Author's Note: The first part of Part Three. If that makes sense.
Three
by
Icy Roses
Part Three (1)
"What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
...
On the eastern edge of Washington D.C., there is a rickety old swing set that sits right in the middle of two school districts. The world is high-tech, everything moves quickly, and it's all rush, rush, rush, but for children – well, some things never change.
It's a blustery autumn day, the sky overhead a crisp October blue. It's the perfect kind of day for apple picking and leaf-raking. The park is overpopulated with children in sweaters and sweatpants, playing tag on the creaking bridge and jumping off of the swings. A girl walks up the sidewalk clutching her Princess Tiana lunchbox. Her skinned knee is oddly out of place with her pleated gray skirt, knee-high stockings, white collared shirt and light blue and gray sweater vest. Her pristine blond hair, though, is coming out of its tight pigtails. She shivers as the wind raises goose bumps on her pale skin. It's obvious that she's never been to this playground before – hasn't ever gone this far away from her neighborhood, actually. She looks around shyly, as if waiting for someone to introduce her to the place, but no one volunteers.
Painfully aware of her foreignness to her surroundings, she walks past the rowdy groups of boys wrestling, throwing bits of tires everywhere, and straight to her favorite part of any playground – the swings. She sets her lunchbox down by the wooden frame and scoots up on the seat. She's so short that her toes barely skim the ground when she pushes off. But something goes wrong. "Wait!" she protests. "Stop it! That's mine!"
A bully grabs her lunchbox when she isn't looking and dangles it in front of his friends. "Finders keepers," he taunts. "Should've been faster, little princess girl." The others laugh and give him high-fives. They're fifth graders, and the girl is only in first. "She doesn't look like a Crawley Elementary kid," the bully with the lunchbox comments. "She shouldn't even be here. Go on, baby. Get!"
She slides off the swing. Tears gather in her eyes, but she doesn't wipe them away. She takes a step forward. "Give it back," she demands.
"Hey," a new boy says, around her age, maybe a year older says. He's wearing scuffed tennis shoes, shorts, and a ratty chess sweatshirt. The girl has a hard time believing this boy plays chess. "Why don't you give her stuff back? You don't want to mess with the rich ones. They'll call the police on you."
"Get out of my beeswax," the bully snarls. "Go find your own stuff."
"I'm telling you to give the girl her lunchbox back. Or do you want the lunchbox because it has a twinkly, pretty Disney princess on it, you pansy?"
"Kid, you're just asking to get your face rearranged today," the bully says, dropping the lunchbox and lunging toward him. The boy skirts to one side nimbly, grabs the lunchbox off of the ground, and before the bully even notices what has happened – notices that his fist hasn't made contact with anything but air – the boy has grabbed the girl's hand, and shouted, "Run!" They are sprinting down the lane, away from the playground, and in between the houses where the yards meet in a line of double green. She is surprisingly sure-footed through the grass. They keep going until the yelling dies behind them and the girl is sobbing for breath. They slow to a stop and lean up against the vinyl side of a house, sliding down. The boy hands over the lunchbox.
"Thanks," the girl says.
"No problem. So what's your name, huh?"
"Lizzy."
"I'm Jamie," he tells her and sticks out his hand. It's dirty, but she shakes it anyway and grins. "Where are you from? Not around here, I'll bet. You one of the kids who goes to the other school?"
"I'm a first-grader at Sidwell Friends," Lizzy says proudly.
Jamie glances at her clothes and smirks. "Yeah, I figured. You look like one of those kids. I'm second-grade. Crawley, like those boys. They're dumb though; nobody likes them. They hog the playground all to themselves. What are you doing all the way out here? Sidwell is that way. And I know you don't live here. You probably live in one of those big, white houses with huge windows."
The way he says it makes it sound like it's somewhere to be ashamed of, so Lizzy doesn't comment one way or another. Her house is pretty big. And white. With lots of windows. She blushes a little, twirling a loose curl around her finger. Her sparkly bobby pins have fallen out. "I'm running away from home," she says matter-of-factly.
He stops messing with his fraying shoelace and peers up at her through his scraggly, uncut black hair. "You?" he repeats, bemused. "Running away from home?"
"Yeah," she says defensively.
He's laughing. "Why? What could you be running away from? Too much money? Too much food? Too much of a good thing? Nobody who goes to Sidwell Friends runs away from home. Only people like me do that."
Her eyes are as wide as tea saucers. "You're running away from home?" Lizzy can't help but be impressed by this worldly stranger, a year older than her, a lifetime wiser.
"I don't have much of a home," he says, kicking a rock rolling down the hill and into someone else's property. "My ma's not around that much – she works a lot. So I get to go all over D.C. and nobody watches me do anything. I have an uncle who drops by sometimes, but it's always on weekends, so I come back so he doesn't send the cops after me."
Lizzy processes this. She didn't know people like him existed in the world. "So…if you're running away from home too, can I come with you? I don't really know my way around the city. You could help me, right?"
The boy, Jamie, glances over at her. "Who, me? Nah. Can't do that. If I take a little girl along with me, people will get suspicious, like I'm kidnapping you or trying to sell you drugs or something."
