Percy Jackson The Complete Collection (11 page)

We got restless waiting for the bus and decided to play some Hacky Sack with one of Grover’s apples. Annabeth was unbelievable. She could bounce the apple off her knee, her elbow, her shoulder, whatever. I wasn’t too bad myself.

The game ended when I tossed the apple towards Grover and it got too close to his mouth. In one mega goat bite, our Hacky Sack disappeared – core, stem and all.

Grover blushed. He tried to apologize, but Annabeth and I were too busy cracking up.

Finally the bus came. As we stood in line to board, Grover started looking around, sniffing the air like he smelled his favourite school cafeteria delicacy – enchiladas.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said tensely. ‘Maybe it’s nothing.’

But I could tell it wasn’t nothing. I started looking over my shoulder, too.

I was relieved when we finally got on board and found seats together in the back of the bus. We stowed our backpacks. Annabeth kept slapping her Yankees cap nervously against her thigh.

As the last passengers got on, Annabeth clamped her hand onto my knee. ‘Percy.’

An old lady had just boarded the bus. She wore a crumpled velvet dress, lace gloves and a shapeless orange-knit
hat that shadowed her face, and she carried a big paisley purse. When she tilted her head up, her black eyes glittered, and my heart skipped a beat.

It was Mrs Dodds. Older, more withered, but definitely the same evil face.

I scrunched down in my seat.

Behind her came two more old ladies: one in a green hat, one in a purple hat. Otherwise they looked exactly like Mrs Dodds – same gnarled hands, paisley handbags, wrinkled velvet dresses. Triplet demon grandmothers.

They sat in the front row, right behind the driver. The two on the aisle crossed their legs over the walkway, making an X. It was casual enough, but it sent a clear message: nobody leaves.

The bus pulled out of the station, and we headed through the slick streets of Manhattan. ‘She didn’t stay dead long,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from quivering. ‘I thought you said they could be dispelled for a lifetime.’

‘I said if you’re
lucky,’
Annabeth said. ‘You’re obviously not.’

‘All three of them,’ Grover whimpered.
‘Di immortales!’

‘It’s okay,’ Annabeth said, obviously thinking hard. ‘The Furies. The three worst monsters from the Underworld. No problem. No problem. We’ll just slip out the windows.’

‘They don’t open,’ Grover moaned.

‘A back exit?’ she suggested.

There wasn’t one. Even if there had been, it wouldn’t
have helped. By that time, we were on Ninth Avenue, heading for the Lincoln Tunnel.

‘They won’t attack us with witnesses around,’ I said. ‘Will they?’

‘Mortals don’t have good eyes,’ Annabeth reminded me. ‘Their brains can only process what they see through the Mist.’

‘They’ll see three old ladies killing us, won’t they?’

She thought about it. ‘Hard to say. But we can’t count on mortals for help. Maybe an emergency exit in the roof…?’

We hit the Lincoln Tunnel, and the bus went dark except for the running lights down the aisle. It was eerily quiet without the sound of the rain.

Mrs Dodds got up. In a flat voice, as if she’d rehearsed it, she announced to the whole bus: ‘I need to use the restroom.’

‘So do I,’ said the second sister.

‘So do I,’ said the third sister.

They all started coming down the aisle.

‘I’ve got it,’ Annabeth said. ‘Percy, take my hat.’

‘What?’

‘You’re the one they want. Turn invisible and go up the aisle. Let them pass you. Maybe you can get to the front and get away.’

‘But you guys –’

‘There’s an outside chance they might not notice us,’ Annabeth said. ‘You’re a son of one of the Big Three. Your smell might be overpowering.’

‘I can’t just leave you.’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ Grover said. ‘Go!’

My hands trembled. I felt like a coward, but I took the Yankees cap and put it on.

When I looked down, my body wasn’t there any more.

I started creeping up the aisle. I managed to get up ten rows, then duck into an empty seat just as the Furies walked past.

Mrs Dodds stopped, sniffing, and looked straight at me. My heart was pounding.

Apparently she didn’t see anything. She and her sisters kept going.

I was free. I made it to the front of the bus. We were almost through the Lincoln Tunnel now. I was about to press the emergency stop button when I heard hideous wailing from the back row.

The old ladies were not old ladies any more. Their faces were still the same – I guess those couldn’t get any uglier – but their bodies had shrivelled into leathery brown hag bodies with bat’s wings and hands and feet like gargoyle claws. Their handbags had turned into fiery whips.

