Author's note: Thank you all for the lovely comments and feedback on the last chapter! Apologies for the lack of updates - I've been quite busy, and I also wrote myself into a corner and couldn't work out how to continue, so. Yeah. I have also been super anxious about updating this.

Some people have asked about the storyline - I am trying to follow the original story to a point, but things will also start changing when Lana reaches camp. A couple of people have also asked about whether there will be shipping. Short answer? Probably. Long answer? I have an idea of what I want to do, but I'll see how it plays out.

So, yeah. Hopefully this turned out okay!

Lana had gone through plenty of weird experiences, so she liked to think that she was used to them. However, there was a big difference between 'accidentally setting off a cannon' and 'a teacher just up and vanishing'. In the days and weeks that followed the trip to the museum, the entire campus seemed to be playing one huge joke on her. For whatever reason, all of the kids and all of the teachers were convinced that Mrs Kerr – some blonde woman that Lana had never even seen before the museum trip – had been the pre-algebra teacher since the beginning of the year. Lana had no idea where Mrs Kerr had even come from, since she'd just appeared on that day.

Because everyone seemed to genuinely believe that Mrs Dodds had never existed, Lana might have believed that as well, if not for a couple of things.

Grover was the first of them. Whenever she'd ask about Mrs Dodds, try to catch him out in the refectory (his zone of weakness), Grover would hesitate very briefly before claiming that she didn't exist.

There was something else, as well. Ever since the museum trip, Lana had had the ballpoint pen that Mr Brunner had thrown to her during her fight with Mrs Dodds. She'd forgotten to give it back to him, and she'd just put it next to her bed in her dorm room. For whatever reason, she felt an odd connection to it. Her hoodie that she had worn that day still had bits of golden powder on it – mainly on the sleeves and torso – and a faint smell of sulphur. Lana had sat on the ground, staring at the two objects in confusion. Something in her brain was telling her that nothing had happened that day, but she couldn't connect that with the yellow powder, with the mysterious pen.

That night, Lana had woken up drenched in cold sweat, trembling from the visions of leathery wings and twisted talons still rushing through her mind. Immediately, she had shoved both the pen and hoodie in one of her bags. The nightmares didn't stop.

As the nightmares continued to plague her at night, Lana became irritable during the day, jittery even. Almost as though it could sense her growing discontent, the freakish weather continued on in the background. One night, after a particularly harrowing vision of Mrs Dodds dissolving into dust, a thunderstorm blew out her window. There was a massive tornado a few days after that, not far from Yancy.

It was only inevitable that her grades would follow the fall of her moods, really. Lana finally snapped in her English class; Mr Nicoll had been hounding her about why she had been too lazy to bother studying for all of her spelling tests and whatnot. Lana, having had very little sleep the night before, immediately told him he was a branleur. What it meant exactly, Lana wasn't sure, but the word had popped into her head in her brief moment of sleeplessness-induced rage. It was almost worth it just to see the intense look of confusion on Mr Nicoll's face, because he didn't know what it meant, either.

When he looked it up during class, though, he was less than pleased.

After that, the school had sent a letter home to Lana's mother, informing her that unfortunately, Lana would not be invited back to Yancy next year. That was fine with her. After everything that had happened in the last few weeks, she desperately wanted to be back with her mum, in their tiny apartment on the Upper East Side. She'd even put up with her stepfather for the chance to be around her mother. It wasn't like she'd miss anything from Yancy, anyway.

Well, she amended to herself quietly as she sat with Grover, staring at a book and willing it to make sense, there would be some things that she'd miss, she supposed. Like the view of the Hudson River, the smell of the pine trees. Grover, too. He was her best friend, and the only boy who had never made her feel bad about herself or looked down on her. She'd miss Mr Brunner's classes, too – the eclectic, fast paced nature of his teaching and his joking around, the way he had gone out of his way to make it easier for her to learn.

Her resolve strengthened, she looked back down at the book again. If she was going to study for any exam, it would be Latin.

That night, as she was leafing through the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology, her frustration reached another boiling point. Mostly, it came from the fact that the letters kept drifting off the page, thus bringing about headaches. Flicking through, she'd caught a glimpse of a picture, a photo of a Greek vase depicting a horrifying bat-like figure that looked far too familiar. Before she could linger on it, Lana slammed the book shut, threw it across the room.

