In which, Adira Lancaster falls in love with her rival, Percy Jackson
OR
he falls in love with her first, unknowingly.
She only seemed to think about a rivalry. Nothing else. Zilch. Nada. Zip.
-disclaimer- I do not own the Percy Jackson Books, or an...
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The least the Oracle could've done was walk back to the attic by herself.
Instead, Percy, Grover and I were elected to carry her. I didn't figure that was because we were the most popular.
"Watch her head!" Grover warned as we went up the stairs. But it was too late.
Bonk! Percy whacked her mummified face against the trapdoor frame and dust flew.
"Ah, man." He set her down and checked for damage. "Did I break anything?"
"I can barely tell," I said, since the darkness was brought upon us.
"I can't tell," Grover admitted.
We hauled her up and set her on her tripod stool, all of us huffing and sweating. Who knew a mummy could weigh so much?
I was relieved when we finally got out of there and slammed the attic door shut.
"Well," Grover said, "that was gross."
The Oracle walked half a mile to talk to Zoe, and she'd said nothing, not even a hint, about Annabeth.
"What will Chiron do?" I asked Grover.
"I wish I knew." He looked wistfully out the second-floor window at the rolling hills covered in snow. "I want to be out there."
"Searching for Annabeth?" Percy asked.
He had a little trouble focusing on me. Then he blushed. "Oh, right. That too. Of course."
"Why?" I asked. "What were you thinking?"
He clopped his hooves uneasily. "Just something the manticore said, about the Great Stirring. I can't help but wonder... if all those ancient powers are waking up, maybe... maybe not all of them are evil."
"You mean Pan."
I felt kind of selfish, because I'd totally forgotten about Grover's life ambition. The nature god had gone missing two thousand years ago. He was rumored to have died, but the satyrs didn't believe that. They were determined to find him. They'd been searching in vain for centuries, and Grover was convinced he'd be the one to succeed. This year, with Chiron putting all the satyrs on emergency duty to find half-bloods, Grover hadn't been able to continue his search. It must've been driving him nuts. It would've driven me beserk.
"I've let the trail go cold," he said. "I feel restless, like I'm missing something really important. He's out there somewhere. I can just feel it."
I didn't know what to say. I wanted to encourage him, but I didn't know how. My optimism had pretty much been trampled into the snow out there in the woods, along with our capture-the-flag hopes.
Before I could respond, Thalia tromped up the stairs. She was officially not talking to Percy now, but she looked at me and said, "Tell Percy to get his ass downstairs."
