The Battle of the Labyrinth Read Free Page A

this?”
    “Oh, Rachel—Annabeth. Annabeth—Rachel. Um, she’s a friend. I guess.”
    I wasn’t sure what else to call Rachel. I mean, I barely knew her, but after being in two life-or-death situations together, I couldn’t just call her nobody.
    “Hi,” Rachel said. Then she turned to me. “You are in so much trouble. And you still owe me an explanation!”
    Police sirens wailed on FDR Drive.
    “Percy,” Annabeth said coldly. “We should go.”
    “I want to know more about half-bloods,” Rachel insisted. “And monsters. And this stuff about the gods.” She grabbed my arm, whipped out a permanent marker, and wrote a phone number on my hand. “You’re going to call me and explain, okay? You owe me that. Now get going.”
    “But—”
    “I’ll make up some story,” Rachel said. “I’ll tell them it wasn’t your fault. Just go!”
    She ran back toward the school, leaving Annabeth and me in the street.
    Annabeth stared at me for a second. Then she turned and took off.
    “Hey!” I jogged after her. “There were these two empou sai ,” I tried to explain. “They were cheerleaders, see, and they said camp was going to burn, and—”
    “You told a mortal girl about half-bloods?”
    “She can see through the Mist. She saw the monsters before I did.”
    “So you told her the truth.”
    “She recognized me from Hoover Dam, so—”
    “You’ve met her before ?”
    “Um, last winter. But seriously, I barely know her.”
    “She’s kind of cute.”
    “I—I never thought about it.”
    Annabeth kept walking toward York Avenue.
    “I’ll deal with the school,” I promised, anxious to change the subject. “Honest, it’ll be fine.”
    Annabeth wouldn’t even look at me. “I guess our afternoon is off. We should get you out of here, now that the police will be searching for you.”
    Behind us, smoke billowed up from Goode High School. In the dark column of ashes, I thought I could almost see a face—a she-demon with red eyes, laughing at me.
    Your pretty little camp in flames , Kelli had said. Your friends made slaves to the Lord of Time .
    “You’re right,” I told Annabeth, my heart sinking. “We have to get to Camp Half-Blood. Now .”

TWO

THE UNDERWORLD SENDS ME A PRANK CALL
    Nothing caps off the perfect morning like a long taxi ride with an angry girl.
    I tried to talk to Annabeth, but she was acting like I’d just punched her grandmother. All I managed to get out of her was that she’d had a monster-infested spring in San Francisco; she’d come back to camp twice since Christmas but wouldn’t tell me why (which kind of ticked me off, because she hadn’t even told me she was in New York); and she’d learned nothing about the whereabouts of Nico di Angelo (long story).
    “Any word on Luke?” I asked.
    She shook her head. I knew this was a touchy subject for her. Annabeth had always admired Luke, the former head counselor for Hermes who had betrayed us and joined the evil Titan Lord Kronos. She wouldn’t admit it, but I knew she still liked him. When we’d fought Luke on Mount Tamalpais last winter, he’d somehow survived a fifty-foot fall off a cliff. Now, as far as I knew, he was still sailing around on his demon-infested cruise ship while his chopped-up Lord Kronos re-formed, bit by bit, in a golden sarcophagus, biding his time until he had enough power to challenge the Olympian gods. In demigod-speak, we call this a “problem.”
    “Mount Tam is still overrun with monsters,” Annabeth said. “I didn’t dare go close, but I don’t think Luke is up there. I think I would know if he was.”
    That didn’t make me feel much better. “What about Grover?”
    “He’s at camp,” she said. “We’ll see him today.”
    “Did he have any luck? I mean, with the search for Pan?”
    Annabeth fingered her bead necklace, the way she does when she’s worried.
    “You’ll see,” she said. But she didn’t explain.
    As we headed through Brooklyn, I used Annabeth’s phone to call