Camp Half-Blood was a strange place.

Kally had never imagined, even with all the monsters she had encountered, that she would see a bonfire that changed colour, seemingly with her mood, with a small girl crouched by it warming herself contentedly. She never thought she'd see a horse with wings, a pegasus Grover called it. And she certainly never dreamed that she'd look into a lake and see pretty female faces smiling back up at her.

Grover and Nico headed straight for the farmhouse by the fields of what she now could see were strawberries. Up close, Kally could see the farmhouse was a faded blue, with a wraparound deck. Steps led to the front door which was wide open, a soft light glowing from the entrance.

Grover walked inside without hesitation, smiling giddily and bleating once or twice. Kally stared after him with a strange look on her face.

'He's just glad to be home,' Nico told her. Kally jumped a little. She had almost forgotten he was there.

It was spooky how he seemed to just be able to vanish into the shadows and then appear from them again like he was made from them. Being a son of Hades, Kally guessed he probably could.

'This is home for him?' Kally asked.

Nico nodded. 'It is for a few people. Most people choose to go home after the summer to their families. But some people don't have that option, or choose not to go if they do. Grover lives here, along with a few other satyrs. He's been a long time, longer than me, longer than almost anyone.'

'How old is he?' Kally asked, bewildered.

She had seen teenagers that looked at least seventeen when they walked past one of the ancient Greek structures that Grover had identified as the dining hall. Kally had peered in and seen girls and boys of all ages sitting at random all through the open room, laughing and talking joyously. As she had gone to leave, she nearly tripped on a crack in the ground that looked as though it wasn't meant to be there. Nico went rigid and told her to keep up, moving on.

'He's thirty-two I think,' Nico responded absently, oblivious to Kally's spluttering. 'He's quite attached to this place. Even has a girlfriend.'

Despite the fact that she'd just learned that Grover was in his thirties, the new that he had a girlfriend was even more out of nowhere.

'Grover has a girlfriend?'

Nico smiled knowingly. 'Yeah. One of the tree nymphs, Juniper.'

Kally paused and said sarcastically, 'So the goat-boy is thirty-two and has a girlfriend who's part tree?'

Nico nodded again. 'That about sums it up.' Kally shook her head in astonishment and asked Nico what to do next. 'Head inside I guess.' He shrugged. 'I'm sure Chiron will want to talk to you.'

'Chiron?' she repeated.

'Yeah. He's… well, you'll see.' Nico waved her off, turning for the dining pavilion. 'I'll see you at the campfire.'

Kally watched him run off into the darkness towards the bonfire in the distance until she could only see a small outline. Then she turned and marched inside.

The interior was stranger than she imagined. A leopard print rug lay across the wooden floor. Strange vines with small buds on them grew wildly over the walls like ivy. Different animal prints covered the walls, and a leopard head was mounted over a door nearby. A fire crackled in the fireplace beside a table with three people surrounding it. Well, perhaps people was a bit too strong a word.

The first was Grover, in his orange t-shirt and jeans that covered his furry hindquarters. He turned and smiled grimly at her, making his scraggly goatee twitch.

Another man, short and round, wearing a Hawaiian print shirt with leopards on it stood next to Grover. He did not look up at Kally, but instead groaned and shook his head, making his thick black curls bounce.

At the end of the table stood a creature that Kally had initially mistaken for a white horse. Looking properly, she realised that the creature was only a horse from the waist down; above that was a human male in his late forties with thinning gray hair and a matching beard.

The horse-human's face looked up and smiled kindly at Kally as she entered the room and moved towards her, putting a restraining hand on Grover's shoulder as he passed.

'Welcome,' the man said sincerely, 'to Camp Half-Blood. Grover tells me your name is Kally, yes?'

'Uh,' Kally managed. 'Um, yeah. Kally. That's me.'

'I see,' he said. 'I am Chiron, a teacher and a mentor here at Camp Half-Blood.'

'Uh, hi.'

Wow Kally. You're meeting a guy who's half horse and all wise and stuff and you say hi? Well done.

'This is our camp director, Mr D,' Chiron told her, gesturing to the chubby guy still glaring at the table, sipping from a goblet. He didn't even look up to acknowledge her, and Kally did not attempt to acknowledge him either. Chiron sighed.

'May I ask your surname?' he said.

'Anastas. Kally Anastas.'

Her immediate response when someone asked for her last name. She had always preferred to keep her mother's maiden name, so as not to let people know that they were related. It always confused her teachers when they had to call out "Kally Anastas and Colton Hark" when they knew that the two were siblings.

'And who are your parents, do you know?' Chiron continued.

