[1] 𝐼𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑢𝑠 - 𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑐𝑦 𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑠𝑜𝑛

3.05

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PERCY LOVED NEW YORK.

You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.

Of course, the Mist helped. People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large, loud, very friendly truck.

He took the risk of using his mom's cell phone to call Cassiopeia for the second time. He'd called her once from the runnel but only reached her voice mail. He'd gotten surprisingly good reception, seeing as he was at the mythological center of the world and all, but he didn't want to see what his mom's roaming charges were going to be.

This time, Cassiopeia picked up.

"Hey," Percy said. "You get my message?"

"Percy, where the hell have you been? Your message said almost nothing!"

"I'll fill you in later," Percy said, though how he was going to do that he had no idea. "Where are you?"

"Almost to Queens—Midtown Tunnel. But, Percy, what are you planning? We've left the camp pretty much undefended, and there's no way the gods—"

"Trust me," Percy said. "I'll see you there."

☽☽☽☽☽

Three white vans pulled up to the curb. They said Delphi Strawberry Service, which was the cover name for Camp Half-Blood.

The first van was driven by Argus, the many-eyed security chief. The other two were driven by harpies, who are basically demonic human/chicken hybrids with bad attitudes. They used the harpies mostly for cleaning the camp, but they did pretty well in midtown traffic too.

The doors slid open. A bunch of campers climbed out, some of them looking a little green from the long drive. Percy was glad so many had come: Pollux, Silena Beauregard, the Stoll brothers, Michael Yew, Jake Mason, Katie Gardner, Cassiopeia and Annabeth, along with most of their siblings. Chiron came out of the van last. His horse half was compacted into his magic wheelchair, so he used the handicap lift.

Cassiopeia and Annabeth came up to Percy.

"Clarisse isn't here," Cassiopeia grumbled, which was obvious. "Too fucking stubborn to get off her ass."

Percy knew she had been taken to camp by a Satyr named Gleason Hedge and they had brought Clarisse with them after finding her. Maybe that was why she was more upset than anyone else.

"There's about forty of us," Annabeth said.

There was an underlying message. It's not enough.

As Percy looked at their faces—all these campers he'd known for so many summers—a nagging voice whispered in his mind: One of them is a spy.