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The polecat glared at him and chattered a series of barks so scathing I couldn’t print them—partly because I couldn’t spell them, and partly because they are not fit for sensitive audiences.

The bees stung Gale and kept her running, cutting off her list of complaints.

Grover turned to the nymphs. “That polecat isnothere voluntarily.”

Phaedra looked shocked. “What? No! We’ve had zero complaints from her.”

“She loves it here,” Daedra agreed.

“SCREAK!”Gale yelped, pursued across a table by the swarm of bees.

“She does not love it here,” Grover said.

Daedra and Phaedra huffed and feigned shock, offering all sorts of excuses about Gale’s lack of transparency when it came to expressing workplace concerns.

Meanwhile, I’d done a pretty great job keeping my mouth shut, if I do say so myself. I was scanning the room, thinking about all the helpful water sources that I could use if things turned into a disaster—and things pretty much always turned into a disaster. I could explode the pipes and kettles. I could flood the whole basement. The problem was that a lot of the liquid in the lab was some form of potion, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be throwing around magical chemicals without knowing what they did. One sip of strawberry crème was what had gotten us into all this trouble to begin with.

Finally, Annabeth cut off the twins with an imperious wave of her hand. “You have retained this polecat without her consent. You’ve used her to make potions for your own profit. Hecate will not be pleased. Release Gale into our custody right now and I won’t report you. Otherwise, you will face the wrath of the Triple Goddess!”

This sounded like a good line to me. I would have immediately saidHere, have a polecat!

The twins, however, became eerily calm. Maybe it was something Annabeth had said, or Grover’s tone, or the way I was shifting nervously from foot to foot. It reminded me of when I swim with sharks—which is usually fun, when you’re a son of Poseidon—and they suddenly smell blood in the water. There is this nanosecond of frisson when they get the scent. Then they kick into death-machine, eat-everything mode.

The twins looked at each other, silently coming to agreement, and then turned to Annabeth.

“We may not be toosmart,” Daedra said, “but we know Hecate would never want a disciple who failed to report the theft of her polecat.”

“You shouldn’t have offered,” Phaedra agreed. “It makes you look desperate.”

“You lost the goddess’s polecat, didn’t you?” said Daedra.

“That’s why you’re here,” added Daedra. “You’re in more trouble than we are.”

“How dare you?” Annabeth said, though it sounded too much like an actual question.

Phaedra smiled coldly. “Your performance was good. I almost believed you. But now I’m remembering how good an actor you were on Aeaea…pretending to be on our side, right before you released the guinea pigs and destroyed our world.”

Annabeth tried to bluff it out. She clenched her fists, stepped forward, and locked eyes with Phaedra. “You have one last chance. Do the right thing or suffer the consequences.”

Even the polecat and the bees stopped moving. They seemed to be watching us, waiting to see who won the standoff. If the bees had tiny tubs of popcorn, I bet they would’ve been eating them.

“The boy you rescued,” Daedra said. “The one called Percy Jackson. I imagine you’ve brought him here in disguise!”

She marched over to Grover and tugged on his left horn.

“Owww!” said Grover.

Daedra frowned. She stepped sideways and knocked off my plastic helmet. “Aha!” she cried.

“No fair,” I said. “You didn’t have a search warrant to look under my helmet. This’ll all get thrown out in court.”

Daedra snarled. “Oh, you’ll be standing trial right here, Percy Jackson. The goddess’s wrath will not fall on us.Youfailed to keep her pets. We will be the servants of Hecate’s vengeance.”

“Indeed.” Phaedra pulled a vial of green fluid from her pantsuit pocket. “We will kill you, return your bodies to Hecate, and explain how badly you failed her. We will return Gale as well, and the goddess shall reward us!”

“AfterGale finishes teaching us how to make all her secret recipes,” Daedra added.

“Yes, after that, of course,” her sister agreed. “Prepare to die, demigods!”