LUNACY; percy jackson

03.13

Zoë threw up her hands in exasperation. "I hate this language. It changes too often!"

Grover sighed. He was still looking up at the stars like he was thinking about the light pollution problem. "If only Pan were here, he would set things right."

Zoë nodded sadly.

"Maybe it was the coffee," Grover said. "I was drinking coffee, and the wind came. Maybe if I drank more coffee..."

Andromeda wondered, but then again she wondered many things in her life. She wondered if the Fates were telling the truth about the things they spoke of, if the gods were all as terrible as they seemed, if things were as simple as they appeared. She wondered if she were to disappear of the face of the planet, would anyone who actually cared about her notice? She wondered many things, but she did not wonder if Pan sent them a gift because Grover had been drinking coffee. She knows it was Pan; she just thinks it was because Grover had enough faith in the gods that, when it was needed, they would provide help. She just wondered what had happened to the faith that she used to have.

"Grover, do you really think that was Pan? I mean, I know you want it to be." Percy questioned, looking in the satyrs direction.

"He sent us help," Grover insisted. "I don't know how or why. But it was his presence. After this quest is done, I'm going back to New Mexico and drinking a lot of coffee. It's the best lead we've gotten in two thousand years. I was so close."

No one said anything, they all just sat in the silence and let his words sink in.

"What I want to know," Thalia said, looking at Bianca, "is how you destroyed one of the zombies. There are a lot more out there somewhere. We need to figure out how to fight them."

Bianca shook her head. "I don't know. I just stabbed it and it went up in flames."

"Maybe there's something special about your knife," Percy said.

"It is the same as mine," Zoë said. "Celestial bronze, yes. But mine did not affect the warriors that way."

"Maybe you have to hit the skeleton in a certain spot," he said.

Bianca looked uncomfortable with everybody paying attention to her.

Andromeda's eyebrows pinched together, looking at the girl curiously. She examined her face and the way she carried herself, finding it eerily familiar to another person. A certain lord of the Underworld. The dark hair, pale skin, dark eyes like the color of cobalt, the way that she was able to kill the dead soldiers as if they were nothing, with just a stab of her knife.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

"Never mind," Zoë told them. "We will find the answer. In the meantime, we should plan our next move. When we get through this junkyard, we must continue west. If we can find a road, we can hitchhike to the nearest city. I think that would be Las Vegas."

Percy was about to protest that Grover, Andromeda, and him had had bad experiences in that town, but Bianca beat them to it.

"No!" she said. "Not there!"

She looked really freaked out, like she'd just been dropped off the steep end of a roller coaster.

Zoë frowned. "Why?"

Bianca took a shaky breath. "I...I think we stayed there for a while. Nico and I. When we were traveling. And then, I can't remember..."

Suddenly Percy had a really bad thought. He remembered what Bianca had told him about Nico and her staying in a hotel for a while. He met Grover's eyes, and he got the feeling he was thinking the same thing.