Chapter Three
Saiorse
The trip to Camp Half-Blood was not as smooth as Saiorse would have liked but, then again, almost nothing that day had gone right.
First of all, the Monster App, updated last week to detect all mythological creatures, had failed to notify her of a werewolf's presence until it was literally on top of her charge.
Second, the battery power on her celestial bronze iPhone was lower than it had been in months –– just below 85% –– as a result of her hasty spear generation. She hated to have it under 90, especially when so many Battle App's required large amounts of power. And, at the rate she was going, she would have to charge it overnight. That was always inconvenient, especially in the Aphrodite Cabin, with so many blowdryers and hair straighteners and gods knew what else hogging the electrical outlets.
Third, Argus had been later than usual and the deviation had left her totally on edge.
And then there were all the questions.
Saiorse had known about Greek gods and monsters for so long that not knowing was no more than a distant memory. She had foggy recollections of her sixth birthday in Ireland, back when her parents were alive, back when she had more family than a fake uncle, Chiron, and a cabin of siblings who hated her. Self-obsessed, they called her or just plain obsessed. But that was the way she was, the way she'd been since her parents died: she always needed a quest and always needed a plan. And Zoey Bennet's list of questions, ones she vaguely remembered asking thirteen years ago, kept her from making a plan.
One of their conversations, if you could call it that, had gone like this:
Zoey: Is Camp Half-Blood really in New York?
Saiorse: Yes.
Zoey: And it has swimming and painting?
Saiorse: Among other things.
Zoey: What kind of other things? Saiorse? Did you hear me?
Another, barely two minutes after Saiorse's vaguest response yet, had gone:
Zoey: What sort of accent is that?
Saiorse: Irish.
Zoey: And your name, Sher-sha. That's Irish, too?
Saiorse: Ser-sha. It's Gaelic. Means 'freedom'.
Zoey: Cool! So which part of Ireland are you from?
Saiorse: Dublin. Now, if you don't mind...
As the Camp Half-Blood van rattled down Interstate 90, Argus' many eyes looking through the windshield, the prattle became so continuous and distracting that, when it cut off suddenly, Saiorse felt startled by its absence.
"Zoey?" she asked, turning around from the passenger seat, already cursing herself. But when she saw the other girl's sickly, white face and pained expression, all her annoyance vanished, replaced with fear. Was something wrong? She hadn't planned for that. "Zoey," she repeated, more urgently. "Are you okay? What's happening?"
A second glance told her that the girl had rolled up a pant leg, revealing a deep gash in her knee. The skin around it was stained scarlet and, though its flow was gradual, more blood was leaking out, dripping down her leg. It didn't look like the work of a werewolf's claw; more likely, it had happened as Zoey slid across the Apple Store, batted around like a child's rag doll. Either way, it looked horribly painful. And bloody. Saiorse took a breath.
What kind of warrior are you? she chastised herself, not for the first time. Afraid of blood, afraid of anything unexpected. They didn't make anxiety medication for demigods so it was lucky for her that this was an easy fix.
"Nasty cut." Saiorse forced herself to sound nonchalant. "Here, eat one of these."
Zoey took the piece of ambrosia between two fingers and, though she continued to grimace, lifted it up to her eyes to examine. "What is it?" she asked, suspiciously.
"Ambrosia, food of the gods," Saiorse explained, trying to ignore the younger girl's narrowed eyes. "Look, believe what you want, but it'll make you feel better. And if I wanted to poison you, don't you think I'd have done it already?"
"That's reassuring," Zoey replied, plopping the stuff in her mouth, anyway. It took a few minutes but, soon enough, the cut on her leg was no more than a scab and some bloodstains. "Oh my god," the girl whispered. "Is that even possible?"
"Clearly."
For twenty minutes, there was blissful silence as Zoey tried to rationalize her quick-healing and Saiorse tried to figure out what to say to Chiron. Hi, Uncle, she imagined saying. So, I know you stationed me in Nashua to protect Zoey Bennet and, if possible, bring her to camp. Well, I did, so, that's the good news. The bad news is that, in the process, she got attacked by a gigantic werewolf. A gigantic Norse werewolf, called Fenrir. And he brought up the 'Great War' again...
