The Titan's Curse (20 page)

He stared resentfully at Thalia. “I hope you learned your lesson, girl. It isn't easy to resist power, is it?”

Thalia blushed as if she were ashamed.

“Mr. D,” Grover said in amazement. “You . . . you saved us.”

“Mmm. Don't make me regret it, satyr. Now get going, Percy Jackson. I've bought you a few hours at most.”

“The Ophiotaurus,” I said. “Can you get it to camp?”

Mr. D sniffed. “I do not transport livestock. That's your problem.”

“But where do we go?”

Dionysus looked at Zoë. “Oh, I think the huntress knows. You must enter at sunset today, you know, or all is lost. Now good-bye. My pizza is waiting.”

“Mr. D,” I said.

He raised his eyebrow.

“You called me by my right name,” I said. “You called me Percy Jackson.”

“I most certainly did not, Peter Johnson. Now off with you!”

He waved his hand, and his image disappeared in the mist.

All around us, the manticore's minions were still acting completely nuts. One of them had found our friend the homeless guy, and they were having a serious conversation about metal angels from Mars. Several other guards were harassing the tourists, making animal noises and trying to steal their shoes.

I looked at Zoë. “What did he mean . . . ‘You know where to go'?”

Her face was the color of the fog. She pointed across the bay, past the Golden Gate. In the distance, a single mountain rose up above the cloud layer.

“The garden of my sisters,” she said. “I must go home.”

SIXTEEN

“We will never make it,” Zoë said. “We are moving too slow. But we cannot leave the Ophiotaurus.”

“Mooo,” Bessie said. He swam next to me as we jogged along the waterfront. We'd left the shopping center pier far behind. We were heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was a lot farther than I'd realized. The sun was already dipping in the west.

“I don't get it,” I said. “Why do we have to get there at sunset?”

“The Hesperides are the nymphs of the sunset,” Zoë said. “We can only enter their garden as day changes to night.”

“What happens if we miss it?”

“Tomorrow is winter solstice. If we miss sunset tonight, we would have to wait until tomorrow evening. And by then, the Olympian Council will be over. We must free Lady Artemis tonight.”

Or Annabeth will be dead, I thought, but I didn't say that.

“We need a car,” Thalia said.

“But what about Bessie?” I asked.

Grover stopped in his tracks. “I've got an idea! The Ophiotaurus can appear in different bodies of water, right?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, he was in Long Island Sound. Then he just popped into the water at Hoover Dam. And now he's here.”

“So maybe we could coax him back to Long Island Sound,” Grover said. “Then Chiron could help us get him to Olympus.”

“But he was following
me
,” I said. “If I'm not there, would he know where he's going?”

“Moo,” Bessie said forlornly.

“I . . . I can show him,” Grover said. “I'll go with him.”

I stared at him. Grover was no fan of the water. He'd almost drowned last summer in the Sea of Monsters, and he couldn't swim very well with his goat hooves.

“I'm the only one who can talk to him,” Grover said. “It makes sense.”

He bent down and said something in Bessie's ear. Bessie shivered, then made a contented, lowing sound.

“The blessing of the Wild,” Grover said. “That should help with safe passage. Percy, pray to your dad, too. See if he will grant us safe passage through the seas.”

I didn't understand how they could possibly swim back to Long Island from California. Then again, monsters didn't travel the same way as humans. I'd seen plenty evidence of that.

I tried to concentrate on the waves, the smell of the ocean, the sound of the tide.

“Dad,” I said. “Help us. Get the Ophiotaurus and Grover safely to camp. Protect them at sea.”

“A prayer like that needs a sacrifice,” Thalia said. “Something big.”

I thought for a second. Then I took off my coat.

“Percy,” Grover said. “Are you sure? That lion skin . . . that's really helpful. Hercules used it!”

As soon as he said that, I realized something.

I glanced at Zoë, who was watching me carefully. I realized I
did
know who Zoë's hero had been—the one who'd ruined her life, gotten her kicked out of her family, and never even mentioned how she'd helped him: Hercules, a hero I'd admired all my life.

“If I'm going to survive,” I said, “it won't be because I've got a lion-skin cloak. I'm not Hercules.”

