We spent two days on the Amtrak train, heading west through hills, over rivers, past amber waves of grain.
We weren't attacked once, but I didn't relax. I felt that we were traveling around in a display case, being watched from above and maybe from below, that something was waiting for the right opportunity.
I tried to keep a low profile because my name and pic- ture were splattered over the front pages of several East Coast newspapers. The Trenton Register~News showed a photo taken by a tourist as I got off the Greyhound bus. I had a wild look in my eyes. My sword was a metallic blur in my hands. It might've been a baseball bat or a lacrosse stick.
T h e picture's caption read:
Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson, wantedfor questioning in the Long Island disappearance of his mother two weeks ago, is shown here fleeing from the bus where he accosted several elderly female passengers. The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after Jackson fled the scene. Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the boy may be traveling with two teenage accomplices. His stepfather, Gabe Ugliano, has offered a cash rewardfor information leading to his capture.
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"Don't worry," Annabeth told me. "Mortal police could never find us." But she didn't sound so sure.
The rest of the day I spent alternately pacing the length of the train (because I had a really hard time sitting still) or looking out the windows.
Once, I spotted a family of centaurs galloping across a wheat field, bows at the ready, as they hunted lunch. T h e lit- tle boy centaur, who was the size of a second-grader on a pony, caught my eye and waved. I looked around the pas- senger car, but nobody else had noticed. The adult riders all had their faces buried in laptop computers or magazines.
Another time, toward evening, I saw something huge moving through the woods. I could've sworn it was a lion, except that lions don't live wild in America, and this thing was the size of a Hummer. Its fur glinted gold in the evening light. T h e n it leaped through the trees and was gone.
Our reward money for returning Gladiola the poodle had only been enough to purchase tickets as far as Denver. We couldn't get berths in the sleeper car, so we dozed in our seats. My neck got stiff. I tried not to drool in my sleep, since Annabeth was sitting right next to me.
Grover kept snoring and bleating and waking me up. Once, he shuffled around and his fake foot fell off. Annabeth and I had to stick it back on before any of the other passengers noticed.
"So," Annabeth asked me, once we'd gotten Grover's sneaker readjusted. " W h o wants your help?"
"What do you mean?"
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" W h e n you were asleep just now, you mumbled, 'Ί won't help you.' W h o were you dreaming about?"
I was reluctant to say anything. It was the second time I'd dreamed about the evil voice from the pit. But it both ered me so much I finally told her.
Annabeth was quiet for a long time. "That doesn't sound like Hades. He always appears on a black throne, and he never laughs."
" H e offered my mother in trade. W h o else could do that?"
"I guess . . . if he meant, 'Help me rise from the Underworld.' If he wants war with the Olympians. But why ask you to bring him the master bolt if he already has it?"
I shook my head, wishing I knew the answer. I thought about what Grover had told me, that the Furies on the bus seemed to have been looking for something.
Where is it? Where?
Maybe Grover sensed my emotions. He snorted in his sleep, muttered something about vegetables, and turned his head.
Annabeth readjusted his cap so it covered his horns. "Percy, you can't barter with Hades. You know that, right? He's deceitful, heartless, and greedy. I don't care if his Kindly Ones weren't as aggressive this t i m e — "
"This time?" I asked. "You mean you've run into them before?"
Her hand crept up to her necklace. She fingered a glazed white bead painted with the image of a pine tree, one of her clay end-of-summer tokens. "Let's just say I've got no love
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for the Lord of the Dead. You can't be tempted to make a deal for your mom."
"What would you do if it was your dad?"
"That's easy," she said. "I'd leave him to rot."
"You're not serious?"
Annabeth's gray eyes fixed on me. She wore the same
expression she'd worn in the woods at camp, the moment she drew her sword against the hellhound. "My dad's resented me since the day I was born, Percy," she said. "He never wanted a baby. W h e n he got me, he asked Athena to take me back and raise me on Olympus because he was too busy with his work. She wasn't happy about that. She told him heroes had to be raised by their mortal parent."
"But how ... I mean, I guess you weren't born in a hos- pital. . . ."
"I appeared on my father's doorstep, in a golden cradle, carried down from Olympus by Zephyr the West Wind. You'd think my dad would remember that as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he'd take some digital photos or some- thing. But he always talked about my arrival as if it were the most inconvenient thing that had ever happened to him. W h e n I was five he got married and totally forgot about Athena. He got a 'regular' mortal wife, and had two 'regu- lar' mortal kids, and tried to pretend I didn't exist."
I stared out the train window. T h e lights of a sleeping town were drifting by. I wanted to make Annabeth feel bet- ter, but I didn't know how.
" M y m o m married a really awful guy," I told her. "Grover said she did it to protect me, to hide me in the
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