He was not going to be happy.
Before Saiorse could think of a less catastrophic-sounding explanation, Nancy Drew piped up from the backseat: "So, what did you do to my dad?" and, sighing, she realized that the easiest thing to do would be to answer.
"It's called charmspeak," she admitted, after a moment. "It's a gift from my mother, Aphrodite. It lets me, um, influence other people's thinking, temporarily. Bend them to my will and such." As an afterthought she added, "It's a bit like hypnosis."
Zoey, though, was still stuck on the first part of her explanation. "Hang on," she said, when Saiorse had finished. "You're telling me that your mom is Aphrodite? Goddess of love and all that?"
Saiorse rolled her eyes: she loathed that association. "Yes," she said, flatly. "Goddess of love 'and all that.' Love, beauty, fertility, and the protection of sailors. That's my birth-mam."
The other girl didn't look convinced. "Uh huh...well, sorry, but this half-god thing is still a bit out there for me."
"That's alright." Saiorse shrugged, not caring anymore. "You don't have to believe it. You'll see soon enough. It is true."
Zoey raised her eyebrows.
"Right." How could she describe it? "Have you ever done something...something that you couldn't, uh, explain?"
"What is this, Harry Potter?" Zoey asked, not unkindly.
Saiorse laughed. "A bit like him, yeah 'Cept some of the things at Camp Half-Blood will make him look like a bit of a sap."
"Is that right?" Zoey was laughing too, but her grin faded slowly. "All this," she said, "All this magic. It's real? It's really happening?"
"It's really happening," Saiorse confirmed. "Argus really has eyes all over his body, we're really going to a camp for deities, and Fenrir the Wolf really attacked you in the middle of a crowded Apple Store."
The girl's eyes brightened. "Speaking of which, why were you in the Apple Store, in the first place?"
Saiorse frowned, wondering if she should tell the truth; she decided, after a moment, that it was for the best. "I was waiting for you," she confessed. "Any other demigod would've been reported, but I was sent, specifically, to keep an eye out for you. We wanted you to come to Camp Half-Blood –– it's really rare that a demigod survive without incident for as long as you have. We thought your luck might run out soon and we were right. We've been waiting for quite some time."
Unsurprisingly, Zoey started to fidget. A new series of questions appeared across her face: Can I trust people who've been watching me for gods know how long? Can I trust this weird girl, when she's a member of this 'we'?
"You can trust me," Saiorse answered.
That just made Zoey more uncomfortable.
"Who's 'we'?" she finally asked.
Saiorse took a breath before answering. "Uh, the staff at Camp Half-Blood. Chiron, who I call my uncle, but obviously isn't related to me –– you'll get what I mean when you see him. I guess some of the campers have heard about you, but they tend not to pay attention when I'm talking about quests..." Oops. She hadn't planned on confessing that.
"What do you mean?" Zoey questioned.
It was Saiorse's turn to look uncomfortable. "Well, let's just say I'm not too chummy with the people in my cabin."
"But isn't the point of a summer camp to, you know, make friends?"
"I didn't say I don't have any friends." Saiorse held up a hand, pleased to find herself on level ground. "There is this one guy, Percy."
Zoey raised her eyebrows again. "Like, Perseus?"
"Exactly!" Saiorse grinned, pleasantly surprised. "I might make a believer of you yet."
"No promises," Zoey replied, smiling slightly. "It's getting easier to process, though. The one thing I don't get is, if there are enough demigods around to start a camp, if there are monsters roaming the cities, and if every Greek god exists somewhere in the world, why haven't I heard about them? Why isn't there a new story everyday in the New York Times?"
"There is," Saiorse replied.
"What?"
"If you know where to look. Take earthquakes, for instance." She shook her hands in the air, miming the motion of a shaking planet. "How many of those do you think are really plates shifting around?"
"Um," Zoey said. "All of them?"
"Try again. I'd say about three-quarters are monster attacks, demigods discovering their powers and blowing up half the city. It could be any number of things, especially since we discovered the other Civs."
Zoey looked puzzled. "Civs?"
"I'll let Chiron explain that," Saiorse replied, feeling satisfied with the number of answered questions. "All you need to know, for now, is that there's something called 'The Mist' and it accounts for a lot of human, uh, blindness."
