The last two hours were among some of the most nerve-wracking of Isabella's life. She had done everything she could to try and maintain her composure. To appear as though she hadn't experienced a mind-numbing realization about her neighbor and friend.

Did he know? Was Percy even aware of what he had in his possession? It was a ridiculous thought, but one that she wanted desperately to entertain nonetheless. It was a far more pleasant thought that Percy, the bumbling and kind-hearted man that he was, had managed to trip and fall into owning and raising some of the most legendary creatures in existence.

It was a nice thought.

But she was not so naive. Moreover, one of the few genuine lessons that she willingly learned from her father was that if you thought something was a coincidence, it wasn't. Which meant that she had to entertain the only other possibility.

That Packard had been right. That there was a hell of a lot more to Percy than met the eye, and he wasn't just some simple human farmer, trying to make his way in the world. That he wasn't just some normal man who had somehow ended up someplace he shouldn't have been. But what did that mean? Who was he? More importantly, what was he?

He wasn't a shifter. That much she was certain of. She would have been able to tell the moment she met him. A magical maybe? It was certainly possible. He had a…powerful aura about it. An almost ethereal presence that she had only ever experienced around those gifted with the powers of the other worlds.

That might explain how he came into possession of damned pegasi at any rate.

She managed to make it through the rest of the lesson without incident, but not without Percy clearly noticing that something was off.

"Everything okay?" He'd asked after Cassidy had clambered into the car and shut the door, waving energetically to the other animals as she did so.

She'd tried to smile, though she was well aware how forced the expression must have appeared.

"We'll see," she said as she pushed past him and climbed into the car.

"Did…Did I do something to upset you?" He asked before she could shut the door. She didn't trust her voice, so she tried smiling at him one last time, before she gripped the door and closed it. Percy allowed the door to be pried free from his grasp, a confused and slightly dazed expression on his face. Her stomach clenched painfully as she drove away, but she did her best to ignore the feeling. She wanted to be pissed at him. Wanted to be angry. He'd lied to her, had lied about who he was and had hidden part of himself from her.

But what a load of hypocritical bullshit that would be, coming from the likes of her. She might have wanted to be pissed at him for keeping secrets from her, but she couldn't bring herself to truly be mad. Not when he didn't know who she really was. What she really was. Besides, she had only known him for a couple of months, he owed her nothing.

It still hurt though.

It still felt like a betrayal.

She knew she was being irrational, but at the moment, she couldn't bring herself to care. She had to be in control of herself far too much in her work. Had to remove emotion from the equation too often. In this one moment, she was going to allow herself to be irrational and feel hurt and betrayed. If only for a little while.

If Cassidy noticed her dower behavior, she didn't comment or didn't care. Too engrossed as she was in her lesson. For the entire ride back home, she babbled incessantly about her lesson. About the horses, about the different kinds of equipment and saddles and everything that Percy told her that she could possibly remember.

It was as Cassidy was babbling, that something struck Isabella. She glanced in the rearview mirror, eyeing her daughter carefully. Had Cassidy not noticed? That didn't make sense. If her daughter had seen pegasi - real, live, pegasi - then there wasn't a hope in hell that the girl wouldn't have been unable to stop fawning over them all night. It would have been an impossibility to even drag her daughter away from the stables at all!

Which just begged a far more important and potentially alarming question…

Was it all in her head? Had she simply imagined the wings attached to those horses? She hadn't thought that she had. She had gone out of her way to try and make sure that she hadn't been going crazy, but then why hadn't Cassidy been able to see them? More importantly, how was it that Percy Jackson was raising damned pegasi in a stable on the outskirts of town, and nobody had noticed? How was it that only a handful of people had even noticed that there were supposedly pegasi flying around?

What the hell was going on?

She worried at her lip as she pulled into the driveway, and bit back a sigh. She didn't necessarily want to, in fact she was very much opposed to the idea, but she couldn't simply sit on this. She needed to talk to the others about what she had seen. But at the thought of the others, her expression darkened as a fresh surge of anger jolted through her chest.

She wanted to have a word with Packard anyway. Hurt and confused as she might have been by Percy, but Packard had still set his fucking dogs on the man. Whether he'd wanted to hurt Percy or not, it didn't matter. He knew better. Knew better to stray from the rest, and more importantly, knew better than to step a toe out of line on her goddamn turf.

Isabella managed to keep her cool around Cassidy for the rest of the night. As soon as Isabella was sure that Cassidy was asleep, she made the call.

Kassandra answered halfway through the first ring.