'Yeah, my dad's name is Graham Hark,' she told him. He nodded, waiting for her mother's name. She sighed and said, 'And my mom's Penelope Hark.'

'Woah, like, as in the model Penelope Hark?' Grover cried, awed.

Kally cringed. This was exactly what she hated about telling people who her mother was – the part where they go all goo-goo eyed for her, saying how lucky she was to have Penelope as a mother, and forget that Kally was just a kid who didn't get on with her mom.

'Yes.' She snapped, perhaps a little too harshly. Grover receded like a puppy that had just been scolded.

'It is interesting that you do not have your parents' surname.' Chiron mused.

'My mom had me before they got married, so I was born under her maiden name.' Kally explained. 'They got married two years later, and she took my dad's last name, but I didn't.'

'Interesting.' Chiron said again, stroking his beard, his arm folded across his chest. 'But is it the true version of events?'

Kally frowned, confused. 'I… I don't know what you mean.'

'Is there any proof of your parents being together before they married?' Chiron said, getting straight to the point. 'Is it possible that perhaps your mother has told you a lie about your father, or vice versa?'

'You think my mom was having an affair?' Kally demanded angrily.

She knew she ought to be polite to Chiron, him being so much wiser and all, but underlying the hatred was a wall of defensiveness over her mother that she had accumulated over the years. She'd never thought the defensiveness could be used in protection of her mother.

'Of course not,' Chiron said gently, his eyes smiling kindly. 'I simply meant that perhaps the length of time that your parents have been together may be a slight… fabrication.'

'So you think they lied to me?'

Kally was trying her hardest to understand what Chiron was trying to tell her. Though she had just met him, there was something in his thoughtful eyes that told her he was trustworthy. Already, she had begun to respect him.

'To put it bluntly, yes.' Chiron stepped back to where Grover stood, hi eye nervously twitching towards the chubby black haired guy.

'Why,' Kally asked, 'would you think that? What would they have to hide?'

'Perhaps, they may have been hiding your true parentage.' Chiron said grimly.

'My true parentage?' Kally repeated. 'That would imply that all my life I've been living under the falsehood that my family was really my family.'

'It seems that way,' Chiron nodded. 'You see Kally; I believe that one of your parents may be a god or a goddess.'

'Yeah, so did Grover and Nico, but I told them the same thing I told you,' Kally ranted. 'Both my parents are my parents, and my brother is my brother. My family is my family. And they are all completely mortal.'

'Is that so?' Chiron enquired. 'Tell me then Kally, does this mean you do not believe Grover and Nico about the Greek gods?'

She thought for a moment. Looking back over her last three years, she was sure anything was possible. But the Greek gods from ancient legend? That seemed just a little too far-fetched. 'No, I don't.'

'Well then, would you please explain what circumstances arose that required you to come here tonight Kally?' Chiron asked, his voice gentle, like he was trying not scare her off.

'Didn't Grover tell you what happened?' Kally wondered, glancing at the satyr. Before he could speak, the dark haired guy, Mr D, spoke up roughly.

'Mr Underwood only has part of the story I'm afraid,' he grumbled. 'He was stuck in a cage for most of it, or else was eating anything he could get his teeth into – including his own shirt it seems. So we don't really have a clear idea of what happened.'

'Does it matter?' Kally said crudely to the man. She had an immediate dislike towards him for some reason.

He whirled around and his eyes lit up like Hades's had earlier in Meg's store. He growled out, 'Of course it matters. We need to know why Hades sent a Fury out to kill you. Unless you want to be bat food, then by all means keep your mouth shut.'

'Meg wasn't sent to kill me.' Kally found herself saying.

'Meg?' the dark-haired guy repeated. 'Who's Meg?'

'The Fury.' Kally explained. 'Megaera. Fury of jealousy. She wasn't sent to kill me.'

'She did attempt to though,' Chiron said gently.

'Yeah, because she thought I was pretty or something.' Kally scoffed.

'Ah,' he said. 'Jealousy is a very demeaning and petty thing, and yet all mortals are inflicted with it, immortals even more so. If you don't mind me saying, Mr D.'

Chiron turned to Mr D as if asking his approval. He grunted in reply and turned back to his goblet and glaring at the table. Chiron sighed again.

'This Fury, Megaera you call her? She has always been jealous of great beauty,' he said slowly. 'And she has never been able to resist the urge to remove that beauty from existence, even when under orders not to. You could say it is her Achilles' heel.'

Kally had always been aware of the fact that she was beautiful. Growing up looking like a double of her model mother it was sort of impossible to deny. But she had always loathed the fact. She hated seeing boys stare at her as if she were an object rather than a person. She hated knowing that people treated her differently just because she looked good. In her eyes, beauty was not a gift, but a curse, and Meg attacking her because of it only reinforced this idea in her mind.

