Hey, everyone! Okay, just a quick message here: I read Son of Poseidon, and of course I need to change a few things about the story now. Leo is dating Hazel Cortez, and the Roman camp's name is actually Camp Jupiter. So…yeah. That's all. Read, love (hopefully) and review!

The sun was shining, the sky was cloudless, and the screams of campers on the climbing wall could be heard even from the cabin wing. By the sound of it, someone had just about fallen into the lava pit. Hopefully the satyrs had managed to catch the poor kid in time.

A soft breeze blew in through the open door of the Poseidon cabin, flooding the stone building with the scent of salt water. I looked over my shoulder at the massive form of my half-brother Tyson, still sleeping even though it was almost time for lunch.

"Hey, Seaweed Brain. You in here?"

I turned towards the door. Annabeth stood on the porch outside the cabin, her curly blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. The magic Yankees camp she always wore stuck out of her back pocket, and her bronze knife was strapped to her right arm. She was smiling in a way that made my heart skip a few beats.

"Here," I answered, returning her smile. "Sleep well?"

"Not really. I was up late reading."

Well, no surprises there. Annabeth had about a dozen books on the go at the same time, and there just weren't enough hours in a day for her to read them all.

She stretched and yawned. "Grover got back last night, by the way. Apparently his mission in the Gulf of Mexico went well."

Grover had been traveling the country for the past few years, spreading the word of Pan and rallying the rest of the satyrs. Whenever something really bad happened - an environmental disaster like an earthquake or tornado - they all gathered to help out. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had brought almost every satyr on the continent down south to clean things up.

I grabbed my lethal ball-point pen, Riptide, off my beside table and shoved it into my pocket. "Okay. Let's go."

It was beautiful outside. The warm weather had convinced the Demeter kids that their cabin needed redecorating, and Katie and Miranda Gardner were making roses grow on the grass roof. The Apollo kids were playing an extremely physical basketball game with the Ares campers. Despite the Apollo kid's wickedly awesome aim, the Ares kids were absolutely enormous and several of Apollo's children lay gasping for breath on the pavement. I figured the infirmary would have several more occupants by the end of the day.

The Hermes kids, headed, of course, by Travis and Connor Stoll, were putting whoopee cushions on all the benches in the dining pavilion, so I made a mental note to check my seat before I sat down to lunch. The clang-clang-clang coming from the forges told me that the Hephaestus kids were up and about, but their senior counselor was sitting on a rock in front of the canoe lake, looking despondent, and I knew why. Leo Valdez had been steadily - and when I say steadily, I mean steadily - dating Reyna Cortez from Portus Aquilae, who'd left for San Francisco a couple days ago. You could tell that he was really depressed because he didn't even glance at the troupe of Aphrodite girls sitting by the hearth. He didn't look up when they started to giggle, which was weird, because I definitely did. Those daughters of Aphrodite sure can squeal.

And after looking around for a moment, I groaned when I saw who they were squealing about.

Nico di Angelo was striding across the cabin wing, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, his black Stygian iron sword swinging at his side. Judging from the sweat soaking the front of his shirt, he'd just come from weapons practice.

Now, I don't want to sound weird or anything, but I could definitely see what the Aphrodite girls were getting so excited about. Nico had grown up a lot in the past few years, in more ways than one. He was taller than me now, and seriously enormous. His skin had paled, his black hair had gotten longer, and he was one of the best swordsmen the camp had seen in a long time. People always came to watch when he and I sparred, which felt kind of strange, but it sure was fun to duel him.

His personality had changed a lot too. Nico wasn't quiet, exactly - he just didn't talk to other people too much. Reserved might have been a better word. He didn't smile very much, and I'd only ever seen him laugh once since his sister died. Fortunately, one of the Iris kids had managed to take a picture of that momentous occasion, and the photograph was now hanging in Chiron's office.

Anyway. Back to why the Aphrodite kids were giggling. I'd heard a lot of the female campers talking about Nico a lot. A lot of them kept saying that they thought he was the best-looking dude in the whole camp. Obviously I'm not the best judge of male looks, but I did know that it was super weird to see girls lusting after the boy who'd been a Mythomagic-playing ten-year-old when I'd met him for the first time.

Nico stopped at the edge of the canoe lake, and sat down on the rock next to Leo. They'd struck up an unlikely friendship before the seven of us sailed to Greece, and I still couldn't figure out what had drawn them together. But even though they were way different, Nico and Leo were close almost to the point of brotherhood.

Annabeth smiled when she saw them. "Good for Nico. Leo looks like he could really use some cheering up."

I nodded. "Piper too. Although she's been handling it a little better than Leo has."

As if on cue, Piper McLean marched up to the girls from her cabin and pointed towards the stables. "Come on, guys. We've got pegasus riding in five minutes."

Her cabin groaned, but Piper was pretty insistent, and the Aphrodite cabin was up and away to the stables within a minute.

Annabeth shrugged. "At least they'll all get to see each other at the end of the month. I think Piper and Jason can wait that long." Then she smiled. "Leo, however, I'm not too sure about."

We walked across the strawberry fields, saying hi to Castor and Cleo, Dionysus's two kids. Castor's twin brother, Pollux, had died in the Battle of the Labyrinth, but he'd gotten a lot happier when Cleo arrived at the camp a few years later. Now the two of them were practically joined at the hip.

