CHAPTER 2

"Id's find," Percy said, holding his nose. "No, no, I'd good."

But when the museum guard offered him a handkerchief, he took it, even if it looked a little used.

They were standing underneath the megalodon skeleton near the museum entrance, and Percy was getting a good look up its little dinosaur butt hole as his eyes watered and his nose bled like a sieve.

It wasn't his first time he'd ended a battle with a couple of pesky harpies—gods, they seemed to always be slinking around museum grounds—with the blood vessels in his nose exploding. Made Annabeth nervous, not knowing who's blood he was covered in when she saw him. And this vigilante, monster-slayer, ghost-buster-for-hire gig he had going on in New York had more often than not left him exhausted, holding his nose, and grumpy as Zeus in a lightning storm.

And those nosebleeds usually stopped after a bit. He'd get some sleep. The cycle would begin again when his cellphone rang and another monster would appear in a taco shop or—

"Sir, I really think you should… should sit down," the guard said, interrupting his thoughts.

Percy looked up again at the dinosaur above him. Then looked down at the glass doors smeared with blood. His blood.

Because this nosebleed wasn't from the fight exhaustion.

It was from him running into the stupid glass exit door.

"Id sorry," he said, patting the guard awkwardly on the shoulder. "Id didn'd see id. Jusd ran righd indo id like an idiod. Nod your fauld ad all."

In fact, Benson—which is what is nametag read, Percy was pretty sure—was an unusually helpful human mortal. Percy felt bad for extending his shift by bleeding all over his front entrance.

But he was also getting really dizzy, and there was a bench just a little ways away from the dinosaur butt, and it was looking mighty nice. He took a step over toward it, cupping his hand under Benson's now-soaked handkerchief, and catching about one-fourteenth of the blood that leaked out from his stupid face.

Gods, he was getting really dizzy.

"Sir, is there anyone I can call to come pick you up? You're looking pale."

"Nodody. Don' have nodody. Don' worry, Denson." He aimed another pat for his shoulder, but missed by about a foot, and the misplaced momentum had his world of dinosaur bones and glass doors and Bensons spinning around him.

Benson grabbed his elbows to steady him. Blood was running down his throat now.

He thought he heard Benson asking again if there was anyone he could call, what his name was, if he had permission to help Percy.

Gods, Benson was such a great guy. He could put him as his new emergency contact, maybe, if he kept this ghostbuster shit up.

But his mouth wasn't working right, and he kept swallowing his own blood, and his handkerchief was gone somewhere so blood was soaking his neck and his t-shirt—and he didn't have many of those in his puny Manhattan apartment, so that was a real bummer—and then Benson's arms were around him, and—

Then he was staring at the dinosaur butt full-on as it spun and spun until each bone was a pinprick of a star in a black, black sky above him.

Percy woke feeling scarily similar to the time he'd been sprayed by a skunk after a fight with a Mare of Diomedes, and after fell asleep in his tomato soup bath he'd made for himself.

But his stomach turned suddenly on him, and he was lurching toward the edge of his bed before he could finish his thought of this doesn't look like my bathtub—

A warm hand was on his back in seconds, rubbing as Percy dry heaved a few times, then threw up mucus and blood.

"Gods," he moaned. "What the… where'd all that blood?"

Had he received some sort of kidney punch?—gods, was he dying?

Again?

"Easy, you had a bloody nose—one of the worst I've seen. It's just drainage," a soft, New York accent tinged with age floated through the alarms going off in Percy's head.

The bloody nose. Just a bloody nose.

That meant he was—

"Am I still at the museum?" he asked, spitting a couple of times and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Gods, that's gross, I'm so sorry."

"Nothing to worry about." That security guard. What was his name, Benjamin?

"Thank you, for-for this. I didn't mean to crash on your… on your museum bench," Percy stammered. He still felt dizzy, but when he touched his nose he found it to be swollen, but blood-free.

The museum was lightening around them, the floors and overhead skeleton gone oranges and pinks in the sunrise.

"You were adamant against a hospital visit. I thought sitting with you until you woke up was the least I could do. Not every day the bird exterminator gets bested by our double door system."

"Huh, yeah. Bird exterminator. Right." He thought of the harpies's flash of teeth. "Bernard, I should go. Thanks for your help. Again."

He stood to go, only wobbling a bit, and brushed down his crusty shirt and sweats.

He'd walked around Manhattan looking worse.

Bernard—Benson! That was his name!—stood too. "You know, I have a change of clothes with me, if you'd like. I don't mind walking home in my uniform."

Percy turned around. "Nah, I wouldn't—"

But the glimpse of himself in the glass door told him he probably should take the offer.

Benson walked to the back, his gait slow and methodical, flashlight swinging ahead of him to light his way. Percy let out one a long breath through his swollen nose, wincing.

The security guard was back with a worn brown sweater and khaki slacks in hand, and Percy changed right on the spot, stripping down to his boxers while Benson turned his back to him, humming some old gospel song. He snagged Riptide out of his sweats pocket, transferring it into the khakis which, when cinched tight with the belt, weren't all that bad—just a little short at the ankles.

He slipped the sweater over his head, feeling the comforting scratch of wool against his skin.

"Hey, Benson," Percy called, gathering his old clothes in his arms. The old guard turned around. "Call me if you ever have any more bird problems."

He handed over his cell phone number, which he had quick scratched on the back of a thrift store receipt he had wrinkled up in his pocket.

Benson smiled. "Of course…"

"Percy Jackson."

"Of course, Mr. Jackson."