"What drugs? Like Tylenol?" she asks.
"Not exactly, kid."
She looks at him expectantly, trying to absorb his infinite wisdom all at once.
Jamie cranes his neck up at the sky. "Dang, I've lost track of the time. Don't you think you're parents are going to be looking for you? You should probably get home."
"That's the point of running away. I don't want to go home. Duh." She says this as if it is the most obvious statement in the world.
"You have to go home. I already helped you out. I'm seven. I can't do anything else for you." He stands up and brushes the dirt off of the sleeves of his sweatshirt and sticks out a hand to help her up.
She sighs and pats her stomach. Her legs are stiff and her knee stings. She needs a Band-Aid and a cup of hot chocolate. The first stars have begun to twinkle into the peach-purple twilight sky. "Okay. I guess I'll try again later. I'm kind of hungry." She accepts Jamie's hand as he pulls her to her feet.
"I'll help you get back," he says. "Where do you live?"
"3749 Lincoln Street." Suddenly, she remembers what he said about her big, white house with windows, and she feels ashamed to admit she lives in the neighborhood she does. Besides, it's a gated community. She has a feeling he'd make fun of it. "No, that's okay," she says. "I can find my way back."
"You sure?"
"Positive," she says with a smile. They return to the sidewalk. Down the street, the playground has emptied, except for a few swirling leaves. The bullies are gone. She glances wistfully at the swing set, but it's already five o'clock or later. Her family always eats dinner at six, on the dot. She'll be in big trouble if she's not home by then.
Awkwardly, Jamie fixates on the ground with his hands in his pockets.
"I like your sweatshirt," Lizzy tells him to break up the silence. "I like to play chess. My daddy taught me last year. One day, I want to join the chess team. You play chess for the team at your school?"
"Nah," he says, waving his hand. "I stole it. The sweatshirt, I mean." He grins at her.
"Oh." She isn't sure how to feel about this. Stealing is a bad thing. The teachers said that on the first day of school. But Jamie isn't bad. He helped her get her lunchbox back. Maybe he knows something she doesn't. Yes, she decides in her head. That's what it must be. It must be something kids learn in second grade. She just hasn't gotten to it yet.
"Well, I guess you should go," he says. "Don't want the servants to catch you coming in late."
"I don't have servants."
"It's a joke, Lizzy."
Personally, she doesn't think it's very funny. Or maybe she doesn't get it. He turns to leave, dragging his feet a little, the way shy kids do when they shuffle down the halls. "Bye," she says to his back. "Hey, does this mean we're friends now?"
He looks over his shoulder, and he's got a real smile on his face this time. "Sure. Maybe I'll see you around then, huh?"
She nods, and chirps brightly, "Okay!"
When she goes home that night, her parents send her to bed right after dinner as a punishment, so she lies awake under the covers and wonders where Jamie lives. All of her friends live in the gated community and go to Sidwell Friends. She can't wait to tell them about the new boy who goes to Crawley, travels all over Washington D.C., and steals things. She'll be the coolest girl in school. Everybody will ask her questions, and she'll be able to tell the story again and again. She sighs and snuggles deeper, falling into a dreamless sleep.
..o..
The heat of the summer has begun to drain away in the wake of Persephone's preparation for her entrance to the Underworld. The trees have taken on a sharper autumn scent from their mellow summer one. The oak trees let off helicopters to fly far and wide on the wind until they land in a backyard miles away. At Camp Half-Blood, the last of the strawberry crop is being harvested, and vans pull away from the border every morning, taking demigods from the safety cocoon of their summer haven to the real world, where monsters await and worse – the prospect of getting a job.
"I'm not," James says flatly to his best friend Marty. "Absolutely, that's a no."
The numbers of demigods ebb and flow every year, but they stay pretty steady for the most part. There are about a hundred and fifty, and as they "graduate" at eighteen, many of them are eager to stay at camp in order to be counselors, especially the ones who have grown attached to the place, starting out young, or the ones who are not eager to go out into the mortal world and make a living. At Camp Half-Blood, it's a couple hours of instruction, dealing with rowdy teenagers that pretty much have their own system of martial law, a bed to sleep on, and three square meals a day. There are a few counselors that Chiron has to push out of the camp borders when the time comes. Twenty-seven is the age limit; then, it's out.
James and Marty both hit their birthdays this summer. The difference is Marty Coolidge is a recent law grad from NYU and signed with a prestigious firm in the Florida Keys for property litigation.
James Fording on the other hand – well, James Fording is not.
"Come on," Marty says, shouldering his bag, and preparing to get on the van. "It's just a brand new adventure, that's all. You'd get sick of living at Camp eventually. Don't you want to hit play on your life and move on?"
"Uh, no, not really," James says. "Dude, you're got a degree and everything. I have a GED, remember? I'd be lucky if I could get a job flipping burgers at McDonalds."
Marty shoves the rest of his stuff in the trunk and shuts it. He sits in the lip on the back. "Well, you could always go back to college."
