❝In a fight, they're lethal. Around each other, they melt❞
"I'm fine." I said, trying to hide the frown and tears that threatened to spill.
Percy looked at me once.
"I'm not going anywhere, unless you tell me what's wrong," he declared and I would h...
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The metal door was half hidden behind a laundry bin full of dirty hotel towels. I didn't see anything strange about it, but Rachel showed us where to look, and I recognized the faint blue symbol etched in the metal.
"It hasn't been used in a long time," Annabeth said.
"I tried to open it once," Rachel said, "just out of curiosity. It's rusted shut."
"No." I laughed and stepped forward. "It just needs the touch of a half-blood."
Sure enough, as soon as I put my hand on the mark, it glowed blue. The metal door unsealed and creaked open, revealing a dark staircase leading down.
"Wow." Rachel looked calm, but I couldn't tell if she was pretending or not. She'd changed into a ratty Museum of Modern Art T-shirt and her regular marker-colored jeans, her blue plastic hairbrush sticking out of her pocket. Her red hair was tied back, but she still had flecks of gold in it, and traces of the gold glitter on her face. "So...after you?"
"You're the guide," Annabeth said with mock politeness. "Lead on."
The stairs led down to a large brick tunnel. It was so dark the others couldn't see two feet in front of us, but Annabeth, Percy and I had restocked on flashlights. As soon as we switched them on, Rachel yelped.
A skeleton was grinning at us. It wasn't human. It was huge, for one thing—at least ten feet tall. It had been strung up, chained by its wrists and ankles so it made a kind of giant X over the tunnel. But what really sent shivers down my spine was the single black eye socket in the center of its skull.
"A Cyclops," Annabeth said. "It's very old. It's not...anybody we know."
It wasn't Tyson, she meant. But that didn't make me feel much better. I still felt like it had been put here as a warning. Whatever could kill a grown Cyclops, I didn't want to meet.
Rachel swallowed. "You have a friend who's a Cyclops?"
"Tyson," Percy said. "My half brother."
"Your half brother."
"He's a sweetheart. Leave the poor dude out of this." I said with a frown.
"Hopefully we'll find him down here," I said. "And Grover. He's a satyr."
"Oh." Her voice was small. "Well then, we'd better keep moving."
She stepped under the skeleton's left arm and kept walking. Annabeth, Percy and I exchanged looks. Annabeth shrugged. We followed Rachel deeper into the maze.
Not able to stand having to acknowledge the fact that there was a mortal in front of us and that we even had to have her help, I faded into my ghostly form.
After fifty feet we came to a crossroads. Ahead, the brick tunnel continued. To the right, the walls were made of ancient marble slabs. To the left, the tunnel was dirt and tree roots.