The Furies surrounded Grover and Annabeth, lashing their whips, hissing: ‘Where is it? Where?’

The other people on the bus were screaming, cowering in their seats. They saw
something,
all right.

‘He’s not here!’ Annabeth yelled. ‘He’s gone!’

The Furies raised their whips.

Annabeth drew her bronze knife. Grover grabbed a tin can from his snack bag and prepared to throw it.

What I did next was so impulsive and dangerous I should’ve been named ADHD poster child of the year.

The bus driver was distracted, trying to see what was going on in his rearview mirror.

Still invisible, I grabbed the wheel from him and jerked it to the left. Everybody howled as they were thrown to the right, and I heard what I hoped was the sound of three Furies smashing against the windows.

‘Hey!’ the driver yelled. ‘Hey – whoa!’

We wrestled for the wheel. The bus slammed against the side of the tunnel, grinding metal, throwing sparks a mile behind us.

We careened out of the Lincoln Tunnel and back into the rainstorm, people and monsters tossed around the bus, cars ploughed aside like bowling pins.

Somehow the driver found an exit. We shot off the highway, through half a dozen traffic lights, and ended up barrelling down one of those New Jersey rural roads where you can’t believe there’s so much nothing right across the river from New York. There were woods to our left, the Hudson River to our right and the driver seemed to be veering towards the river.

Another great idea: I hit the emergency brake.

The bus wailed, spun a full circle on the wet tar and crashed into the trees. The emergency lights came on. The door flew open. The bus driver was the first one out, the passengers yelling as they stampeded after him. I stepped into the driver’s seat and let them pass.

The Furies regained their balance. They lashed their
whips at Annabeth while she waved her knife and yelled in Ancient Greek, telling them to back off. Grover threw tin cans.

I looked at the open doorway. I was free to go, but I couldn’t leave my friends. I took off the invisible cap. ‘Hey!’

The Furies turned, baring their yellow fangs at me, and the exit suddenly sounded like an excellent idea. Mrs Dodds stalked up the aisle, just as she used to do in class, about to deliver my F- maths test. Every time she flicked her whip, red flames danced along the barbed leather.

Her two ugly sisters hopped on top of the seats on either side of her and crawled towards me like huge nasty lizards.

‘Perseus Jackson,’ Mrs Dodds said, in an accent that was definitely from somewhere further south than Georgia. ‘You have offended the gods. You shall die.’

‘I liked you better as a maths teacher,’ I told her.

She growled.

Annabeth and Grover moved up behind the Furies cautiously, looking for an opening.

I took the ballpoint pen out of my pocket and uncapped it. Riptide elongated into a shimmering double-edged sword.

The Furies hesitated.

Mrs Dodds had felt Riptide’s blade before. She obviously didn’t like seeing it again.

‘Submit now,’ she hissed. ‘And you will not suffer eternal torment.’

‘Nice try,’ I told her.

‘Percy, look out!’ Annabeth cried.

Mrs Dodds lashed her whip around my sword hand while the Furies on the either side lunged at me.

My hand felt like it was wrapped in molten lead, but I managed not to drop Riptide. I struck the Fury on the left with its hilt, sending her toppling backwards into a seat. I turned and sliced the Fury on the right. As soon as the blade connected with her neck, she screamed and exploded into dust. Annabeth got Mrs Dodds in a wrestler’s hold and yanked her backwards while Grover ripped the whip out of her hands.

‘Ow!’ he yelled. ‘Ow! Hot! Hot!’

The Fury I’d hilt-slammed came at me again, talons ready, but I swung Riptide and she broke open like a piñata.

Mrs Dodds was trying to get Annabeth off her back. She kicked, clawed, hissed and bit, but Annabeth held on while Grover got Mrs Dodds’s legs tied up in her own whip. Finally they both shoved her backwards into the aisle. Mrs Dodds tried to get up, but she didn’t have room to flap her bat wings, so she kept falling down.

‘Zeus will destroy you!’ she promised. ‘Hades will have your soul!’

‘Braccas meas vescimini!’
I yelled.

I wasn’t sure where the Latin came from. I think it meant ‘Eat my pants!’

Thunder shook the bus. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

‘Get out!’ Annabeth yelled at me. ‘Now!’ I didn’t need any encouragement.

