Fixed a few typos ^-^

Never take a dare from a Stoll. Free life lesson right there.

During free time, Cooper and I were hanging out with the Stoll brothers, and Connor convinced us to play Truth or Dare. I hated the game, but he promised me a s'more if I got Clarisse La Rue to laugh. The satyrs at camp give you, like, five pieces of chocolate per s'more. So, yeah.

I dared Travis to kiss Katie Gardener, who was luckily much better by that point. He did it (on the cheek – that little brat!), and came back with three golden drachmas that he had swiped from her pocket. "I have a girlfriend now," he announced.

"Until she finds out where her drachmas went," Connor snorted. Travis looked so scared, it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. "Okay, EmCay, truth or dare?"

"First of all, don't call me that. Second... um... dare." I honestly don't know why I said dare. Like I said, I hate Truth or Dare, the Dare part especially, and I mean no disrespect to a certain Oracle of Delphi.

Connor grinned, and I immediately knew that that had been a bad idea. "I dare you... what's a good one, Travis? Maybe... to kiss Nico di Angelo? On the lips?"

I paled. "You evil person."

Connor laughed maniacally. "I know, right? And the best part is, he's not actually your brother. I heard everything you said at breakfast this morning! We're playing without the option of chickening out. Go," he said.

"And you have to do it in front of the Hades cabin," Travis added. I stood. I knew my duty.

You may be thinking: "But you liked him. What's the problem?" The problem is, I'm 11. This may come as a shock to you, but usually when an 11-year-old girl says she likes someone, it means a crush. Crushes are very different from actually loving someone. Crushing on someone does not involve kissing him. It involves giggling about him with your friends and writing "EmCay + Nico," or "I ship Emico" – or whatever – on everything. So, you can understand why I was freaking out.

Nico was talking with a ghost behind the Hades cabin. It disappeared when it saw me, but I caught a glimpse of it – a very tall, very buff dark-skinned guy, probably college-age, in what looked like a blacksmith's clothes. After it vanished, Nico turned around to see what had disturbed it. He relaxed a bit when he saw me. "Hey," he said. "That's just Beckendorf. I think you startled him."

"Sorry," I replied, glancing around. "Can we go around to the front for a minute?"

"What's wrong?" he asked as I led him around to the front of the cabin. When I caught Travis's eye, he gave me a thumbs-up. I shot eye daggers back at him, and Nico seemed to understand what was going on. He stopped. "Wait. You're playing Truth or Dare with them?"

"Connor promised me a s'more," I complained. "The s'mores here are really good."

He sighed. "Why do girls have to like chocolate so much? What was the dare?"

"I have to kiss you," I said. He blushed, and I looked down at the ground. "On the lips."

We stood there for a second. "Well, that's what you've got to expect from the Stolls. Anything else?" he asked.

"I can't chicken out and we have to do it where they can see us," I said.

"Okay," he said simply. He kissed me for about three seconds before I backed away. Clarisse, watching from the Ares cabin, burst out laughing.

"I never thought I'd see Death Boy kiss someone!" she yelled at us.

"Thanks," I told Nico, my face burning. "Connor owes me a s'more."

His face was just as red as mine, if not more, but he smiled. "Slap him for me," he said.

"Gladly," I called over my shoulder as I stomped back towards the central green.

"How was – ow!" Connor said. That last part was because I punched him in the arm.

"That was from me," I said. Then I slapped his face. "And that was from Nico. If I hear that anyone I see around me is talking about this, I will punch you again in a much more painful place. And you owe me your s'more."

"I never said I'd give you mine," Connor whined.

"I'm going to tell everyone I see to guard theirs at the next campfire, so it's going to have to be yours," I said. Cooper stood and put a hand on Connor's shoulder.

"As her best friend," he whispered loudly, "I'd suggest backing off." Connor nodded enthusiastically, one hand on his bicep.

That night was really boring (except for the whole dare thing, but Clarisse, Cooper, and the Stolls were the only ones who saw that). I'm pretty sure that Chiron had accidentally overlooked it when he was working on the schedule, so he just let us all do whatever we wanted, as long as it did not involve what had been dubbed basketshoe, going into Rachel Dare's cave (apparently they'd been having problems with that) or salad fights. I figured this was a good time to ask Chiron what had happened to my mom, whom I'd forgotten yet again.

"I'm honestly not sure," he said when I asked him. "After you went on your tour, she said she had to use the restroom. I pointed it out, but she didn't come out after about ten minutes. The door's still locked."

This was news. I was the one who took fifteen minutes in the bathroom. Mom took, like, one minute. "That's not like her," I said. "Have you tried breaking in?"

"No," he admitted. "I, ah, haven't had the courage."

"Oh, yeah. You're a guy. I'll go try," I said. The door, like he had said, was locked, but it wasn't a key lock. I could unlock it with my fingernail. It was a really small bathroom, and I couldn't see Mom anywhere. "She's not in here," I told Chiron. "Is there, like, a secret trapdoor anywhere?"

