I woke up to a small hand pressed against my face and a "Lucy, no!"
When I opened my eyes, a little blond girl with bright blue eyes peered down at me. "Hi!" She said in that high little kid voice.
"Hi," I responded, sitting up.
"Lucy! I told you to leave him alone!" Sam protested as she moved to collect her sister.
"She's fine." I laughed.
"Whatever." Sam rolled her eyes and stalked out of the room.
I smiled at the little girl. "So, you're Lucy, huh?" She nodded eagerly. "Kezi told me a lot about you last night."
"Really?" Lucy asked excitedly. A look of confusion passed over her little face and I couldn't help but think of Annabeth in the way her eyebrows scrunched together. "What's your name?"
"Percy." I answered her as Kezi walked into the room.
"I heard you're up." Kezi said, stroking Lucy's curls as she hugged her leg.
Lucy took hold of Kezi's hand and pulled her towards the kitchen. Kezi motioned for me to follow.
The kitchen was full of natural light streaming in through the sliding glass doors. Nico sat on the counter near the stove eating from the serving plate Mrs. Astley was trying to fill with food. Athan and Easton played chess at the table. I'm not sure, but I think Athan was losing. Lucy climbed into Easton's lap and Kezi took Athan's turn.
"Check." She said.
"Hey!" Easton demanded. "I thought we had a rule against you helping anyone!"
Kezi shrugged with a devious look. "Athan's so bad he doesn't count."
"Hey!" Athan laughed as he pulled Kezi into his lap.
"Check… Mate?" Lucy squeaked as she moved a pawn to capture Athan's king. Easton burst out laughing.
"What? Kezi!" Athan complained.
Kezi smiled. "I thought you were at least competent enough to defend yourself from a pawn." She teased.
Athan slid Kezi into the chair next to him. "Lucy, I want a rematch."
Lucy's eyes widened in excitement. "Really? I get to play?"
"I'll help you." Easton volunteered as he moved the pieces back to their original locations.
Lucy shook her head. "No."
"But, Lucy…"
"No."
Easton opened his mouth to argue with the little girl but Kezi cut him off. "Let her play alone. It's not like Athan has much of an advantage."
Easton eyed Athan a moment before shrugging.
"Kezi, dear, I believe Nico's stolen your job." Mrs. Astley said from the stove as she placed another set of pancakes on the platter. "And then some."
Kezi laughed as Nico shrugged and took yet another piece of bacon. "I noticed, except for the whole meat thing."
A sudden movement on the floor caught my eye. Sam was sitting on the floor with her arms crossed in front of her. I moved across the room and sat down beside her.
"Look, Sam, the only reason I don't want you to come along is that I've already got two untrained people, a third could get us killed."
Sam turned and glared at me. "Kezi's not untrained. She moves like a freakin' hunter! And once, we went to a Renaissance festival, and she didn't even break a sweat when they wanted her to fight a trained guy with a knife!" Sam hissed with her voice barely above a whisper.
"A knife, huh?" I asked, my mind wandering as I thought of Annabeth's knife-fighting abilities. I absently wondered if Kezi was really any good.
Sam continued to glare at me. I sighed. "This quest is really important to me, okay?" It felt strange opening up to a girl nine years younger than me. "Annabeth is missing and she's eight months pregnant. I can't take any more risks."
Sam's face immediately softened. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize…" She trailed off.
"I win!" Lucy shouted happily. Kezi and Easton broke down into hysterics.
Nico moved to the table to survey the chess board. "Dude! What are you, twenty-two?" Athan nodded. "And you just lost a game of chess to a five-year-old? Seriously?"
Kezi wiped tears from her eyes. "Athan, you make it very hard to show you off to intelligent people."
Easton gasped for air. "The best part is: you didn't even let her win!" They burst into a new fit of laughter, Nico joining them this time.
Athan just shrugged and stood up to pick up Lucy, tickling her until she, too, was struggling for air.
"I've lost many games to five-year-old daughters of Athena." I said, standing up with Sam right behind me. Mrs. Astley shot me a look. Oh, I thought, Lucy is a daughter of Athena.
"So," I said after we'd eaten breakfast and just before we were to get in the car. "Anybody have extra weapons for these two?"
Easton immediately disappeared but came back just a few seconds later. "I'd hidden a knife out in the garden for Kezi about nine years ago." He handed her a sheathed knife just shorter than her forearm.
"Nine years ago?" Athan asked. "That would've been a year before I moved in."
Easton nodded. "Strategy, my friend, strategy."
"All right, so Athan needs-" I trailed off when Mrs. Astley walked down the stairs.
"Athan, come here." She said with her hands behind her back.
Athan threw a quick confused look over his shoulder to Kezi before moving over to his mother.
"Yeah?" He asked.
She pulled a glittering black sword from behind her back and handed it to her son. "It's stygian iron, from before World War II."