We rushed outside and found the other passengers wandering around in a daze, arguing with the driver, or running around in circles yelling, ‘We’re going to die!’ A Hawaiian-shirted tourist with a camera snapped my photograph before I could recap my sword.

‘Our bags!’ Grover realized. ‘We left our –’

BOOOOOM!

The windows of the bus exploded as the passengers ran for cover. Lightning shredded a huge crater in the roof, but an angry wail from inside told me Mrs Dodds was not yet dead.

‘Run!’ Annabeth said. ‘She’s calling for reinforcements! We have to get out of here!’

We plunged into the woods as the rain poured down, the bus in flames behind us and nothing but darkness ahead.

So there we were, Annabeth and Grover and I, walking through the woods on the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind us and the smell of the Hudson reeking in our noses.

Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupilled and full of terror. ‘Three Kindly Ones. All three at once.’

I was pretty much in shock myself. The explosion of bus windows still rang in my ears. But Annabeth kept pulling us along, saying: ‘Come on! The further away we get, the better.’

‘All our money was back there,’ I reminded her. ‘Our food and clothes. Everything.’

‘Well, maybe if you hadn’t decided to jump into the fight –’

‘What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?’

‘You didn’t need to protect me, Percy. I would’ve been fine.’

‘Sliced like sandwich bread,’ Grover put in, ‘but fine.’

‘Shut up, goat boy,’ said Annabeth.

Grover brayed mournfully. ‘Tin cans… a perfectly good bag of tin cans.’

We sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like sour laundry.

After a few minutes, Annabeth fell into line next to me. ‘Look, I…’ Her voice faltered. ‘I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave.’

‘We’re a team, right?’

She was silent for a few more steps. ‘It’s just that if you died… aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world.’

The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind us, leaving us in almost total darkness. I couldn’t see anything of Annabeth except a glint of her blonde hair.

‘You haven’t left Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?’ I asked her.

‘No… only short field trips. My dad –’

‘The history professor.’

‘Yeah. It didn’t work out for me living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood
is
my home.’ She was rushing her words out now, as if she were afraid somebody might try to stop her. ‘At camp you train and train. And that’s all cool
and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That’s where you learn whether you’re any good or not.’

If I didn’t know better, I could’ve sworn I heard doubt in her voice.

‘You’re pretty good with that knife,’ I said.

‘You think so?’

‘Anybody who can piggyback-ride a Fury is okay by
me.’

I couldn’t really see, but I thought she might’ve smiled.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘maybe I should tell you… Something funny back on the bus…’

Whatever she wanted to say was interrupted by a shrill
toot˜toot˜toot,
like the sound of an owl being tortured.

‘Hey, my reed pipes still work!’ Grover cried. ‘If I could just remember a “find path” song, we could get out of these woods!’

He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still sounded suspiciously like Hilary Duff.

Instead of finding a path, I immediately slammed into a tree and got a nice-size knot on my head.

Add to the list of superpowers I did
not
have: infrared vision.

After tripping and cursing and generally feeling miserable for another mile or so, I started to see light up ahead: the colours of a neon sign. I could smell food. Fried, greasy, excellent food. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything unhealthy since I’d arrived at Half-Blood Hill, where we
lived on grapes, bread, cheese and extra-lean-cut nymph-prepared barbecue. This boy needed a double cheeseburger.

We kept walking until I saw a deserted two-lane road through the trees. On the other side was a closed-down gas station, a tattered billboard for a 1990s movie and one open business, which was the source of the neon light and the good smell.

It wasn’t a fast-food restaurant like I’d hoped. It was one of those weird roadside curio shops that sell lawn flamingos and wooden Indians and cement grizzly bears and stuff like that. The main building was a long, low warehouse, surrounded by acres of statuary. The neon sign above the gate was impossible for me to read, because if there’s anything worse for my dyslexia than regular English, it’s red cursive neon English.

To me, it looked like:
ATNYU MES GDERAN GOMEN MEPROIUM
.

‘What the heck does that say?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Annabeth said.

She loved reading so much, I’d forgotten she was dyslexic, too.

Grover translated: ‘Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium.’

Flanking the entrance, as advertised, were two cement garden gnomes, ugly bearded little runts, smiling and waving, as if they were about to get their picture taken.

I crossed the street, following the smell of the hamburgers.

‘Hey…’ Grover warned.

