Escape from camp half blood

Chapter10

"You okay?" Sadie asked. When Nico didn't look up she put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a rough but affectionate shake. "Hey? You okay?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" It looked to Sadie like Nico was trying to put on a carefree expression, but it was actually painful to see, so she looked away.

"We're sorry, by the way," said Carter.

"Don't be. It's not your fault that Drew is such a shrew," said Percy.

"Well, we're sorry about that too, but I was talking about the stuff that we did," said Carter. "Turning Piper into a fruit bat and starting that fight."

"I'm not sorry about the fight," said Sadie. "Sorry that you broke it up so fast, yeah, but not sorry for starting it."

"Sadie -"

"Don't 'Sadie' me. Drew deserved it."

"What's done is done," said Percy. "And since you turned Piper into a bat to keep her from getting hurt, then turned her right back, I think it'll be okay. Unless she complains directly to Chiron, but since she's new I don't think she'll take her complaints straight to him. He doesn't have a whole lot to do with most new campers now, which is lucky for you guys right now."

They were in the Hades cabin, where Percy said people were least likely to disturb them, and Sadie could see why. Nico's cabin was like a crypt of the creepiest kind. The only light in the room came from green flames on the torches and the shadows looked like they were alive. There were several beds that were little more than slabs of marble, and Sadie had the feeling that anyone sleeping on one of them would look eerily like a carved coffin cover, which was probably the point. She wondered how Nico could stand living there. His room at their place looked like a room of death as well, but at least it had a few homey touches, like a pedestal table for playing Mythomagic, and a bed that didn't make him look like a corpse laid out for viewing.

"So do we have a plan now?" Sadie asked.

"Actually, we do," said Percy. "Nico came up with one. Didn't you, Nico?"

Again, Nico seemed to be staring off into space.

"Hey," said Sadie. She gave him another shake. "Pay attention when people are talking to you."

"What?" Nico asked. "I was paying attention."

"You weren't."

"Was too."

"Were not."

"Too."

"Not."

"I was!"

"You're a liar is what you are!"

"Focus, please," said Percy, his voice quite tolerant all things considered. "The plan, Nico?"

"Oh yeah, the plan." Nico sat up a bit straighter, definitely paying attention now. "We're leaving tonight. I don't want you here while the investigators are here. So we're going to make a break for the camp's borders and then I'm shadow traveling us someplace very far away, so far that the hunters won't be able to track us, and we'll lay low until the investigators catch the killer."

"If we run, won't they think -"

"Yes, which is why we're going so far away that they can't trace us," said Nico. "They'll realize you're not the killer when they do their investigation, or if someone else gets killed. The former is preferable, but if they decide not to have an investigation just because they think you must be the guilty ones, and the latter happens then that's their fault, not ours. I'm not going to risk your secrets getting out while the investigators investigate everyone here, because I don't trust them not to automatically think you're guilty."