"Maybe," James says, but only to placate his friend. He would never think about going back to college. Study? Spend hours on end struggling through mountains of books? Thanks, but no thanks. Chiron has said before that James has one of the worst cases of dyslexia he's ever seen. James doesn't doubt it one bit. He hates reading. He hates even reading five-hundred word newspaper articles. Last time he checked, college involved a lot of reading, and also – a lot of money. "I'm a son of Hermes," he says with a grin. "I'll make do. We always do."
Marty gets in the van. "I worry about you."
"Don't. I'll find my way," he replies nonchalantly. His heart is sinking, but he's not about to admit it. "I spent most of my childhood wandering around random places and jacking food and clothes. I can do it again."
"Don't you want more out of your life than that?"
Momentarily, James feels irritated. The last couple years of his life has been lecture after lecture, about his so-called "potential," and how he can "make something of himself." His response? Fuck that. Life is about having fun and getting by. He doesn't want to be tethered to some lame nine-to-five, working in a cramped cubicle, and typing out his days until he ends up getting carpal tunnel, goes blind, and ending up in a retirement home and realizing he's never done anything for himself. He doesn't need to make something of himself. But this is the end of the summer, he thinks, swimming back to the present where Marty is waiting to shut the door and drive to sunny Florida, make a shit load of money, marry a beautiful girl, and have babies. That's Marty for you. Big house, family, kids, and a couple of cars – the ideal life for a son of Hera. Boring, James thinks. Completely mind-numbing.
He shakes Marty's hand. "All right, man. You better be on your way. And wipe that look off of your face. It's a brand new beginning for me."
"I hope so," Marty mutters. "Don't be a stranger, okay? My door's always open."
"I'll look you up if I ever head down there," James assures him. He watches, a little sadly, as the van drives away. Marty was the last of the counselors to stay, and he did it because he had a sense of responsibility to the camp, not because he wanted to bum off the camp's food and living space. James would almost feel guilty about his freeloading, except he's never felt guilty about anything in his life. No, sir, he's a forward-looking individual, and his future is all ahead of him.
The kids are so much younger than him, and it makes him feel a bit out of place as he shoves all of his money and clothes into a small suitcase and layers his coats so he doesn't have to carry them. Some of them run by and say their farewells. He'd be lying if he said it didn't make him the tiniest bit sad. He's seen some of these kids go from their awkward, pimply pre-teen stages to normal, proportional humans. It'll be – a change, that's for sure, to disappear all of a sudden. Then, it only takes about fifteen minutes, for him to pack up, and before he knows it, he's standing at the top of the hill, his hand gently stroking the pine needles of Thalia's tree – the sign of home he'll never forget. He realizes that he doesn't even know where he's going. Besides Camp Half-Blood, he neither knows nor likes any place else. Except, well – Washington D.C. He grew up there, after all, learned all of the tools of his trade. Maybe he'll head back to his old hometown and see how things are kicking down south.
He's about to leave when a gaggle of Hunters appear behind him and whisk past him into camp without so much as an acknowledgement. He rolls his eyes. Dumb girls. They drop by occasionally, he's heard, but they've never done it for the years he's been there. And from what he's heard of them, that's probably a good thing. Quite a few turn to give him the stink eye as they glide down the hill. He knows his life has sunk to an all-time low when fourteen-year-old girls are looking at him as if he's a pervert, even though it's only by virtue of the fact that he inherited the Y-chromosome, as if that's his fault too. But he does a rather good job of ignoring them, until the head Hunter passes, holding up the end. When she looks full into his face, she stops dead in her tracks with a sharp intake of breath.
The girls stop where they are. "Are you okay?"
The Hunter looks to be about sixteen, a pixie cut of black hair on her head and ice-blue eyes. James shifts on his feet, feeling as if she is piercing his soul with her gaze. He's kind of offended by her open gaping. Does he have a mole sprouting out of his chin or something? "What are you staring at?" he snaps. "Just move along, okay? Nothing to see here, just a specimen of the male species; we make up about fifty percent of the population, so there's lots of other ones to stare at."
One of the other girls makes a disgusted noise in her throat. "Come on, Thalia. This guy's an even bigger tool than the ones we usually meet." The second-in-command grabs her wrist and tugs.
"Yeah," the one named Thalia says weakly. "I – um – I need to talk to Chiron. Stat." And she trails away with the rest, but he notices she keeps glancing over her shoulder at him like she's seen a zombie. Hunters, he thinks. They've always been the weirdest bunch.
..o..
"You're attending the White House ball this weekend, aren't you?" It's almost seven o'clock, and the dying rays of sunlight filter into the empty office.
Liza tucks a few sheaves of paper into her leather briefcase and zips it up. She blows a fallen curl of hair out of her face. Her colleague, Beatrice Barnes, holds her coffee thermos and her purse, waiting for the answer to her question.
