This Dark Night ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase¹

―xv. percy harrasses a homeless guy

"TELL ME WHEN IT'S OVER," Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding onto them so they couldn't fall, but Thalia still clutched his arm like it was the most important thing in the world.

"Everything's fine," Percy promised.

"Are... are we very high?"

Naomi looked down. Below them, a range of snowy mountains zipped by.

Percy stretched out his foot and kicked snow off one of the peaks.

"Nah," he said. "Not that high."

"We are in the Sierras!" Zoë yelled. She and Grover were hanging from the arms of the other statue. "I have hunted here before. At this speed, we should be in San Francisco in a few hours."

"Hey, hey, Frisco!" the angel holding Naomi, Percy, and Thalia said. "Yo, Chuck! We could visit those guys at the Mechanics Monument again! They know how to party!"

"Oh, man," the other angel said. "I am so there!"

"You guys have visited San Francisco?" Percy asked.

"We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" their statue said. "Those mechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble lady statues, see. And—"

"Hank!" the other statue—Chuck—cut in. "They're kids, man."

"Oh, right." If bronze statues could blush, Naomi swore Hank did. "Back to flying."

The angels must have been excited, speeding up as they left the mountains behind. Soon they were zipping along over farmland and towns and highways.

Grover played his pipes to pass the time. Zoë got bored and started and started shooting arrows at random billboards as they flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store—there were dozens of them—she would peg the store's sign with a few bullseyes at a hundred miles an hour.

Naomi chewed on a piece of ambrosia, watching the bright red burn on her wrist fade slowly back into her normal skin tone.

"When did you learn how to fight like that?" Percy asked her.

"Clarisse taught me," Naomi answered, rubbing her shirt sleeve over the leftover blood from her bullet graze. That wound was completely healed thanks to the ambrosia and general lack of seriousness.

"Since when have you trained with Clarisse?" Percy sounded shocked.

Naomi shrugged. "We're both year-rounders, both had nothing better to do. She offered to teach me a few things—including dual-wielding. I wasn't sure it'd come in handy, but I'm glad it did."

"It was badass," Percy complimented.

Naomi cracked a smile. "It was, wasn't it?"

Thalia's eyes had been closed the entire way, and she was muttering to herself a lot, like she was praying.

"You did good back there," Percy called out to her. "Zeus listened."

It was hard to tell what she was thinking with her eyes closed.

"Maybe," she said. "How did you get away from the skeletons in the generator room, anyway? You said they cornered you?"

Percy told her and Naomi about the mortal girl he'd encountered, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to be able to see right through the Mist.

Thalia didn't look surprised. "Some mortals are like that," she said. "Nobody knows why."

"Well, the girl was annoying," Percy said. "But I'm glad I didn't vaporize her. That would've been bad."