"Your ears must be burning," the older nymph chuckled, "I was just about to call you."

Isabella arched a brow in curiosity, "Oh?" She said, making her way downstairs towards her mud room, as she began to throw on her sneakers, "About what?"

"Packard called an emergency meeting, something about your splendid new chew-toy."

Isabella fought back a growl, and closed her eyes to try and keep herself calm.

"Ironically enough," she said, her voice coming out a little terser than she wanted, "He's who I wanted to talk about as well."

"Really?" Asked Kassandra, and she sounded positively captivated on the other end. If nothing else, one could always trust a nymph to be interested in the latest gossip. But Isabella ignored the question for the moment and pushed on,

"What time did he call for?"

Kassandra sighed heavily on the other end of the line, but didn't press her luck.

"An hour," she said.

Without saying goodbye, Isabella hung up the phone and got in her car. It only took half an hour or so to get into town at this hour, but she wanted to be there early enough to circumvent any bullshit Packard thought he'd throw their way. She didn't know what exactly he was going to tell them, maybe he also knew about the pegasi. Given her own suspicions, Isabella was pretty sure she knew how and the thought only made her angrier.

Slamming on the accelerator, she roared out of her driveway, and began making her way into town.

BREAK

Percy watched as the familiar set of headlights raced out of Isabella's driveway and tore past his farm. He wasn't concerned with her being able to see her. Even with a supernatural's eyesight, he was far too well hidden and if Isabella was looking for him, she'd be looking for him in his house. Not that she'd have anything to see. As far as anyone looking at the was concerned, Percy had already gone to bed. Not entirely unlikely for a farmer, even a young one. But she never would have looked to the brush of trees along the eastern edge of Percy's property, where Percy was waiting.

After the red of Isabella's taillights disappeared around the corner, Percy counted to five before he turned the engine over on his bike, and roared off after her. He followed her for the next thirty minutes or so, making sure to keep a mile or so of distance between them. Even though he was wearing a helmet, and had taken precautions to magically hide his scent, he didn't want to tip his hand, especially when he still wasn't entirely too sure what he was working with.

As he drove, Percy reached out and tried to get a feeling for Isabella's form. All creatures of the supernatural emanated even a tiny amount of magic. With enough training, or raw godly power, it was a simple matter to learn how to lock on to the magical energy of another being.

As Isabella pulled onto the main road leading to the town's center, Percy peeled off and drove three blocks over. There was a small alleyway tucked in between a hardware store and someplace selling decorative knickknacks. Parking the bike in the alley, we pressed his hand against the cool metal frame and injected a minuscule amount of divine energy. There was a low hum in his ears, as the bike seemingly disappeared in a small distortion of the air.

Still focusing on Isabella, Percy walked down the abandoned street. She had stopped moving, and Percy was fairly certain that he knew where she was. Sure enough, as he turned the corner onto Main Street, he saw her car parked alongside several others he didn't recognize outside the entrance to City Hall.

He sighed. He'd of course already suspected as much, but it was still rather disappointing to have his previous guesses confirmed. He'd been hoping for something a little less…on the nose, but he supposed that would have been asking too much. Still, he had a funny feeling something like this would happen, so he supposed it was time to see what the good people of Paradise were worried about.

With another burst of divine magic, Percy shrouded himself in the mist and disappeared from sight.

BREAK

Isabella glared at Packard as he sat down. She might have been uncomfortable with the direction her day had been going, but she was still beyond pissed with Packard.

"What?" He snapped at her. He was looking equally frazzled, if not more so. His was looking matted and greasy, his facial hair had grown into an unkempt mess of patchy splotches of dark hairs of mismatched and uneven lengths. He clearly hadn't been sleeping, as the circles under his eyes were large, and pronounced.

Isabella didn't respond, and continued to glare at him. She could feel Kassandra's curious eyes on her, as the Nymph took her usual place beside Isabella. Slowly but surely over the next fifteen minutes, the rest of the town's council meandered into the room. When Jed, the last of them to arrive, took his place at the head of the table, the quiet chatter of the room fell to a still.

"Thank you all, for coming on such short notice," began Jed softly, "I know that it is late, and we all live busy lives, so I do appreciate everyone's being here. That being said, I call this session into order. Mister Packard, you were the one to call this emergency session. Please, inform us of your…urgent matter."

