HEY GUYS! So I know it's been a while since I updated, but don't worry, I haven't given up. Here's the next chapter, and remember that critiques are always welcome! :D

Disclaimer-I don't own the Percy Jackson franchise, or Rick Riordan.

Mira's POV

This situation was absolutely crappy. We were essentially following a ghost trail mixed with a red herring, we had that tag-along little kid-was he really only twelve?- and Nico was still pissed at me. I mean, it was understandable, but even when I sent my happy-happy-joy-joy vibes out over his thread, it didn't seem to make even the slightest difference in his emotions. I mean what the fuck? I was hammered, I didn't know what I was doing, and I don't even remember it! That has to count for something, right?

Ugh. Whatever. I could do without this drama right now, but I guess I don't have much of a choice.

"Hey Mira?"

Connor whispered to me from the driver's seat and I crept up the aisle until I was next to him.

"Yeah?"

"Can you wake everybody up? We're just about at Central Park."

I nodded and shuffled back, tapping Percy and Annabeth on the forehead as I went, shaking Nico's shoulder and jabbing Tommy in the side.

"Ow!" He rubbed his stomach where my finger hit it. "What was that for?"

I held my hands up. "Hey-you're gonna run away with us on a dangerous quest, the least you can do is learn to roll with the punches and take a finger to the side sometimes."

I stomped back to my seat, dutifully ignoring the glare Nico gave me as I passed him.

Annabeth looked at me, pity in her eyes, and I felt a swell of rage inside my stomach.

"What?"

She lowered her voiced to a murmur. "Just because you and Nico are having a spat doesn't mean you need to take it out on Tommy."

"I'll take it out on whoever I want, thank you very much."

The pity in her eyes grew, and it made me sick. I turned away from her and glared at the back of the seat in front of me.

Percy cleared his throat. "Ookay. Awkward."

Conner parked the van with a jerky halt, and we piled out in a sleepy, grumbly mess.

"Okay. We need a plan, because central park is freaking huge."

When all of us turned to Annabeth, she blinked a bit and then sighed, rubbing her temple. "Alright. We need to split up. Whatever took Brandon was big, really big, and it will have left some sort of trail, but since we don't know where he was taken, we need to cover as much ground as possible. Percy and I will head to the left, Connor and Tommy to the right, Nico and Mira to the middle. If you see something, shout."

Nico and I both opened our mouths to protest, but Annabeth held up one finger and shushed us.

"No arguments!"

We looked at each other sulkily, and I began to watch my feet.

"And you two need to talk everything out and make up before we see you again. If you don't, I'm sending your asses right back to camp. Do you understand?"

We gaped at her with open mouths and she just stared stonily at us. Realizing that she wouldn't be changing her mind and that she probably would send us back to camp, I closed my mouth and muttered an accepting kind of noise. Next to me, Nico did much of the same, though his words sent a quick shiver through the earth at our feet.

Annabeth gave us both a giant grin.

"Great! Now, everyone needs to get a move on; we have a giant monster to track."

Everyone split and went to their respective sides, leaving Nico and I standing awkwardly on the edge of the forest.

I shifted back and forth on the balls of my feet, looking anywhere but him.

Nico cleared his throat. "Should we, ah, start looking?"

"Yeah, I guess."

With a few hesitant first steps, we moved slowly into the trees in front of us.

We were silent for a good couple of minutes, and I grew more and more tense as the time passed. I scratched my nose, I rubbed the back of my neck, I slapped at an errant mosquito, all the while resisting the urge to look at Nico and check to see if he was looking at me. Deeper and deeper into the woods we went, looking predominantly downwards and just searching for clues. Eventually I absolutely couldn't stand the uncomfortable silence anymore and I just stopped walking.

Nico paused and turned halfway around, looking at me, really looking at me for the first time since that goddamn video played, eyes like dead coals and boring holes into my conscience.

"What are you stopping for?"

"The second half of our orders, remember? We need to talk, and I wouldn't put it past Annabeth to ship us back to camp, and then we'll have to face Chiron."

He turned to face me fully and strode forward, stopping about a foot away from me and crossing his arms, looming in my personal space. "Fine. So talk."

