Great Stir Pot –.
However bad you think you are, I’m worse.
We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and I found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept climbing. A minute later Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately, that something was my face.
Rachel’s voice. Something flew past me, and a blue plastic hairbrush hit Kronos in the eye.
Even here in the Underworld, everybody – even monsters – needed a little attention once in a while.
She looked like a hippie who’d been kicked to the side of the road maybe forty years ago, where she’d been collecting trash and rags ever since. She wore a dress made of tie-dyed cloth, ripped-up quilts, and plastic grocery bags. Her frizzy mop of hair was gray-brown, like root-beer foam, tied back with a peace-sign headband. Warts and moles covered her face. When she smiled, she showed exactly three teeth.
I’m right here.” He tried to put his hand.
It was hard to measure time, but Jason figured his friends slept about four hours. Jason didn’t mind. Now that he was resting, he didn’t really feel the need for more sleep. He’d been conked out long enough on the dragon. Plus, he needed time to think about the quest, his sister Thalia and Hera’s warnings. He also didn’t mind Piper using him for a pillow. She had a cute way of breathing when she slept – inhaling through the nose, exhaling with a little puff through the mouth. He was almost.
TWENTY-NINE We Are Falafel-Jacked by an Eagle.
Only Ephialtes’s snake feet stuck out, darting their heads around, as if wondering where the rest of their body had gone. The crowd roared with approval, but Percy suspected Ephialtes was only stunned.
Mykonos, which probably meant it was time for them to get.
You would do well to listen more and talk less, boy.
What kind of name is Phineas? Sounds like a cartoon character.
It’s hard to describe the feeling. And I knew from Horus’s memory that this kind of union was very rare – like the one time when the coin doesn’t land heads or tails, but stands on its edge, perfectly balanced. He did not control me. I did not use him for power. We acted as one. Our voices spoke in harmony: “Now.” And the magic bonds that held us shattered.
Braccas meas vescimini!
There was a time when those words would’ve been bellowed loud enough to shake the furniture. I would’ve apologized for bringing Lillian home late, for using my horn in the driveway, for wearing the wrong clothes in front of their friends, just for fear of being murdered by this man. Now when he spoke, the words were more like hammer strikes on a saw blade, loud but shaky, so watery they were almost absurd in their force.
Jump into the harbor,” he said casually, like another kid might say, I’m going to get a snack.
I sometimes forget that as bad as you think your family is, there’s always someone who has it worse.
I tried to remember anything from the old stories that might help with this thing. Annabeth had told me about a monster crab – something about Hercules crushing it under his foot? That wasn’t going to work here. This crab was slightly bigger than my Reeboks.
The situation was so pathetically sad, it was almost funny.