"Abraham?"

"Teresa. Sorry to bother you this late."

"I'll say; it's three in the morning. What's possessed you?"

"A fiery little demon. Now, I need some legal advice—if a child in one's rightful custody goes missing and reappears, say, a few years later in someone else's care, does any court action have to take place, or can I just call the police?"

"…I would think the latter, but why?"

"You keep all the foster records, don't you?"

Leo was hyperventilating on the floor and he didn't know why.

He was huddled up in the corner between the wall and the side of the bed. He had a vague awareness that he was in Cabin 13, that he was safe, but it was hard to stay grounded. He had to think of anything else. Happy place, robot puppies, summertime, warm air. Leo rubbed his palms on the carpet and opened his eyes. One black carpet under him, one black wall in front of him, one coffin behind him. Yeah, this was definitely Nico's cabin.

One Nico in front, crouching down, suddenly. "Are you okay?"

Leo looked up from his hands. He couldn't sit on the floor forever, could he? "What happened?"

"You fell out of bed. I went to check on you and you were like this." Nico's face was scrunched up with worry. "Bad dream?"

There was an implicit request there. For half-bloods, ominous dreams were rarely just dreams. Plus, he'd slept in a coffin last night. If he were in school, this would be in his English homework. Question 3: What does the coffin represent? "The coffin is a hamfisted metaphor for Leo's incoming death by heart attack," he'd write.

Leo rolled his shoulders back. "Pretty bad."

"You want to tell me?"

Clamming up was tempting. But he remembered some advice Annabeth had given him: bad communication was the leading cause of death in ancient Greece. "It wasn't a dream. It was a memory." Leo wiped away sweat. He was beginning to cool to a comfortable temperature. "I guess running into... ol' Father Abe dredged something up."

Or it's an omen, was the unspoken statement.

Leo ignored that. "What time is it?"

Nico looked at the wall. "Too early to get up. Too late to go back to bed."

"There's no windows in here, how the hell did you do that?"

"Magic."

Leo sighed and leaned back further, bending backwards so his head was on the bed. "Guess I can't just sit here until sunrise." He stared at the ceiling. It shined purple-black. "I'm going to Bunker 9. Don't wait up."

Nico opened his mouth, as if to say something, but Leo closed the door before he could do so.

Nico spent all his free time in the infirmary. Usually he split the difference between that and the bunker, but what would he say when he did? Well, what could he say.

He wondered if Leo was okay. He didn't go looking for him, but he did wonder, and that showed character. Probably.

The infirmary was very stuffy and chaotic and hard to wrap one's head around. It was perfect for somebody who had too many thoughts swirling around. Worrying, fearful thoughts. And sometimes, if he got lucky, he'd get to stand in a spot near the window, and there would be a warm sunbeam.

He slid into a different headspace here. The kids still weren't used to his presence and flinched away when he was nearby. Maybe they never would get used to him. But y'know, even if they never stopped thinking he was a freak, they'd eventually get tired of flinching.

At Camp Half-Blood, you get some interesting injuries. You gotta love a summer camp with swords, spears, and a lava pit. There was that time with the knife that got so close to that kid's heart it wobbled with every heartbeat. There was the thing with the twenty-foot long tapeworm. The penis bottle incident.

And yet nobody trusted him. A whole year of bullshit, and nobody trusted him!

Except Will. Maybe.

That afternoon, he had mostly normal activity. The usual inhaler refills, stab wounds, convection burns.

Then there were three kids. They were playing basketball when a tree fell on the court. A couple of broken limbs (ha) and cuts and scrapes. Jason popped in, wearing dark glasses. "Hey," Nico said. He was carefully stitching a cut behind one kid's ear, holding the ear in place with tweezers. "Did you have a good night?"

"It was a good night. Not as good of a morning. I think I'm dying," he sighed, holding his hands over his ears.

A basketball passed through the space between them. The kid Nico was sewing up caught it. "No basketball in the infirmary!" Will snapped. He grabbed the ball and spirited it to a closet before continuing to set a broken leg.

The kid blew a raspberry.

Nico glared at the kid. "He's right."

"What are you going to do? Kill me?" he taunted.

Nico's eye twitched. He ignored him.

"What happened with you and Leo?" Jason continued. "You two just vanished around midnight. If it weren't for Piper's knife showing us you went home, we would've flipped out and thought a monster got you. At least warn us."

Nico paused. "What did Katropis show you, exactly?"

"You and Leo asleep in Cabin 13."

Another basketball whizzed past them. "Hey!" Will shouted. "Where are you getting those?"

