𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥 - 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲 𝐣𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐱 𝐨𝐜

¸„.-•~°ˆ˜¨ 𝐬𝐢𝐱 ¨˜ˆ°~•-.„¸

New York is pretty amazing.

You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.

Of course, the Mist helped.

People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large, loud, very friendly truck.

Percy took the risk of using his mom's cell phone to call Annabeth for the second time.

He'd called her once from the tunnel but only reached her voice mail. He'd gotten surprisingly good reception, seeing as he was at the mythological center of the world and all, but he didn't want to see what his mom's roaming charges were going to be.

This time, Annabeth picked up.

"Hey," Percy said. "You get my message?"

"Percy, where have you been? Is Phoenix with you? Your message said almost nothing! We've been worried sick!"

"Yes she's with me. We'll fill you in later," Percy said, though how he was going to do that he had no idea.

"Where are you?"

"We're on our way like you asked, almost to the Queens—Midtown Tunnel."

"But, what are you planning? We've left the camp virtually undefended, and there's no way the gods—"

"Trust me," Percy said. "I'll see you there."

He hung up.

His hands were trembling.

"That seemed like a waste of a phone call," Phoenix mumbled.

It was late afternoon when the taxi dropped them at the Empire State Building.

Mrs. O'Leary bounded up and down Fifth Avenue, licking cabs and sniffing hot dog carts.

Nobody seemed to notice her, although people did swerve away and look confused when she came close.

Percy whistled for her to heel as three white vans pulled up to the curb.

They said Delphi Strawberry Service, which was the cover name for Camp Half-Blood.

Phoenix had never seen all three vans in the same place at once, though she knew they shuttled the fresh produce into the city.

The first van was driven by Argus, the many-eyed security chief.

The other two were driven by harpies, who are basically demonic human-chicken hybrids with bad attitudes.

The harpies were mostly for cleaning the camp, but they did pretty well in midtown traffic too.

The doors slid open.

A bunch of campers climbed out, some of them looking a little green from the long drive.

Phoenix was glad so many had come:

Davey, Harlow, Will, Pollux, Silena Beauregard, the Stoll brothers, Michael Yew, Jake Mason, Katie Gardner, and Annabeth, along with most of their siblings.

Chiron came out of the van last. His horse half was compacted into his magic wheelchair, so he used the handicap lift.

The Ares cabin wasn't here, but Phoenix tried not to get too angry about that.

Clarisse was overly stubborn. End of story.

Percy did a head count: forty campers in all. Not many to fight a war, but it was still the largest group of half-bloods he'd ever seen gathered in one place outside camp.