"You know I'm not, Bea. I have to work on Sunday. I just got hired a month ago, and I want to make sure I do everything right. There's just so much stuff to sort through from the last administration that the new one wants to rectify and put in new policies and—"
Bea shakes her head, sets the thermos down on the tiny desk in the cramped cubicle, and helps her gather the rest of her stuff. "Jeez, you have to take a breather sometime. It makes me stressed just looking at you. Do you ever take any days off? No, don't—" she makes Liza set her laptop back on the desk—"you are not taking that home. It's Friday! Go find yourself a date and have a night on the town. I will not let you sit at your dinner table and do this all night."
Liza buttons up her dark red coat and launches into her routine feminist declaratives, "I don't have time for men in D.C. They're all so stuck up and think they're so much better than you. Like I haven't worked my whole life – well, my whole twenty-six years – for this job. I am a professional. My career is everything I want it to be, and I'm not about to settle down and pop out some babies for some unemployed bum or some sleazy politician – and don't think I haven't gotten any offers either."
Bea rolls her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, as if I haven't heard this schpeal before. Okay, we get it, Liza. We all know you worked hard for this job. I just don't understand why you settled for some low-level secretarial job at the Department of Education when you could be working as a high up in any sector in the government. Seriously, I mean, your dad is Senator Allen. Everyone would be scrambling to hire you if you put yourself out there on the job market. You could do better than this."
It's a long day, and Liza doesn't argue. She's gone over this a million times; basically, every time someone finds out she's Robert Allen's daughter, they go crazy, asking her what it's like to have such close connections to Congress, have such close connections to the President. It's no secret that Senator Allen and the President have been friends for a long time. It doesn't help at all that Senator Allen is always dropping hints of his family life – they call him the family man, the one who would never stray from his loving wife and beautiful daughter. Liza hates being used as fodder for her father's public image. It's what comes of having a politician as a dad, but the senator really milks it for all it's worth. She can't even remember the last time she spoke to him on the phone, even though they live in the same city. Maybe Christmas? Her mother is a bit of a socialite, all flashy smiles for the camera and nine hundred dollar gowns, and doesn't approve of her daughter's grubby, governmental work. Of course, the senator and his wife will be attending the ball. And for that reason mainly, Liza will not.
"Try not to think of anything work-related," Bea suggests. "For tonight. If you're not going to hit the town, then at least go rent a movie and veg out on the couch. Please. For me. I don't want you burning out within the year. You're one of the best here. You never slack off. I'm starting to think you're unnatural."
"Thanks," Liza says dryly. "I'll try to act more lazy and natural for you." She shoulders her bag, and together, they leave the building. She grabs Metro and takes it all the way home, thinking maybe tonight she'll actually take a nice bath and pamper herself a bit – but tomorrow, she'll get up early and figure out the latest tangle at work. Everyone is in a tizzy about the ball this weekend – apparently, it's in honor of some foreign prince – and it's affected everyone's capacity to do anything remotely work-related. Liza isn't one to get distracted by the promise if visiting royalty. She's lived in D.C. practically her whole life, minus grad school at Columbia University in New York, and foreign dignitaries, political scandals, and lavish parties are no longer new to her anymore. She's got more important things to worry about.
..o..
Four months later, James has gotten to D.C. all right. He has also failed to find any kind of employment – although, not all of it can be blamed on the fact that he has no technical skill; after all, he didn't try very hard to get that job. He's found two demigods and sent them on their way to camp (a daughter of Demeter and a son of Hebe), which is probably the biggest accomplishment he's had so far in this city.
It's right smack in the middle of winter, and he is absolutely freezing his ass off. He's thinking he should've decided to be homeless in Georgia or maybe Texas, but definitely not D.C. What possessed him to be here again? The only thing he can truly count himself grateful for is his heritage. If he weren't a son of Hermes, he probably would've died by now. As it is, he's done well enough doing petty theft and begging the rest of the way. He's got no qualms against tricking people out of their money either. Loose morals mean a full stomach. People like him can't afford to stick to the high road.
Once, for no particular reason, he wandered back into his old neighborhood to see if he could find his broken down one-floor house. But construction in D.C. is always on the move, and the only thing he encounters is a new neighborhood, pristine with block houses lined in strings of Christmas lights; they all look the same, but never mind that. The lot where his old place stood is now a spanking new condo. The lights are on, merry and warm against the frosty windows, and he can only hope that the inhabitants inside are a happy family enjoying dinner together.
He wanders through the streets, finds an alley, starts a fire and warms his hands. He'll need a new pair of gloves soon. A scarf too, he thinks. It's good policy to put out the fire before falling asleep in order to not set things aflame, but he's too cold to care about what's legal and what's good policy. So in a haze of wintry stiffness and sheer tiredness, he slips into fitful sleep, not really ever going fully into darkness. He'll wake when the sun brushes the tops of the buildings a pale peach and streaks the sky a lighter gray. That's what he expects, anyway.
So it's not exactly the best of moods he wakes to when four hours later, a teenage girl pokes him, standing above him with her hands on her hips. He blinks, thinking he's still locked in a dream. "Can I help you?" he murmurs, skimming the edge of coherence.
