Author Notes: Hey people! Wow, so I'm updating pretty quickly. I hope you guys have been keeping up with me. Okay. So I just want to say thanks for all your support! I love seeing it whenever I open my email and it reads, "Fanfiction Review Alert". Gods, it feels so amazing knowing that someone reads my stories. Okay, so I just want to promote my other story. It's called I DON'T LOVE YOU. If you're a My Chemical Romance fan, then yes. I stole the title from the song. But the song has no relation to the story. It's a Thalia and Luke story so I hope you guys like it. Okay. So here's chapter four. Enjoy! Oh and I really think I'm getting the hang of writing longer chapters. Haha. It's not as hard as it seems.

4

The car ride was silent.

I hated silent.

It was just like being with Portia again. It was lonely, empty, quiet. I think that was one of the reasons I loved music so much. It filled with the wide spaces of shyness between everyone. It was one common thing with people. Like, there is a complete stranger out in this world and the only thing that binds you together is the music you listen to. I always thought of music as a fight for peace. It always brought everyone together, no matter what you do. You couldn't hide from it. It's music.

Obviously, Will wasn't the type to care if it was quiet. He just calmly drove down the roads, taking rights and lefts, here and there.

It was silent.

Silence made me nervous and fidgety. At least with noise, you had a hint of what was going on. Silence made always made you guess.

"So…" I said. And that was the farthest that we got.

After a couple of minutes, I got bored and started playing with the window, clicking the button and pulling it up again. The wind whisked my hair around my face and filled the car with cool air.

"You don't talk very much." Will said finally.

"Me? You think I don't talk so much?" It surprised me how forceful my voice was sounding at the moment. But really, bottling up everything and giving in to the silence just wasn't working out.

Will was quiet after that. He didn't speak until we arrived in front of my house.

"You took me home?" I said.

"What? No." he replied, taking out his cellphone and started dialing a number. "Hello? Oh hi. Um…no. It's me. Will. Anyway, I found her! I mean, really, I did. What? But I don't get to…Owens? Why him…oh. Okay. Yeah. There's this other kid but he's all the way in Maryland. Yeah. Yeah sure…No I was…"

I stopped listening and started clicking a button on the streetlamp. Quickly, the stoplight changed to green and flashed an outline of a walking person.

"Yeah okay, bye." Will shut the phone and threw it in the next trashcan.

"What was that for?" I asked, following him towards my front door.

"You don't want another monster to get us, do you?" Will said as we passed the FOR SALE sign that was mounted on the front lawn.

He rang the doorbell and waited.

"You do know that I have a key." I told him.

"Why do you have a key to—"

The door opened. It was Tom sitting in his wheelchair. We stayed alone in the house now without Marissa. After the divorce had been settled, she had taken Lisa and Macy with her so it was just the two of us.

"Hi Tom." I said.

"Hello Nikki." He replied.

"Hi Chiron! This is Nikki." Will said with a smile, his hands on his shoulders.

"I know." Tom said.

"I caught her." Will said, still looking proud.

"Yes, I see." Tom said. "You caught my step-daughter."

I decided to shut up and watch Will look stupid.

"No, this is Lord Apollo's." Will said.

"I know." Tom said.

"This is the girl that he asked me to take to camp."

"I know."

"And she's the one that—"

"Whatever you're about to say, I know. She's a demigod."

"You knew?"

"Yes. She's been living under my roof for a year now so…"

"She's been what?" Will asked, stepping back. "What?"

"She's adopted. Of course."

"So then, I killed a dracaenae for nothing?"

"Yes, pretty much."

Will looked at me then sighed as if I was a total waste of his time. I probably was considering all the hard work he went through: finding me, killing Portia, persuading me to come with him, chasing me, then taking me home just to find out that I didn't need to be found.

"Oh. Well, I better get going then." Will said disappointedly, his green eyes saddening. "There's this other kid that dad told me to go find."

"See you at camp, William." Tom said, nodding before Will exited our front yard with heavy steps. Tom smiled one last time before backing up his wheelchair and wheeling away from the door.

"Tom!" I called quickly, shutting the door behind me. "Tom."

He stopped his moving and swerved around.

"Yes?"

"What was Will talking about? All that demigod stuff."

"Oh, er, well, nothing." Tom said. "It's better if you don't find out."

"Will said that was risky." I recalled, tapping my chin with my index finger.

The look on Tom's face assured me that this was going to be complicated. Also the way he said, "Nikki, I think you have to sit down."

"Oh come on, just tell me. Sitting down never works out for me anyway."

Tom sighed, shaking his head.

"Alright. Let's start with me. I'm not Tom."

"Huh?"

"I'm Chiron."

"So where's Tom?"

"No one's Tom. Tom never existed. I'm Tom. But there isn't a Tom. It's Chiron now. I'm—"

"Okay, 'Chiron,'"—air quotation—"What else is there to know?"

Chiron scrunched up his eyebrows. This wasn't going to be easy to understand.

"It's about your dad…" he said quietly.

I felt a spark inside my chest. My fingers tingled and went numb. I had so little memories about my dad that I would do anything to find out about him.

"What…" I couldn't even say it. "What about…my…"

"Your father…" Chiron's face seemed difficult to read but I could tell he had done this several times in the past. "Your father…he's not who you think he is."

"Who is he?" I laid my hands out on the table. "Tell me."

"He's not…human. He's…a god."

I blinked. Chiron wasn't making sense. This wasn't making sense. Tonight wasn't real. Nothing was real. My life wasn't real. This had to be a nightmare. Everything had to be a nightmare. Portia. Will. Tom.

Dad.

Dad was a nightmare. He was a nightmare that came haunting me after I had put away all the unknown things we ever had together. Things that I would never know about and wasn't sure if I wanted to.

"Nikki," Chiron said. "You know Apollo, right? The god of the sun?"

I nodded, swallowing.

"Are you saying…" I stopped and cleared my throat. "Are you saying that my dad…he's Apollo? The Greek god?"

"Yes."

I shook my head, pushing off the table.

"This is retarded. Seriously. Do you expect me to believe that my father is that guy from the books? The one that never existed? The myths?"

Thunder shook the house slightly. A flash of lightning cut through the black sky.

"Yes." Chiron said. "There are thousands of you. Don't worry. You're just like everyone else. Lord Apollo has tons of children."

My heart stopped. Chiron probably didn't know it, but he had crushed everything I had believed in from this day. He said too much for me. My dad had hundreds of children. I used to dream about my parents. I used to believe that they loved each other. I used to think that the only reason that my dad left was because of my mom's death. I figured that he couldn't take her loss so he just ran.

But here I was, being told that my dad was just fine, running off with hundreds more women, having hundreds of other kids, like I was just another one.

In his eyes, I probably was.