"From YOUR MOM!" one of them said.

"Shut up, at least my mom talks to me." That was cold, even for Will, who could make like Canada at times. "I better not see any more of these, or I'm finding your ball stash and popping every single one."

The kids jeered. "I bet you do a lot of things to balls in your free time."

Nico clenched his jaw. Jason glared disapprovingly at the kid next to him, making him wither. Nico shook his head. "If you need something for the hangover, we keep Advil in the back."

"Thanks Nico," Jason said. "And, uh, one more thing?"

"Yeah?"

"Is Leo… okay?" Jason said. He was squinting in the light of the window, but it didn't hamper his look of concern at all. "He took off last night and now he's hiding in the bunker. Did something happen?"

Nico hesitated. He didn't know the details with Abraham, but a reaction like Leo's implied nothing good. "You'll have to ask him about that."

Jason's scrunched-up expression drooped sadly, almost but not quite relaxing his hangover squint. "I was afraid of that. Most days I have to pretend I'm the one with the problem to get him to admit anything."

There was a deep anxiety in his eyes that made Nico wonder how he'd figured that out. That wasn't the expression of a man who'd learned this gradually.

"…Advil's in the back," Nico repeated.

"What?"

"Hangover. You have a hangover. I have painkillers."

"Right, right," Jason said. He shook his head, as if to loosen something that was too tightly wound. "Nice talking to you."

Jason crossed the room so he was standing behind Nico.

And then it happened.

A kid hit Nico in the face with the basketball. He reeled back and landed on his ass. His arm jerked backwards, taking the cut ear with it, where it landed on the floor like a sad little pepperoni slice.

"Oh my gods!" The ear kid screamed, clutching his bloody, one-eared head. "Oh my gods!"

"What?" said Jason as he slipped on the ear, hitting his head on the rail of a cot, knocking him unconscious.

Yep.

Nico couldn't believe it either.

By the end of the day, Jason was laid up in a cot with an ice pack and the kid's ear was dusted off and back on his head. It was only a little squashed, but he acted like Nico had cast a hex on the basketball in midair, redirecting it towards himself and causing a hot thirty minutes of chaos.

It made people look at him in a way (a split second where he could see them staring before they nervously turned away, like his gaze alone could kill them) that made Nico feel like he'd shot up with ice water.

At dinner, Nico went to apologize to Jason. Often, he felt like he'd done so much wrong he needed to apologize for things that weren't really his fault, like this thing. Jason could've ripped Nico's ear off, and Nico would still apologize to him.

He was walking to Jason, and he was about six feet away when Jason shivered, unnerved, sparks flying off his shoulders.

Nico stopped in his tracks. Jason glanced back, at first fearful, but then guilty.

He turned around and went back to the Apollo table, where Will's brothers and sisters ogled him, but at least they didn't pity him.

After dinner, his anxiety rose to a level over his nose, and he went to the bunker.

Leo was perched on a stool, tinkering with something that looked like a power tool or one of those shoe measuring things. He smiled, a half-moon, not looking up at Nico but hearing the door creak open and his soft footsteps. "You just couldn't get enough, could you?"

"You aren't getting enough, either."

"Oh-ho, is that a threat or an invitation?"

"I meant food. You aren't getting enough food." Leo finally looked up. Nico frowned down at him, holding a Tupperware container of spaghetti. He didn't eat at Hephaestus's table, so he wasn't sure what Leo liked. Spaghetti was a full meal, right? It had carbs, at least. "I didn't see you at meals all day. Actually—I didn't see you all day. Period."

The corners of Leo's mouth fell at the pace of a frosted cupcake stuck to a glass door. Slowly, hesitantly, before hitting rock bottom. "Um… yeah. Can I have that?" he said, putting down his doodad.

Nico would've taken one of the magic plates, but they kept teleporting back to the dining pavilion when he tried. In his frenzy to steal food, he had neglected to bring any forks. Or baby wipes. Jesus. Leo's hands were black with grease. Nico gave him the food and nodded at Leo's toolbelt. "Does that have silverware in it? Can a fork be considered a tool?"

"I don't know," Leo muttered. He reached in. Sure enough, a dainty fork came out of the belt. "Huh. Could just be my definition of 'tool.' I never really thought about how that works."

He set the container on his knee, removed the lid with his left hand and held the fork in his right. The container wobbled perilously. Nico took the lid. "You better hold onto that food. I went to a lot of trouble to make sure you eat."