Her eyes are ringed with heavy black eyeliner – they make her eyes even brighter feverish blue. And she is studying him with extreme intensity. He feels as if he is a bug that has been pinned on a corkboard to be examined by scientists. "Bleargh," he says. She looks a bit familiar, as if he's seen her somewhere before – oh, yes! "Hunter. You're one of the Hunters, aren't you?" He can't imagine why she's come here to find him, in the shadier section of Washington D.C.
She nods. She kneels so she's closer to his height. "Percy Jackson," she says. "I've found you at last. It's been a couple hundred years. And wow, are you a poor excuse for a human being in this lifetime."
…And it's way too early in the morning for him to process that in his head. He sits up, rubbing his forehead and realizing he really needs a shave. He thinks there's some kind of insult buried in her statement, but he's not conscious enough to pick it out and make sense of it. "What?" he says, none too articulately. Then, he lets his brain do a little bit of catching up with his ears. "What did you call me?"
"Percy Jackson," she repeats. "It's taken me months to find you, after Chiron told me you had left for good, and that – jeez, you're reborn as a son of Hermes? What is that? Anyway, he said you were probably wandering around the country like a no-good jobless hobo, and that you grew up here, so I figured D.C. would be the best bet."
She looks so sure about it. He coughs and rubs his hands together. The fire has gone out. "I'm not really sure what you're talking about, actually," he says. "I'm James Fording. Chiron knows that."
"Oh, no," she said with a shake of the head and a sigh. "This'll be harder than I thought. You don't remember a thing, do you?"
He is more and more baffled by this punk teenager, who has stalked him up and down the country, woken him up, and is now insisting that he is this strange person he's never even heard of. He's starting to think she's some child of Mr. D's who has gone seriously haywire. "What do you mean? Like of my childhood? I have a pretty decent memory."
"No, I mean, of your past life. You don't remember it."
Yep, it's official. The girl is off of her rocker. "How old are you, kiddo? Like fourteen? Like you would remember me in a past life, if I even had one." He's pretty skeptical about the last part anyway. Reincarnations or whatever. That stuff is way too existential for him to think about. He hasn't considered what will happen when he dies. Probably the Fields of Asphodel. He's got no high aspirations.
She wrinkles her nose, obviously annoyed that he has just used the word "kiddo" to describe her. "First of all, if you continue speaking to me as if I'm four, I'm going to have to punch you in the nose, Percy or not. Second, I'm almost sixteen. Third, in real years I guess you could say I'm actually three hundred and five. So yeah, I would say I have a good grasp on your past life, buddy." She bumps her shoulder against his, and it sends him back onto his butt. "You are definitely him."
He considers her for a moment, all fierce determination and snappy movements, the very opposite of how he does things. It's averse to his personality. "I think you have the wrong guy," he says with finality, leaning back into the wall.
The Hunter seems unperturbed, as if she hasn't heard him at all. Slowly though, she rises and towers above him. "Don't be so sure. You can't be meant for this. If I know anything, I know that you aren't supposed to be a homeless man, frittering away your life. And if you're here, then I know…" She looks off into the distance. "I'm going to prove it to you," she tells him. "So you don't wander anywhere else, you hear?"
He shrugs, noncommittal. Yes, what he really needs right now is another person getting on his case. Who the hell is she that he has to listen to what she says? He never even listened to his own damn mother.
"By the way, my name is Thalia. So you can please use my name from now on. I'll be back." Just like that, she slips off.
"Hey, wait," he says, startled, seizing on a random fact that has just crossed his mind. "Thalia – like Thalia's pine tree at Camp Half-Blood?"
"The very same!" she calls from the corner. "That's my tree." She grins a feral grin, and then, she's gone. And he's left marveling what Thalia, the girl of legend, is doing hunting down a little nobody like him.
His mind is troubled with questions. He can't decide whether he should leave D.C. or not.
..o..
The next time Thalia the Hunter finds James, he is sitting on a park bench, watching the children playing on a rusty old swing set, melting snow dripping off the overhead beam in trickles. She is by herself again, and he is shoving the last bit of a Hostess snack in his mouth. The past few months have been difficult, but now it's spring, and the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom. It means the tourists are coming, and he can start selling himself as a tour guide to make money that way. He knows all of jack shit about the historical sites in D.C. but neither do the tourists, so it works. He thought about leaving, but he couldn't miss spring. It is a major jackpot he wouldn't be able to snag part of in any other city.
Thalia, her bangs just sweeping over her eyes, approaches him, businesslike as usual. "Hello," she says. "Found you again."
"I'm going to have to issue a restraining order against you," he says, finishing off the last bit of his Twinkie.
She has a look of vague revulsion on her face watching him licking off the wrapper. "If you didn't look exactly like that idiot son of Poseidon, I would've swore I made a mistake. You are nothing like him. Gods. And Chiron thought you had potential. I wonder if Chiron has seen you in action over here." She sits down on the bench next to him, but not too close.
"All right," he says, dusting the crumbs off his hands. "Say what you have to say, Hunter girl. I'm used to your crazy ramblings now. Son of Poseidon thing? That would be pretty sweet I have to admit. Any way you can reactivate my awesome water powers?"
She makes a disgusted noise.
He shrugs. "Okay. I tried."