Packard didn't immediately respond as he reached under the table and into the bag under his chair. He pulled free a small stack of manilla envelopes and began passing them around the table to each of them. Curious, Isabella flicked open the envelope, and was almost unsurprised to see a picture of Percy staring back up at her. He looked younger in the photo, likely taken three or four years ago. The picture was attached to what Isabella could only guess was a dossier of some kind. She had no way of knowing however, because literally every line of text on the page was cover in thick, black ink. She flicked through the rest of the document, but was unsurprised to see more of the same. Every single page was covered in the black ink. Isabella couldn't even fathom the reason behind having a file, when damn near everything had been redacted.

She of course recognized what this was. She had one herself after all, as did every single person in the room. It was a DSI dossier. A complete psychological and historical workup of a single person. Typically, the dossiers included the type or at least category of supernatural of the target. But there was nothing suggesting what Percy was in the file.

"What the fuck is this?" Spat Broke in agitation as he flicked through the file.

"If this is your idea of a joke," said Hei coolly as he flicked through the file.

Packard ignored the grumblings as he leaned back in his chair.

"A week ago, I ordered four of my men to kill a couple of Percy Jackson's horses."

It was the bluntness with which he said it, that seemed to throw the rest of the room off-balance. Though it lasted for only a few moments before the room exploded into boisterous shouting.

"Quiet!" Roared Jed, seemingly shaking the foundations of the building. When the others sat themselves back down in their seats, he glared at Packard.

"You had better have a very, very good reason for why you disobeyed my directive." He said softly, his voice little more than a low rumbling growl.

Packard nodded, but otherwise seemed unfazed.

"My initial plan wasn't to hurt him. You were right, outright killing him would have been too suspicious, and would have drawn unwanted attention. But it didn't change the fact that he's an unknown, and poses a risk to us and to this town. I made the unilateral decision, to which the rest of my family agreed-"

"Shock of shocks that a family of yes-men wouldn't know how to tell you not to do something," simpered Kassandra. Packard looked in her direction, his expression darkening somewhat, but otherwise he didn't respond, instead he stared blankly ahead.

"All four of the men that went after Jackson haven't come back. Which, on its own, was suspicious already. But then me and some others went snooping around the property. We couldn't find them anywhere. Their trail…it just disappeared. Vanished. And we know for a fact that there was a fight." His eyes darted over to Isabella, who glared back at him.

"Don't tell me you didn't notice the new door and the structural damage to the stables."

Isabella only hesitated somewhat before answering.

"I did," She admitted, "looked like someone had taken a pretty sizable bit out of the wall."

"Exactly," nodded Packard, "Which means that one or all of my boys managed to transform. This guy managed to kill, and then disappear the bodies of four fully grown shifters, after they'd changed? I started digging around some more. Started looking at places we hadn't been looking into before."

"Why are you so damn fixated on this guy?" Asked Thailor with a roll of her eyes. "We already guessed he was a supernatural, so why the hell are we still talking about this? As far as I'm concerned, dude saw a bunch of prissy puppies about to kill his horses and killed them first. I hardly think this was worth an emergency meeting."

"Seconded," grunted Daiyo, looking increasingly agitated.

"You'll be thanking me in a minute," snarled Packard, looking increasingly put upon. He jabbed a finger at the dossier sitting in front of Brok. "That's not an average report from the files of the DSI. You know where we got that thing from?"

"Guessing you'll tell us anyways," grumbled Hei under his breath,

"We got that from our guy in the records department of the DSI. He said that he pulled that file from the fucking employee registry…Jackson is a fucking fed!"

There was some silence around the room, and even though it was Packard saying it, there was a chill over all of them. Only a handful of those in the room had been alive for what happened in the eighties…but Isabella had heard the stories. It was still in the midst of a rather…tumultuous time in the supernatural world. The mortal world had become increasingly more aware of its existence, and the normal government was trying harder and harder to regulate the supernaturals.

Especially when they found out exactly what families like Isabella's were really doing.

It turned into a rather dark period in the supernatural world. Like the dark ages of old, but even worse. Mortal weapons and technology had finally advanced to a degree where they posed significant threats to the supernaturals. Raw physical strength didn't mean too much against hollow-points.

The feds, the early days of the DSI, had stormed Paradise. Descended upon it like the rats they were, and slaughtered half the town. It was only thanks to the likes of Jed and his brothers that entire city hadn't been cut down in the streets.

Or so the stories went at any rate.

But from then on, the supernatural world contained a healthy dose of fear at the thought of the shadowy government agency. True, the DSI had grown into far more of a bureaucratic organization these days, but that didn't mean that they weren't capable of stirring the pot when necessary. A fact that Isabella was only too familiar with.