"And I tip my hat to you, good sir. …You know, I used to know somebody who thought language was a big waste of time. Reckoned everything could be summed up in one or two words. Randy—his name. Everything was a 'tool' to him. He'd call across the room for a 'tool' and I wouldn't know what the fuck he was talking about. He could be talking about a spatula or a screwdriver or a fork. And Randy would never tell me which one! I'd say 'what the fuck are you talking about' and he'd say 'a tool' and we'd go back and forth until he finally got up and it turns out the 'tool' is a hole punch. I fucking hated that guy. That's a massive oversimplification of speech—of people, really. We have so many different tools for different things that evolved over the years that just calling everything a tool kind of cheapens it. But I guess his thinking dug into me until it affects the magic in my tool belt. Asshole Randy's terrible philosophy actually helps me every now and then. I still hate it, obviously, but even when I hate it, I'm thinking about it. I can't choose what I think about."

Leo's rambling lulled as he twirled spaghetti around his fork, stopped eating, and began staring at it blankly. Nico was still holding the Tupperware lid for a lack of any clear space to put it down.

"This isn't really about tools, is it?" Nico said.

"Ugh, no. But I really hoped it would end up being about tools after all," Leo grumbled.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes," he insisted.

Nico clenched his jaw, trying to remember Jason's advice. I pretend to be the one with the problem. "Okay. I don't believe you, but okay."

Leo moved the spaghetti-wrapped fork around the container. It hit each side with a quiet, wet thump.

"…Jason got another concussion today," Nico said.

"What happened?"

"Punk kids throwing a basketball."

"Hit him square in the forehead?"

"No, he slipped on the ear I accidentally severed. …Yes, really. People won't quit talking about it. It's starting to get on my nerves." He paused and looked at Leo. Leo was smiling, but into his spaghetti. "Well, it's been getting on my nerves for a while now. But, uh… I deal with it my own way."

Leo scoffed. "The old 'picture everybody naked' shtick?"

Nico wasn't used to being to the center of the conversation. "No. I—when I was ten, I ran away from camp and hung out with this ghost, Minos. I won't go into detail, but he spent a long time hyping me up, making me angry. He wanted me to kill somebody for him. I almost did it. I was young and stupid, and he seemed convincing."

"But…?" Leo, very slightly, was looking Nico in the eye.

"But every time he almost won me over—after every other reason to say 'no' had fallen through, and I was beginning to think he was right after all—without fail, we'd walk past a black person. And he'd say something racist."

Leo coughed. "Holy shit, dude."

"I know. He'd start rambling about 'how lazy the Africans are' and I'd say to myself, 'oh no, I almost listened to this guy.' And I'd end up thinking, 'thank gods he's racist.'"

Nico paused. "Wow," Leo said.

"And that's an awful thing to think, but it was a good red flag. Something to keep me from falling into a trap. I still have moments like that. I hear someone talking about me and I think that they're right. Then I realize that the person talking is, I don't know, that guy who sells pictures of his feet on the internet."

"Greg the foot guy?! Does he really do that?"

"Yes he does."

Leo looked both amused and horrified. "Wait—"

"I just know stuff, okay? The point is, nobody's infallible, and chances are they have some horrible flaw that helps you ignore them." Granted, Nico didn't have dirt on every single person in camp, and a lot of them were good people. Great people. "If some kid is dumb enough to throw a basketball in a busy infirmary, I don't need to listen to any advice they've got to offer."

They were quiet.

Leo finished his spaghetti.

"I'm sorry you had to go to this trouble. Seeing Abraham really fucked me up. I'm thinking of things I haven't considered since I was fourteen. Actually—" Leo swiveled on his seat. "—are you Catholic?"

"No."

"But you used to be, weren't you?" Nico must have made a face that tipped off the answer. "Yeah, you were. You're Italian. You were probably Catholic. I was Catholic once. Abraham wasn't… isn't. He's evangelical or Pentecostal or one of those other crazy options."

"…"

Leo inhaled deeply. "I don't know. He was crazy either way. Kept calling me possessed. Sometimes I believed it. The things I saw as a kid—Tia Callida, the fireplace… Gaea. If I didn't know better, I could chalk it up to demons."

Nico had no idea what Leo was talking about, but he felt stupid just sitting there. "But you know better. Now you know why that stuff happened. It sucks that it happened, but you know it wasn't demons."

Leo suddenly pounded his hand on the workbench.

"Yeah, I know now, okay! That's why I'm pissed!"

Leo looked at his hand. He must have brought his palm down on something sharp, because blood trickled from it down his arm. Nico moved to help, but he waved him off. "It's fine. I'm fine. …The spaghetti was great. I forgot to thank you."

