This Dark Night ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase¹

―xii. splitting up

NAOMI THOUGHT THEY'D LOST THE SPIDER until Tyson heard a faint pinging sound. They made a few turns, backtracked a few times, and eventually found the spider banging its tiny head on a metal door.

The door looked like an old-fashioned submarine hatch—oval, with metal rivets around the edges and a wheel for a doorknob. Where the porthole should've been was a big brass plaque, green with age, with a Greek Êta inscribed in the middle.

They all looked at each other.

"Ready to meet Hephaestus?" Grover said nervously.

"No," Percy admitted.

"Yes!" Tyson said gleefully, and he turned the wheel.

As soon as the door opened, the spider scuttled inside with Tyson right behind it. The others followed, not quite as anxious.

The room was enormous. It looked like a mechanic's garage, with several hydraulic lifts. Some had cars on them, but others had stranger things: a bronze hippalektryon with its horse head off and a bunch of wires hanging out its rooster tail, a metal lion that seemed to be hooked up to a battery charger, and a Greek war chariot made entirely of flames.

Smaller projects cluttered a dozen worktables. Tools hung along the walls. Each had its own outline on a Peg-Board, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. The hammer was over the screwdriver place. The staple gun was where the hacksaw was supposed to go.

Under the nearest hydraulic lift, which was holding a '98 Toyota Corolla, a pair of legs stuck out—the lower half of a huge man in grubby gray pants and shoes even bigger than Tyson's. One leg was in a metal brace.

The spider scuttled straight under the car, and the sounds of banging stopped.

"Well, well," a deep voice boomed from under the Corolla. "What have we here?"

The mechanic pushed out on a back trolley and sat up. Naomi had seen Hephaestus once before, briefly, on Olympus, though he looked a bit less put-together here. He wore overalls smeared with oil and grime. Hephaestus was embroidered over the chest pocket. His leg creaked and clicked in its metal brace as he stood, and his left shoulder drooped, so he seemed to be leaning even when he was standing up straight. He wore a permanent scowl, his beard smoking and hissing like it was on fire, because it was on fire. His hands were the size of catcher's mitts, but he handled the spider with amazing skill. He disassembled it in two seconds, then put it back together.

"There," he muttered. "Much better."

The spider did a happy flip in his palm, shot a metallic web at the ceiling, and went swinging away.

Hephaestus glowered up at Naomi and her companions. "I didn't make you, did I?"

"Uh," Annabeth said, "no, sir."

"Good," the god grumbled. "Shoddy workmanship."

He studied Annabeth, Percy, and Naomi. "Half-bloods," he grunted. "Could be automatons, of course, but probably not."

"We've met, sir," Percy told him.

"Have we?" the god asked absently. He didn't seem to care either way. "Well then, if I didn't smash you to a pulp the first time we met, I suppose I won't have to do it now."

He looked at Grover and frowned. "Satyr." Then he looked at Tyson, and his eyes twinkled. "Well, a Cyclops. Good, good. What are you doing traveling with this lot?"

"Uh..." said Tyson, staring in wonder at the god.

"Yes, well said," Hephaestus agreed. "So, there'd better be a good reason you're disturbing me. The suspension on this Corolla is no small matter, you know."