ᴄᴀᴠᴇ ᴄᴀɴᴇᴍ: ᴘᴀʀᴛ ɪɪ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴇʀᴄᴀʙᴇᴛʜ/ꜱᴏʟᴀɴɢᴇʟᴏ ᴘʀᴏᴊᴇᴄᴛ

xxɪɪ | ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ ʏᴇʟʟꜱ ᴀᴛ ɴɪᴄᴏ. ʜᴇ ᴅᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇꜱ ɪᴛ.

Percy will be discussing everything that just happened in therapy. He should probably send Cletus a muffin basket ahead of time, or better yet, a container of his mom's cookies. Cletus won't know what hits him after Percy unloads a quest, a missing person, two incidents in which Percy compromised his morals, and a crisis somehow both romantic and sexual in nature.

Maybe he should tell Cletus to clear his whole day. This story could take a while to tell, and he hasn't even found Nico yet.

According to the concierge, Mr. di Angelo and his guest checked out of their room a couple of hours ago, which doesn't really make sense to Percy, but the drunkenness has yet to wear off. Nothing makes sense right now.

After paying a fee for checking out late, Percy fills a backpack with his and Annabeth's things and then hits the road.

Nico can't have left the city already. Besides, hellhounds are pretty good at hiding when they don't want to be found. The only thing that could summon a hellhound is a dog whistle, and that's only if the dog is properly trained like Mrs. O'Leary is.

Something tells Percy that Nico is quickly learning how hard training hellhounds is. Mrs. O'Leary was trained by Daedalus, a guy known pretty much only for being a genius and a sub-par father. Training helllhound puppies is a labor worthy of Hercules.

Percy sticks his hands in his shallow pockets and sighs.

There's a miracle in his pocket.

He picks up the dog whistle, letting the chain it's laced through run between his fingers. Nico gave this to him before he ran off to find his hellhound, Raphael. Percy was supposed to help, but instead, he ran into a bar and drank vodka-cranberries until he started to see oceans in other people's eyes. Percy doesn't even like cranberry juice! He's scarred after that time Annabeth forgot to pee before they had victory sex in his cabin after another successful game of capture the flag. The amount of cranberry juice consumed that day was ungodly.

Percy holds the dog whistle parallel to his eyes. Has Nico used this thing before, or is it magic and can only grant one use?

He chooses to believe it's the second option because something about sharing germs with a guy who swaps saliva with hellhounds is a little offputting.

The metal is cold between his lips when he blows through the whistle. He can't hear the high-pitched sound it makes. That has to be magic because Percy is not old enough for his hearing to be damaged, is he?

He looks down into the alleyway behind him. That's where Raphael would come from if he were shadow-traveling.

Nothing's happening.

Percy squints. When he used to care for Mrs. O'Leary more often, she'd usually come out of the shadows when he least expected it. Then again, she had experience sneaking up on people and scaring them. Raphael probably doesn't since he's just a puppy. If Raphael heard the dog whistle, he would have shown up by now.

Thankful to not have just shared germs with Nico and his dogs, Percy puts the broken pieces of the enchanted dog whistle back into his pocket. He'll discard them when he finds a trashcan, or preferably, a recycling bin. Percy cares about the planet like that. Being best friends with a satyr and having a marine biology degree will do that to a person.

And then he hears the pounding of feet against the pavement. It's too strong to be any human and way heavier than Raphael. It's sort of like someone put legs on a garbage truck and let it run through the city.

He reaches into his other pocket, ready to draw Riptide, and turns around only to find the one and only Mrs. O'Leary running at him with the force of at least four Raphaels.