"I guess there's a lot I don't know," Zoey said.
Saiorse grinned. "You don't know the half of it."
They arrived at Camp Half-Blood two hours later and Saiorse couldn't have been happier if Aphrodite climbed down from Olympus and welcomed her home, herself. It had been eleven long months –– almost a year –– what with watching out for Zoey and the two Civ quests before. Quests were the life she loved, the life she'd chosen, but that didn't make homecomings any less sweet.
Sure enough, she could see Chiron on the Big House porch, the moment she climbed the Half-Blood Hill. His hind legs were hidden inside a wheelchair, probably to ensure that Zoey felt as comfortable as possible on her first day; her uncle tended to do that, each time a new camper arrived.
"Welcome Saiorse!" He shouted, as soon as they were within hearing distance. "Welcome Pangerbon. And welcome, Zoey Bennet." When they were a bit closer, he added to the newcomer, "I'm sure you have a lot of questions."
Saiorse tried to disguise her laughter with a cough, but neither Zoey nor Chiron looked fooled.
"Thank you for so carefully escorting her," the latter told her with raised eyebrows. "I've heard something of your, uh, troubles from Mr. Jackson –– he was knocked out during training today and woke up with a few interesting dreams to describe." His eyes, kindly a moment before, flashed with something like worry; another second passed and they were back to normal. "I'd go see him, if I were you. He's been very worried about you. Meanwhile, Zoey and I have a lot of," he grinned in the younger girl's direction, "Catching up to do. If you don't mind..."
The disguised centaur led Zoey towards the Big House door, leaving Saiorse behind. She didn't mind, though: that house had always given her the creeps, even after Rachel Dare replaced the mummified Prophet of Delphi. There was just something about it that felt oppressive, confining. More like a jail than the other cabins –– although not much more than her own.
She turned away from the house, following the sound of swordplay to the combat arena, knowing exactly where to find her best friend. Her chimera cub didn't follow; happy to be home as well, Pangerbon had stalked off toward the forest, looking for the group of nymphs that always fed him kindling. While she walked, alone, Saiorse passed other campers. They nodded in her direction; some even called out, "Glad to have you back" or "Haven't seen you in a while." The exception to this were the members of the Aphrodite Cabin who, when they saw her coming, ran away to form a huddle and began whispering, secretively. Saiorse was used to this, but she sighed anyway. We're in is a camp made up of freaks, she wanted to tell them. It's pointless to make fun of me for being the freakiest. That didn't matter, she knew; she couldn't change them. But still, it wasn't her fault that she was the only one of Aphrodite's children with any sense.
The entrance to the combat arena rose in front of her and she could hear Riptide swinging and hitting from within. That blade had a very specific song and she knew it almost as well as her own sword's. She felt her pace quicken until she was almost jogging; she sprinted down the dark hallway, rounding the corner, and then ––
"Percy!"
She threw herself at him with ferocity, enfolding him in a bone-crushing bear hug. This boy who, though three inches taller than her (in boots), was two years her junior; who had saved the world countless times –– most notably during the Titan War, last summer ––, many of which occurred with her by his side. He had been the first camper to ask her on a quest, the first camper to accept her aloofness and strange need for order. He was her best friend in all the world and she was...she was just so glad to see him again.
"Whoa, girl," Percy laughed, hugging her back. "I missed you too, but do you really have to crush me?"
"Of course," Saiorse teased, releasing him. "How have you been?"
He swung his sword, absentmindedly, tracing circles in the dirt. "I've been good," he told her. "How was the Granite State?"
"Boring, boring, extra boring, even more boring. And then a werewolf attacked."
"I saw," Percy replied, his expression turning grave. "And it wasn't one of Lycaon's puppies, was it?"
"No," Saiorse admitted. "It definitely wasn't. We're going to have to call a meeting."
He nodded. "These Civ's are becoming a problem."
"Not all of them," she reminded him. "Just this one. The Norse." The word had barely left her mouth when a vivid memory of Fenrir popped into her head. The Great War is coming, he'd said.
"Either way," Percy replied, as if he could read her thoughts. "We're going to be paying Rachel a visit."
"Which means," Saiorse agreed, "It's time for another quest."