Accidental Love (A Nico di Angelo love story)

Chapter 7: How to Save a Life

I opened my eyes again and was back on the boulder, where I had been before. The only thing different was that I now held Nico's silver ring in the center of my palm where he had placed it. As soon as I got my bearings, I stood up straight and raced out of the woods, though the commons area, past the canoe lake, and all the way to the Big House. I clambered onto the wrap-around porch and right into the parlor. Chiron was sitting by the hearth in his magical wheelchair.

He turned it around when he heard me running in. Out of breath and gasping for air, I collapsed on a couch and slowly recover from my extensive run. Finally I catch my breath and say, "Chiron, I know where Nico is!"

He looked taken aback and surprised. Then he asked, "Where?"

"I don't know. I had a vision while I was cooling down in the woods and I saw a room with mountains of storage boxes and a single window with black curtains. The door locks from the outside and you cannot get out from the inside. I saw Nico laying in a pool of poisonous blood in the middle of the room and he had this horridly bloody gash on the left side of his chest and he had been stabbed with a poisoned blade because the wound was a sickly dark shade of green and his eyes were completely black, the whites and everything and-"

"Stop!" Chiron says. I just then realize that I was rambling on and talking really fast, like I typically do when I am upset or nervous. "Slow down, child. Now from the beginning. Where was this mysterious room at?"

"I don't really know. The curtains on the window were too dark to see through."

Okay, well-"

"Although if I had to take a guess, I would say that it was somewhere in the Big House. In a storage room."

"Okay, now how did the wound look? Where was it on his body? Was it serious looking besides the poison?" Chiron investigated.

"The wound was a gash about two inches deep on the left side of his chest, opposite of his heart. His blood was black and dark green and there was a lot of it. I would say that he lot more that half of his blood. The wound was definitely serious. The poor kid is almost dead. I estimate that he will be dead around sunset. So we only have a few hours left to find him. And also-"I removed Nico's ring from my jeans pocket and placed in my hand, "-Nico gave me this."

Chiron took the ring from me and examined it. Worry plastered all over his face. "Nico is in more danger than I thought. You predicted right, Miss Nightshade. If the cut was on the left side of his chest then we only have a few hours until the poison reaches his heart. I expect that it already has entered his bloodstream. We need an-"

"-emergency meeting right now? Yes we do. Nico also told me that."

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It turns out that the council meetings take place in the rec room where all of the counselors(and me) crowd around the ping pong table and have a screaming fest. They bad part about being new to the council is that I do not know most of them. An Ares girl in a camo jacket was threatening a scrawny Apollo and trying to get him to admit that Ares was better than Apollo. Meanwhile an Iris boy who looked like a brick wall was shoving pickles into a Demeter girl's mouth. So far he had managed to get 9 into her small mouth, stretching her cheeks. Jason from Zeus' Cabin was talking to Piper of the Aphrodite. Annabeth and Percy were sitting in the corner having a not-to-serious argument about who wisdom was better than water powers. Eventually Percy shut Annabeth up by pulling her into a passionate kiss.

However while all this was going on, I sat under the table, avoiding everybody, trying not to get pulverized. Chiron, as soon as everybody got there, called the meeting to order and asked me to come out from under the table. I did so while everybody else circled the table. As soon as Piper saw me rise out from my hiding place, she looked me dead in the eye, but I could hardly look at anyone of them.