When Nico was ten, the first time he'd come to camp, he'd asked Percy about God. Percy had said something along the lines of I don't know, Chiron won't talk about it. Now go bite someone else's ankles. He never got around to asking Chiron, but he'd probably get brushed off if he did.

"What do you mean?"

Leo looked up. A little sauce was at the corner of his mouth. "What?"

"What's missing?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," Leo said, looking intensely worried about it.

Nico took the injured hand. Leo balled it into a fist, so he couldn't see. "At least let me look, Leo. This bench is covered in rusty metal."

Nico gently peeled Leo's fingers back. Index, pinkie, middle, ring, thumb. The array of tools and loose metal on the bench had cut his palm deeply. Leo whistled in faux surprise. "Would you look at that. Right in the middle."

"Gods, Leo, this isn't a joke. I'm trying to help you here." Nico always had a little ambrosia on him, even in relatively safe situations. He still wanted to be cautious. Nico looked over at a deep sink basin across the bunker, something he imagined was rarely used. "Come over here."

Nico took him to the sink. Leo's wrist was a jumble of friendship bracelets, rubber wristbands, and paracord braids, and they were all covered in blood.

Nico pawed at the tangled mass, and Leo offered no support. "What are you doing?" Nico said.

"Maybe I like these bracelets, okay?"

"Well, wash them. They're gross now."

Nico scraped it away and gave pause. Leo had scars.

They were old. They were brown. There were no distinct lines, so they weren't self-harm. They were burn scars, something seemingly impossible for Leo to have until Nico noticed that they went all the way around his wrist in a perfect circle.

It was friction burn, like you get from a rope.

"Leo—?"

"Don't."

Later, Leo was woken up at way too fucking early o'clock and told to come to the camp border.

In the morning, Nico consulted Annabeth.

Annabeth wasn't obligated to stay at camp, but in the summer she returned as a counselor. If anyone could help in this situation, it would be her.

Nico had no excuse to even be near the Athena table, but he pulled her aside anyway. "Can we talk?" he said. (The Hephaestus table was right next to Athena, and Leo wasn't there.) "I need your opinion on something."

They walked down a dirt trail that would weave through the campground and eventually approach the border. There was a cold fog, heavy like trying to bite through a wool blanket and thick enough to cut with a knife. Nico could barely see Annabeth standing paces away. Her hair was puffed up in the humidity. Even further away, campers were silhouettes of themselves.

Annabeth peered down at him curiously. "What's wrong?"

"I'm worried about someone at camp."

Nico told her what he'd put together, without naming Leo. He explained the incident with Abraham, the religious stuff, the scars.

Annabeth's brow was creased when he finished. "…Jeez." She was still trying to choose her words. Nico didn't blame her. What could you say?

"Even though he never said he was abused, I'm worried," he said. "Now that his foster parent knows he's in New York, he could get hurt." Either by Abraham's hand, or his own.

"You need to tell Chiron. He needs to know who that preacher is so he can be kept away from camp."

"I know I do. I just wanted to run it by you."

Annabeth was quiet. Her gray eyes were stony, gazing into the woods. They'd almost come to the end of the path, and the vague shadow of Thalia's tree stood in the distance, Golden Fleece flapping flaccidly in the wet wind. Annabeth muttered something about using Jason as a dehumidifier. "Does your friend know that you're discussing this with me?"

Nico frowned. "…I could've asked him if he needed help, but he'd say 'no.' He's like that."

There was a look in her eyes that made him think she knew who he was talking about. But if she did, she didn't bring it up.

"What do you think?" he said.

"Huh?"

"About the preacher. He thought that kid was possessed. And I guess that's not unreasonable, given what half-bloods are like." Nico thought of times Leo had scared him. He pulled technology advanced enough to look like magic out of his ass, handled red-hot metal with no problems, and conjured fire out of the air.

If Nico had encountered Leo as a child in Italy, maybe he'd mistake him for a demon too.

Annabeth's ponytail had pinwheeled into chaos, and she fixed it, the hair elastic between her teeth as she gathered it up. "I' seen somethin' like that," she mumbled.

"What?"

"Hold." Annabeth put her hair up. "About five years ago, Percy, Grover and I snuck into the Underworld. On our way in, we saw some greasy televangelist getting hauled into the Fields of Punishment. Percy asked why he was there if he believed in a different hell. Grover lobbed the theory that he was seeing something else, but we had other things to worry about at the time. Makes you wonder."

"Yeah. My family was Catholic, actually. I'm not sure how."