For a moment, she just sat there, tapping her fingers restlessly against her duvet. The bobble that had been holding her hair back all day was beginning to loosen, stray strands tickling her shoulders and neck. For a moment, Lana just breathed, thought about Mr Brunner's thousand-year-old eyes. The way he'd said that it was vitally important to life – the difference between life and death – had stuck with Lana. Another deep breath to clear her head, and she slowly picked up the book.

Lana had never asked for help from a teacher before – having never had one willing to actually help her before, she'd given up on that immediately. However, Mr Brunner was different. Maybe he could steer her in a direction in which to revise, or even give her a pep talk.

Mind made up, Lana quickly rushed out of her dorm room, and made her way through the darkened labyrinth of the school corridors. The classrooms lay dark and empty, the faculty offices in a similar state of disuse. Lana tried to ignore the hairs rising on the back of her neck. She always felt weird being in a school in the evening, or at night. It felt like it was tempting fate; Lana honestly wouldn't be surprised if around the next corner, there was a Japanese schoolgirl ghost waiting to mess up her life.

Finally, she was at the door to Mr Brunner's office. To her relief, the light was still on, and she was about to knock when voices drifted out.

Normally, Lana would have just left in order to avoid interrupting anything. She'd rather face down the Japanese schoolgirl ghost than the social anxiety of interrupting a meeting. She was just turning to leave when she caught Grover's voice drifting out.

"… worried about Lana, sir."

Lana froze at the mention of her name, everything in her seeming to go on high alert. Barely daring to breathe, she edged closer to the door, pressing herself against the wall.

"… this summer," Grover continued, "Not after the Kindly One!" He let out a frustrated noise. "They've gotta know now. I mean, we know now–"

"To rush things would make things worse," Mr Brunner replied. "She's not ready, yet."

"But sir, the summer solstice! The deadline–"

"Can be resolved without her," Mr Brunner interrupted gently. "Let her enjoy her ignorance."

There was the sound of footsteps moving back and forth, as though someone was pacing. "She saw her, though!"

"A daydream," Mr Brunner said dismissively. "The Mist over the school will convince her of that."

Mist? What was Mr Brunner talking about? So far as Lana knew, there hadn't been any sudden blankets of mist or fog around Yancy lately – all their freakish weather tended to be storms. Realising she was getting off track again, she forcibly pulled her mind back from where it had wandered, just in time to hear Grover say, "… I can't fail my duties again. You know what that means."

Mr Brunner sighed, but when he spoke, it was with the same kind tone he used with Lana when she was having a particularly hard time. "You haven't failed, Grover," he said gently. "She hid herself well. Now, let's just worry about keeping Lana alive."

Shock coursed through Lana's system, like her blood had suddenly been replaced with icy water. The mythology book dropped from her hand, landing with a solid thunk on the floor. Immediately, the conversation inside the room ceased. Trying to control her mounting panic, Lana quickly picked up the book and retreated further down the hallway, hiding in the shadow of a nearby bin. There was a slow clip-clop sound, edging closer to where Lana had hidden herself, and she felt her heart begin to pound against her ribcage, almost painfully. The noises stopped, only a short distance away from her, and she risked a glance at the floor – on the ground, there was a shadow of something huge. Lana slowly, shakily, exhaled.

A moment, and the giant whatever began to move in the other direction. Lana heard Mr Brunner say something to Grover about a winter solstice as he disappeared back into his office. Wasting no time, Lana cautiously stood up and sneaked away from Mr Brunner's office, keeping to the shadows until she was far enough away that he would not hear her.

Then, she ran back to her dorm room, trying to absorb the information she had accidentally heard. No matter which way she looked at it, though, Lana couldn't make sense of it, and couldn't reconcile the giant shadowy something with Mr Brunner's voice.

She sighed. Her head was really starting to hurt.

The next day was the three-hour Latin exam. Lana left it with yet another headache, the pain pulsing behind her eyes as the words she had spelt wrong swirled around her mind – the beginnings of a migraine. Just as she was getting to the door, Mr Brunner called her back to his desk. Lana hesitated for a moment – the only thing that he could possibly want to talk to her about was the whole eavesdropping thing from the night before.

"Look, Lana," he said quietly, once she was standing on the other side of his desk. His voice was quiet enough to not carry to the rest of the class. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. This place – it isn't the best place for you."

