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Chapter 28
La démence

Volume 3: The Titan's Curse

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"Tell me when it's over," Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding on to them so they could not fall, but still Thalia clutched his arm like it was the most important thing in the world.

"Everything's fine," Percy promised.

"Are...are we very high?"

Percy said, "Nah. Not that high," but he could kick the snow off of the peaks of the mountains below them, so Pallas considered it high.

"We are in the Sierras!" Zoë yelled. She, Pat, and Grover were hanging from the arms of the other statue. "I have hunted here before. At this speed, we should be in San Francisco in a few hours."

"Hey, hey, Frisco!" Pallas' angel said. "Yo, Chuck! We could visit those guys at the Mechanics Monument again! They know how to party!"

"Oh, man," Chuck the angel said. "I am so there!"

"You guys have visited San Francisco?" Percy asked.

"We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" Pallas' statue said. "Those mechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble lady statues, see. And—"

"Hank!" Chuck cut in. "They're kids, man."

"Oh, right." If bronze statues could blush, Hank did. "Back to flying."

They sped up—obviously because the angels were excited to party. The mountains fell away into hills, and then they were zipping along over farmland and towns and highways.

Grover played his pipes to pass the time. Zoë got bored and started shooting arrows at random billboards as they flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store—and they passed dozens of them—she would peg the store's sign with a few bulls-eyes at a hundred miles an hour. Pat's hands looked white from gripping Chuck so hard, but other than that, he looked fine. On the other hand, Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole way. She muttered to herself a lot, like she was praying.

"You did good back there," Percy told her. "Zeus listened."

It was hard to tell what she was thinking with her eyes closed. "Maybe," she said. "How did you get away from the skeletons in the generator room, anyway? You said they cornered you."

Pallas and Thalia listened as Percy explained an encounter with a weird mortal girl who could see through the mist. Thalia nodded along with his words and explained, "Some mortals are like that. Nobody knows why."

"Well, the girl was annoying," Percy said. "But I'm glad I didn't vaporize her. That would've been bad."

Thalia nodded. "Must be nice to be a regular mortal." She said that as if she had given it a lot of thought.

"Where you guys want to land?" Hank asked.

Percy looked down and said, "Whoa."

San Francisco looked like the skylines Pallas' mother had painted. There was a huge bay like back home in Marseille, ships and sailboats everywhere. The Golden Gate Bridge stuck up out of the fog.

"There," Zoë suggested. "By the Embarcadero Building."

"Good thinking," Chuck said. "Me and Hank can blend in with the pigeons."

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