THE HEALER| Heroes of Olympus

nine

Hazel wrinkled her nose. "What are you talking about?"

"Just curious how much I'm going for these days," Leo said. "I mean, I can understand not being as pricey as Percy or Jason, maybe...but am I worth, like, two Franks, or three Franks?"

"Hey!" Frank complained.

Jasper and I both glanced at each other at the same time. 

"I'm worth two of you." We said in unison. We looked away from each other and hid our smiles. Our arguing was now mostly playful as well as making fun of each other. 

"Knock it off," Annabeth ordered. "At least we know our next step is to go to Charleston, to find this map."

Piper leaned against the control panel. She'd done her braid with white feathers today, which looked good with her dark brown hair. I wondered where she had found the time. 

"The Mark of Athena." Percy looked cautiously at Annabeth, like he was afraid he'd overstepped. She was putting out a very strong I don't want to talk about it vibe. 

"Whatever that is," he continued. "We know it leads to something important in Rome, something that might heal the rift between the Romans and Greeks."

"The giants' bane," Hazel added.

Percy nodded. "And in my dream, the twin giants said something about a statue."

"Um..." Frank rolled his not-exactly-Chinese handcuffs between his fingers. "According to Phorcys, we'd have to be insane to try to find it. But what is it?"

Everyone looked at Annabeth.

"I—I'm close to an answer," she said. "I'll know more if we find this map. Jason, the way you reacted to the name

Charleston...have you been there before?"

Jason glanced uneasily at Piper, though I wasn't sure why.

"Yeah," he admitted. "Reyna and I did a quest there about a year ago. We were salvaging Imperial gold weapons from the C.S.S. Hunley."

"The what?" Piper asked.

"Whoa!" Leo said. "That's the first successful military submarine. From the Civil War. I always wanted to see that."

"It was designed by Roman demigods," Jason said. "It held a secret stash of Imperial gold torpedoes—until we rescued them and brought them back to Camp Jupiter."

Hazel crossed her arms. "So the Romans fought on the Confederate side? As a girl whose grandmother was a slave, can I just say...not cool?"

Jason put his hands in front of him, palms up. "I personally was not alive then. And it wasn't all Greeks on one side and all Romans on the other. But, yes. Not cool. Sometimes demigods make bad choices." He looked sheepishly at Hazel. "Like sometimes we're too suspicious. And we speak without thinking."

Hazel stared at him. Slowly it seemed to dawn on her that he was apologizing.

Jason elbowed Leo.

"Ow!" Leo yelped. "I mean, yeah...bad choices. Like not trusting people's brothers who, you know, might need saving. Hypothetically speaking."

Hazel pursed her lips. "Fine. Back to Charleston. Are you saying we should check that submarine again?"

Jason shrugged. "Well...I can think of two places in Charleston we might search. The museum where they keep the Hunley—that's one of them. It has a lot of relics from the Civil War. A map could be hidden in one. I know the layout. I could lead a team inside."