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Grover’s eyes rolled back in his head. He started to shake. I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Okay, that’s enough,” I decided.

I marched over, ready to kick some squirrel posterior in my usual heroic fashion, but the party ended on its own. The squirrels broke formation and scattered in every direction. The rat was the last one to leave the sinking satyr. It waddled off into the bushes with one last disapproving glance at me over its shoulder.

“Grover?” I knelt next to him. The vines and branches retreated. I brushed away the dirt and leaves and was shocked to find that Grover had descended about half a foot into the ground, like the earth had been trying to swallow him.

“Hey, buddy.” I shook his shoulder gently.

His eyes fluttered open.

“Oh. Hi.” He blinked groggily. “I’m still here. Good.”

“Wait, what?”

He sat up. “Nothing. Just…Wow. That was a lot.”

“What just happened?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I told you. I got grounded. Tried to find Gale by connecting with…well, everything alive on Manhattan. Except for humans. You all don’t really count. No offense.”

“You can do that?”

“I mean, yes.…”

There was a lot to process here. Like, why had Grover never told me about this before? Why was he acting so cagey about it? Had he learned anything?

But since I’m ADHD, the first question out of my mouth was “What’s the deal with the rat? You had, like, a million squirrels and one rat.”

“Oh, that’s just Eustis,” Grover said. “He’s adopted.”

Let it go, Percy, I told myself.

“So, are you okay?” I asked. “That looked painful.”

“I’m fine.” He was lying. You can’t share an empathy link with somebody and not know when something is hurting them. “I got some information. Turns out there aren’t many polecats in Manhattan. Skunks, yes, but not polecats. When one is running around wild, the other animals tend to notice. The last time one was seen was Tuesday, on Lafayette Street.”

I tried to picture where he was talking about. “Like in Chinatown?”

“I don’t know how far downtown,” he admitted. “But Lafayette starts around Ninth Street, right? We could head down there, just start walking south.”

It sounded like as good a plan as any.

I also kind of appreciated the randomness of it. An Annabeth plan would have been more effective, more targeted, and more logical. Butjust start walkingwas the kind of thinking I could support.

I helped him up. We went to check on the hellhounds and found them still sleeping. Leaving them alone wasn’t optimal, but nothing about this week had been optimal. We put out fresh food, told the eels we’d be back, and headed downtown.

SODNYC was on our route, and I stopped and left a message with Annabeth’s dorm advisor so when Annabeth got out of class, she’d have some idea of where we were going.

We continued walking. Every now and then I glanced at Grover, who seemed even shakier than I’d felt after all my shadow-travel. A few times he stumbled, and once I caught his arm.

“Are you sure—?”

“I’m fine,” he insisted.

“You won’t have to, uh, ground yourself again when we get closer, will you?”

He laughed weakly. “No. That would be…No.”