‘The lights are on inside,’ Annabeth said. ‘Maybe it’s open.’

‘Snack bar,’ I said wistfully.

‘Snack bar,’ she agreed.

‘Are you two crazy?’ Grover said. ‘This place is weird.’

We ignored him.

The front garden was a forest of statues: cement animals, cement children, even a cement satyr playing the pipes, which gave Grover the creeps.

‘Bla-ha-ha!’ he bleated. ‘Looks like my Uncle Ferdinand!’

We stopped at the warehouse door.

‘Don’t knock,’ Grover pleaded. ‘I smell monsters.’

‘Your nose is clogged up from the Furies,’ Annabeth told him. ‘All I smell is burgers. Aren’t you hungry?’

‘Meat!’ he said scornfully. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’

‘You eat cheese enchiladas and aluminium cans,’ I reminded him.

‘Those are vegetables. Come on. Let’s leave. These statues are… looking at me.’

Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle Eastern woman – at least, I assumed she was Middle Eastern, because she wore a long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was completely veiled. Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was about all I could make out. Her coffee-coloured hands looked old, but well-manicured and elegant, so I imagined she was a grandmother who had once been a beautiful lady.

Her accent sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, too. She
said, ‘Children, it is too late to be out all alone. Where are your parents?’

‘They’re… um…’ Annabeth started to say.

‘We’re orphans,’ I said.

‘Orphans?’ the woman said. The word sounded alien in her mouth. ‘But, my dears! Surely not!’

‘We got separated from our caravan,’ I said. ‘Our circus caravan. The ringmaster told us to meet him at the gas station if we got lost, but he may have forgotten, or maybe he meant a different gas station. Anyway, we’re lost. Is that food I smell?’

‘Oh, my dears,’ the woman said. ‘You must come in, poor children. I am Aunty Em. Go straight through to the back of the warehouse, please. There is a dining area.’

We thanked her and went inside.

Annabeth muttered to me, ‘Circus caravan?’

‘Always have a strategy, right?’

‘Your head is full of kelp.’

The warehouse was filled with more statues – people in all different poses, wearing all different outfits and with different expressions on their faces. I was thinking you’d have to have a pretty huge garden to fit even one of these statues, because they were all life-size. But mostly I was thinking about food.

Go ahead, call me an idiot for walking into a strange lady’s shop like that just because I was hungry, but I do impulsive stuff sometimes. Plus, you’ve never smelled Aunty Em’s burgers. The aroma was like laughing gas in the dentist’s chair – it made everything else go away. I barely
noticed Grover’s nervous whimpers, or the way the statues’ eyes seemed to follow me, or the fact that Aunty Em had locked the door behind us.

All I cared about was finding the dining area. And, sure enough, there it was at the back of the warehouse, a fast-food counter with a grill, a soda fountain, a pretzel heater and a nacho cheese dispenser. Everything you could want, plus a few steel picnic tables out front.

‘Please, sit down,’ Aunty Em said.

‘Awesome,’ I said.

‘Um,’ Grover said reluctantly, ‘we don’t have any money, ma’am.’

Before I could jab him in the ribs, Aunty Em said, ‘No, no, children. No money. This is a special case, yes? It is my treat, for such nice orphans.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Annabeth said.

Aunty Em stiffened, as if Annabeth had done something wrong, but then the old woman relaxed just as quickly, so I figured it must’ve been my imagination.

‘Quite all right, Annabeth,’ she said. ‘You have such beautiful grey eyes, child.’ Only later did I wonder how she knew Annabeth’s name, even though we had never introduced ourselves.

Our hostess disappeared behind the snack counter and started cooking. Before we knew it, she’d brought us plastic trays heaped with double cheeseburgers, vanilla shakes and XXL servings of French fries.

I was halfway through my burger before I remembered to breathe.

Annabeth slurped her shake.

Grover picked at the fries, and eyed the tray’s waxed paper liner as if he might go for that, but he still looked too nervous to eat.

‘What’s that hissing noise?’ he asked.

I listened, but didn’t hear anything. Annabeth shook her head.

‘Hissing?’ Aunty Em asked. ‘Perhaps you hear the deep-fryer oil. You have keen ears, Grover.’

‘I take vitamins. For my ears.’

‘That’s admirable,’ she said. ‘But please, relax.’

