Percy Jackson Son of Hades

Chapter 5: My first date gets ruined by spiders

The next thing we knew it was June 14, one day since the whole blowing up the Arch thing, seven days before the solstice, our train rolled into Denver. We hadn't eaten since the last night, when we were somewhere in Kansas. We hadn't taken a shower since Half-Blood Hill, and I am pretty sure that is obvious to literally everyone around us.

"Let's try to contact Chiron," Annabeth said. "I want to tell him talk to him about how the quest is going."

"How we don't have any phones, do we?" I ask

"No, we don't and even if we did, we couldn't use them, technology boosts our scent/signal for all monsters to smell."

"Oh, definitely a bad idea then" I respond

Annabeth dragged Grover and myself away from the train station, we wandered through downtown for about half an hour, though I wasn't sure what Annabeth was looking for. The air was dry and hot, which felt weird after the humidity of St. Louis. Everywhere we turned, the Rocky Mountains seemed to be staring at us, like a big rocky tidal wave about to crash into the city.

Finally, we found an empty do it yourself car wash. We veered toward the stall farthest from the street, keeping our eyes open for patrol cars. We were three adolescents hanging out at a car wash without a car, it obviously looked like we were gonna get up to no good.

"What exactly are we doing?" I asked, as Grover was taking out a spray gun.

"It's seventy-five cents," he grumbled. "I've only got two quarters left. Annabeth?"

"I got no change on me sorry." Annabeth responds

I fished out my last bit of change and passed Grover a quarter.

"Cheers Percy," Grover said. "Now we could do it with a spray bottle, of course, but the connection isn't as good, and my arm gets tired of pumping."

"What are you talking about?"

He fed in the quarters and set the knob to FINE MIST. "IM'ing."

"What instant messaging, I thought we couldn't use technology?"

Annabeth just looked at me like I was stupid but didn't bother explaining it.

"IM'ing is Iris Messaging, the rainbow goddess Iris carries messages for the gods. If you know how to ask, and she's not too busy, she'll do the same for half-bloods."

"Oh, cool so it's kinda like actual IM'ing"

"Yeah but instant messaging doesn't let you see the person face to face now does it?" Annabeth asked in a know it all kind of tone.

Woah now that's impressive I don't even know how long its gonna take mortal technology to catch up, years, decades?

"You summon the goddess with a spray gun?" I ask still kind of dumbfound.

Grover pointed the nozzle in the air and water hissed out in a thick white mist. "Unless you know an easier way to make a rainbow."

Sure enough, late afternoon light filtered through the vapor and broke into colors.

Annabeth held her palm out to me. "Drachma, please."

I mumbled something about being a bank or something while handing over two or three Drachmas, while bird brain and goat boy just laughed.

She raised the coin over her head. "O goddess, accept our offering."

She threw the drachma into the rainbow. It disappeared in a golden shimmer.

"Half-Blood Hill," Annabeth requested.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then I was looking through the mist at strawberry fields, with Long Island Sound in the distance. We seemed to be on the porch of the Big House. Standing with his back to us at the railing was a sandy haired guy in shorts and an orange tank top. He was holding a bronze sword and seemed to be staring intently at something down in the meadow