DEVOTION, percy jackson

Poseidon Cant Keep It In His Pants Confirmed?

The sun was setting behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins. The group stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in.

Annabeth was still pretty shaken up, but she promised she'd talk to them later. Whether or not that's true is up for discussion. She went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin-boys and girls all having the same gray eyes like hers.

Annabeth wasn't the oldest, but she'd been at camp more summers than just about anybody. You could tell that by looking at her camp necklace-one bead for every summer, and Annabeth had six.

No one questioned her right to lead the line, and if they did Tallulah would have to punch someone, and she doesnt wanna do that.

Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn't seem to have fazed her. She looked pretty badass, Tallulah wasn't going to lie.

After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin-six guys led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteen year-old African American kid. He had hands the size of catchers' mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmith's forge all day.

He was very kind once you got to know him, but no one ever called him Charlie or Chuck or Charles. Most just called him Beckendorf.

Rumor was he could make anything. Give him a chunk of metal and he could create a razor-sharp sword or a robotic warrior or a singing bird bath for your grandmother's garden. Whatever you wanted, the guy could make it.

As soon as all the campers filed in, Tallulah, Percy, and Tyson walked into the dining pavilion. "Who invited that?" somebody at the Apollo table murmured.

Tallulah glared at the Apollo girl, Daphne, and gave her the meanest glare she could. Daphne sunk down in her seat with shame.

From the head table a familiar voice drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Peter Johnson and Tessa Stevens. My millennium is complete." Percy gritted his teeth and Tallulah rolled her eyes.

"Percy Jackson ... sir." Percy murmured. "It's Tallulah Storm. My name isn't very hard to remember." Tallulah said. Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever."

He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with black socks. With his pudgy belly and his blotchy red face, he looked like a Las Vegas tourist who'd stayed up too late in the casinos. Behind him, a nervous-looking satyr was peeling the skins off grapes and handing them to Mr. D one at a time.

Next to him, where Chiron usually sat (or stood, in centaur form), was someone I'd never seen before-a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner's jumpsuit. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails, and badly cut gray hair, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker.

He stared at the two of them, and his eyes made Tallulah uncomfortable. She took a step closer to Percy, trying to hide from the man. He radiated anger and frustration that made Tallulah light headed.

"These two," Dionysus told him, "you need to watch. Poseidon's child, you know. And his sidekick, the daughter of Demeter." "Ah!" the prisoner said. "That one." "I am not his sidekick!" Tallulah exclaimed.

"I am Tantalus," the prisoner said, ignoring Tallulah. "On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble."

"Trouble?" Percy demanded. Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table-the front page of today's New York Post. There was his yearbook picture from Meriwether Prep.