Thalia collects herself, reaches into the pocket of her dark, skinny jeans, and fishes out a business card. She shoves it at him, black nail polish gleaming on short, clipped fingernails. He regards it for a second, and then takes it out of her hand. It is on heavy, cream cardstock, nice quality, obviously for someone kind of important. "What's this?"
"Read it, and you'll see."
The writing on the paper is block print, no fancy script. It says: Liza Allen – Department of Education, Capital Division, (483) 385 – 2839. He reads it over and over. "Um, Thalia?"
"Yeah?" She's tapping her feet together and staring at her lap, waiting for some great revelation from him.
"I have no idea what you're doing, if this is some kind of joke or whatever, but this business card"—he shakes it between two fingers—"tells me absolutely nothing. Liza Allen? Who is this girl? Am I supposed to know her?"
Thalia has furrowed her eyebrows and sat up straighter. "You mean you don't know who she is?" She looks slightly crestfallen.
"No!" He's flipping the card over, running his fingers over it, as if there might be a secret identifier that will clue him in as to who the woman is. But the card is just a card, straightforward and ordinary. "The woman works for the Department of Education. The federal government? Do you think someone like me could possibly know someone like her? Look at me!" He gestures down at the way he's dressed, which includes a shoe that has a missing tongue. Even Thalia has to admit that someone like James would be lucky if he even accidentally bumped into someone like Liza Allen on the Metro.
She sighs. "The gods just really don't want this to work out, do they? I know you think I'm not fully sane—"
He snorts.
"—but hear me out, okay?" She takes a deep breath. "In a past life, this girl's name was Annabeth Chase. You…knew each other. Really well."
James shoves the wrapper in his pocket – he doesn't litter, after all – and stares at the kids swinging on the swing set. "Annabeth Chase," he repeats.
Thalia looks at him eagerly. "Do you remember?"
He puts a hand on his chin and strokes his imaginary (but soon to be real) beard. "Hmmm." He pauses dramatically. Then—"Nope. Name does not ring a bell at all. If I knew her really well, don't you think it would? Look, the fact of the matter is, all of this past life mumbo-jumbo is freaking me out, and I don't think you're going to be able to convince me of your big, bright plan for me. Why are you so attached to helping me remember anyway? Is this a Quest of yours? Do Hunters even have Quests?"
She punches him in the arm.
"Ow!"
"I'm doing this because I'm your friend, even though you don't know it," she snaps.
"You got that right," he says resentfully. "Some friend you are." They sit in silence for a while. She chews her lip thoughtfully, and he watches the swings, a tiny something niggling at his brain, trying to remind him of something. Of swings? He doesn't remember. Anyway, this is the end of it. Thalia has the wrong person. He is more and more sure of it the longer he sits.
She clasps her hands together on her lap like she suddenly has stumbled upon a brilliant idea. "Why don't you come with me, and we find her?"
"Oh, no," he groans. "Not again. You mean I haven't convinced you yet that I have no inkling whatsoever of this girl – Liza Allen? You want me to get arrested for following a government employee? My life really couldn't get much worse, but thanks for the offer, Thalia."
"Exactly," she says, a gleam in her eye. "You're life isn't getting worse from here. Come on, give it a chance. Who knows? Maybe she'll remember, and – don't you think it would be beneficial to be friends with someone who works for the government on your side? Take a chance on it. You're always up for an adventure. Or at least, you used to be." She leans toward him expectantly, urging him to seize the challenge.
And her words are pulling on his soul, reminding him of back when he got his first Quest…but no. The past is in the past. He shakes it off. This is where he is now. Is he ready to set himself on this wild goose chase for a girl he can't remember, counting on the assurances of a Hunter he doesn't know? There was a time when he would've said yes in a split second. Like a plant brushing off the last remnants of a winter snow, his imagination and memory stretches. Annabeth Chase, huh? Well, he doesn't know an Annabeth Chase or a Liza Allen. He is almost positive Thalia has it wrong. But it also seemas like Thalia might be willing to keep him well-fed and buy him some new clothes, so at least he'll get that out of it. "Sure," he says. "Let's give it a shot. I wouldn't get your hopes up, though. I don't think you've got it right."
He stands up and pulls Thalia with him. "We'll see," she says, grinning from ear to ear. "I'll bet you'll be eating your words one day."
"Where do we go from here?" he asks, looking around. "You know where Liza Allen hangs out?"
Thalia leads the way. "Yeah – she's hanging out at a job, unlike you. I know where the building is."
"Hey, don't knock on my unemployed status! It's the economy, don't you know?"
"Yeah, right."
..o..
It's about six thirty when they reach the headquarters of the Department of Education. Like everything else in the capital, it has the classic marble stairs leading up to the columned façade and tall wooden doorway. It looks more like a memorial than an office building. James, of course, has never been inside, never even dreamed of it. Thalia drums her fingers against the railing.
"How did you find this Liza Allen anyway?" James asks as they wait for the employees to file out.
