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The next morning Rory made sure Mrs. O'Leary had enough dog biscuits. She asked Charles Beckendorf to keep an eye on her, which he didn't seem too happy about, but he agreed. Then she hiked over Half-Blood Hill and met Annabeth and Argus on the road. Now they were just waiting for Percy.
He arrived after a few minutes, and the three kids squeezed into the back of the van — which was awkward, to say the least.
Annabeth and Percy didn't talk much. Rory refused to say a single word to Percy. And Argus never spoke because he had eyes all over his body, including at the tip of his tongue, and he didn't like to show that off.
Annabeth looked queasy, like she didn't sleep at all.
"Bad dreams?" Percy asked her.
She shook her head. "An Iris-message from Eurytion."
Rory's head snapped up. "Is something wrong with Nico?"
"He left the ranch last night, heading back into the maze."
"Didn't he try to stop him?" Percy asked.
"Nico was gone before he woke up. Orthus tracked his scent as far as the cattle guard. Eurytion said he'd been hearing Nico talk to himself the last few nights. Only now he thinks Nico was talking with the ghost again, Minos."
"He's in danger," Percy said.
"No kidding. Minos is one of the judges of the dead, but he's got a vicious streak a mile wide. I don't know what he wants with Nico, but—"
"That's not what I meant," he interrupted. "I had this dream last night..." He told the girls about Luke, how he had mentioned Quintus, and how his men had found a half-blood alone in the maze.
Annabeth's jaw clenched. "That's very, very bad."
"So what do we do?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Well, it's a good thing you have a plan to guide us, huh?"
It was Saturday, and traffic was heavy going into the city. They arrived at Sally Jackson's apartment around noon. When she answered the door, she gave her son a hug only a little less overwhelming than having a hellhound jump on you.
"I told them you were all right," she said, but she sounded like the weight of the sky had just been lifted off her shoulders — and all three half-bloods knew firsthand how that felt.
She gave the girls big hugs too, and then sat the kids down at the kitchen table and insisted on feeding them her special blue chocolate chip cookies while they caught her up on the quest. Percy tried to water down the frightening parts, but somehow that just made it sound more dangerous.
When he got to the part about Geryon and the stables, Sally pretended like she was going to strangle him. "I can't get him to clean his room, but he'll clean a hundred tons of horse manure out of some monster's stables?"