"Hey, Percy!" Cleo said, her bright violet eyes - just like her dad's - energetic. "Hi, Annabeth!"

"Going to visit Grover?" Castor asked, in a slightly calmer tone.

"Yeah, do you know where he is?"

Castor pointed towards the forest, in the general direction of Zeus's fist. "He was rushing off to find Juniper when I saw him last."

"Be careful you don't disturb them," Cleo said, grinning wickedly. I tried to ignore the mental image those words put in my mind.

"Awesome, thanks," Annabeth said. "See you later!"

We left then - skirting around the edge of the forest so we wouldn't get eaten by some form of giant bug or bear or wolf - until we got to Zeus's fist. Juniper the wood nymph and Grover, my best friend and favourite barnyard animal, were sitting on the lowest collection of rocks, hand in hand.

"Hey, Grover!" I yelled, starting to run towards him. Grover jumped, looked around, and finally saw me.

"Perrrrrrcy!" he bleated. He leaped off of his perch on the rocks and the two of us man-hugged. "Annabeth! How are things?"

"Peaceful, for once," Annabeth answered, hugging him too. "How's the Gulf of Mexico?"

Grover's smile faded for a moment. "A little better, but there's still a lot of work to be done. But I don't want to think about that now." He ran a hand through his wildly curly hair. "It feels so good to be home! How is everybody?"

I held up my hands and put down a finger every time I said someone's name. "Piper's okay, Leo's depressed, Clarisse is on her third electric spear after Butch broke the last one, Katie and Travis are still arguing, and a couple Apollo kids came close to impaling Nyssa from the Hephaestus cabin a few days ago."

"Sounds like another typical day at camp," Grover said contentedly. Then his eyes slid past me and stared at a place just over my right shoulder. "Nico?"
"Nico's fine too," I told him.

He nodded. "I know. I was only wondering why he's running towards us."

I turned around, and sure enough, Nico was jogging through the trees and coming to a slow stop right at the foot of Zeus's fist. He clapped hands with Grover - he wasn't smiling, but his eyes were happy. "Good to see you, man."

"You too, Nico," Grover said. The two of them had always liked each other a lot, ever since Nico first came to the camp and Grover had shown him around. After that, the three of us had sort of adopted him as our protégé. I think that's French for "young charge" or something like that.

"Listen, I came down to say that Chiron wants all four of us down at the Big House," Nico told us. "Chiron got an Iris-message from Thalia last night. Apparently the Hunters are coming to stay for a while."

"Awesome!" I said.

Grover nodded enthusiastically. "We get to see Thalia again!"

Only Annabeth looked a little troubled. "Why, though? The Hunters almost never settle down in one place for more than a few days."

"Oh, come on, Annabeth," Grover complained. "Get excited! Thalia's going to be here soon!"

Annabeth shook her head and addressed Nico. "Did she say anything else in her message?"

"Chiron only told me that the Hunters were coming, and he needed to talk to all the senior counselors."

I flicked Riptide between my fingers. Something about this just didn't feel right.

"Okay, then," I finally said. "Let's get going."

We made our way back to the Big House, meeting several of the senior counselors as we walked. Clarisse stared me down and muttered "punk" so she must have been in a good mood. Piper met us in the pavilion, smiling and smelling a lot like horses. And it took three of us - me, Nico and Annabeth - to get Clovis out of bed and drag him to the Big House. But we did get there eventually.

Once we'd all settled around the ping-pong table, Seymour the leopard growled at all the senior counselors to remind us that it was feeding time. So Astrid from the Hestia cabin got out the Snausages and started tossing them to the giant cat's head.

Chiron and Mr. D. came in a few minutes later. Mr D. clapped his hands together. "All right, you brats! I mean, listen up, heroes! Chiron has something very important to tell you."

Chiron gave Mr. D. a reproving glance before speaking. "Mr. D. is right. Thalia called this morning on Iris-message and said that she and the Hunters will be coming to stay for a while."

Several of the counselors smiled and high-fived each other. A lot of them had sisters or friends who were Hunters.

"She also said that she'd talked to Camp Jupiter -" Here he stopped and smiled, because the attention levels of the counselors had gone up about three hundred percent. "-and she's asked all your Roman friends to come back. They'll be here in about three days."

The excited chatter got a lot louder after that. Only Piper, who should have been leaping for joy at the chance to see her boyfriend again, frowned. "Why, though? They were just here."

Chiron shook his head. "That was the second part of the message. Thalia thinks that trouble is coming for the children of the gods, and she wants us all to be in one place when it comes."

Silence fell again very quickly. That did not sound good.

"Be on your guard, everyone," Chiron warned. "I think you're all free to go. Mr. D., anything to say?"

"Hmm?" said Mr. D., looking up from his copy of Winemakers Monthly. "Yes, yes, the safety of the camp is the most important thing."

Chiron sighed. "Well, that was to be expected. Off you go to afternoon activities."

We all emerged into the bright sunlight. A lot of the kids looked more relaxed now that they were out in the light, but I wasn't among that number. I stared out over at the lake, memorizing the look of my camp.

It was beautiful, bright, the perfect place.

And peaceful.

But somehow, I doubted it would stay that way for much longer.