I threw the coat into the bay. It turned back into a golden lion skin, flashing in the light. Then, as it began to sink beneath the waves, it seemed to dissolve into sunlight on the water.

The sea breeze picked up.

Grover took a deep breath. “Well, no time to lose.”

He jumped in the water and immediately began to sink. Bessie glided next to him and let Grover take hold of his neck.

“Be careful,” I told them.

“We will,” Grover said. “Okay, um . . . Bessie? We're going to Long Island. It's east. Over that way.”

“Moooo?” Bessie said.

“Yes,” Grover answered. “Long Island. It's this island. And . . . it's long. Oh, let's just start.”

“Mooo!”

Bessie lurched forward. He started to submerge and Grover said, “I can't breathe underwater! Just thought I'd mention—”
Glub!

Under they went, and I hoped my father's protection would extend to little things, like breathing.

“Well, that is one problem addressed,” Zoë said. “But how can we get to my sisters' garden?”

“Thalia's right,” I said. “We need a car. But there's nobody to help us here. Unless we, uh, borrowed one.”

I didn't like that option. I mean, sure this was a life-or-death situation, but still, it was stealing, and it was bound to get us noticed.

“Wait,” Thalia said. She started rifling through her backpack. “There
is
somebody in San Francisco who can help us. I've got the address here somewhere.”

“Who?” I asked.

Thalia pulled out a crumpled piece of notebook paper and held it up. “Professor Chase. Annabeth's dad.”

After hearing Annabeth gripe about her dad for two years, I was expecting him to have devil horns and fangs. I was
not
expecting him to be wearing an old-fashioned aviator's cap and goggles. He looked so weird, with his eyes bugging out through the glasses, that we all took a step back on the front porch.

“Hello,” he said in a friendly voice. “Are you delivering my airplanes?”

Thalia, Zoë, and I looked at each other warily.

“Um, no, sir,” I said.

“Drat,” he said. “I need three more Sopwith Camels.”

“Right,” I said, though I had no clue what he was talking about. “We're friends of Annabeth.”

“Annabeth?” He straightened as if I'd just given him an electric shock. “Is she all right? Has something happened?”

None of us answered, but our faces must've told him that something was very wrong. He took off his cap and goggles. He had sandy-colored hair like Annabeth and intense brown eyes. He was handsome, I guess, for an older guy, but it looked like he hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and his shirt was buttoned wrong, so one side of his collar stuck up higher than the other side.

“You'd better come in,” he said.

It didn't look like a house they'd just moved into. There were LEGO robots on the stairs and two cats sleeping on the sofa in the living room. The coffee table was stacked with magazines, and a little kid's winter coat was spread on the floor. The whole house smelled like fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies. There was jazz music coming from the kitchen. It seemed like a messy, happy kind of home—the kind of place that had been lived in forever.

“Dad!” a little boy screamed. “He's taking apart my robots!”

“Bobby,” Dr. Chase called absently, “don't take apart your brother's robots.”

“
I'm
Bobby,” the little boy protested. “He's Matthew!”

“Matthew,” Dr. Chase called, “don't take apart your brother's robots!”

“Okay, Dad!”

Dr. Chase turned to us. “We'll go upstairs to my study. This way.”

“Honey?” a woman called. Annabeth's stepmom appeared in the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She was a pretty Asian woman with red highlighted hair tied in a bun.

“Who are our guests?” she asked.

“Oh,” Dr. Chase said. “This is . . .”

He stared at us blankly.

“Frederick,” she chided. “You forgot to ask them their names?”

We introduced ourselves a little uneasily, but Mrs. Chase seemed really nice. She asked if we were hungry. We admitted we were, and she told us she'd bring us some cookies and sandwiches and sodas.

“Dear,” Dr. Chase said. “They came about Annabeth.”

I half expected Mrs. Chase to turn into a raving lunatic at the mention of her stepdaughter, but she just pursed her lips and looked concerned. “All right. Go on up to the study and I'll bring you some food.” She smiled at me. “Nice meeting you, Percy. I've heard a lot about you.”

Upstairs, we walked into Dr. Chase's study and I said, “Whoa!”

The room was wall-to-wall books, but what really caught my attention were the war toys. There was a huge table with miniature tanks and soldiers fighting along a blue painted river, with hills and fake trees and stuff. Old-fashioned biplanes hung on strings from the ceiling, tilted at crazy angles like they were in the middle of a dogfight.

