The war god was waiting for them in the diner parking lot.
"Well, well," he said. "You didn't get yourself killed."
"You knew it was a trap," Percy said.
Ares gave them a wicked grin. "Bet that crippled blacksmith was surprised when he netted a couple of stupid kids. You looked good on TV," he told Y/N and Annabeth.
Y/N shoved his shield at him. "Hope you liked the show."
Ares grabbed the shield and spun it in the air like pizza dough. It changed form, melting into a bulletproof vest. He slung it across his back.
"See that truck over there?" He pointed to an eighteen-wheeler parked across the street from the diner. "That's your ride. Take you straight to L.A., with one stop in Vegas."
The eighteen-wheeler had a sign on the back, which was readable only because it was reverse-printed white on black, a good combination for dyslexia: KINDNESS INTERNATIONAL: HUMANE ZOO TRANSPORT. WARNING: LIVE WILD ANIMALS.
Y/N said, "You're kidding."
Ares snapped his fingers. The back door of the truck unlatched. "Free ride west, punk. Stop complaining. And here's a little something for doing the job."
He slung a blue nylon backpack off his handlebars and tossed it to Y/N.
Inside were fresh clothes for all of them, twenty bucks in cash, a pouch full of golden drachmas, and a bag of Double Stuf Oreos.
"We don't want your lousy—" Percy started to say.
"Thank you, Lord Ares," Ethan interrupted. "Thanks a lot."
Y/N thought it was probably a deadly insult to refuse something from a god.
He looked back at the diner, which had only a couple of customers now. The waitress who had served them dinner was watching nervously out the window, like she was afraid Ares might hurt them. She dragged the fry cook out from the kitchen to see. She said something to him. He nodded, held up a little disposable camera and snapped a picture of them.
Great, he thought. We'll make the papers again tomorrow.
With their luck, the headline would probably be something like: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD OUTLAWS BEAT UP DEFENSELESS BIKER.
"You owe me one more thing," Percy told Ares. "You promised me information about my mother."
"You sure you can handle the news?" Ares kick-started his motorcycle. "She's not dead."
Percy's eyes opened wider. "What do you mean?"
"I mean she was taken away from the Minotaur before she could die. She was turned into a shower of gold, right? That's metamorphosis. Not death. She's being kept."
"Kept. Why?" Percy asked.
"You need to study war, punk. Hostages. You take somebody to control somebody else."
"Nobody's controlling me," Percy said.
Ares laughed. "Oh yeah? See you around, kid."
Percy balled up his fists. "You're pretty smug, Lord Ares, for a guy who runs from Cupid statues."
Behind the sunglasses, fire glowed. Y/N felt hot wind in his hair. "We'll meet again, Percy Jackson. Next time you're in a fight, watch your back."
Ares revved his Harvey, then roared off down Delancy Street.
Annabeth said, "That was not smart, Percy."
"I don't care," Percy grumbled.
"You don't want a god as your enemy. Especially not that god," Grover told Percy.
"Hey, guys," Ethan said. "I hate to interrupt, but..."
He pointed toward the diner. At the register, the last two customers were paying their check, two men in identical black coveralls, with a white logo on their backs that matched the one on the KINDNESS INTERNATIONAL truck.
"If we're taking the zoo express," Ethan said, "we need to hurry."
Y/N didn't like it, but they had no better option. Besides, he had seen enough of Denver.
They ran across the street and climbed in the back of the big rig, closing the door behind them.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. It was the world's biggest pan of kitty litter.
The trailer was dark inside until Percy uncapped his sword—it cast a faint bronze light; what more could you ask for? Sitting in a row of filthy metal cages were three of the most pathetic animals he had ever beheld: a zebra, a male albino lion, and some weird antelope thing he didn't know the name for.
Someone had thrown the lion a sack of turnips, which he obviously didn't want to eat. The zebra and the antelope had each gotten a Styrofoam tray of hamburger meat. The zebra's mane was matted with chewing gum, like somebody had been spitting on it in their spare time. The antelope had a stupid silver birthday balloon tied to one of his horns that read OVER THE HILL!
Apparently, nobody had wanted to get close enough to the lion to mess with him, but the poor thing was pacing around on soiled blankets, in a space way too small for him, panting from the stuffy heat of the trailer. He had flies buzzing around his pink eyes and his ribs showed through his white fur.
"This is kindness?" Grover yelled. "Humane zoo transport?"
He and Ethan would've probably gone right back outside to beat up the truckers with reed pipes and quarterstaff, and Y/N would've helped them, but just then the truck's engine roared to life, the trailer started shaking, and they were forced to sit down or fall down.
They huddled in the corner on some mildewed feed sacks, trying to ignore the smell and the heat and the flies. Ethan talked to the animals in a series of goat bleats, but they just stared at him sadly. Annabeth was in favor of breaking the cages and freeing them on the spot, but Percy pointed out it wouldn't do much good until the truck stopped moving. Besides—but he thought it would be rude to the lion to say it aloud—Y/N had a feeling they might look a lot better to the lion than those turnips.
He found a water jag and refiled the animals' bowls, then Percy used his sword to drag the mismatched food out of their cages. He gave the meat to the lion and the turnips to the zebra and the antelope.
Grover calmed the antelope down, while Annabeth used her knife to cut the balloon off his horn. She wanted to cut the gum out of the zebra's mane, too, but they decided that would be too risky with the truck bumping around. Y/N, Annabeth and Percy told Ethan and Grover to promise the animals they'd help them more in the morning, then they settled in for the night.
Grover curled up on a turnip sack; Annabeth opened the bag of Double Stuf Oreos and nibbled on one halfheartedly; Ethan played with his banana sunhat; Percy looked lost in his thought; Y/N tried to juggle with his ring.
