The sun was setting down behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins. Y/N, Annabeth, Ethan, Percy and Tyson stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in. Annabeth was still pretty shaken, but she promised she'd talk to the rest of them later. Then she went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin—a dozen boys and girls with blond hair and gray eyes like hers. Annabeth wasn't the oldest, but she had been at camp more summers than just about anybody. You could tell that by looking at her camp necklace—one bead for every summer, and Annabeth had six. No one questioned her right to lead the line.
Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn't seem to have fazed her. Someone had taped a piece of paper to her back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell her about it.
After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin—six guys led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteen-year-old African American kid. He had hands the size of catchers' mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmith's forge all day. He was nice once you got to know him, but no one ever called him Charlie or Chuck or Charles. Most just called him Beckendorf. Rumor was he could make anything. Give him a chunk of metal and he could create a razor-sharp sword or a robotic warrior or a singing birdbath for a grandmother's garden. Whatever anyone wanted.
The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came up from the canoe lake. Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came a dozen satyrs.
After the satyrs filed in to diner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. They were always the biggest cabin. Last summer, it had been led by Luke, the guy who'd fought with Thalia and Annabeth on top of Half-Blood Hill.
Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll. They weren't twins, but they looked so much alike it didn't matter. Y/N could never remember which one was older. They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes's kids had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes whenever they looked at you—like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt.
As soon as the last camper had filed in, Y/N walked into the middle of the pavilion, Percy and Tyson following a little behind. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. The Ares shoot lethal glares at Y/N. "Who invited that?" somebody at the Apollo table murmured, pointing at Tyson.
From the head table a familiar voice drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Y/N L/N and Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete."
"Percy Jackson . . . sir," Percy corrected.
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.
Next to him, where Chiron usually sat—or stood, in centaur form—was someone Y/N 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, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker. He stared at Y/N; his eyes made Y/N nervous. He looked . . . fractured. Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the same time.
"This boy," Dionysus told him, "he's the son of Hera. The other, you need to watch. Poseidon's child, you know."
"Ah!" the prisoner said. "That one." He smiled coldly. "I am Tantalus. On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing more trouble."
"Trouble?" Percy demanded.
Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table. There was a picture of Percy's school on fire. There was another, a little blurry, of Y/N and Ethan getting out of the gym by the hole in the wall.
"Oh, I'm here! I look good, you don't think?" he said wryly to Mr. D and Tantalus.
They waved their hands disdainfully, as if they would have wanted to say something but didn't actually dare.
"Having a mother other gods are afraid of, check," Y/N whispered to Percy as they went to sit.
After the offerings, as he sat at his table, he looked at the head table.
A satyr inched forward nervously and set a plate of barbecue in front of Tantalus. The new activities director 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.
"Go on, old fellow," Dionysus said, a strange sparkle in his eyes. "Perhaps now it will work."
Tantalus grabbed for the glass, but it scooted away before he could touch it. A few drops of root beer spilled, and Tantalus tried to dab them up with his fingers, but the drops rolled away like quicksilver before he could touch them. He growled and turned toward the plate of barbecue. He picked up a fork and tried to stab a piece of brisket, but the plate skittered down the table and flew off the end, straight into the coals of the brazier.
"Blast!" Tantalus muttered.
"Ah, well," Dionysus said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "Perhaps a few more days. Believe me, old chap, working at this camp will be torture enough. I'm sure your old curse will fade eventually."
"Eventually," Tantalus muttered, staring at Dionysus's Diet Coke. "Do you have any idea how dry one's throat gets after three thousand years?"
Y/N turned to his plate. He asked several times his glass for ice tea, soda, or whatever else he wanted to drink. He gulped his chicken leg and fries
Then Tantalus had one of the satyrs blow the conch horn to get their attention for announcements.
"Yes, well," Tantalus said, once the talking had died down. "Another fine meal! Or so I am told." As he spoke, he inched his hand toward his refilled dinner plate, as if maybe the food wouldn't notice what he was doing, but it did. It shot away down the table as soon as he got within six inches.
