𝒊𝒊𝒊. 𝐋𝐎𝐘𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒

𝒙𝒊𝒊𝒊.

"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 still Thalia clutched his arm like it was the most important thing in the world. 

"Everything's fine," Percy promised. 

"Are... are we very high?" 

He 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!" Percy's angel 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?" his 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, Percy swore Hank did. "Back to flying." 

They sped up, so Percy could tell the angels were excited. The mountains fell away into hills, and then they were zipping along over farmland and towns and highways. 

Grover played his pipes to pass the time. Noelle had somehow found a way to fall asleep, her head resting on her arms that were grabbing the statue. Zoë got bored and started shooting arrows at random billboards as they flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store—and they passed dozens of them—she would peg the store's sign with a few bulls-eyes at a hundred miles an hour.

Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole way. She muttered to herself a lot, like she was praying. 

"You did good back there," Percy told 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 about the weird mortal girl, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to be able to see right through the Mist. He thought Thalia was going to call him crazy, but she just nodded. 

"Some mortals are like that," she said. "Nobody knows why." 

Suddenly Percy thought on something he'd never considered. 

His mom was like that. She had seen the Minotaur on Half-Blood Hill and known exactly what it was. She hadn't been surprised at all last year when he'd told her his friend Tyson was really a Cyclops. Maybe she'd known all along. No wonder she'd been so scared for him as he was growing up. She saw through the Mist even better than he did. 

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

Thalia nodded. "Must be nice to be a regular mortal." She said that as if she'd given it a lot of thought.

~

"Where you guys want to land?" Hank asked, waking Noelle up from her nap. 

She looked down and said, "Whoa."