𝔐𝔬𝔦𝔯𝔞𝔦𝔬 - 𝔉𝔢𝔪𝔒ℭ𝔵𝔏𝔢𝔬 𝔙𝔞𝔩𝔡𝔢𝔷

9. Seeing an old hag in an attic was not on my bingo card. . .

The next morning, Chiron moved my brother and I to cabin three.

We didn't have to share with strangers, plenty of rom for all of our stuff: the Minotaur horn, two sets of toiletry bags, and two sets of spare clothes. We sat at our own dinner table, picked all our own activities, call "lights out" whenever we felt like it, and not listen to anyone else.

We were still miserable.

I continued my work of training with Luke, going to the forest, and the other daily things.

Just when we had started to feel slightly normal, we were separated as if we had some rare disease. Far as I could tell, Percy hated it here. I slightly did too, I just learned to adapt quicker.

Nobody mentioned the hellhound, but I got the feeling they all talked about it behind our backs. The attack scared everybody—why? It was attacking me and Percy, not you hun— and it sent two messages: one, that we were children of the Sea God; and two, monsters would stop at nothing to kill us. 

 Isn't that just bloody great, right? First I lose my mother, then I find out I'm gonna die before having my first kiss? —Okay, that was a bit overkill. . . But still.—

Other campers steered clear of us as much as possible. Cabin eleven was too nervous to have sword class after what we'd done to the Ares folk. (Percy, taking Clarisse on, and me, ruining someone's ability to walk,)

Percy started to train with Luke one-on-one like I did, but he pushed us harder than ever, and wasn't afraid to bruise us up in the process.

"You're both gonna need all the training you can get," he promised. As we were working with swords and flaming-freaking-torches. "Now let's try that viper-beheading strike again. Fifty more repetitions."

He trained me with daggers, swords, bows, spears, and even as ironic as it is, tridents. Turned out, I was really good with them all, other than spears. Don't wanna turn into a kebab, amiright?

Annabeth still taught us Greek in the mornings, but she seemed distracted. Every time either of us said something, she scowled at us, as if we poked her between the eyes. 

After lessons, she would walk away muttering to herself : "Quest . . . Poseidon? . . . Dirty rotten. . . Moiraío? . . . Got to make a plan. . ."

Even Clarisse and Beefy kept their distance, maybe because I ripped her tendons though. Through their venomous looks made it clear they wanted my brother and I dead. I wished they'd yell or say something so I could have the right to punch them or something.

One night when we came to our cabin, we saw a mortal newspaper dropped inside the doorway, a copy of the New York Daily News, opened to the Metro page. The article took us almost an hour to read combined, because the angrier we got, the more the words floated and the more I threw it onto the floor.

MOTHER AND TWO KIDS STILL MISSING AFTER FREAK CAR ACCIDENT, ONE GIRL AND ONE BOY.

BY EILEEN SMYTHE

Sally Jackson, son Percy and daughter Kiera, are still missing one week after the mysterious disappearance. The family's badly burned '78 Camaro was discovered last Saturday on a north Long Island road with the roof ripped off and front axle broken. The car had flipped and skidded for several hundred feet before exploding.

Mother, son, and daughter gone for a weekend vacation to Montauk, left hastily, under mysterious circumstances. Small traces of blood were found in the car and near the scene of the wreck, but there were no other signs of the missing Jacksons. Residents in the rural area reported seeing nothing unusual around the time of the accident.