Charmolypi

Chapter 90

The scene changed showing the campers filing into the dining pavilion, cabin after the other. Once everyone was seated, Percy led Tyson into the middle of the pavilion, where all heads turned to him.

"Who invited that?" someone asked from the Apollo table. Percy glared in the general direction of the voice, but he couldn't identify who it belonged to.

"Shove off!"

"There's no need to be rude!"

From the head table a familiar voice drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete."

Percy gritted my teeth. "Percy Jackson ... sir."

Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever."

He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with black socks. With his pudgy belly and his blotchy red face, he looked like a Las Vegas tourist who'd stayed up too late in the casinos. Behind him, a nervous-looking satyr was peeling the skins off grapes and handing them to Mr. D, one at a time.

"There's something I don't like about him," Pandora told her fiancée that was sitting right beside her.

Next to him, where Chiron usually sat, was someone Percy had never seen before-a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner's jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails, and badly cut gray hair. His look made Percy uncomfortable.

"They...they brought a prisoner to replace Chiron?" Fleamont asked, not processing the fact that the gods had fired the person they had entrusted their children to for centuries, only for him to be replaced by a criminal.

"This boy," Dionysus told him, "you need to watch. Poseidon's child, you know."

"He said it in such an insulting way..."

"He's no better! Your father's a whore!" Sirius yelled, and an eath shaking clap of thunder rang, which made many, particularly from his family.

"Ah!" the prisoner said. "That one." His tone made it obvious that he and Dionysus had already discussed me at length. "I am Tantalus," the prisoner said, smiling coldly. "On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble."

"Trouble?" Percy demanded.

Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table-the front page of today's New York Post, There was Percy's yearbook picture from Meriwether Prep. It was hard for him to make out the headline, but he had a pretty good guess what it said. Something like: Thirteen-Year-Old Lunatic Torches Gymnasium.

"Oof that's bad."

"No wonder the kid has such a bad reputation."

"You make a good point."

"Yeah, especially after what happened last year."

"Yes, trouble," Tantalus said with satisfaction. "You caused plenty of it last summer, I understand." Percy was too mad to speak.

"Like it was his fault that our parents were going to cause a civil war," Thea said rolling her eyes. Tantalus' cold gaze shifted from the son of Poseidon to the daughter of Zeus, who returned the look with an even colder one.

"Yes Thea!"

"You show him!"

A satyr inched forward nervously and set a plate of barbecue in front of Tantalus. The new activities director tore his eyes from the girl and licked his lips. He looked at his empty goblet and said, "Root beer. Barq's special stock. 1967." The glass filled itself with foamy soda. Tantalus stretched out his hand hesitantly, as if he were afraid the goblet was hot.