Aunty Em ate nothing. She hadn’t taken off her headdress, even to cook, and now she sat forward and interlaced her fingers and watched us eat. It was a little unsettling, having someone stare at me when I couldn’t see her face, but I was feeling satisfied after the burger, and a little sleepy, and I figured the least I could do was try to make small talk with our hostess.

‘So, you sell gnomes,’ I said, trying to sound interested.

‘Oh, yes,’ ‘Aunty Em said. And animals. And people. Anything for the garden. Custom orders. Statuary is very popular, you know.’

‘A lot of business on this road?’

‘Not so much, no. Since the highway was built… most cars, they do not go this way now. I must cherish every customer I get.’

My neck tingled, as if somebody else was looking at me. I turned, but it was just a statue of a young girl holding an Easter basket. The detail was incredible, much better than
you see in most garden statues. But something was wrong with her face. It looked as if she were startled, or even terrified.

‘Ah,’ Aunty Em said sadly. ‘You notice some of my creations do not turn out well. They are marred. They do not sell. The face is the hardest to get right. Always the face.’

‘You make these statues yourself?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes. Once upon a time, I had two sisters to help me in the business, but they have passed on, and Aunty Em is alone. I have only my statues. This is why I make them, you see. They are my company.’ The sadness in her voice sounded so deep and so real that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

Annabeth had stopped eating. She sat forward and said, ‘Two sisters?’

‘It’s a terrible story,’ Aunty Em said. ‘Not one for children, really. You see, Annabeth, a bad woman was jealous of me, long ago, when I was young. I had a… a boyfriend, you know, and this bad woman was determined to break us apart. She caused a terrible accident. My sisters stayed by me. They shared my bad fortune as long as they could, but eventually they passed on. They faded away. I alone have survived, but at a price. Such a price.’

I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I felt bad for her. My eyelids kept getting heavier, my full stomach making me sleepy. Poor old lady. Who would want to hurt somebody so nice?

‘Percy?’ Annabeth was shaking me to get my attention.
‘Maybe we should go. I mean, the ringmaster will be waiting.’

She sounded tense. I wasn’t sure why. Grover was eating the waxed paper off the tray now, but if Aunty Em found that strange, she didn’t say anything.

‘Such beautiful grey eyes,’ Aunty Em told Annabeth again. ‘My, yes, it has been a long time since I’ve seen grey eyes like those.’

She reached out as if to stroke Annabeth’s cheek, but Annabeth stood up abruptly.

‘We really should go.’

‘Yes!’ Grover swallowed his waxed paper and stood up. ‘The ringmaster is waiting! Right!’

I didn’t want to leave. I felt full and content. Aunty Em was so nice. I wanted to stay with her a while.

‘Please, dears,’ Aunty Em pleaded. ‘I so rarely get to be with children. Before you go, won’t you at least sit for a pose?’

‘A pose?’ Annabeth asked warily.

‘A photograph. I will use it to model a new statue set. Children are so popular, you see. Everyone loves children.’

Annabeth shifted her weight from foot to foot. ‘I don’t think we can, ma’am. Come on, Percy –’

‘Sure we can,’ I said. I was irritated with Annabeth for being so bossy, so rude to an old lady who’d just fed us for free. ‘It’s just a photo, Annabeth. What’s the harm?’

‘Yes, Annabeth,’ the woman purred. ‘No harm.’

I could tell Annabeth didn’t like it, but she allowed
Aunty Em to lead us back out the front door, into the garden of statues.

Aunty Em directed us to a park bench next to the stone satyr. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’ll just position you correctly. The young girl in the middle, I think, and the two young gentlemen on either side.’

‘Not much light for a photo,’ I remarked.

‘Oh, enough,’ Aunty Em said. ‘Enough for us to see each other, yes?’

‘Where’s your camera?’ Grover asked.

Aunty Em stepped back, as if to admire the shot. ‘Now, the face is the most difficult. Can you smile for me please, everyone? A large smile?’

Grover glanced at the cement satyr next to him, and mumbled, ‘That sure does look like Uncle Ferdinand.’

‘Grover,’ Aunty Em chastised, ‘look this way, dear.’

She still had no camera in her hands.

‘Percy –’ Annabeth said.

Some instinct warned me to listen to Annabeth, but I was fighting the sleepy feeling, the comfortable lull that came from the food and the old lady’s voice.

‘I will just be a moment,’ Aunty Em said. ‘You know, I can’t see you very well in this cursed veil…’