"Hey, Y/N," Annabeth said, "I'm sorry for freaking out back at the water park."
"That's okay," he said.
"It's just..." She shuddered. "Spiders."
"Because of the Arachne story," he guessed. "She got turned into a spider for challenging your mom to a weaving contest, right?"
Annabeth nodded. "Arachne's children have been taking revenge on the children of Athena ever since. If there's a spider within a mile of me, it'll find me. I hate the creepy little things. Anyway, I owe you."
"We're a team, aren't we?" he said. "Besides, Grover did the fancy flying."
He had thought Grover was asleep, but he mumbled from the corner, "I was pretty amazing, wasn't I?"
Y/N, Annabeth, Ethan and Percy laughed.
Annabeth pulled apart an Oreo, handed him half. "In the Iris message...did Luke really say nothing?"
He munched his cookie in silence. He had forgotten the conversation.
"Luke said you and he go way back," Percy said before he could recall. "He also said Grover wouldn't fail this time. Nobody would turn into a pine tree."
In the dim bronze light of the sword blade—what a wonderful sword—it was hard to read facial expressions.
Grover let out a mournful bray.
"I should've told you the truth from the beginning." His voice trembled. "I thought if you knew what a failure I was, you wouldn't want me along."
"You were the satyr who tried to rescue Thalia, the daughter of Zeus," Y/N guessed.
Grover nodded glumly.
"And the other two half-bloods Thalia befriended, the ones who got safely to the camp..." Y/N looked at Annabeth. "That was you and Luke, wasn't it?"
She put down her Oreo, uneaten. "A seven-year-old half-blood wouldn't have made it very far alone. Athena guided me toward help. Thalia was twelve. Luke was fourteen. They'd both run away from home, like me. They were happy to take me with them. They were...amazing monster-fighters, even without training. We traveled from Virginia without any real plans, fending off monsters for about two weeks before Grover found us."
"I was supposed to escort Thalia to camp," Grover said, sniffling. "Only Thalia. I had strict orders from Chiron: don't do anything that would slow down the rescue. We knew Hades was after her, but I couldn't just leave Luke and Annabeth by themselves. I thought...I thought I could lead all three of them to safety. It was my fault the Kindly Ones caught up with us. I froze. I got scared on the way back to camp and took some wrong turns. If I'd just been a little quicker..."
"Stop it," Ethan said. "No one blames you."
"Thalia sacrificed herself to save us," Grover said miserably. "Her death was my fault. The Council of Cloven Elders said so."
"There's only the old from the Council to say that," Ethan said, "and it's been years they didn't help any half-blood. Screw their opinion."
"Ethan's right," Annabeth said. "I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for you, Grover. Neither would Luke. We don't care what the council says."
Grover kept sniffling in the dark. "It's just my luck. I'm the lamest satyr ever, and I find the two most powerful half-bloods of the century, Thalia and Percy."
"You're not lame," Annabeth insisted. "You've got more courage than any satyr I've ever met. Name one other who would dare go to the Underworld, saving Ethan. I bet Percy is really glad you're here right now."
"Yeah," Percy said "It's not luck that you found Thalia and me, Grover. You've got the biggest heart of any satyr ever. You're a natural searcher. That's why you'll be the one who finds Pan."
Y/N heard a deep, satisfied sigh. He waited for Grover to say something, but his breathing only got heavier. When the sound turned to snoring, he realized he had fallen asleep.
Everybody began dozing off. Y/N felt Percy's head falling against his shoulder. He moved it away; he had already learned his lesson for the drool.
In five minutes, everyone was asleep except for him.
"How do they do that?" he marveled out loud.
"I don't know," Annabeth said.
He gave a start. He hadn't noticed she was still awake.
Annabeth rubbed her necklace like she was thinking deep, strategic thoughts.
"That pine-tree bead," he said. "Is that from your first year?"
She looked. She hadn't realized what she was doing.
"Yeah," she said. "Every August, the counselors pick the most important event of the summer, and they paint it on that year's beads. I've got Thalia's pine tree, a Greek trireme on fire, a centaur in a prom dress—now that was a weird summer...."
"And the college ring is your father's?"
"That none of your—" She stopped herself. "Yeah. Yeah, it is."
"You don't have to tell me."
"No...it's okay." She took a shaky breath. "My dad sent it to me folded up in a letter, two summers ago. The ring was, like, his main keepsake from Athena. He wouldn't have gotten through his doctoral program at Harvard without her.... That's a long story. Anyway, he said he wanted me to have it. He apologized for being a jerk, said he loved me and missed me. He wanted me to come home and live with him."
"That doesn't sound so bad."
"Yeah, well...the problem was, I believed him. I tried to go home for that school year, but my stepmom was the same as ever. She didn't want her kids put in danger by living with a freak. Monsters attacked. We argued. Monsters attacked. We argued. I didn't even make it through winter break. I called Chiron and came right back to Camp Half-Blood."
"You think you'll ever try living with your dad again?"
She wouldn't meet his eyes. "Please. I'm not into self-inflicted pain."
"You shouldn't give up," he told her. "You should write him a letter or something, at least."
"Thanks for the advice," she said coldly, "but my father's made his choice about who he wants to live with."
They passed a few miles in silence.
"I'm sorry," Annabeth said.
"Oh, don't be," he told her awkwardly. "It's you who's right—"
"No, I shouldn't have said that," she said.
"Let's not think about it anymore," Y/N interrupted, uncomfortable.
Slowly, Annabeth fell asleep against Ares's backpack. He had no trouble following her example.