Following Florence's advice, I set out to see if I could figure out The Case of the Cold Air. Or whatever you would like to call it. I checked all around the wall of my house, trying to feel anything cold. No luck. Then I went inside. I didn't feel anything cold inside either, until I realized that my house wasn't cold anymore. Then I got the shivers. What was making everything weird? I mean, there is me passing out and my vision, there was Dad's weird trance, and there was the cold air. I thought maybe Bob was doing it, but who was Bob, anyways? He was the person deleting all of Dad's memories, but could he really be doing all of the other stuff too? What if he was making me go on the quest so that Dad would be alone and then he would kill him? And then he could kill me and make it look like it was a tragic death on the quest because of something. I was really freaked out for like the fourth time since I got off the bus yesterday, which is saying something. I usually keep my cool and stuff, because how much more freaky can it get than seeing ghosts? Obviously a lot. So I went to check on Dad, to make sure he was okay. He was still sleeping in his bed, and I breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't dead yet. I wasn't very optimistic about me and him surviving, because if Bob wanted to kill us, he probably could. Which wouldn't be all that bad, because then we could still be together in the Underworld. Or would we? What if Bob just made us evaporate, spirit, soul, and all? So the question was what should I do? I doubted that I could keep Dad safe any longer, with the way things were going, but I couldn't go on the quest if that meant endangering both of us more than we already were. But what if the quest was real, not just a set-up for death, and the whole world really was in danger. Then I would be risking everyone's life by not going. I figured, after a while of pacing around my house, the cemetery, and my yard, that I should probably go on the quest. Even if it was just a set up, I wouldn't be in anymore danger that I was already. If I didn't go on the quest, Bob would just kill me anyways, so what did I have to lose? I guess my life, but I was going to lose that no matter what, so it didn't matter.
It was after noon by the time I made my decision, so I went to go wake Dad up and make some sandwiches for lunch. I actually only made one, though, because I was still digesting my pancake spree. I cleaned up, and Dad watched TV while I dusted and then took a nap. Worrying made you tired. I woke up when it was dark out, and smelled pizza. Why did it smell like pizza? After some investigating of my kitchen (actually, it took two seconds to figure out) I found that Dad had ordered pizza.
"Is it good?" he asked me with a wacky grin on his face.
"Umm, yeah, it's great!" I said. "How did you know the pizza parlor's number?"
"I memorized when we went out on a walk last week. Remember we passed the place? Turns out the don't do deliveries, but I convinced them it would be worth their while"
"What did you give them?" I asked, hoping he didn't pay them 100 bucks for a pizza. He tilted his head toward the living room, and I looked in that direction. "You gave them our carpet?" I cried, appalled at what Dad had done.
"Yup," he stated, pleased at his brilliance.
"Okay," I told him. "Time to go to sleep." I said, to keep him out of any trouble and to keep me from freaking out on him. What was the use anyways, if he would forget it the next day?
"What are you to tell me what to do? You're smaller than me."
"Go now," I told him, mad that he was acting so out of control. Thankfully he obeyed, and got up from the table. Then I headed out to the graveyard to tell Florence what Dad did. Even though I was mad that Dad gave away our carpet, it was pretty I got to the graveyard, it was unusually quiet. I knocked on Florence's grave, but I heard no answer. I knocked the waited awhile more, but still nothing. Weird, I thought. Then I heard a loud crack. I looked behind me, and standing behind me was Nico. He looked pretty mad. His face was quite red, and his eyes looked a little bloodshot.
"What are you doing here?" I asked him, irritated. "None of your business!" He said, his voice catching in the middle. Wait, I thought. Was Nico crying? I didn't know what to do or say, because seeing your nemesis crying is a bit awkward and shocking.
