𝐂œ𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐬é𝐬 [Percy Jackson]

45

In the morning, the group had disbanded again.

At first, Annabeth and Hazel had a pretty good time walking along the Battery. Charleston Harbor glittered in the sun. To the north and south, strips of land stretched out like arms enclosing the bay, and sitting in the mouth of the harbor, about a mile out, was an island with a stone fort. 

Annabeth had a vague memory of that fort being important in the Civil War, but she didn't spend much time thinking about it. Mostly she breathed in the sea air and thought about Percy. She had been crushing on him big time since she was twelve years old, but now their bond was so much more. She couldn't put a label on it even if she had to. "Best friend" didn't begin to cover it.

They turned away from the seawall and explored the inland side of the gardens. The park wasn't crowded.

"Kind of reminds me of New Rome," Hazel said. "All the big mansions and the gardens. The columns and arches." Annabeth nodded.

Hazel didn't say much after that, she seemed preoccupied. Maybe she was taking in their surroundings, or maybe she was worrying about her brother. In a week or so, unless they found him and freed him, Nico would be dead. Annabeth felt that deadline weighing on her, too. She'd always had mixed feelings about Nico di Angelo.

She suspected that he'd had a crush on her ever since they rescued him and his big sister Bianca from that military academy in Maine; but Annabeth had never felt any attraction to Nico. He was too young and too moody. There was a darkness in him that made her uneasy. Still, she felt responsible for him. Back when they had met, neither of them had known about his half sister, Hazel. At the time, Bianca had been Nico's only living family. When she had died, Nico became a homeless orphan, drifting through the world alone. Annabeth could relate to that.

She was so deep in thought, she might have kept walking around the park forever, but Hazel grabbed her arm. "There." She pointed across the harbor. A hundred yards out, a shimmering white figure floated on the water.

At first, Annabeth thought it might be a buoy or a small boat reflecting the sunlight, but it was definitely glowing, and it was moving more smoothly than a boat, making a straight line toward them. As it got closer, Annabeth could tell it was the figure of a woman.

"The ghost," she said.

"That's not a ghost," Hazel said. "No kind of spirit glows that brightly."

Annabeth decided to take her word for it. She couldn't imagine being Hazel, dying at such a young age and coming back from the Underworld, knowing more about the dead than the living.

The apparition floated up the seawall and stopped in front of them. The glow faded. Annabeth gasped. The woman was breathtakingly beautiful and strangely familiar. Her face was hard to describe. Her features seemed to shift from those of one glamorous movie star to another. Her eyes sparkled playfully— sometimes green or blue or amber. Her hair changed from long, straight blond to dark chocolatey curls.

Annabeth was instantly jealous. She'd always wished she had dark hair. 

The woman was dressed like a Southern belle, just as Jason had described. Her gown had a low-cut bodice of pink silk and a three-tiered hoop skirt with white scalloped lace. She wore tall white silk gloves, and held a feathered pink and white fan to her chest.

"Aphrodite," she said.

"Venus?" Hazel asked in amazement.

"Girls!" The goddess spread her arms like she wanted a group hug. The demigods did not oblige. Hazel backed into a palmetto tree.

"I'm so glad you're here," Aphrodite said. "War is coming. Bloodshed is inevitable. So there's really only one thing to do."

"Uh...and that is?" Annabeth ventured.