Which brought her back to the present, with Packard saying that Percy, of all people, was a fucking fed. The thought itself was so ridiculous in her mind, that she couldn't quite stop the snort that escaped her. Not that she tried all that hard either.

"You're joking, right?" She asked, "Have you ever spoken to Percy before? He gets hives if he's stationary for more than ten minutes. The idea that he would willingly work for the government, or even wear a suit, is just…kind of ridiculous."

"Enough," Jed ordered, stopping Packard who had already opened his mouth to retort.

"Regardless of whether or not you think it's ridiculous, miss Connors, it, the situation…bears looking into."

She glowered, but fell silent all the same.

But even still, was the thought as ridiculous as she maybe originally thought? Percy had pegasi. Damned pegasi. One of the rarest creatures on the planet, long thought to have gone extinct. Not for the first time, she was struck with how truly little she knew about her neighbor. Was it possible that he really had worked for the DSI? Potentially still did work for the DSI? She really didn't want to believe that. It felt…wrong. Isabella knew feds, knew their look, and their demeanor. Even the undercover ones had a sort of flair that she prided herself on being able to suss out a mile away. But Percy? He didn't strike her as the suit type. Dangerous? Yes, he was most certainly dangerous. Her instincts constantly screamed as much when she was around him, but a fed? She didn't think so.

She was brought out of her thoughts as Kassandra lightly nudged her under the table. She blinked, and realized that everyone was staring at her.

"Sorry," she said, "Lost in thought. Could you please repeat the question?"

"I asked," said Jed, "How you think we should proceed. You have spent the most amount of time with him. You know the man the best. How do we proceed from here?"

That was the million-dollar question though, wasn't it. How did they proceed from here? What should they do? What should she do?

"Provoking him now is idiotic," she said softly. "If he really is DSI, and if he really is on assignment, then he's in too deep now. Been here too long. If he goes quiet, then they're almost certainly going to know, and the entire town is going to be dead by dawn." Packard looked like he wanted to protest, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

"He hasn't done anything as of yet. Could be that he's here on reconnaissance, could be that he's just here to keep an eye on things. Or…he could have really, truly, just stumbled onto us without realizing it." She glanced back down at the dossier in front of her, there was a date on the inside from about two years ago. "This suggests that he stopped working there a while ago, early retirement isn't uncommon with DSI agents. We know that they're benefits packages are fairly generous too. Assuming he doesn't have much, if any, family to support then it's not unreasonable that he would have used his money to buy some horses and move."

But even as she said that, it didn't make sense. There was a fairly substantial hole in that theory. A hole that likely had not been considered until earlier that afternoon.

"Still…it doesn't explain how the pegasi." She muttered out load.

Silence.

"I beg your fucking pardon?" Said Thailor, "You're shitting me, right?"

"Saw them myself," said Isabella, "Only a couple of hours ago. Same one that's been flying around town the last few weeks, plus at least four others and those are just the ones that I saw."

"That's not…" Hei began to say and then shook his head. "You are mistaken. You must be. Pegasus have not been seen live in…in…"

"You will speak to me with the respect my position in this town demands, Hei," said Isabella coolly. "And I am not mistaken." She opened her phone, and with a couple of swipes, she messaged everyone sitting at the table. There was several soft "dings" and a couple of buzzes, as everyone at the table began checking their phone.

Isabella had known that no one was going to believe her, so she had made sure to bring some collateral with her, in the form of some rather irrefutable evidence. Namely, a video of her daughter feeding one of the pegasi, and one of Isabella stroking the feathery wings of another. The room was silent as the others watched the videos. Varying looks of incredulity on their faces. Though the look on Kassandra's face was less of awe and confusion, and more of…bitter constipation. it was a strange, pinched expression.

Isabella made no comment, but filed the information away for later as something to ask the nymph. As a wood nymph, a being that was inherently more in tune with nature and the animals, Isabella would have thought that there would have been no one more excited than her to see the creatures.

"Fucking hell…" muttered Thailor,

"That seems to sum up the situation nicely," sighed Jed. He leaned back in his chair, pulling his glasses free from his nose and tossing the haphazardly on the table. He leaned back in the chair and rubbed tiredly at his eyes.

"I have no idea what to do with this information," he grunted.

"See why I'm so confused now?" Isabella asked, "If he was still DSI, why the fuck would he bring those things here. Why would he expose himself like that? It doesn't make sense."

