The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #5)(18)

Her second-in-command, Malcolm, suppressed a smile. "Yeah, um . . . we cleaned everything else. Didn't know if it was safe to move your notes."

That was probably smart. Annabeth had a bronze knife that she reserved just for monsters and people who messed with her stuff.

Malcolm grinned at me. "We'll wait outside while you finish inspection." The Athena campers filed out the door while Annabeth cleaned up her bunk.

I shuffled uneasily and pretended to go through some more reports. Technically, even on inspection, it was against camp rules for two campers to be . . . like, alone in a cabin.

That rule had come up a lot when Silena and Beckendorf started dating. And I know some of you might be thinking, Aren't all demigods related on the godly side, and doesn't that make dating gross? But the thing is, the godly side of your family doesn't count, genetically speaking, since gods don't have DNA. A demigod would never think about dating someone who had the same godly parent. Like two kids from Athena cabin? No way. But a daughter of Aphrodite and a son of Hephaestus? They're not related. So it's no problem.

Anyway, for some strange reason I was thinking about this as I watched Annabeth straighten up. She closed her laptop, which had been given to her as a gift from the inventor Daedalus last summer.

I cleared my throat. "So . . . get any good info from that thing?"

"Too much," she said. "Daedalus had so many ideas, I could spend fifty years just trying to figure them all out."

"Yeah," I muttered. "That would be fun."

She shuffled her papers—mostly drawings of buildings and a bunch of handwritten notes. I knew she wanted to be an architect someday, but I'd learned the hard way not to ask what she was working on. She'd start talking about angles and load-bearing joints until my eyes glazed over.

"You know . . ." She brushed her hair behind her ear, like she does when she's nervous. "This whole thing with Beckendorf and Silena. It kind of makes you think. About . . . what's important. About losing people who are important."

I nodded. My brain started seizing on little random details, like the fact that she was still wearing those silver owl earrings from her dad, who was this brainiac military history professor in San Francisco.

"Urn, yeah," I stammered. "Like . . . is everything cool with your family?"

Okay, really stupid question, but hey, I was nervous.

Annabeth looked disappointed, but she nodded.

"My dad wanted to take me to Greece this summer," she said wistfully. "I've always wanted to see—"

"The Parthenon," I remembered.

She managed a smile. "Yeah."

"That's okay. There'll be other summers, right?"

As soon as I said it, I realized it was a boneheaded comment. I was facing the end of my days. Within a week, Olympus might fall. If the Age of the Gods really did end, the world as we knew it would dissolve into chaos. Demigods would be hunted to extinction. There would be no more summers for us.

Annabeth stared at her inspection scroll. "Three out five," she muttered, "for a sloppy head counselor. Come on. Let's finish your reports and get back to Chiron."

On the way to the Big House, we read the last report, which was handwritten on a maple leaf from a satyr in Canada. If possible, the note made me feel even worse.

" 'Dear Grover,'" I read aloud. " 'Woods outside Toronto attacked by giant evil badger. Tried to do as you suggested and summon power of Pan. No effect. Many naiads' trees destroyed. Retreating to Ottawa. Please advise. Where are you? —Gleeson Hedge, protector.'"

Annabeth grimaced. "You haven't heard anything from him? Even with your empathy link?"

I shook my head dejectedly.

Ever since last summer when the god Pan had died, our friend Grover had been drifting farther and farther away. The Council of Cloven Elders treated him like an outcast, but Grover still traveled all over the East Coast, trying to spread the word about Pan and convince nature spirits to protect their own little bits of the wild. He'd only come back to camp a few times to see his girlfriend, Juniper.

Last I'd heard he was in Central Park organizing the dryads, but nobody had seen or heard from him in two months. We'd tried to send Iris-messages. They never got through. I had an empathy link with Grover, so I hoped I would know if anything bad happened to him. Grover had told me one time that if he died, the empathy link might kill me too. But I wasn't sure if that was still true or not.

I wondered if he was still in Manhattan. Then I thought about my dream of Rachel's sketch—dark clouds closing on the city, an army gathered around the Empire State Building.

"Annabeth." I stopped her by the tetherball court. I knew I was asking for trouble, but I didn't know who else to trust. Plus, I'd always depended on Annabeth for advice. "Listen, I had this dream about, um, Rachel . . ."

I told her the whole thing, even the weird picture of Luke as a child.

For a while she didn't say anything. Then she rolled up her inspection scroll so tight she ripped it. "What do you want me to say?"

"I'm not sure. You're the best strategist I know. If you were Kronos planning this war, what would you do next?"

"I'd use Typhon as a distraction. Then I'd hit Olympus directly, while the gods were in the West."