Lana swallowed heavily. "Right. Okay, sir," she mumbled. A sharp pain bit at her chest. Mr Brunner had always supported her through the year, had earned the status of being her favourite teacher, and yet he was telling her that she didn't belong at Yancy? She blinked, ignoring the stinging assaulting her eyes.

"No, no," Mr Brunner said gently. He looked frustrated with himself. "What I meant to say is, you're not normal, Lana." His face twisted. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."

Lana nodded jerkily, ignoring the sudden influx of pain that the motion caused, taking a shuddering breath. It suddenly hurt to breathe. "Thanks, sir," she said, slightly biting. Before Mr Brunner could say anything else, Lana turned and fled from the classroom.

The end of term couldn't come fast enough. Lana waited until the very last day to sort out her packing, tiredly shoving clothes into a suitcase. As much as she might miss the view from her dorm room, she couldn't wait to be rid of the place – her nightmares had continued to get worse since the end of the exams and seeing her mother again could possibly help with it. Even if that meant seeing her stepfather every day as the price, she added to herself bitterly.

Around her, she could hear the other girls discussing their plans for the summer holidays. One of them was going on a hike in Switzerland with their family. Another was taking a cruise down the Norwegian fjords. Lana grimaced, and quickly moved past them, their words fading into the background. Sure, they were troublemakers, like Lana herself, but the difference was that they had rich families. Lana had none of that. She was just some adopted kid, her birth parents as much a mystery to her as her stepfather's ability to breathe without choking on his own scent. Not that she cared much for the whole 'adopted' thing – Sally was the only mother she'd ever known, and she loved her more than words could describe.

It wasn't going to be hard saying goodbye to Yancy, Lana concluded to herself as she pulled her suitcase outside the main doors, watching the quiet street before her. She would miss Grover, though. He'd been one of the best friends she'd ever made – scratch that, the only friend she'd ever made. How he was going to survive the next year at Yancy, Lana didn't know – the thoughts of him having to face Nathan Bobofit alone caused anxiety attacks.

Just as she was about to start walking to the bus stop, ready to go back into the city, a voice called out to her. "Hey, Lana!" She turned towards the sound and raised her eyebrows as she saw Grover practically running towards her, crutches apparently forgotten. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, she mused to herself idly.

Grover pulled to a stop next to her, breathing heavily from his brief bout of exercise. A moment passed, Lana standing there feeling only moderately awkward, and Grover straightened up, leaning heavily on the crutches. "Are you getting the Greyhound back into the city?" he asked, despite the fact that Lana was clearly headed towards the stop for said coach. Lana nodded slowly, and Grover let out a heavy exhale. "Good. I mean, I'm heading that way too. Using the same coach."

Lana nodded again, keeping her face impassive. She quickly thought back to the conversation she'd overheard between Grover and Mr Brunner. Part of her wanted to think that his getting on the same bus as she wasn't just convenient timing. No way would Grover buying tickets on the exact coach that she was getting be considered a coincidence. Grover was still staring at her with an impassioned expression, so Lana sighed. "Okay," she agreed, ignoring the flash of relief that passed through Grover's eyes.

The coach arrived only a few moments after, and Lana quickly shoved her suitcase into the hold, climbed up the steep steps – did they seriously have to make them so steep? That was, like, small person discrimination – and took the window seat nearest the other door. Grover joined her a few moments later, making his way slowly down the aisle. He sat next to her, placed his crutches in front of him so they were leaning against the barrier between them and the other steps.

Lana leaned her head against the window, the low rumble of the engine coursing through her as the coach began to draw away from the school. She cast her eyes on Yancy for one last time, kept staring at it until it was just another building in the distance. Once it was far gone, she turned her gaze back to Grover, keeping her head leant against the cool glass of the window and trying to ignore the steady churning of her stomach.

He kept looking around nervously, his nose twitching whenever his gaze landed on another passenger. Grover had always been jumpy on school trips, as though he was constantly expecting something terrible to happen. Lana's mind involuntarily flashed back to Mrs Dodds, an echo of soft singing in the background, and she forcibly pushed the image away.

The silence stretched on for another long moment, and even through her growing travel sickness, Lana was beginning to feel antsy. Finally, she snapped and asked, coolly, "Find any Kindly Ones yet?"

Grover jumped like he'd been electrocuted, and he slowly turned his head to look at her. His expression mirrored a deer caught in the headlights. "Wha–what do you mean?" he asked nervously, shifting in his seat.

