Page 17

“Remember, no touchy,” I warned him.

“Of course not!” He sounded offended, maybe because he’d been thinking about doing exactly that. “Not until ten a.m. tomorrow morning, with safety gloves, blah, blah, blah. I think I found the microwave. Oh, wait, it says Easy Curse Oven. Never mind.”

Once our food was reheated, we made camp in the great room. Grover’s bedrolls were surprisingly comfortable, only slightly nibbled by rats, and they didn’t smell like rodents at all—more like pine needles and wild mint. In the dim candlelight, I could almost believe the silver flecks on the ceiling really were constellations in a dark rural sky.

If only we’d had a campfire…but I imagined that would’ve been against city codes. I wondered if Hecate had smoke detectors. If they went off, would they summon the FDNY or some godly brigade of hosers? That sounded like a good job for children of Poseidon. Maybe it was another career path I could look into if college didn’t work out.

Hecuba and Gale didn’t go to their rooms and fall right to sleep like good pets. Instead they sat at the edge of our imaginary campfire and watched us as if they’d never seen humans have dinner before. Hecuba’s sorrowful eyes followed every bit of food that went into my mouth. I was tempted to throw her my grasshopper tlayudas, but Hecate had said no treats. So I just picked at my plate, makingnom-nomsounds and relying on the dim light to hide the fact that I was avoiding the bug meat.

“This is nice,” Annabeth said after she’d finished her meal.

“I admire your positivity,” I said.

She nudged my knee. “Ah, c’mon, Seaweed Brain. It’s not so bad. As far as quests go, this is luxury! We have heat and running water. Speaking of which, I’m going to go find a shower.…”

She got up to do that while Grover and I cleared the dishes.

When Annabeth came back, her hair was wrapped in a towel. She’d changed into gray flannel owl-patterned pj’s. Her blistered feet were bandaged, and she had a strange smirk on her face. “You guys need to see the bathrooms.”

Trailed by Hecuba and Gale, we went upstairs to check out the wondrous facilities. Apparently, I’d been right about Hecate magicking them into existence the moment I asked. Not being a plumber, or a human, the goddess hadn’t remembered how bath fixtures worked, so she’d created a variety of rooms, none of which made much sense. In the first bathroom we visited, the shower worked normally, but the toilet was on the ceiling, the water staying in the bowl in defiance of gravity.

“What happens if you flush it?” I wondered.

Annabeth laughed. “Percy, I’ve seen what happens when you mess with plumbing. If you want to try that, wait until I’m out of the room.”

She put a sticky note on the bathroom door:SHOWER OKAY, just to mark which one we could use. Then she led us to her next discovery. This bathroom was lined in black leather with spiky chrome fixtures.

Gale chittered in approval.

Grover grunted. “You’re right.Metal.”

The shower came in one temperature: ice-cold. The towels were chain mail.

“No thanks,” I decided. “What about the—”

“Careful,” Annabeth warned. She used a plunger to open the toilet lid. Steam billowed out. The water in the bowl bubbled like a stewpot.

“It’s aboilet,” I said.

I grinned, pleased with myself. Hecuba growled. Apparently, she didn’t appreciate my humor. Annabeth often told me I would make a great dad, because I already had the right jokes—stupid, corny, and stupid.

We spent a few more minutes exploring the wonders of Hecate’s bathrooms. We managed to locate three working toilets that would not kill us and two working showers, along with a bathtub that was a working koi pond. Grover assured us that would suffice for him as long as the fish didn’t mind.

Once we’d all gotten ready for bed, we gathered again in the great room. The polecat and the hellhound cuddled next to the grand piano, which was almost cute if you could ignore the way Hecuba bared her fangs while she slept, and Gale’s gas problems.

“Good first day,” Grover sighed. “Gotta get easier from here, right?”

Three seconds later, he was snoring.

I hoped this might give me some time to talk to Annabeth. I was worried about the strange apparition I’d seen in front of the building—the fleeing child, the broken glasses. I was worried about leaving Grover alone tomorrow with magical strawberry ice cream while we went to school. And I was worried about the hellhound and the polecat chewing my face while I slept.

But Annabeth must’ve been exhausted too. She nestled into her rat-recycled bedroll and was out like a torch.

Me, I stayed up for a while, staring at the speckled constellations on the ceiling. I thought about Grover’s comment—that things had to get easier. The problem was, in Percy World, things never got easier, only weirder.

We got up at way too early o’clock, thanks to the hellhound’s and polecat’s growling stomachs. We fed them breakfast, threw the eels some dead fish, and coaxed Hecuba into swallowing her seven million Vitamin McNuggets. Then we enjoyed the wonders of Hecate’s antigravity showers and enchanted toilets before heading to the kitchen, where I got dog hair in my orange juice and a weasel butt in my cereal bowl. (Polecat butt—whatever.)

Grover suggested a daily walking schedule for the pets. He figured there should always be at least two of us on leash duty. Every morning, he and I could escort Annabeth down to SODNYC. Then, in the afternoon, he and Annabeth would come meet me with the pets at AHS and we’d walk to the manse together from Astoria. My school was a lot farther away than Annabeth’s, but I didn’t mind the plan if she didn’t. I was just happy to spend extra time with her and Grover, even if it involved being dragged across town by our new fuzzy supernatural overlords.