LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE . . . pjo

III.

SO THERE THEY were, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Mia, walking through the woods along the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind them, and the smell of the Hudson reeking in their noses.

Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupiled and full of terror. "Three Kindly Ones. All three at once."

Percy was also in shock, staring ahead of him blankly as his feet led him on. Annabeth kept pulling them along, saying: "Come on! The farther away we get, the better."

It stinks here, Mia thought, shivering. She wished that she'd brought a sweatshirt. Oh wait, she'd had like five in her backpack, but that was destroyed now.

"All our money was back there," Percy said, as if listening to her thoughts. "Our food and clothes. Everything."

"Well, maybe if you hadn't decided to jump into the fight—"

"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?"

"You didn't need to protect me, Percy. I would've been fine."

"Sliced like sandwich bread," Grover put in, "but fine."

"Shut up, goat boy," said Annabeth. Mia stifled a laugh, disguising it with a sigh.

Grover brayed mournfully. "Tin cans . . . a perfectly good bag of tin cans."

They sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like bad perfume. Mia knew that personally.

"We'll be alright, Grover," Mia promised as she stepped in line with him, trying to ignore Percy and Annabeth's conversation behind them. "After this, I'll give you a bag of tin cans."

He looked toward her. "Really?"

"Yeah," she smiled. "It'll all work out. It always does in the end."

The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind them, leaving them in darkness. Mia could still see a lot in the darkness, like the defining features of Grover's face and the many trees in front of them.

"How do you know that it'll all work out?" he asked.

Mia shrugged. "I don't know. I just . . . I have to, I guess. I want to go home and hang out with my sister. Preferably inside, because I am not made for the outdoors. But we'd lay on her bed and listen to music and talk for hours and—"

"Music!" Grover started digging into his pockets, presumably looking for something. "My reed pipes!"

Oh, no, Mia wanted to say, but she suppressed the urge to say it. "Do you still have them?" she asked instead, fiddling with her necklace.

"I think so," he continued taking things out from his pockets, handing some things to her to hold for him, and some things he just ate. "Aha!"

Grover triumphantly brought out his reed pipes, and Mia gave him his stuff back so he could put it in his pockets. Then he put his mouth to the instrument and blew in it.

The sound that came out was a shrill toot-toot-toot, like the sound of an owl being tortured. Mia tried not to laugh.

"Hey, my reed pipes still work!" Grover cried. "If I could just remember a 'find path' song, we could get out of these woods!"

He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still sounded suspiciously like Hilary Duff.

Mia looked back to share a look with Annabeth, only to find that Percy was about to barrel into a tree.

"Percy," Mia said, taking his hand and pulling him away from the tree's path. He stopped, looking down at her confusedly. She could see his confused frown, and the way his eyebrows furrowed, but the only thing she focused on was his bright, nearly glowing green eyes. "You were about to bump into a tree," she said, a hint of laughter in her voice.