Advisor's Son

Chapter 10 This Camp Will Take Getting Use To

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We were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Lucy, so of course everybody treated us as if we’d won some reality TV contest. According to camp tradition, we wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in our honor, then led a procession down to the bonfire, where we got to burn the burial shrouds our cabins had made for us in our absence.

Annabeth’s shroud was so beautiful – gray silk with embroidered owls – I told her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. She punched me and told me to shut up.

Being the daughter of Poseidon, I didn’t have any cabin mates, so the Ares cabin had volunteered to make my shroud. They’d taken an old bedsheet and painted smiley faces with X’ed-out eyes around the border, and the word LOSER painted really big in the middle.

It was fun to burn.

Through all of that the only people that seemed to notice Y/N behind me were Annabeth, Grover, Chiron and Mrs D. I think a few demigoddesses glanced at him but never said anything.

As Apollo’s cabin led the sing-along and passed out toasted marshmallows, I was surrounded by my old Hermes cabin mates, Annabeth’s friends from Athena and Grover’s satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand new searcher’s license she’d received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had called Grover’s performance on the quest “Brave to the point of indigestion. Horns-and-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past.”

The only ones not in a party mood were Clarisse and her cabinmates, whose poisonous looks told me they’d never forgive me for disgracing their mother.

That was okay with me.

Even Dionysus’s welcome-home speech wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits. “Yes, yes, so the little brat didn’t get herself killed and now she’ll have an even bigger head. Well, huzzah for that. In other announcements, there will be no canoe races this Saturday… What is it Chiron?” Chiron whispered something in her ear, “Is that really wise?” Chiron only gave her a look, “Very well.”

Mrs D gave a long sigh as Chiron pushed Y/N up beside her. “This here is… what is your name boy?”

“Y/N Veileder.” He squeaked out looking embarrassed by all the eyes on him, and a bunch of campers gasped.

“The brat on her quest saw fit to bring this boy, Y/N Veileder, back to Camp. He has even seemed to earn the favor of Hades.” At that a bunch of people murmured and Y/N clutched Liber Necris to his chest looking like he was trying to make himself seem smaller. “As well as Poseidon’s. Now he will be staying here.” Some campers looked excited, which oddly bothered me. “In the Big House.” Some sighed and a few Aphrodite campers booed, but Mrs D just rolled her eyes. “I do not recommend harming him, but go ahead and earn the ire of the Queen of the Dead and Sea if you wish.”

I moved back into cabin three, but it didn’t feel so lonely any more. I had my friends to train with during the day. At night, I lay awake and listened to the sea, knowing my mother was out there. Maybe she wasn’t quite sure about me yet, maybe she hadn’t even wanted me born, but she was watching. And so far, she was proud of what I’d done.

As for my mom, she had a chance at a new life. Her letter arrived a week after I got back to camp. She told me Gabe had left mysteriously – disappeared off the face of the planet, in fact. She’d reported him missing to the police, but she had a funny feeling they would never find him.

On a completely unrelated subject, she’d sold her first life-size concrete sculpture, entitled The Poker Player, to a collector, through an art gallery in Soho. She’d got so much money for it, she’d put a deposit down on a new apartment and made a payment on her first term’s tuition at NYU. The Soho gallery was clamoring for more of her work, which they called ‘a huge step forward in super-ugly neorealism’.