¹𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀. percy jackson

XIII.

ｔｈｅ　ｔｉｔａｎｓ　ｃｕｒｓｅ

LUCIA WASNT SCARED OF HEIGHTS, but you try being up mountain-high dangled in the air by 30 feet tall giant winged automatons, and not freak out a little.

"Tell me when it's over," Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding on to 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?"

Lucia 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."

"You're afraid of h-?" Lucia began to ask when Percy glanced at her, silently sending her the message to not bring up the subject.
"-hamburgers."

"Hamburgers?" Thalia asked her eyes were still tightly closed shut but her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Hamburgers? Percy mouthed

"Yeah" Lucia shrugged at Percy "They're so freaky no? just me? oh well."

"Didn't you eat a burger your first night at camp?" Thalia questioned

"uh...exposure therapy.." Lucia said, "anyways enough about my irrational fears, where are we?"

"We are in the Sierras.'" Zoe 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!" Lucia'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?" Lucia asked.

"We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" Lucia's 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, Lucia swore Hank did. "Back to flying."

They sped up, so they 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. Zoe 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," Lucia tried to distract her. "Zeus listened."

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

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

Percy told her about the weird mortal girl, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to be able to see right through the Mist. Thalia only nodded.

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

"Well, the girl was annoying," Percy said. Lucia tried to hold back her grin. "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.