Dr. Chase smiled. “Yes. The Third Battle of Ypres. I'm writing a paper, you see, on the use of Sopwith Camels to strafe enemy lines. I believe they played a much greater role than they've been given credit for.”

He plucked a biplane from its string and swept it across the battlefield, making airplane engine noises as he knocked down little German soldiers.

“Oh, right,” I said. I knew Annabeth's dad was a professor of military history. She'd never mentioned he played with toy soldiers.

Zoë came over and studied the battlefield. “The German lines were farther from the river.”

Dr. Chase stared at her. “How do you know that?”

“I was there,” she said matter-of-factly. “Artemis wanted to show us how horrible war was, the way mortal men fight each other. And how foolish, too. The battle was a complete waste.”

Dr. Chase opened his mouth in shock. “You—”

“She's a Hunter, sir,” Thalia said. “But that's not why we're here. We need—”

“You saw the Sopwith Camels?” Dr. Chase said. “How many were there? What formations did they fly?”

“Sir,” Thalia broke in again. “Annabeth is in danger.”

That got his attention. He set the biplane down.

“Of course,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

It wasn't easy, but we tried. Meanwhile, the afternoon light was fading outside. We were running out of time.

When we'd finished, Dr. Chase collapsed in his leather recliner. He laced his hands. “My poor brave Annabeth. We must hurry.”

“Sir, we need transportation to Mount Tamalpais,” Zoë said. “And we need it immediately.”

“I'll drive you. Hmm, it would be faster to fly in my Camel, but it only seats two.”

“Whoa, you have an actual biplane?” I said.

“Down at Crissy Field,” Dr. Chase said proudly. “That's the reason I had to move here. My sponsor is a private collector with some of the finest World War I relics in the world. He let me restore the Sopwith Camel—”

“Sir,” Thalia said. “Just a car would be great. And it might be better if we went without you. It's too dangerous.”

Dr. Chase frowned uncomfortably. “Now wait a minute, young lady. Annabeth is my daughter. Dangerous or not, I . . . I can't just—”

“Snacks,” Mrs. Chase announced. She pushed through the door with a tray full of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and Cokes and cookies fresh out of the oven, the chocolate chips still gooey. Thalia and I inhaled a few cookies while Zoë said, “I can drive, sir. I'm not as young as I look. I promise not to destroy your car.”

Mrs. Chase knit her eyebrows. “What's this about?”

“Annabeth is in danger,” Dr. Chase said. “On Mount Tam. I would drive them, but . . . apparently it's no place for mortals.”

It sounded like it was really hard for him to get that last part out.

I waited for Mrs. Chase to say no. I mean, what mortal parent would allow three underage teenagers to borrow their car? To my surprise, Mrs. Chase nodded. “Then they'd better get going.”

“Right!” Dr. Chase jumped up and started patting his pockets. “My keys . . .”

His wife sighed. “Frederick, honestly. You'd lose your head if it weren't wrapped inside your aviator hat. The keys are hanging on the peg by the front door.”

“Right!” Dr. Chase said.

Zoë grabbed a sandwich. “Thank you both. We should go.
Now
.”

We hustled out the door and down the stairs, the Chases right behind us.

“Percy,” Mrs. Chase called as I was leaving, “tell Annabeth . . . Tell her she still has a home here, will you? Remind her of that.”

I took one last look at the messy living room, Annabeth's half brothers spilling LEGOs and arguing, the smell of cookies filling the air. Not a bad place, I thought.

“I'll tell her,” I promised.

We ran out to the yellow VW convertible parked in the driveway. The sun was going down. I figured we had less than an hour to save Annabeth.

“Can't this thing go any faster?” Thalia demanded.

Zoë glared at her. “I cannot control traffic.”

“You both sound like my mother,” I said.

“Shut up!” they said in unison.

Zoë weaved in and out of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. The sun was sinking on the horizon when we finally got into Marin County and exited the highway.

The roads were insanely narrow, winding through forests and up the sides of hills and around the edges of steep ravines. Zoë didn't slow down at all.

“Why does everything smell like cough drops?” I asked.

“Eucalyptus.” Zoë pointed to the huge trees all around us.