"She's the daughter of Senator Allen of Virginia. Everyone knows him. His wife is like two spots away from the throne of some country in Europe, a small one. And he – well, he's just loaded. He talks about his daughter all the time in the news. Sometimes, Liza shows up for social events that this administration is known for throwing. The galas and stuff." She raises her eyebrow at him. "I take it from the look you're giving me that you don't follow politics much, do you?"
"Not really a political kind of guy."
"Right. Anyway, so I saw her picture on the news, and I recognized her. It was just chance that I ran into you last year. The business card? I managed to nab one off her desk."
James rolls his eyes and leans into the rail casually. "What you're saying is – the girl's got no gods forsaken clue who you are. And you're expecting her to talk to a homeless demigod and a fifteen-year-old girl dressed like some punk ass rebel? That sounds plausible. We'll be exceptionally lucky if she doesn't call security in point-five seconds."
"Have a little faith, will you?"
"Yeah, yeah," he mutters. The sun has begun to set later in the day, but after an hour, it has started to set, nonetheless. It's a chilly spring evening. James shivers and wonders if Liza wouldn't mind buying him a jacket if she doesn't end up sending him to jail. He doesn't have a clue what she looks like, but it seems like Thalia knows. Several young pretty women filter out of the building – apparently, the Department of Education is where the babes are – but Thalia doesn't bat an eyelid at any of them. She watches the door like a hawk. James hopes there isn't some kind of back door to this building, and they missed her. It's almost eight, when he finally says, "Are you sure she works here? What kind of woman in her right mind stays this late at the office? Didn't you say the work day officially ends at six? She's two hours late."
"She's a workaholic!" She pulls the hair from in front of her face. "Always was," she says softly.
"I was good friends with a workaholic?" he asks. "I must've had it going in another life."
The sarcasm is plainly lost on his companion. "You did," she says, solemn as a stone. Her certainty about every part of his personality, his likes, his dislikes, his habits, is unsettling and weird. He doesn't like it, not at all. He didn't think it was possible, but Thalia just might be holding some blackmail on him that he doesn't even know about. It's not a very good feeling to have. And he has to wonder why he was ever friends with a Hunter? Unless he was a girl in a past life…
"Shhhh, here she comes!" Thalia hisses.
James looks up to see what kind of girl they're dealing with here, expecting a mousy, scrawny governmental worker with a bit of a slouch (that's what he's thinking when Thalia says "workaholic"). The woman walking down the steps is nothing like that. She's wearing a plaid Burberry coat with a smart leather briefcase and conservative black pumps. Her curly golden hair is tied back in a ponytail. "That's her?" he whispers out of the side of his mouth. "She sure is—"
"Can I help you?" the blonde woman asks. "I'm sorry – walk in hours are over, but if it's something urgent—"
"—yes," Thalia interjects. "We were looking for you, actually."
Liza is surprised. "Really? Do I know you?"
"Kind of," Thalia says, which is blatantly the wrong answer, because how can you kind of know someone?
James steps in front of Thalia. "Well, no, you don't really know us. But we did want to talk to you."
"Um, okay," she says. She peers around him. "Is she your daughter?"
James almost chokes. "Oh, gods, no. How old do I look to you?"
Liza takes a step back. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to offend you. I just thought maybe you were a teenage father or something – look, never mind. What am I supposed to think? She's with you, you're with her, you've come to the Department of Education…" She's flustered and starting to step away. But even so, she's still a professional at heart, it seems. She glances up at the sky, then at the watch on her wrist. "Please, just tell me what is going on. I've had a long day and I would really, really like to go home."
"You see, Thalia? The woman's had a long day, and she wants to go home. Let's just leave her—"
"Hang on," Liza interrupts. She leans closer. "I do know you! I can't believe it. It's been so many years, and you look so different."
Thalia is grinning. "You see? I knew she'd remember—"
"Jamie!" she exclaims. "Of course." She claps her hands together and drops the briefcase. "I would never forget your face." She is beaming.
For a moment, James is temporarily thrown off course. And then it dawns on him. "You're Lizzy, the girl at the playground who went to Sidwell Friends. You're the senator's daughter? I had no idea."
A cloud passes over her expression, but it clears. "Yes, although back then, my father was only in state government. He is, ah, always moving up in the world, I guess." Her smile softens. "I never forgot that day. Even though after a month, my parents stopped letting me go out, because they suspected I was going to the bad side of town."
A memory – a sadness. Yes, James remembers. One day, Lizzy stopped coming to the playground, and then, eventually, he stopped going too. He forgot about her – almost – except that she was the only nice rich girl he ever met. He never forgot that. "That Princess Tiana lunchbox," he begins.