I took a nervous swallow and met his gaze, as intense and angry as it was, and tried to choose my words very carefully.

"I know that how I behaved was really inappropriate. I have a tendency to be a very…sexual drunk. There are a lot of things I did at the party that could account for you being this mad, but I want to know exactly what I did that got this reaction from you."

Nico looked down at me for a moment, and there was nothing in his gaze-no anger, no pity, no forgiveness. It was just a black gaze of emotionlessness, and for a second it was incredibly refreshing, even though I could sense the turmoil in him through his thread.

Suddenly he sighed and uncrossed his arms.

"It's-it's not anything concrete, really. I don't have a-a claim to you, or anything, and it doesn't even make sense but, uh," He quickly rubbed at the back of his neck and looked away from me, focusing on something near my shoulder instead. "It was when you…canoodled with Apollo." Suddenly his voice sped up, spewing out words and phrases lightening quick, and he waved his hands frantically, eyes flickering. "First off, I didn't like that in general and then immediately afterwards you come and dance with me like I'm some second hand knock-off that you play with whenever your prettiest toy is off on business. Then you get me so drunk I can't even remember you asking me to go to bed with you-which is something I'd certainly like to remember, along with the kissing and the disrobing, thank you very much-and then you just fall asleep on me, apparently? That's real good for a guy's ego. You didn't fall asleep on Apollo."

He sucked in a deep breath, and I could only watch him, stunned, with my heart firmly lodged in my throat.

"Sorry. That got a little out of hand."

"Did you just say canoodled?"

He gave me a little smile. "Shut up."

I gave another swallow, trying to dissolve the lump in my throat, knowing it was my turn to speak. "Well, I can see how those are things that could make a man angry. Before I say anything else, we need to remember that I was drunk off my rocker and acting on basic instincts. That being said, I basically acted like a giant slut."

He coughed a bit in surprise and spluttered for something to say. "Well I wouldn't say-

"No, but I would, and we both know it's true. I was basically whoring around, and for that I am really, really sorry. It wasn't my intention at all to screw with you like this-I just wanted to go to a party and have some fun. With all this new Greek stuff going on I needed something normal, more basic, and there is nothing more normal for me than partying until I'm half dead. I didn't think it would have these kinds of consequences, and I would never have done it if I knew you would get this pissed at me. I like you, Nico, I really do, and I don't want to jeopardize that again."

He looked down at me with wide eyes.

"That was-that was great." He gave me a grin. "You really like me?"

All the air went out of my body in relief. "Yeah. Truthfully, if I had had a coherent choice in the matter, I would have gone with you instead of Apollo."

The smile on his face slipped into some sort of sordid amazement and he opened and closed his mouth like a fish.

"And if you're really that upset about missing 'the kissing and the disrobing', we can always try it again." I grinned up at him.

His eyes traveled all over my face, as if searching for a lie in my words, but soon he was smiling back at me.

"That sounds-that sounds really great. When can we-?"

I was about to answer when I was cut off by a frantic shout to our left. Apparently, Percy had found something.

Nico and I turned in the general direction of the shout, then back to each other.

"Maybe next time." We turned regretfully away from each other and began to trot off towards Percy and Annabeth.

Soon Connor and Trevor had caught up with us, sprinting and out of breath, and we eventually located Percy and Annabeth, both who looked a little disheveled, I noted.

"So what is it? What'd you find?"

Tommy jumped up to them, full of an almost tangible energy, and raced around the clearing looking for clues.

Annabeth looked down her nose at the kid, and then pointed to some trees behind them.

"Go see for yourselves."

Glancing at each other, Nico and I walked forward, slightly hesitant. Connor grabbed Tommy by the collar as he tried to dart forward, muttering out a low 'heel, boy' and snickering at the pained look on his face.

We pushed through the first couple of trees and found that they ended rather abruptly. It appeared that something had stepped on the trees and crushed them, flattening them into the ground and destroying them for about a hundred yards.

"Holy crap."

"Did a giant decide to nest here or something?"

I snickered at Nico as he knelt down and poked at the broken branches.