"Just leave me alone. Go home or something," Nico said after awhile. Fine by me, because I detest being within a mile of him, let alone a yard. I walked home slowly though, thinking about the disappearance of the ghosts and Nico being so... there wasn't a word for it. Nico was _. When I was out of the graveyard, I heard Nico make a grunt of frustration, like 'AAARRRGGHHHMMMPPP!" He was defiantly angry. Then I stopped. Nico came to the cemetery to summon his ancient family members who were buried here and talk to them. But the ghosts are gone. Florence defiantly wouldn't just leave on me, and I could usually feel the presence of other spirits. Tonight I felt nothing. Then I heard Nico yell, "What the h&%! Where are you?" Although I resented the thought, and even more the action, I knew I had to go back and tell Nico that the ghosts were gone. Before he tore up the cemetery in frustration.
I walked back, hesitant but quick, and said, "Umm... Nico, the ghosts are gone."
"What do you mean? How can they be gone?" He said looking up at me with sheer anger.
"They just are. They disappeared."
"WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THEM?" Nico asked, enraged, although it was more of a command then a question.
"I didn't do anything with them! I came here and they weren't here. Why don't you figure it out? After all," I added, angry now at him blaming me for everything, "you are the Ghost King." He looked down at his feet for a second, then said, "Oh, this is bad."
"What's bad?" I asked, confused.
"The gods are fighting. Didn't you hear that?"
"Already?" I said. The vision-lady told me that Olympus was going to fall into chaos, but I didn't know it would happen so quickly. "Why are they fighting?"
"It's all Poseidon's fault, really" Nico said. "He had two kids while the pact was in effect." I looked at him, confused, because I had no idea what the pact was. He must have noticed, or something, because he added, "The one that said that the Big Three couldn't have any children because of the Great Prophecy. Poseidon had Percy and Ula."
"Ula?" I asked. "Yeah she just came to camp and was immediately sent on a quest. Figures. All of the Zeus and Poseidon kids get to go on quests, but not the Hades kids..." Nico broke off and looked at his feet again and made a little squeaking sound, and when he looked back up, his face was wet. "I have to go," he told me, as if he wanted me to hug him or some crap like that.
"Fine by me," I told him, then started walking back up the hill toward my house. The whole way up I didn't hear any cracking sounds that would signal that Nico had left, so when I got back to my house, I looked back into the cemetery, and sure enough, he was still there, standing exactly where he was when I left. Drat.
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I figured that I had better go on the quest. If the gods were fighting already, then it defiantly was bad. And real. No Bob trying to set me up. I hoped. Anyways, the only problem that I had was that I didn't know where to go. I knew I had to leave soon, like tomorrow, but where in heck was I supposed to go? I fell asleep quickly, but I awoke in the middle of the night by a loud crack. Thinking that something had possessed Nico to come back and appear in my house, I got up and looked around. He wasn't in the living room or kitchen, and I wasn't about to look in the bathroom, so I checked my dad's room. Nico wasn't there, but neither was Dad. I figured Dad woke up to watch TV, but he wasn't there when I checked the living room again. Then I got worried. I scouted out our whole house, but no luck. I went outside, wandered down the street, and eventually started searching the cemetery. All of the ghosts were still gone, which gave me no comfort. I looked in all the nooks and crannies, but Dad was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't imagine where he had gone. Then I remembered the noise that woke me up. Was it possible that Nico kidnapped him? I didn't like Nico at all, but I couldn't imagine that he would do something like that. It could have been Bob the Evil since he was tired of just making my dad forget everything. Whoever it was, I didn't think that I would find him. I pretty much broke down. Why was my entire world falling apart? It wasn't fair. I sat down on Florence's gravestone, which I had conveniently stopped by, and cried until dawn, then fell asleep.
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I woke up around noon. At first I didn't know where I was, but as I looked around everything came back to me. My dad missing, the gods fighting, the ghosts vanishing. Somewhere, in the rational part of my mind, I knew I had to get help. I had to go on the quest, but I didn't know where to go or what to do. I needed a prophecy. And for that I needed the Oracle, so I had to find a way to New York. I figured I couldn't delay, so going by airplane would be best. The thought of flying in to Zeus's domain while the Big Three were angry made me nervous, but I knew I had to do it. The only issue was the fact that I had next to know money.