"And it makes more sense that some random normie managed to find and breed one of the rarest magical creatures on the planet, a creature that has long since thought to be fucking extinct?" Thailor snorted sarcastically, "I don't know which I'd believe less."

"He might not even know," mused Isabella to herself, "For some reason, it seemed like I was the only one who was able to see them." She glanced around the table, "Cass couldn't see them."

"Could be the case," mused Jed, "Not uncommon for non-supernatural beings to be in possession of magical items or creatures without being aware of it."

"Yeah, but if he was DSI, then it was literally his fucking job to see supernatural shit," said Packard. "So that makes even less sense."

"Who the hell knows," shrugged Hei, "Who knows what the rules even are when it comes to pegasi."

"We're talking in circles," said Jed, leaning back towards the table and putting his glasses back on. "And I don't think we're going to come to any kind of a resolution tonight. We will not act on this new information. As it stands, Mr. Jackson has thus far indicated no animosity towards us or our town. Until we have more concrete information that he really is an active DSI agent, we cannot act." He looked over and shot Packard a meaningful look, but the younger man didn't balk, and met the older man's gaze evenly.

"Because it appears you are incapable of following directions, I will say it more clearly so that even you, Mr. Packard, will be able to understand."

Packard's nostrils flared, and Isabella noticed the gleam of his fingernails as they elongated in the fluorescent light overhead, but he otherwise didn't respond, even as Jed bore down on him.

"Mr. Jackson is not to be disturbed. In spite of your overly inflated sense of self-worth, you still live in my town. This is my council, and my word is still fucking law boy. You step out of line again, and it won't be Percy Jackson or the DSI who you have to worry about. Am I clear?"

Packard didn't say anything, he simply spun on his heel and strode from the room as quickly as possible. Isabella watched him go, a tight feeling in the pit of her stomach contorting painfully. She glanced over at Kassandra, who had been strangely quiet for the last several minutes, only to see that she was already gone. Isabella frowned; she'd have to confront the woman about that later. She clearly knew something, but hadn't been comfortable sharing it with the rest of the group.

After a few moments of silence, Brok finally spoke.

"Five grand says that he doesn't listen to you Jed,"

Jed sighed.

"Sucker's bet Brok…sucker's bet."

BREAK

Isabella collapsed into the chair in her office. She was exhausted, and she desperately wanted to get to bed, but before she could, she needed to get on top of the situation. With a heavy breath, she opened the second drawer from the bottom of the desk. She removed the large pile of legal notepads from the drawer and pressed her hand down on shelf. There was a soft "click" and the false bottom popped up. Removing the false bottom from the shelf, Isabella withdrew the cellphone from within.

From memory, she input a number and after a single ring, a man answered on the other end.

"Yes ma'am?"

"I need information," she said. "Percy Jackson, former DSI. Born in New York, maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven." "I'll get on it," said the man,

"And I'll need two people up here. Discreet and patient. People who are able to watch and tail someone without being spotted…Sury and Paulaskaite preferably." "They'll be there tomorrow night."

Without further acknowledgement, Isabella hung up and replaced the phone and shelf and shut the drawer.

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

She didn't know who Percy Jackson was, but she was going to find out.

BREAK

Percy bade his time until the last of the councilors had walked through the door. It had been an…interesting conversation, if not the most illuminating. It was clear that there was a town hierarchy and Jed was at the tip top of it. But why? And who was he?

More interestingly, was his mounting awareness of exactly how big of a mess he'd somehow managed to stumble himself into. These weren't just run of the mill shape shifters and supernatural creatures…he'd somehow tripped and fallen his way directly into the middle of the goddamn safe haven for the families of the biggest supernatural crime syndicates in the country.

Apollo had this on purpose, he was sure of it. The cocky bastard had to have known what this place was. Percy had wondered why his cousin had been so emphatic about Percy moving to Paradise, but had chalked it up to a genuine act of kindness.

He should have known better.

Sighing, he rubbed at his forehead, before pushing his cloaked form off of the wall behind the nymph. Monsters they might be, but they weren't his kind of monsters, and they didn't have the ability to smell his divine heritage, so a simple application of the mist had been enough to hide him completely and utterly from the rest of these folks.

He needed to figure out what the hell he had stumbled into.

AN: Shoutout to Double for helping me with this idea and for being the best beta on the planet. Check out the link in my channel for the discord server I'm in. My upload schedule is there and you can come hang out with me a bunch of other really awesome and talented authors. Thanks for all the love, and hope you're enjoying the ride thus far.

Love,

LilDB