"And here on my first day of authority," he continued, "I'd like to say what a pleasant form of punishment it is to be here. Over the course of the summer, I hope to torture, er, interact with each and every one of you children. You all look good enough to eat."
Dionysus clapped politely, leading to some halfhearted applause from the satyrs. Tyson was standing at the head table, looking uncomfortable, but every time he tried to scoot out of the limelight, Tantalus pulled him back.
"And now some changes!" Tantalus gave the campers a crooked smile. "We are reinstituting the chariot races!"
Murmuring broke out at all tables—excitement, fear, disbelief.
"Now I know," Tantalus continued, raising his voice, "that these races were discontinued some years ago due to, ah, technical problems."
"Three deaths and twenty-six mutilation," someone at the Apollo table called.
"Yes, yes!" Tantalus said. "But I know that you will all join me in welcoming the return of this camp tradition. Golden laurels will go to the winning charioteers each month. Teams may register in the morning! The first race will be held in three days time. We will release you from most of your regular activities to prepare your chariots and choose your horses. Oh, and did I mention, the victorious team's cabin will have no chores for the month in which they win?"
An explosion of excited conversation. No KP for a whole month? No stable cleaning? Is he serious? Y/N thought.
Then the last person he expected to object did so.
"But, sir!" Clarisse said. She looked nervous, but she stood up to speak from the Ares table. Some of the campers snickered when they saw the YOU MOO, GIRL! sign on her back. "What about patrol duty? I mean, if we drop everything to ready our chariots—"
"Ah, the hero of the day," Tantalus exclaimed. "Brave Clarisse, who single-handedly bested the bronze bulls!"
Clarisse blinked, then blushed. "Um, I didn't—"
"And modest, too." Tantalus grinned. "Not to worry, my dear! This is a summer camp. We are here to enjoy ourselves, yes?"
"But the tree—"
"And now," Tantalus said, as several of Clarisse's cabin mates pulled her back into her seat, "before we proceed to the campfire and sing-along, one slight housekeeping issue. Percy Jackson, Y/N L/N and Annabeth Chase have seen fit, for some reason, to bring this here." He waved a hand toward Tyson.
Uneasy murmuring spread among the campers. As for Y/N, he was already in favor of Tantalus's death.
"Now, of course," Tantalus said, "Cyclopes have a reputation for being bloodthirsty monsters with a very small brain capacity. Under normal circumstances, I would release this beast into the woods and have you hunt it down with torches and pointed sticks. But who knows? Perhaps this Cyclops is not as horrible as most of its brethren. Until it proves worthy of destruction, we need a place to keep it! I've thought about the stales, but that will make the horses nervous. Hermes's cabin, possibly?"
Silence at the Hermes table. Travis and Connor Stoll developed a sudden interest in the tablecloth. Who could blame them? The Hermes cabin was always full to bursting. There was no way they could take in a six-foot-three Cyclops.
"Come on," Tantalus chided. "The monster may be able to do some menial chores. Any suggestions as to where such a beast should be kenneled?"
Suddenly everybody gasped.
Tantalus scooted away from Tyson in surprise. All Y/N could do was stare in disbelief at the brilliant green light that had appeared—a dazzling holographic image over Tyson's head.
There was a moment of awed silence.
Being claimed was a rare event. Some campers waited in vain for it their whole lives. When Y/N and Percy had been claimed last summer, everybody had reverently knelt. But now, they followed Tantalus's lead, and Tantalus roared with laughter. "Well! I think we know where to put the beast now. By the gods, I can see the family resemblance!"
Every camper laughed, except Y/N and Annabeth and a few others, like Beckendorf.
Tyson didn't seem to notice. He was too mystified, trying to swat the glowing trident that was now fading over his head. He was too innocent to understand how much they were making fun of him, how cruel people were.