Lana turned sheepish. "I heard you talking to Brunner the other night. The night before his Latin exam," she added at the confused look, and Grover paled.

"Ah… how much did you hear?" he asked, eye twitching.

Lana shrugged idly. Considering Grover and Mr Brunner had let her think she was going insane rather than telling her anything, she was going to draw this out. "Pfft, I don't know. Not much. What's the summer solstice?"

Grover winced, not meeting Lana's eyes as he fiddled with a loose string on his hoodie. "Look, I was just worried for you. I mean, hallucinating demon maths teachers?" Lana tried to interrupt him, but Grover carried on as though she hadn't spoken. "So I was telling Mr Brunner that I thought you were over-stressed, because clearly there's no such person as Mrs Dodds."

"Grover," Lana interrupted again, making her voice gentle, "you're a bad liar."

Grover's face turned red, and he coughed. Quickly, he reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out what looked like a business card. What he was doing with business cards when he was at school, Lana had no idea. He handed it to Lana, who took it hesitantly. "In case you need to contact me over summer," he said when Lana turned her dubious expression towards him. Still dubious, she looked at it.

The card was written entirely in fancy schmancy looping script. That meant that reading the words on the card was absolute hell on her dyslexic eyes. After a moment of squinting at it, and tilting the card to examine it from different angles, she could vaguely make out;

Grover Underwood

Keeper

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800) 009 0009

She looked up at Grover again, once again confused. "What is this?" she asked, gesturing towards the name on the card.

Grover fidgeted for a moment. "That's my – uh – summer address."

Lana felt her heart sink at that. During the entire year they'd been at Yancy together, she'd never considered the idea that Grover was from a rich family, as well. Maybe it was because he wasn't like the other kids that she'd met at Yancy? Before she could dwell on it further, Grover said, "Just take it, yeah? In case you need me."

Lana nodded, pocketing the card. "Right. Yeah."

Grover turned red again, and he picked at the loose string again. If he wasn't careful, the entire thing was going to unravel. "The truth is – I kind of have to protect you."

Lana merely stared at him, nearly lifting her head away from the window. Was Grover being serious? For the entire year, she had gotten into arguments with Nathan Bobofit and the teachers to protect him, and she'd been worrying about his chances of survival there next year. One look at Grover's face told her, though, that he was in fact serious. She swallowed heavily.

"Grover," she asked lowly, "what exactly are you protecting me from?" The conversation between Grover and Mr Brunner flashed through her mind again, like a scene on repeat.

Before Grover could answer her, there was a grinding sound coming from underneath the bus. Within seconds, black smoke poured into the coach through the dashboard, filling the coach with a smell like rotten eggs. Lana's stomach churned, vividly reminded of her nightmares. The driver let out a long string of curses, and slowly drove the coach over to the side of the road. He got up and off the coach, and Lana noticed him walk around the bus to where the engine was.

A few moments passed, wherein the only sounds were the mutterings of annoyed passengers and the sound of clanking around in the engine. The driver eventually announced to everyone that they had to get off the coach, although why she had no idea. Dutifully, she and Grover filed outside with everyone else, standing in the heat reluctantly.

They'd broken down on a stretch of country road, the type of road that went unnoticed, and that people would avoid at night. On their side, there was nothing but maple trees, rubbish from passing cars. Grover's nose twitched when he saw the various cans, but he said nothing. On the other side, there was what looked like an old-timey fruit stand.

The stuff being sold there looked mouth-wateringly good. Giant heaps of red and green apples, cherries, and apricots, complete with jugs of juice in a large clawfoot bath filled with ice. Oddly, there were no customers at the stall, just three old ladies sitting in wooden rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting a gigantic pair of socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them, the lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held the basket of electric-blue yarn.

All of them looked ancient, their pale faces wrinkled like leather, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses, and silver hair held back by bandanas.

Against her better judgement, Lana took a few steps forward. She really wanted one of those apples. Behind her, she could hear Grover making panicked noises, but she paid him no mind. When she was a couple of metres away from the fruit stall, the three ladies looked at her. Despite the heat emanating off the road, Lana felt a chill go down her spine.

"Er, hi," she said awkwardly, shoving her hands in her pockets to hide her nervousness. "Could I get one of those apples, please?"

The women continued to stare at her. A moment passed, and the lady on the right began to speak. "Atalanta Jackson," she said lowly, her voice almost a grating sound. Lana froze – she rarely told anyone her full name, so why did these ladies know it?

