Demigods at Rookwood

Chapter 21

Annabeth

Reyna flipped through the book, trying to look for anything that wasn't gibberish. But every page had the same thing;rows and rows of numbers.

I looked over Reyna's shoulder at the book, full of numbers. I figured it must've been some sort of code, but the more troubling thing about it, was the qquestion of, what were they trying to hide?
What was so important that the Whispers wrote the whole book in code?

*****

With the book intow, we started on our way back down the winding steps.
Ariadne and I burst into Room 13 where Scarlet and Thalia were waiting for us, waving the prefect book at both of them.

"We found this!" Said Ariadne. "But we don't know what it says."

"What? Give that here ...." Scarlet took the book off of Ariadne and stared at it as everyone else entered the room. "Eh? It's just numbers!"

"I think it's a code." Said Ivy, looking dejected. "The whole thing is written in it."

"But of it's a code then we can break it," said Thalia. "Right?"

"True!" Said Ariadne.

"You get on it then, brainbox," said Scarlet, tossing her back the book. "If it says anything about our mother, I want to know. You too, prefect." She said 'prefect' as if it had a bad association, which to be fair, it definitely did.

"We're on it!" Ariadne grinned.

We hid the Whispers' book in the old hole in Scarlet's mattress and headed down for dinner.

I was shocked to see that it wasn't stew being served up, but casserole. Though it may as well have been stew because there was no difference between the 2 when it came to taste.

I took a seat at the Richmond table next to Thalia, who was poking at the casserole as if trying to figure out it's contents. She glanced up at me. "What do you think is going to happen to Penny and Nadia?"

I shook my head. Just thinking about what Mr Bartholomew could've done to them made me shudder.

Ariadne plonked herself down next to me. She was silent for a moment, before asking 'What do you think the code is?"

I shrugged. The first thing that came to mind was that 1 equaled A, 2 equaled B, and so on. But surely that would be too obvious?

We were both silent, trying to crack the code.

"I've got it," said Ariadne, snapping her fingers so loudly that everyone sitting near us looked up from their plates and stared at her.

"Got what?" Asked Mrs Knight, looking slightly frazzled.

"Nothing." Said Ariadne, her cheeks flushing red.

"Ariadne was trying to help me solve out a difficult math problem." I smiled sweetly at her. "We were using the Pythagorean theorem."

"Oh, well. Jolly good," said Mrs Knight. "I like to see keen students."

As the rest of the table returned to the earlier chatter, Ariadne leant over to me. "It wasn't a maths problem!"

"We know," said Scarlet, from the other side of the table.

"Oh." She paused. "I've figured out the code, I think! Annabeth and I will just need a while to transcribe it all."

"Keep it a secret, you swear?" Scarlet stared both me and Ariadne in the eye.

Ariadne blinked. "Of course!"

Scarlet frowned. I raised an eyebrow at her. What was her problem?

____________________________________

Hello!

I'm not dead .... sorry if I ruined anyone's day.

Sorry it's been a while. I had a bit of a writer's block for this story, but I'm still working on it.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Sorry it was a bit short.