Athan turned it over in his hand. "It's awesome, thanks."
Mrs. Astley hesitated and Kezi seemed to immediately pick up on why as she moved silently to stand right behind Athan.
"It was your father's." Mrs. Astley whispered.
Athan suddenly dropped it with a clatter on the tile floor.
"No! I want nothing to do with him!" Athan protested angrily.
He jumped when Kezi placed her hand on his back. "Athan, it's not a big deal."
"It is." He insisted giving her an intensely bitter look.
Kezi glared back even more bitterly. "No. It's not. People make mistakes. He never meant to hurt you." They continued to glare until Athan eventually looked away. "Now pick up the stupid sword and let's go." Light glinted in her eyes and off the blade strapped to her arm wickedly. Athan picked up the sword.
"I don't like you armed and moody." Athan muttered.
"Bite me," was Kezi's simple response.
"Welcome to the Burgh!" Kezi said cheerfully forty-five minutes later as we trekked down the sidewalk past the Petersen Events Center. Yes, trekked, the hill was so steep I almost felt like I needed some rope and a harness.
We stood facing a large, grayish, triangular steel building in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh. Kezi walked straight in the door and beckoned us all in.
"What floor do you want?" Kezi asked me as she smiled and waved to the secretary at the reception desk.
"The six hundredth." I said, walking up to the desk.
"Wait! What?" Kezi just stood there with a confused look on her face.
"Do I need a key to the six hundredth floor, or can I just go up?" I asked the woman, who was obviously a fake blond and probably at least 30. She smiled.
"He's hallucinating." Kezi said apologetically when she appeared beside me. "Long walk from Oakland."
The secretary's smile vanished. "No, Miss Blake," She hissed. "He's not hallucinating." She turned back to me as Kezi rolled her eyes. "Here you go, Mr. Jackson." Her smile grew back and she handed me a key card like on Olympus.
"What was that?" I asked in the elevator.
Kezi shrugged. "One of my many haters." Nico glanced at her sideways. "What's wrong with that?"
Athan leaned against the railing and pulled Kezi into his arms. "She has a right to hate you. Waltzing in here like you own the place after what you did."
"What'd you do?" I asked curiously.
"I befriended her boss when I was fifteen and convinced him she was doing her job wrong, which she was." Kezi sighed. "And when I was seventeen I made her seem less qualified in his eyes."
"How could you do that?"
"She graduated from Pitt. I turned them down for Penn. I don't know why everyone freaks about that. It could've been worse. I could've gone to Penn State." Kezi said 'Penn State' like she was talking about the plague.
"What's wrong with Penn State?" Nico asked, earning himself a glare that could kill.
"It's Penn State." Kezi said disgustedly. "In Pittsburgh, you either like Pitt or Penn State, never, ever both. I've always been a Pitt person."
"Then why did you go to Penn?"
"Penn is Ivy League. Pitt doesn't have an architecture program." She shifted in Athan's arms. "I needed to get out of this city for a while."
The door finally dinged open and revealed an Olympus-quality reception room. A tall goddess with long, dark hair strode into the room as we stepped out of the elevator. I recognized her from Olympus after the Titan War.
"Lady Nemesis." I called out her name.
She turned and looked at me. Ethan had his mom's eyes- sorry, eye. "Mr. Jackson, I've been expecting you."
She led us down a hall to an office with wide floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the place where the rivers converged. A stone fountain gushed at the tip of the triangular area.
Kezi squeaked beside me. "The Point. I've never seen it from this angle." She bit down hard on her lip when Lady Nemesis cleared her throat at the other end of the room.
"My sources tell me Annabeth has gone missing." Nemesis prompted.
"Yeah, she did. Two days ago without a trace."
"And what do you want from me?" Nemesis leaned forward in her seat behind her dark mahogany desk.
"Rachel, the oracle at camp, thinks she might be in this building." I continued. "Do you have any way for us to check all of the floors?"
"I do not sense her presence." Nemesis said and my heart fell. Kezi shot me a pitying look. "However, after my eye-for-an-eye phase, Apollo has banned me from all operations of UPMC, including the offices. Perhaps Mr. Brady, here, can get you in to check those floors."
Easton shook his head. "I don't know that I can. I kinda ticked Pitt off too."
I turned back to Nemesis. "Do you know anyone else who might be able to get us in?"
"I believe Mrs. Astley knows of somebody else." Nemesis smiled as she studied Kezi's face. Kezi eyebrows barely twitched. "Yes, dear, the state finally got around to making your name change legal."
Kezi fought back a smile as she and Athan shared a brief look. "If we can't get in, we can see if my brother can help us. But only if we can't get in."
So I was looking back through this story, and I realized I had skipped a chapter when I was posting them. I can't believe no one pointed out the gap. I promise I wouldn't leave that kind of gap on purpose. Really I do.