I sat on my bed, writing a paper for one class or another. I couldn't even remember. Ocean jumped onto the bed, and sat down on my parchment. "You're an idiot," I told her.

"I hope you aren't talking to me that way!" Meryl said, walking into the room. I shook my head and pointed at Ocean. "She's being a bitch."

Meryl looked at me with wide eyes. "Rita!"

"What?"

"Watch your language! You've been cursing a lot more ever since you started hanging out with those fifth years..."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said."

"And what is that supposed to mean? Derek and Lucille are really the only ones in the group that curse anyway."

"You're just cursing because you want to sound cool."

"I do not!"

Meryl rolled her eyes at me, and I was thinking about something really mean to say when I decided that I didn't feel like fighting with my best friend. I sighed. "Do you have anything else on Akiva?"

"I think I've found just about everything there is."

Ocean stood up to stretch and I took the opportunity to pick her up and plop her down on a pillow. Underneath the my homework was my laptop, which I opened up. There were several already opened tabs into the origins of Greek myths, none of which said anything about Akiva.

"We need to talk to somebody at camp about this." I told Meryl, even though I knew she didn't want any help. "Well how would we contact them? The new phones and tablets aren't foolproof. You were there when Chiron told us there was danger of explosions!"

"Oh, big deal! Besides, Charlie Weasley gave me access to the school's private server. The password is 'lemondrops.'"

"He did what?!" Meryl asked, and then shook her head. "No, no. Do not change the topic."

"I am not! I could contact camp, I just don't know who to send the text to."

"You could use an Iris message. You know, to get to Camp Half-Blood."

I screamed and Meryl jumped in her seat. We turned around to see who else but Professor Falls. After I got over the initial shock of having the living daylights scared out of me, I took a deep breath and turned to Falls.

"A what? And how do we use it?"

Meryl was looking at me in disbelief. "Rita!"

"What? It's the only thing we have right now!"

"We don't need anyone at camp to help us."

"Still here, you know," Professor Falls said.

Meryl bit her lip. "How do you know about our camp? Did you go there?

Falls shook her head. "No, I'm not a demigod. That would make me something special. The same as you, actually. But no. I, uh, associated with one of your kind. The higher up kind, if you know what I mean."

"The gods?" I asked her. "You had a relationship with a god. A Greek god."

"Yes," she answered and suddenly became very interested in her Sam Edelman boots.

"Professor?" Meryl spoke up.

"Yes, Meryl?"

"Did you, um... did you have a child?"

Falls stifled a laugh. "No, but oh, we were going to. A beautiful baby. Girl or boy, it didn't matter. We were going to send it to this camp, where it would learn everything it would ever need."

"What happened?" Meryl spoke again. "Not to pry, or anything."

"I woke up one day and he was gone."

I couldn't believe it. "Just like that?"

Falls nodded. "Just like that."

We sat in silence. I cleared my throat. "So how do we send an Iris message?"