"Same, sort of. My stepmom's from a religious family. She got my half-brothers baptized and everything. Wanted me to get baptized too, but I thought it was pointless. I'm the daughter of a pagan goddess—if I didn't know better, I'd assume I'm allergic to holy water."

Nico snorted. He had vague memories, blurred by the Lethe, of going to Mass. It occurred to him how ridiculous it was. He wondered why his mother kept doing that—did she really hold onto her faith, or was she trying to keep up appearances? In Italy, you either went to Mass or there was something wrong with you.

The arch of the entrance approached. "Here's the end of the line," Nico said. "We should get back. I'll talk to Chiron—"

"Is something out there?" Annabeth said, squinting at the horizon.

Actually, yes.

Nico couldn't see where they were coming from, but there were red and blue lights coming from beyond the fog. He saw the shape of Chiron in his magic wheelchair, and Mr. D drinking his Diet Coke, both speaking to a blurry third figure.

Oh gods. Leo wasn't at breakfast.

Nico darted through the entrance, Annabeth yelling at him to wait.

The scene came into focus.

There were two cars parked outside Camp Half-Blood. One was a police car. The other was an ugly church bus. There were a few policemen filling out reports. Chiron and Mr. D were arguing with an officer and a woman in a suit who was waving a slip of paper.

Nico ran up to Chiron, whose face was ashen and pulled tight. "What's going on here?" he cried.

Mr. D responded for him, looking intensely irritated. "Little Miss Litigation here says we took in a camper illegally."

The woman, a woman wearing a business suit and a hard expression, sniffed. "Leo disappeared from our home two years ago. Next thing I know, my husband's telling me he's in the woods in Long Island. Did you know that he wasn't here with our permission? Did you even ask?"

"Ma'am, please calm down," Chiron said. "I'm sure we can come to an agreement."

"No disrespect, but I've been missing a child for years, and you're a pair of shady old men running an unlicensed day camp. There is no 'we' in this conversation," the woman insisted.

Nico gritted his teeth. "Who are you?"

"Can we please wrap this up?" she continued, ignoring Nico. "Leo must be tired from all this deliberating. I want to take him home."

Nico looked at the police car. Leo was in the backseat. Fuzzy and wide-eyed. Nico bolted across the lawn, but was caught by the collar. "Hey! Don't make this worse!" Mr. D snapped, acidic soda on his breath.

Annabeth rushed in. Mr. D pushed Nico into her arms. She held onto him, keeping him at a distance. "Babysit Nick Angel for me," he said. "We've got enough to deal with as it is."

Nico struggled against Annabeth's restraining arms. Unfortunately, those same arms had once held the sky itself, so the struggle was futile. She dragged him into the camp borders, where onlookers swayed in the fog, staring at the red and blue lights.

Nico strained against her grip. "Put me down!"

"Stop fighting! Stop fighting!" Annabeth demanded. "I won't let go until you calm down!"

Nico thrashed around. Annabeth held on for dear life.

The gathered crowd stared in horror as Mr. D and Chiron nodded at the policemen, making some agreement. Mr. D got in the police car. Chiron signed some paperwork. The police car drove away.

Nico went limp, his eyes tracing the red and blue lights until they disappeared into the fog.

Chiron, still in his chair, waited for the woman to drive away. The bus started with a sickening scraping sound, and scraped itself away. The sound stayed long after the bus did. Chiron then rose, his truncated horse's body emerging, his fake legs lying uselessly in the chair. There was clear dread on his face as he approached the crowd.

Annabeth squeezed Nico slightly tighter. Possibly to restrain him, or perhaps to comfort herself.

"Attention, campers. Certain aspects of Camp Half-Blood have come to mortal attention," he said wearily. "While they remain unaware of the camp's true nature, the Mist does not stop them from inspecting the legality of our operation. And… there was a conflict of interest that led to the removal of a camper."

The crowd muttered fearfully.

"Silence. Silence, now!" Chiron said. "We are fighting to return the removed to camp. Mr. D is going to the police station as we speak. In the meantime, we must take measures to prevent this from happening again."

Chiron cleared his throat. He had the look of a man about to throw a verbal bomb.

"All half-bloods attending camp without a legal guardian's consent must inform me that they are doing so."

There was an explosion of outrage. Of course there was. Half of camp had run away, been abused, or were orphans.

"Silence!"

There was no silence, but Chiron talked anyway.

"I am not returning any of you to your guardians' custody!" he shouted. "I am trying to ensure that those guardians will not call the police!" Because if the police got involved, Nico realized, Chiron couldn't do anything. The ball would be in their court.

But this was prevention. It was already too late for Leo.

Outside Nico's mind, the screaming went on forever.