"We're assuming it was Geryon, since he is a giant and able to cause this much destruction." Annabeth stepped out from behind us. "And we think we have even more of a lead."

The five of us turned to her, and Connor plopped down on the grass under one of the remaining trees.

"More of a lead than a giant hole in the forest?"

"Shut up, Connor." Annabeth sat herself down as well, and the rest of us followed suit. "Rachel just Iris messaged Percy and I with some information she dug up on who or what monster has a thing for children, and she found that there's a daemon named Lamia who-who eats children, and apparently there have been four disappearances of half-bloods over the last month."

"That's disgusting."

Annabeth shifted a bit on her haunches. "Yeah. And after Chiron realized we were gone, he figured that we'd need all the help we could get, so he told Rachel that Lamia had been imprisoned in a cage thousands of years ago, way back in Ancient Greece. As far as he knows, she's still there."

"Wait-but if she's still there, how is she taking the children?" I had started leaning against a still-standing tree.

"Well, she's not-the Geryon is. They likely have some sort of arrangement or something."

Percy sighed and ran his fingers roughly through his hair. "Alright then. How do we stop them?"

Annabeth grimaced. "We'd need to locate Lamia's cage, travel to Greece, get inside the cage without opening it, then kill Lamia and the Geryon, all before any other children could get taken."

Everyone was depressingly silent. I sucked in a deep breath and put my face in my hands. "Well, fuck me sideways, we've got a lot of work to do." I couldn't help but notice that Nico started a bit at the sentence. "Where are we supposed to start?"

"Well," Annabeth stood up and helped Percy to his feet as well. "I suggest we go and try to look up where her cage is. I can't think of anything else at the moment."

"Where the hell are we going to find information on shit like that?" I muttered, discontent, as we started off towards where we had ditched the van.

Annabeth grinned at me. "We're in New York! Where do you think?"

I furrowed my eyebrows and opened my mouth to speak as she clapped me on the shoulder and steered me onto the sidewalk.

A couple blocks and a few hurried, expletive-filled conversations later, and we were standing at the base of the steps of the New York Public Library. Annabeth was smiling hugely, and the rest of us were just kind of sulking behind her as she grabbed Percy's hand and pulled him up the steps. I sucked in a deep breath to steady myself, and calmed the nervous fluttering in my chest.

"Come on, guys! Research time!"

Nico snickered at me when I rubbed my temples and muttered a few choice words to myself.

"Cheer up. At least we're not getting attacked by anything." He bumped my shoulder and walked past me.

Connor was throwing his hood up over his head and covering his face.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not allowed in there." He whispered and steered me in front of him.

"Why?"

"There was an unfortunate incident with Mentos and a barrel full of Coca-Cola. One of my greater achievements, but the librarians did not appreciate it in the same way. At all."

I decided not to question it. Figuring I needed to grow a backbone and get this over with, I strode forward and pushed through the door and past the lady at the front desk as quickly as possible. The others had set up shop in a back corner, well out of the way of prying eyes. Annabeth had disappeared into the rows upon rows of books, and Percy and Nico were lounging in a pair of chairs around a small circle table. Connor, deciding we were far enough away from the front desk, dropped his hood and plopped down across from Nico, and I took the seat between the two of them.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and ran my fingers through my hair. "Man, I hate libraries."

Nico gave me a look. "Why?"

Settling deeper into my seat, I shut down the part of my mind that started burning. "No reason. I just-I came to one with an old friend."

"And?"

I looked at him, and tried as hard as possible to stop anything from traveling over the thread from me to him. "It just didn't agree with me."

He looked as if he were about to say something more, maybe ask some 'deeper meaning' questions (as if I hadn't heard them all before), but just then Annabeth returned with an entire cart of books.

"Oh dear gods."

Connor banged his head dramatically against the table, earning us a vehement shush from an old lady a few tables away.

Dumping stacks onto the table, Annabeth grabbed a book with a smile and settled into her own chair.

"Come on, guys, this is a group effort."

Barely keeping myself from jumping out of my seat and sprinting out of the building, I plucked a book from the top of the stack and settled in to read.

Lucky for me, it was entirely in Ancient Greek, which I could barely read. This was going to be fucking fantastic.

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