The lady on the left started talking. "Greek and Roman both."

"A half-blood of the eldest gods," rasped the one in the middle. The entire time, their eyes never left Lana. The lady in the middle brought out a pair of scissors – huge things with silver and gold blades – and she brought them to the yarn. She cut the thread of yarn, and the snip that echoed from it seemed to permeate Lana's very bones. Her two friends began rolling up the giant socks.

Somewhere behind her, she heard the engine of the coach roar back to life – whatever the driver had done, it had clearly worked – and with one last look towards the old knitting ladies, Lana hurried back towards the coach. She only noticed, then, that she had one of the shining red apples in her hand, despite having no memory of picking it up. She quickly climbed back onto the coach, took her seat and rested her head on the window.

As they started moving again, she started feeling feverish. Beside her, Grover didn't look any better, pale faced and teeth chattering.

"Grover?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling me?"

Grover shot her a nervous look and dabbed at his forehead with his sleeve. "What did you see? At the fruit stand, I mean?" There was something in his face that reminded Lana of the brief flashes she'd seen in his eyes whenever she mentioned Mrs Dodds. Hesitantly, she recounted her experience at the fruit stand, watching Grover turn pale with each word. When she got to the point where she was telling him about the middle lady cutting the thread, Grover closed his eyes, made a strange gesture with his fingers that looked almost like someone crossing themselves, except far older. "You saw her cut it."

"I–yeah." She tried to make her tone nonchalant, but even then she could see that it was a big deal, even if she didn't know how exactly. Grover muttered to himself, looking like he was close to an anxiety attack.

"Just like last time," she heard him say, eyes flicking about. "Always age twelve. They never get past it."

Lana tried to edge away from him, even if the only place to go was into the window. "Grover, what's going on?" she asked, voice shaking slightly. With the way he was starting to act, all freaked out, it was starting to scare her.

Grover ran an anxious hand down his face and turned to look at her, eyes wide. "Look – just let me walk you home from the station. Promise me."

If it was any other person asking that, Lana would have rejected it immediately, because she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Grover's expression stayed her tongue, though, and she promised him that yes, he could walk her home. They lapsed back into awkward, anxious silence, and eventually Lana found the courage to speak again.

"That snipping of the thread," she began lowly, a memory of her Greek mythology studies rising to the forefront of her mind, "does it mean that someone's going to die, Grover?"

Grover didn't reply, just stared at her mournfully. If Lana didn't know any better, she would say that he was already picking out which flowers would look best on her coffin. She only hoped that he would pick forget-me-nots for her hypothetical funeral.

Somewhere else, somewhere beyond the reach of the gods, titans, and primordials all, three old women gathered together, sat before a golden basket of sea green yarn at the base of an endless tree, betwixt the twisted roots. As they sat, their faces were continually flickering, moving from the faces of old, wizened women to the faces of ladies still in their youth. A short distance from them stood a well, surrounded by seemingly endless sand.

The woman on the right was slowly spinning the yarn into thread, humming softly as she worked. Beside her, the woman in the middle was slowly measuring out the spun thread, whilst the woman on the left watched with unreadable eyes, the shears lying beside her.

The first woman, Clotho, paused in her humming. "An ancient law, broken."

The second woman, Lachesis, nodded slowly in agreement. "The mixing of the eastern and western bloodlines."

The last of the women, Atropos, took part of the thread in one hand, and in the other appeared what seemed to be a cord composed of different coloured threads, each interwoven with the others. "The godling, half Greek in blood," she rasped, "shall reach sixteen against all odds." Her two companions started humming, and the sea green thread glowed gold for a moment, before infusing itself with the interwoven cord.

Slowly, the cord and thread both were put into the golden basket, a hint of electric blue yarn peeking out from underneath. The three old women continued to hum, and they began to spin another coloured yarn into another thread, the shears glinting beside Atropos.

Author's note: Little cameo by Yggdrasil and the Norns at the end there. Since all the gods of all the pantheons exist together at the same time, I like to think that the Moirai/Parcae are also the Norns from Norse mythology.

'Branleur' apparently means 'wanker'. Apologies if my French is off.

I also had to look up what a 'Greyhound' is. From what I can gather, it seems to be similar to National Express and Eurolines, so I kinda based that part on those.

Hopefully this was okay though - please let me know your thoughts!