Nico

"We're not a bad team."

They were finishing their coffee – well, a fresh cup – back at the café. Nico was exhausted after shadow-traveling and summoning so many of the dead, but he tried to keep his expression neutral and pick at his flapjack in a way that didn't suggest that hadn't eaten that day.

Morris had been shocked by the shadow-travel to say the least. When they had emerged, after a relatively short journey, into the sunlight, she had to sit down for a minute. Lightweight. Percy had wanted to go again.

But now that Morris brought the subject up, Nico realised that they were a good team. He had seen enough battles to understand when fighters benefited from and needed each other, If he were an army general, he'd want himself and Morris in the same unit.

"Yeah… you fight well for someone who got beaten by a sea monster."

"I was not beaten… I was just a little off that day. My dad wasn't in the mood to play nice with demigods."

"Even one of his own children?" Nico was surprised. Sure, the Olympians were terrible parents by mortal standards, but usually they let their own offspring enjoy relative freedom within their own domains.

Morris shrugged. "He's pretty pissed that the Titans lost the war with the gods. He got to wreck Poseidon's game room, which was good, but then they locked up all the other Titans, which was bad. Now he can't really show his face in undersea politics, so his minions are wreaking havoc with any demigods they can find. I guess he forgot to give me a free pass." Morris shrugged again and Nico got the feeling that she wasn't sharing all the details about why she got in trouble.

"Was your sister a child of Oceanus too?" Maybe it was rude to ask so many questions, but Nico was curious and demigods knew not to wait around. Put off asking a question today, die tomorrow and spend eternity in Asphodel irritated about it.

"I actually had two sisters, but yeah, we were all Oceanus kids. Or…" she paused. "We're mostly Oceanus kids. My mother's family has some demigod blood as well."

Nico was impressed. Apart from Thalia and Jason, and maybe Leo, he had never known anyone with families who were really mixed up, god-wise. From Morris' tone it was clear that she had explained as much as she was comfortable discussing, so Nico changed the subject and explained that he had returned to Ireland to learn more about European demigods and monsters.

Morris nodded as he talked, sipping coffee. "Well, if you want to get to know Europe… I'd recommend starting by speaking to my mother."

Morris seemed totally comfortable around Anne-Marie, but she gave Nico the heebie-jeebies, which was saying something for a Hades kid. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties, with Morris' red hair and smile lines around eyes that were green like her son's, but more of an emerald colour than the sea green Nico had come to associate with ocean kids. Other than looking way too young to have a kid in his teens, Anne-Marie seemed to be completely normal. Or she did if you weren't a child of the Underworld.

As soon as Nico had seen Hazel in the Fields of Asphodel he had recognised her as a child of Pluto. As soon as he saw Anne-Marie he knew she was at minimum descended from a god of death. But her aura was different to Hades or Pluto. It was just as old, but Nico recognised that she had a mixture of godly blood, and not just from one set of deities. If she had caught the eye of Oceanus, one of the most primordial of all the Greek deities, she was powerful. Nico wondered if she knew just how much. "Some demigod blood," Ares' underpants. Anne-Marie was a godly time bomb… and Nico was staying in her spare room.

Then there was the unspoken undertone of death in the little house. The cottage was cheerful enough, with a beautiful view of the beach that made Nico's heart hurt. But the Black family had experienced death, and recently. He could see it in Morris' eyes when he went to speak to Anne-Marie then stopped, like he remembered something was a sore subject. He could see it in Anne-Marie's entire countenance, separate from her demigod exterior. Nico remembered that Morris had alluded to sisters who had died. Maybe there was a deeper story than the usual mortal ones of sickness or accidents. Those deaths were hard enough – gods knew, Bianca's death had been an accident – but Nico got the feeling that, like Bianca, Morris' sisters' deaths had been magical. No wonder there was enough magic in the house to give Hazel a headache.

Nico had Iris-messaged his friends the night before, explaining to Hazel that Anne-Marie was definitely not the average mortal mom (then again, neither was Sally Jackson, who would always be Nico's gauge for how mortal parents should act). Hazel had asked if there were signs of magical activity in the cottage, which of course there were. Nico could tell that just by walking across the threshold. The house had boundaries through which he had been allowed to enter. He wondered what would have happened if he been a monster.

"My best guess is that she's put up magical protection so the house is safe," Hazel had said. "Like how Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood are protected by magical boundaries… if this family has as much godly blood as you think, it's probably doing you a favour."

Now, sitting in the little kitchen drinking tea, Nico could hardly see a magical house. Gods knew his upbringing had been unconventional, but to mortal eyes the cottage was entirely normal. Unless you could identify the herbs hanging from the ceiling or the symbols etched into the walls, you would think that the cottage was simply home to an eccentric, or somebody interested in paganism.

Unfortunately, Nico needed Anne-Marie's expertise. She had travelled well and knew a lot about which monsters were where. She had been the one to suggest that, since Nico and Morris had worked so well together at the beach, they should train together too. So they had spent the last two days sparring in Anne-Marie's garden, Morris back in guy form, swapping monster-fighting tips and stories. For a kid who had never been to camp, Morris had moves.

Nico's instincts told him it was time to move on, though. He had been surprised to find how much he enjoyed training with Morris, but he knew he needed to keep moving. He kept in touch with home enough to know that after Gaia had been defeated, not all the monsters had gone back to Tartarus. Some were still out there and they weren't going to dissolve themselves.

He decided to speak to Morris over dinner.