The 12 Days of Christmas - The Great Holiday Mystery

A Very Demigod Christmas

~The Cave~

'You four have some explaining to do.'

Annabeth's voice rang through the air. The silence was deafening, the surprise unnerving, the shock not quite registering.

Lou, Clarisse, Drew and Rachel remained silent.

They were an odd bunch. A daughter of Hecate, a daughter of Ares, a daughter of Aphrodite and the Oracle.

Although that did explain how everything happened. The disappearances required magic, what Lou was good at. The note required cunning and creativity; Rachel's speciality. Clarisse and Drew manipulated the campers. Those Aphrodite girls who helped them find the snowmen must've been charmspoken.

'Answers, anyone?' Piper said. 'Start talking.'

Her charmspeak washed over them, including Drew who could've countered it with her own, but choose not to.

'I was bored,' Clarisse said. 'And I was talking to Rachel and we had the idea to set up a puzzle for you guys.'

'But we knew you'd never just do it,' Rachel took up the story. 'There had to be something at stake. So we got Lou in on it and she said we could, like, kidnap you guys one by one.'

'But we'd never want to hurt anybody,' Lou added quickly. 'Which is why, when we found this cave, I spelled it so it was safe. Then I enchanted the table so it never ran out of food.'

'But we needed food first,' Clarisse explained. 'So we got Drew to help us since she's a daughter of Aphrodite and they can naturally cook. Strangely.'

'So I cooked all the food,' Drew ignored Clarisse's jibe. 'And set it on the table for Lou to work her magic, literally.'

'Then we came up with the riddles,' Rachel took a piece of paper out of her pocket inscribed with words and scribbles. 'And Clarisse hid the first one in the star. After that, Lou simply sent the note wherever with magic.' 

'And you thought kidnapping us was okay?' Nico asked with a frown, obviously confused.

The four girls remained silent.

'It was supposed to be something fun to do,' Clarisse said glumly. 'You've all done pretty much nothing interesting since the Giant War ended. We thought ... I thought it could be fun.'

They all fell quiet. Nothing was said. What could you say to four friends who'd just kidnapped you?

'I had fun.'

Everyone stared at Leo like he dropped from out of space. Come to think of it, people looked at him like that a lot. But that didn't matter.

'What did you say?' Reyna asked like she'd misheard.

'I had fun,' Leo repeated. 'I never realized it, but it was kind of fun working out the riddles. Yeah, it was scary. Yeah, it was terrible when our friends disappeared. But I kind of had fun.'

The other demigods still stared at him.

'I had fun too.'

'Percy,' Annabeth hissed. 'What are you doing?'

'Telling the truth,' he said. 'What Leo said. I kind of had fun too.'

'I guess it was fun working out clues,' Piper grumbled.

'And the food was great!' Travis added excitedly. Connor chuckled.

Annabeth relented, 'I guess, it wasn't so bad.'

She looked up at the four girls with a resigned smile, 'I suppose we forgive you. It was very clever.'

Rachel laughed and tackled her best friend in a hug. Percy yelled, 'Group hug!' and everyone piled on. Jason flew up in the air and sat on top of the pile.