I knew there was a pawn shop on the main road that went by the cemetery, so I set to work. I first got all of our small decorations and stuff, minus the dream catchers, and put them in a box and walked down to the shop. It was a dusty place, and almost too run-down to be functional. A man, probably about 50, came out of a back room and greeted me. I put the items on the counter and he gave me a price. It wasn't very much, but I really needed the money, so I said, "It's a deal."
"Wait," the man said. "Aren't you too young to be doing this?"
"Listen," I told him, playing out something I had heard on TV from our 'fun day' in history class, "Do you want the stuff or not?"
"Okay," he said, apparently frustrated, but desperate. "Hand it over." We swapped the stuff in the box for the money, And I told him, "I'll be back."
"Great!" he said. I knew I was probably breaking the law, but I broke it in a lot of other way besides this, so I wasn't really concerned. I headed back to my house and cleaned most of it out, including the furniture and the carpet. I took my cotton candy machine even though I didn't want to sell it. The man at the shop got suspicious when I started bringing in furniture, which I must say took awhile to get there, but he still paid me the money for it. By the time I was done, it was evening, but I had enough money to get me to the Big Apple. I packed up some clothes, my toothbrush and toothpaste, a brush, ponytails, my dream catchers, and a bunch of other travel necessities. Then I called my school and told the secretary that I was Dad and that my daughter would be absent for the rest of the school year, which was only a week, because I developed the flu. They didn't have a problem with it, and I locked up the house and went on my way to the bus station, thinking that I probably wouldn't make it back home. Not that there was much of a house to go to anymore.
I caught a bus that would take me to the airport, and sat beside another girl about my age. She was absently looking out the window and didn't acknowledge me, so all I could tell was that she was tall and had a massive amount of red curls all over her head. I got out my cheap MP3 player and put it on shuffle, but it kept going back to Don't Stop Believing by Journey. After awhile I turned it off and put it away. Then the girl looked at me and smiled.
"Having trouble there?" she asked me.
"Umm... yeah," I told her. Something was really off about her, though I couldn't tell what. She stuck out her hand and said, "I'm Susa." When my hand touched hers to shake it, it was freezing. I'm not talking someone with circulation problems, I'm talking cold like death. I had felt that before, but the hand didn't just pass though me like it normally did.
"Whoa," I said, surprised. "You're a ghost!"
"Yeah!" Susa said energetically.
"But I thought all the ghosts vanished." I said.
"They did," Susa replied. "Except for me. I'm to take you to the dream world."
"What?" I said, "No, I have to go to Camp Half Blood and go on a quest!"
"This is your quest! Well, it's not technically a quest, but it's close enough for us to call it one," Susa said, returning her gaze to the window. "Calm down, we are almost there."
Suddenly everything got really swirly and all I could make out was two huge black figures in front of me.
DUN DUN DUN! IF YOU ARE TOO LAZY TO READ THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE, AT LEAST GO AND CHECK OUT GEM OF THE SEA BY SOMNIUMASTRUM!
Susa makes her first appearance after her death! If you don't know who Susa is, read SomniumAstrum's Gem of the Sea. She is a really good writer, by BFF, and her story is totally epic. My story, Flower Of Sleep by SpiritusAstrum, and Alexandria the Great by NoxAstrum are all parallel to it, so if you read all of them you will get way more information on what is happening at this time.
Also, Nico just had a big fight with the main character in Flower Of Sleep, so that is why he is so grumpy. (I think he is always grumpy anyways, but he is especially grumpy now.)
Review! Please! I need it! Please!
Today's Disclaimer:
(Brought to you by the person who is stalking you right now)
Stalker: Minimus does not own PJO, any of her friend's stories, or Susa, although she would like to. She also does not own a pawn shop (that's illegal, I think..) or anything else you recognize from real life. By the way, you're out of milk.
Me: Umm... thanks, and get out of my house before I call the police.
Again, REVIEW!
PLEASE!
And read the other stories I mentioned above!
Post Scriptum (This is what P.S. is, it translates to "written after" in Latin): Next disclaimer will be brought to you by my sock monkey :)