'Is that why she's jealous of Nico?' Kally asked.

She hadn't really thought about it before but Hades had said that Meg was very jealous of Nico. He was attractive enough, she supposed, but surely that couldn't be the sole reason Meg was jealous.

'No.' Chiron said, confirming her thoughts. 'She is jealous of Nico because he is so close to his father, Hades. The Furies have always been Hades' closest lieutenants. But now that Nico is in the picture…'

'She wants him out.' Kally finished. Chiron nodded sadly. 'But she can't touch him because she knows Hades will kill her.'

'Well, I don't believe even Hades could kill the Furies entirely.' Chiron remarked. 'Perhaps he would send them to Tartarus, but it is not within anybody's power to eradicate the Furies completely.'

Mr D grunted and looked up from the table. He seemed annoyed at something. Probably Kally's mere existence.

'Look, it doesn't matter about the bloody bats,' he grumbled. He turned to Kally and pointed a plump finger at her. 'The issue is, who is your godly parent, and how to get you to believe it's all true.'

'I don't know what would make me believe it,' Kally narrowed her eyes at Mr D. 'But I know there's nothing you can do to assist in the process of my belief, director.'

The breath that Grover sucked in was audible. Even Chiron froze and watched Mr D carefully for his reaction. Mr D's eyes burned again, and as he stepped towards her he seemed to grow to be several feet taller than her.

'Oh?' he said, eerily calm despite his aggressive body language. 'Is that so? Well, have you ever stopped to wonder about what "Mr D" stands for? Look around you. Use your brain, if you have one. Do you know anything about Greek "mythology"? Think!'

Kally glared defiantly up at him. (It unnerved her that he had been a head shorter than her before, but that know she had to lift her nose to see into his fiery eyes.) She didn't want to do anything this guy told her to do. But hearing Mr D's question of what his name stood for made her curious.

For the same unknown reason that she had listened to Meg in her store, she listened to Mr D now.

She moved around him and glanced at her surroundings. Vines all over the walls, the leopard print everywhere, the goblet half full of what looked like a deep red wine. She asked him what the liquid was, hoping it wasn't blood.

'Diet Coke,' Mr D replied, his arms folded against his chest.

She continued with her search of the room, but found nothing of interest. She pieced together what she knew and came up with the only plausible explanation she could conjure up.

'A-are you… Dionysus?' Kally said, feeling stupid for even asking. 'The god of wine, right?'

'Oh congratulations, the girl does have a brain.' He turned to Chiron with a wearisome look on his face, and then wheeled around to face Kally again. 'I would advise you not to go throwing around names Katherine.'

'Kally.' She snapped.

'That's what I said Kate.' Mr D replied. He turned to Chiron again. 'I'm going to the campfire for sing-alongs,' he said, without enthusiasm. 'Send her out when you've got something useful.'

And then he strode out of the house without glancing back at Kally. Grover bleated nervously.

'You shouldn't have made him mad,' he said.

'He irritates me,' she told him.

'There's a boy here a lot like you,' Chiron said, a smile in his eyes. 'He doesn't much like our director either. Perhaps you'll meet him at the campfire. But first,' his eyes went dark again, 'I need you to tell me everything that has happened right up until you got here. Starting from your childhood would be excellent.'

Kally told him everything. She described her childhood, her relationship with her parents and her brother. She expressed her hatred for school, and her adoration of her father. The problems with her mother were difficult to talk about without getting mad all over again, but she made it through the runaway. The rest was just her life on the streets and all the strange creatures she'd seen.

She considered telling Chiron about seeing Clarisse and Chris three years ago. If this was the camp they had mentioned, they may still be here. But the memory was somewhat private to her. So she kept their encounter with each other and Panos the Laistrygonian to herself.

The final part was the fight in Meg's shop. Grover interjected little bits from his perspective from time to time, but mostly he stayed quiet. Eventually Kally had told him everything there was to tell, and they all sat there in an eerie silence while Chiron studied her.

'Well,' his intense gaze let up, and Kally felt it was okay to breathe again, 'that was very insightful. I have much to think about. Grover, if you could please escort Miss Anastas to the campfire? I'm sure there is still some songs going on that she can enjoy.'

Grover nodded and walked toward the door, gesturing for Kally to follow. She turned to look at the white-backed centaur (she'd come to realise what he was during her contemplation of Dionysus) and then followed Grover out of the house.

'So,' Grover said, his voice quiet in the night, 'do you believe it all yet?'

'I think,' Kally said slowly, trying not to let her sudden exhaustion show, 'that I would be a fool not to. And I do not consider myself a fool Grover Underwood.'