"My parents threw it out after a while," she says. "Trust me. I cried a lot over it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
They're smiling at each other, reliving childhood memories, when Thalia coughs. "This is not what I meant when I said, 'she'll remember,'" she says. "I meant to say…"
James can hear it coming – the total word vomit. He knows Thalia is going to do something idiotic, like spill the fact that they're descendents of the Greek gods, or the fact that he and Liza are actually Peter Johnson and Annabelle Chess (or whatever their names were supposed to be), or the fact that James is homeless (for some reason, he is ashamed of this now that he is standing in front of Lizzy). But at the same time, he can't actually bring himself to believe Thalia is dumb enough to do any of those things. Because you just don't tell mortals about gods and reincarnation and whatever else. James thinks it's weird enough. Lizzy might just either bust out laughing or have them all thrown into an asylum. He doesn't like either option, although being laughed at is better than being in a straitjacket, theoretically. He is thinking this all frantically as Thalia opens her mouth to say what she's got in her head, and then, he realizes a split second before she says it that this Hunter is absolutely stupid enough to say this all in front of a mortal woman.
"…you two are reincarnations. We need to get your memories back."
James doesn't even attempt to curse, bury his face in his hands, or otherwise show any signs of disbelief and anger. Because there's nothing he can do to make this moment okay.
Liza, on the other hand, has swiveled around to stare openly at Thalia. "Jamie, who exactly is she?" Her eyes are wide as a doe's.
"I don't need him to introduce me," Thalia says. "I'm a Hunter of Artemis, the Greek goddess."
"Oh," Liza says weakly, staggering slowly down a few steps. "Oh."
"Now you've done it," James says grimly. "Just what in the hell do you think you're doing? Seeing as you're three hundred and something, shouldn't you know at this point, that it's supposed to be a secret? You can't Mist away something like that!"
Liza has begun to retreat down the rest of the stairs backwards, shaking her head as if she's trying to block something out. "No," she says. "I—I need to go."
"Wait! I'm sorry. That's not – just ignore what she said. Forget it." He's waving his hand, trying to dismiss Thalia's words.
"No, I can't," Liza says. Her face has gone pale, her gray eyes glittery with fear. "I don't want to know. Please leave me alone. Jamie – I can't be a part of this." Her words throw him off-kilter. But there isn't time to consider their meaning, because she turns around and begins to run away, briefcase clutched to her chest. The pumps don't slow her down.
"Lizzy!" he shouts after her. But she doesn't even pause or look back. Her hair has fallen free from the clip, so he can't see her face. But if he had to guess, it would probably be confused and terrified. He watches her go, helpless to the sight and knowing he shouldn't follow her, but wanting to anyway. He wants to explain, but how do you explain a thing like that? He isn't sure he can even explain it to himself. Liza disappears around the corner. "Damn it!" He kicks the step above him. He whirls back on Thalia, who is standing there, subdued. "Was this your plan? To drag me over here and throw some conspiracy theory at us about how we need to get a lobotomy or something so we'll 'remember each other' and make things right again? Because you're doing a damn good job of fucking up my life right now. Hers too, it looks like. Did you see her face? She's a mortal."
Thalia takes this rant rather well and says calmly, "It doesn't matter."
"What?"
"I said, it doesn't matter. She's not just a normal mortal. Percy, she's a clear-sighted one, so she knows about our world. I can tell, just from the way she reacted, and besides, I knew already before. I wouldn't have risked it on a regular mortal. Plus, even if she doesn't remember, she is still Annabeth. It doesn't hurt to tell her that."
James is fed up. He's so mad he can't even think, and he was bad at controlling his temper to begin with. Trembling with anger, he backs away. "Don't call me Percy. My name is James, got it? I'm a son of Hermes. And I'm tired of you making me someone I'm not. Don't you have someone else's head to fuck with?"
He sprints down the rest of the steps and doesn't stop until he finds himself standing in front of the Metro. The muscles in his legs feel like they're dissolving and for the first time in years, he wants to cry – but he doesn't know why.
He just stands on the subway car and rides it around the map for four hours, watching people get on and off, because he can't think of a final destination.
Author's Note: I decided to split Part Three in half for two reasons. Firstly, you guys have been amazingly patient, and I know it's been a long time since I posted, between leaving the country for three weeks and settling into a new semester and whatever. I figured you would want to see some progress. Secondly, Part Three is like mind-numbingly long, so organizationally, I didn't think you would want me to throw 20,000+ words at you in one chunk. As you might suspect, the second part of Part Three will definitely be longer than this. Also, rest assured: it will be coming soon. Like, within a week or two, tops. I'm almost, almost done, and with some minor tweaks, it should be ready to go. (I know this seems like a cliff to leave you hanging on, but trust me, there were a lot worse places to cut it; I tried to make it as non-torturous as possible!) Thanks for sticking with the story! Here is a preview of the next part:
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It takes him a moment, but James finally processes the statement in his head. "You – what? What do you mean, Quest?"
"I mean, Quest," Thalia says. "The kind that demigods go on. The kind of demigods that aren't always trying to run away from their heritage, that is," she adds pointedly.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" James glares. Gods, the girl can really be a pain in the ass sometimes.
"Nothing," she says innocently, but just guiltily enough to mean she loaded her words with meaning. She's goading him. He is so not going to take the bait. He's not going to take the bait. He's not that stupid. "What makes you think I want to go on this Quest?"
"Because Chiron said you had to. I just got off I-M with him in the bathroom – "
"He I-M-ed you in the bathroom? What, with the toilet water?"
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You guys are awesome! Thanks for reading!