I woke up to Blair prodding my shoulder.

"Morning" She said. This time, her voice seemed to be more guarded than usual. I looked around. We were in the same place we had been last night. Hunter was awake, and Blair was still wearing my jacket. I had to admit, that in the daylight, the black aviator jacket looked pretty good on her, if you ignored the fact that it was too big.

"Morning. What's up?" I asked.

"We had a visitor." Blair said, pointing towards where a simple piece of light gray paper lay in the sand, perfectly folded, five feet away. It was clearly a note.

"Have you read it?"

"No, we wanted to wake you up first." Hunter said.

"Okay. How you doing, anyways?" I asked him.

"Good, but not great. My head hurts a little, but otherwise I'm fine. Blair told me about what happened, thank you.

"Wait... Me? Blair was the one that protected you and stood up to the thing." I said.

"Y-you did?" Hunter said, turning to Blair.

Blair just shrugged.

"It wasn't much."

"Wasn't much?" I said. Even I could hear the disbelief in my voice.

"Really, you did the impressive stuff, summoning those skeletons and stabbing the drakon." Blair said.

"Okay, whatever," I said, the defeat probably quite clear in my voice, "Let's just get to the note."

I stood up and walked over to where the gray card lay. I picked it up, opened it, and began to read it aloud:

"Hello, demigods.

I await your arrival at Monroe

Find me at Ouachita, Endom

Hurry"

"Okay..." Blair said. "Well, whoever it is, clearly we need to figure out what he means and fast."

I had to agree, but there was something different about that card, something Underwordly. I didn't understand, but I knew it was important, and mostly directed towards me.

"I agree. What do you think he means by Monroe?"

"Isn't that a city somewhere?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah, Monroe, Louisiana." I remembered. " I drove through that city on a vacation once."

"Cool, but does there happen to be a place called Ouachita Endom?" Blair asked.

"Endom... Endom... Why do I remember that? Endom... Endom! That's it! Endom bridge runs over the Ouachita river!" I remembered.

"Well, then I guess we should go to Louisiana." Blair said.

"Apparently." Hunter said.

I nodded. I realized why the Endom bridge was something I had remembered: Bianca had died there. We had been on vacation, and a monster called a manticore had attacked us. A manticore has the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, but, it had the face of a man. The manticore had impaled her with its poison-spike-shooting tail. Bianca had leaped in front of me to protect me from them, thus getting hit. I could still remember the thump when her limp body had hit the ground. That's when the demigods had arrived. Seven senior demigods that didn't live at camp now, but had then. They had surrounded the manticore, and pummeled it with arrows and cuts from swords, until it turned to dust. That had been the worst day of my life.

"Nico?" I heard Blair's voice, snapping me back to the moment.

"Yeah?" I asked. I realized that my voice was about to crack and that tears were forming in my eyes.

I looked directly into Blair's mismatched, defiant eyes. But this time, instead of seeing Blair's strength and dignity through them, all I saw was worry. Blair turned to Hunter and whispered something in his ear. Hunter nodded and took Blair's and his backpacks and sat down on the sand and started to sort through them. Blair gently grabbed my arm and pulled me a few feet away.

"What?" I asked, really confused at what she was doing.

"Tell me about it, and don't use the excuse that you don't feel comfortable talking with me about it, you need to tell someone."

As much as I didn't want to, for some reason it just came out. Everything. Bianca's death, Denny's, my dream where I got the necklace from them both, everything. The entire time Blair's face remained the same: betraying no emotion but still somehow soft and understanding. I'd spilled all of my emotions that I had kept locked inside myself, emotions that even I had been afraid of, and Blair had taken them in like they were nothing.

"So...?" I asked.

"Nico, I'm sorry about your sister, Denny too, but remember, some people have to die to lead someone else in the right direction. I'm glad that you told me this time."

I was speechless, but I wasn't even sure why.

Eventually I came up with something to say other than gibberish. But it had mostly nothing to do with the subject.

"Most people... They are afraid of me. Even more so when I show them my emotions... Why not you?"

"Everyone has a dark side, Nico. You find it and learn not to let it control you. My dark side, my greatest fear at the moment is you know... My power. It controls me. But that's beside the point. Your emotions and what happened to the people you loved in the past, it's now for both of us to share. Now please, let's go, I'm tired of being all philosophical and stuff."

I laughed, it wasn't much, just a short burst that only lasted for about a second, but it was the first time I'd laughed since Bianca's death.

"Okay," I said. "Let's get to Louisiana."