"It's been a few centuries since this house was built, but I don't believe so. Is she your birth mother?" he asked.

"No, I was adopted when I was two weeks old," I replied, though I couldn't really see the point of the question.

"Ah, that may explain the problem of your godly parents. Perhaps your birth parents were demigods – a child of Hades and a child of Demeter. That would explain your sign," he said.

"That is really awesome, but my real mom seems to be missing. Any idea where she might have gone?" I asked.

"Not one. I'm sorry, Emily," he said. I sat down on the grape couch and sighed.

Sometimes people ask why I love my mom so much if she's not my real mom. I tell them that they're being stupid. My birth parents put me up for adoption for whatever reason. My mom actually chose me. She had the choice of about fifteen different kids, and she wanted me. I've been raised as her daughter. We love each other. Of course she's my real mom.

"Okay. Do you still want me sleeping in the Hades cabin?" I said.

"Since that's our best bet, that would probably be good. See you in the morning, Emily," he said. I went back to the cabin sadly, not even bothering to splash in the creek. Cooper must have known something was wrong when he saw that. He came over and walked back to the cabins with me.

"Hey, EmCay. What's up? You seem sad," he said.

"My mom's gone. She went to the bathroom in the Big House and just disappeared," I replied. "And Chiron says I might not even be a demigod. He thinks my birth parents were demigods, a child of Demeter and a child of Hades, and that's why my sign looked like that."

Cooper was silent for a minute. "Oh. That sucks." I thought that summed it up pretty well.

My sheet-wall was still on the ground, but I was too tired and too sad to hang it up again, or even get into my pajamas. I just lay down and waited to fall asleep.

In my dream, I was standing at the edge of a pit in what was probably the Underworld. Tartarus, I thought. That was one of the few things I remembered from Greek mythology. I tried to run, but I was standing on a steep slope covered in black gravel. The harder I tried, the closer I slid to the edge. At one point I thought I was going to fall in, which would have sucked, but there was an invisible wall stopping me.

"Stop struggling, dear. Tartarus really isn't that bad. You don't need to run away," a man's voice said. I have to admit: I freaked. I tried even harder to run away, but this time the wall disappeared and I fell. I was just hanging on by my hands. I figured the voice was Hades, my probably-grandfather.

"L-lord Hades?" I squeaked. Yes, squeaked is the right word. I was so scared, I sounded like a mouse being stabbed with a fork. Sorry if you were eating while reading that.

"I could really use some help down here, if you wouldn't mind. Don't you want to come visit your papa?" he asked. I swallowed hard. Papa was what I'd called my grandfather before he died. I didn't say anything. One hand fell off the ledge. Immediately, it was surrounded by warmth - kind of like I'd stuck it into a hand-shaped oven.

"I suppose that's a yes? All right, then. See you later, Emily," Hades said. I lost my grip and fell into Tartarus. I wasn't sure if I was asleep or not from that point on – I was just falling, and falling, and falling. I couldn't see anything. I wondered if the pit was really bottomless, as I'd heard, and if monsters just reformed in midair and got teleported back to the mortal world. I didn't manage to find anything that could have been proof.

I woke when I realized the warm pressure against my hand was another hand. It was still night, and Nico had fallen asleep in a chair next to my bed, holding my hand. I turned to see him better and woke him up in the process. He saw the look on my face, glanced at our hands, and got back into his bed.

"Nico? Are you..." I was going to say okay, but he obviously wasn't. I couldn't think of anything else.

"Your hand was cold," he said shortly.

He didn't say anything after that, even though he wasn't asleep. I thought about the dare earlier – he had seemed to be perfectly fine with kissing me, and I'd been the first one to break away. And I knew for a fact that my hand had not been cold, because since when is just one part of your body cold? Well, unless you're wearing a coat, and then just your face would be cold. But I wasn't wearing a coat. Plus, it was August. New York was a heck of a lot different from Texas – back home, it would be about eighty-five degrees – but it definitely wasn't cold out. It was probably around seventy degrees.

Nico wasn't my brother, but he may have been my uncle. That was scary enough by itself, that I had a crush on my uncle, but what's worse was he seemed to have a crush on me. I could hope that Chiron was wrong, that I wasn't related to Hades at all, but my sign made it kind of hard to believe that. Maybe I wasn't a demigod at all, and the gods had decided to have April Fool's Day a little late this year.

I prayed silently: If you're my dad, show me who you are. Thunder boomed in reply. I remembered that that's how the gods signaled that they'd heard your prayer, and was momentarily comforted. Then the thunder continued. Before long, I could hear rain pattering against the roof.

Wait. Rain?

It wasn't supposed to rain at Camp Half-Blood. I got out of bed, careful not to wake Nico, and opened the door. Yep, it was raining. Hard. Every few seconds, lightning lit up the sky. A few other campers had noticed, too – doors all over the green were opening. Everyone stood at the entrances to their cabins, just staring.

"Well," someone said, "someone's made the gods mad."