Walk With the Shadows [ Percy Jackson OC ]

TWENTY-NINE | Kitty

KITTY WAS STILL SNICKERING AT Alex's choice to rent a car under the name of Quintus O'Leary two hours into their drive south. Every so often, she'd start laughing and Alex would break into a smirk. He couldn't punch Daedalus beyond the grave but they could connect him to credit card fraud.

Using the last little bits of the early morning shadows, Ophelia had used the Mist and Kitty had used her luck to get them a nice car. With two quivers of Quinn Coleman's arrows, an extra handful of ambrosia, and a hundred dollars from the Kennedy Center's safe, they began the fifteen or sixteen-hour drive to Orlando that lay before them.

Fifteen hours provided no monsters attacked them, of course. That was a big ask. Kitty's muscles still ached in the morning when she woke up from the Colchis bull.

She tried to stretch across the back seat of the small SUV. Alex hogged all the driving time again. Not fair. Sure, his dad was god of travelers and he was the only one with a license, but she'd been driving. What the cleaning harpies didn't know wouldn't kill them. Kitty looked out the window. Besides, I-95 seemed to stretch on straight for hours and hours. What better place to practice?

Gods, she wanted something to do. Only three hours in and she'd have been okay with a couple of harpies or a dracaena to fight. Those were easy. Even she could kill them. Instead, she had the Alt 18 on repeat on SiriusXM radio and two quiet road buddies.

At least Alex looked better this morning than he had when Quinn left. Kitty wondered about him. What was it like, living in the real world? She'd never really thought about what to do after Camp. She had another year before college. Another year of listening to Chiron tutor the year rounders and completing math books and English assignments. After Camp Half-Blood was future Kitty's problem.

Hour four passed, and Kitty started counting the number of stitches in the fabric of the car ceiling. Three hundred, four hundred, nine hundred, eternity. Maybe Ophelia would play the license plate game again. They'd gotten half the states before the Colchis bull had totaled their car.

By hour five, Kitty resigned herself to counting the number of McDonald's's symbols on Exit signs. In the front, Ophelia had fallen asleep. Alex kept driving, eyes on the road, heart on the task at hand. At least he could channel his ADHD into hyperfocusing on the road. What did she have to hyperfocus on? Her lack of things to hyperfocus on?

Kitty had never been so excited to see a gas station than when hour six and the sign for South Carolina passed. She ignored the horrible humid heat that blasted her in the face when the car door opened, instead making a beeline for the restroom, the snacks, and hopefully an aisle with a deck of playing cards.

"In and out," Alex told her. "Make it fast. I don't know how active monsters are in South Carolina, but I don't wanna risk it."

"Keep your socks on," Kitty said. "We'll be fine."

She didn't wait for him or for Ophelia before rushing inside the Sunoco. A tiny bell rang as she opened the door. Alternating scuffed black and scuffed white tiles stretched from wall to wall. A couple of people wandered around the aisles and a single male employee stood behind a counter, staring down at a cellphone. She wished she could use a cellphone.