QUEST WITHOUT HARRY

Chapter 9 : I Am Offered a Quest

The next morning, Chiron moved me to cabin three. I didn't have to share with anybody. I had plenty of room for all my stuff: the Minotaur horn, one set of spare clothes and a toiletry bag. I got to sit at my own dinner table, pick all my own activities, call "lights out" whenever I felt like it and not listen to anybody else. And I was absolutely miserable.

Just when I'd started to feel accepted, to feel I had a home in cabin eleven and I might be a normal kid – or as normal as you can be when you're a half-blood – I'd been separated out as if I had some rare disease, I am again feel like Laia Black in my initial days in Hogwarts.

Nobody mentioned the hellhound, but I got the feeling they were all talking about it behind my back. The attack had scared everybody. It sent two messages: one, that I was the daughter of the Sea God; and two, monsters would stop at nothing to kill me.

They could even invade a camp that had always been considered safe. The other campers steered clear of me as much as possible. Cabin eleven was too nervous to have sword class with me after what I'd done to the Ares folks in the woods, so my lessons with Luke became one-on-one. He pushed me harder than ever, and wasn't afraid to bruise me up in the process.

"You're going to need all the training you can get," he promised, as we were working with swords and flaming torches. "Now let's try that viper-beheading strike again. Fifty more repetitions." But at least he is still with me, he consoles me.

Andrew still taught me Greek in the mornings, but he seemed distracted. Every time I said something, he scowled at me, as if I'd just poked him between the eyes. After lessons, he would walk away muttering to himself: "Quest... Poseidon?... Dirty rotten... Got to make a plan..."

Even Clarisse kept her distance, though her venomous looks made it clear she wanted to kill me for breaking her magic spear. I wished she would just yell or punch me or something. I'd rather get into fights every day than be ignored.

I knew somebody at camp resented me, because one night I came into my cabin and found a mortal newspaper dropped inside the doorway, a New York Daily News, opened to the Metro page. The article took me almost an hour to read, because the angrier I got, the more the words floated around on the page.

GIRL AND MOTHER STILL MISSING AFTER FREAK CAR ACCIDENT BY EILEEN SMYTHE

Sally Jackson and daughter Percy are still missing one week after their 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 the front axle broken. The car had flipped and skidded for several hundred metres before exploding. Mother and daughter had gone for a weekend vacation to Montauk, but 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. Ms Jackson's husband, Gabe Ugliano, claims that his stepdaughter, Percy Jackson, is a troubled child who has been kicked out of numerous boarding schools and has expressed violent tendencies in the past. Police would not say whether daughter Percy is a suspect in his mother's disappearance, but they have not ruled out foul play. Below are recent pictures of Sally Jackson and Percy. Police urge anyone with information to call the following toll-free crime-stoppers hotline.

The phone number was circled in black marker. I wadded up the paper and threw it away, then flopped down in my bunk bed in the middle of my empty cabin.

"Lights out," I told myself miserably.

That night, I had my worst dream yet. I was running along the beach in a storm. This time, there was a city behind me. Not New York. The sprawl was different: buildings spread farther apart, palm trees and low hills in the distance. About a hundred metres down the surf, two men were fighting. They looked like TV wrestlers, muscular, with beards and long hair. Both wore flowing Greek tunics, one trimmed in blue, the other in green. They grappled with each other, wrestled, kicked and head-butted, and every time they connected, lightning flashed, the sky grew darker, and the wind rose. I had to stop them. I didn't know why.