A/N: I own nothing. Enjoy!

"Luke, stop it, I'm serious."

Annabeth pushed her boyfriend off of her. Luke's body was much heavier than hers, and it took her a few moments of squirming to push him off. Usually, when she felt something was going too far and she expressed that thought, he listened. Annabeth's intuition tingled. Something felt severely off today.

"Luke." She warned. Her grey eyes flashed the classic Annabeth glare that she had become infamous in her high school for.

Luke rolled his blue eyes as he disentangled himself from her limbs. "Come on Annabeth, it's only a little bit of kissing. And judging from the noises you were making, I'd say you quite enjoyed it." His golden eyebrows waggled up and down as he shot her a meaningful glance.

Annabeth held back the urge to throttle Luke. For all his seventeen years of age, Luke Castellan was still a hormone-driven teenage boy with one hand stuck up her bra. No wonder girls matured faster than boys.

Granted, she wasn't much better, with her pulling off his shirt willingly, at least for the first ten minutes. Although they had done much more inappropriate things that would have made her mother send her off to military boot camp, or even worse, to her father's, Annabeth was not in the mood for any further shenanigans. Especially when she had given her boyfriend so many warnings, and he'd ignored them. Her eyes wandered anxiously to the flashing lights of the car's dashboard.

"It's nearly past ten, Luke. You know what my mom is like when I break my curfew. She thinks we're going to a museum, not sucking each other's face off. I was supposed to be home by 9:30 pm, and I told you we needed to leave at 9:15!"

"Oh, we've definitely sucked more than each other's faces tonight, you know." Luke winked, the handsome kind that always made other females weak in the knees. They used to have that same effect on her, but now it only made her feel exasperation.

"Which I said had to end before 9:30 pm," Annabeth said, with no enthusiasm at all. "Please, back to my house, now, Luke."

Luke groaned and settled himself back in the front seat. "Always the goody goody, aren't we, Annabeth?"

"Not this again, Luke."

Annabeth forced down the urge to roll her eyes. Sure, she was a star student, but she hated being reminded by Luke of that status every time. The goody-goody, the nerd, the shy, introverted girl who never took risks. Unfortunately, Annabeth was never one to say no to challenges, and her pride had fallen to Luke's goading far too many times to do things she never would have even considered. Enough was enough.

And now, she was going to be caught.

Athena, her mother, was just like her namesake. A former military sergeant and current Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Athena kept a rigorous routine in her life. Wake up at 6:00 am, bed at 10:30 pm. Those strict routines also applied to Annabeth. Even after Athena's honorable discharge from the military, she still carried that commanding presence. Her mother had an innate ability to strike fear into anyone's eyes, including Annabeth.

Annabeth quickly rearranged her clothing back to tip-top shape. Annabeth would say that they got lost going to the museum. Traffic was terrible or something to that effect.

"Fine then. Whatever," Luke scowled. He stared straight through the windshield, not even glancing at her.

The car zoomed along the hilly streets of San Francisco in silence, with Annabeth fuming beside him. She thought that after capturing the attention of one of the school's most handsome student and getting accepted into her top schools in the Bay Area, nothing in her life could go wrong. It was that teenage way of thinking, those elated false emotions of invincibility.

But her relationship with Luke was volatile, unpredictable at best. Luke's behavior tonight had proven he enjoyed the physical side of their relationship far more than he preferred the emotional side. There were even times when, did she dare say it, she wanted to end things before the relationship became too toxic for the both of them.

Annabeth sighed internally. What did Luke even like about her?

Luke stepped on the accelerator just as Annabeth closed the passenger side door. The car sped off, vanishing soon in the distance into the night. As far as she could tell, he never looked back.

When Annabeth opened the door to her Edwardian-style house that night, that should have been the moment for her to get the hell out. She should never have stepped foot past the threshold that night. Never.

The lights should have alerted her. For one, they were all off. Athena always kept the lights on for her daughter. Now her eyes were stuck trying to get used to the dark shadows licking at the corners of the furniture.

Maybe the alarm should have been the slow drip drop sounds of water leaking from the kitchen faucet. Athena Olympian was just too perfect to not close the faucet properly. The house was always maintained immaculately, with any problems fixed within the day and by Athena herself.

Or perhaps it was the blinds being drawn down. Her mom and she would of course pull them down at night, but not if Athena was waiting for Annabeth to come home.

She shouldn't have stepped inside the house but she did, putting her keys on the counter as she shuffled her sneakers off her feet. Her hand flicked the light switch, and she squinted her eyes to prepare for the glare of the light. No change. Annabeth turned the switch on and off again, but no light appeared.

Strange.

"Mom, is the electricity off?" Annabeth called out.

But the neighbor's house had lights turned on, she recalled. As Ms. Rhea often came by to trade plant clippings with her mother, through their conversations Annabeth bet their neighbors were watching an episode of Friends again. The raucous sounds of the studio audience members laughing were so loud that Annabeth could hear them from her driveway.

"I'm sorry about being late. I lost track of time with Luke. I know, it's stupid of me, and I won't do it again. Honestly, I-I think I'm going to break up with him."

But she was met with silence. Silence was worse than the quiet anger in her mom's words. Gods, her mom must be the angriest she had ever been.

She stepped on something sticky when she turned the corner from the hallway to the living room.

Then someone was screaming, screaming as if her life depended on it. How strange. The screams sounded like they were coming from her mouth but she had no way of stopping them.

"Now what is with the screaming, young lady? I thought you had more sense than to, oh shit-" The gruff voice shut up quickly.

Annabeth barely registered the shadows of someone blocking the light from the front doorway behind her. Ms. Rhea's husband grabbed her by the arm, trying to pull her out of the house.

"Honey, what's wrong?" Ms. Rhea called. "Is that Annabeth, I hear?"

"No, don't look!"

But it was too late. Annabeth's eyes had already fallen onto the scene that would forever be branded into her mind.

For her mom lay sprawled on the carpeted living room, lying in a pool of her own congealed blood.

But it was those grey eyes that traumatized Annabeth the most. The same grey eyes Annabeth had inherited.

They were open and lifeless, staring right at her, with the scorching black mark of a scythe branded on her right cheek.

A/N: So welcome to my new story! It will definitely have some very dark themes to it. If you love mystery and romance, then buckle up, kiddos, this author is gonna take you for a ride.

Feel free to discuss your theories in the reviews. Isn't it satisfying when your theory is correct? The main plot of this story has been completed from start to finish, but because this story isn't completely written like How to Seduce an Earl, my updates may not be as regular as that story was. See you next chapter, my lovelies~