The Demigod Files(18)

‘Enough!’ Dr Boring snapped. ‘Percy Jackson, this is a final exam. I cannot have poodles –’

‘WOOF!’ Mrs O’Leary’s bark shook the auditorium. She wagged her tail, knocking over a few more elves. Then she crouched on her front paws and stared at me like she wanted me to follow.

‘I’ll get her out of here, Dr Boring,’ I promised. ‘I’m finished anyway.’

I closed my test booklet and ran towards the stage. Mrs O’Leary bounded for the exit and I followed, the other kids still laughing and calling out behind me, ‘See ya, Poodle Boy!’

Mrs O’Leary ran down East 81st Street towards the river.

‘Slow down!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you going?’

I got some strange looks from pedestrians, but this was New York, so a boy chasing a poodle probably wasn’t the weirdest thing they’d ever seen.

Mrs O’Leary kept well ahead of me. She turned to bark every once in a while as if to say, Move it, slowcoach! She ran three blocks north, straight into Carl Schurz Park. By the time I caught up with her, she’d leaped an iron fence and disappeared into a huge topiary wall of snow-covered bushes.

‘Aw, come on,’ I complained. I hadn’t had a chance to grab my coat back at school. I was already freezing, but I climbed the fence and plunged into the frozen shrubbery.

On the other side was a clearing – a half acre of icy grass ringed with bare trees. Mrs O’Leary was sniffing around, wagging her tail like crazy. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. In front of me, the steel-coloured East River flowed sluggishly. White plumes billowed from the rooftops in Queens. Behind me, the Upper East Side loomed cold and silent.

I wasn’t sure why, but the back of my neck started to tingle. I took out my ballpoint pen and uncapped it. Immediately it grew into my bronze sword, Riptide, its blade glowing faintly in the winter light.

Mrs O’Leary lifted her head. Her nostrils quivered.

‘What is it, girl?’ I whispered.

The bushes rustled and a golden deer burst through. When I say golden, I don’t mean yellow. This thing had metallic fur and horns that looked like genuine fourteen-carat. It shimmered with an aura of golden light, making it almost too bright to look at. It was probably the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Mrs O’Leary licked her lips like she was thinking, Deer burgers! Then the bushes rustled again and a figure in a hooded parka leaped into the clearing, an arrow notched in her bow.

I raised my sword. The girl aimed at me – then froze.

‘Percy?’ She pushed back the silvery hood of her parka. Her black hair was longer than I remembered, but I knew those bright blue eyes and the silver tiara that marked her as the first lieutenant of Artemis.

‘Thalia!’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Following the golden deer,’ she said, like that should be obvious. ‘It’s the sacred animal of Artemis. I figured it was some sort of sign. And, um…’ She nodded nervously at Mrs O’Leary. ‘You want to tell me what that’s doing here?’

‘That’s my pet – Mrs O’Leary, no!’

Mrs O’Leary was sniffing the deer and basically not respecting its personal space. The deer butted the hellhound in the nose. Pretty soon, the two of them were playing a strange game of keep-away around the clearing.

‘Percy…’ Thalia frowned. ‘This can’t be a coincidence. You and me ending up in the same place at the same time?’

She was right. Demigods didn’t have coincidences. Thalia was a good friend, but I hadn’t seen her in over a year, and now, suddenly, here we were.

‘Some god is messing with us,’ I guessed.

‘Probably.’

‘Good to see you, though.’

She gave me a grudging smile. ‘Yeah. We get out of this in one piece, I’ll buy you a cheeseburger. How’s Annabeth?’

Before I could answer, a cloud passed over the sun. The golden deer shimmered and disappeared, leaving Mrs O’Leary barking at a pile of leaves.

I readied my sword. Thalia drew her bow. Instinctively we stood back to back. A patch of darkness passed over the clearing and a boy tumbled out of it like he’d been tossed, landing in the grass at our feet.

‘Ow,’ he muttered. He brushed off his aviator’s jacket. He was about twelve years old, with dark hair, jeans, a black T-shirt and a silver skull ring on his right hand. A sword hung at his side.

‘Nico?’ I said.

Thalia’s eyes widened. ‘Bianca’s little brother?’

Nico scowled. I doubt he liked being announced as Bianca’s little brother. His sister, a Hunter of Artemis, had died a couple of years ago, and it was still a sore subject for him.

‘Why’d you bring me here?’ he grumbled. ‘One minute I’m in a New Orleans graveyard. The next minute – is this New York? What in Hades’s name am I doing in New York?’

‘We didn’t bring you here,’ I promised. ‘We were –’ A shiver went down my back. ‘We were brought together. All three of us.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Nico demanded.

‘The children of the Big Three,’ I said. ‘Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.’

Thalia took a sharp breath. ‘The prophecy. You don’t think Kronos…’