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"Tell me when it's over," Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding onto them so they couldn't fall, but Thalia still clutched his arm like her life depended on it.
"Everything's fine," Percy promised.
"Are ... are we very high?"
Elaine looked down. Below them, a range of snowy mountains zipped by. Percy stretched out his foot and kicked snow off one of the peaks.
"Nah," he said. "Not that high."
Elaine watched the exchange and it suddenly dawned on her that Thalia must've had a fear of heights.
Percy shook his head when he saw her about to ask the daughter of Zeus about her ironic phobia. She huffed in defeat. She'd ask later.
"We are in the Sierras." Zoe yelled. She and Grover were hanging from the arms of the other statue. "I have hunted here before. At this speed, we should be in San Francisco in a few hours."
"Hey, hey, Frisco!" One angel said. "Yo, Chuck! We could visit those guys at the Mechanics Monument again! They know how to party!"
"Oh, man," the other angel said. "I am so there!"
"You've been to San Francisco?" Elaine asked.
"We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" Her statue said. "Those mechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble lady statues, see. And—"
"Hank!" the other statue Chuck cut in. "They're kids, man."
"Oh, right." If bronze statues could blush, Elaine swore Hank did. "Back to flying."
They sped up, so Elaine could tell the angels were excited. The mountains fell away into hills, and then they were zipping along over farmland and towns and highways.
Grover played his pipes to pass the time. Zoe got bored and started shooting arrows at random billboards as they flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store—and they passed dozens of them—she would peg the store's sign with a few bulls-eyes at a hundred miles an hour.
Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole way. She muttered to herself a lot, like she was praying.
"You did good back there," Percy told her. "Zeus listened."
It was hard to tell what she was thinking with her eyes closed.
"Maybe," she said. "How did you get away from the skeletons in the generator room, anyway? You said they cornered you."
He told them about a weird mortal girl, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to be able to see right through the Mist. Elaine didn't know much about the Mist, but if some mortals could see through it, it would explain why her mother wasn't confused when she told her about the manitcore at her school.
