Grover Gets Grounded
Kids, always remember to shadow-travel responsibly. If you overdo it, that post-shadow hangover is a KILLER. By the time Annabeth and Grover
woke me up the next morning, it was already seven thirty. I should’ve been showered, dressed, and giving aspirin to my homework by then.
“You needed the sleep,” Grover said. “So did they.”
He pointed to Hecuba’s dog bed. The queen of Troy was curled up and snoring, with Nope tucked contentedly up against her belly, making happy little yips in his sleep. Next time I saw Mrs. O’Leary, I owed her a large
chew toy. Without her, we never would’ve found the pup that brought home Hecuba.
“She was in no mood for a morning walk.” Annabeth gestured to the front door, which was now reinforced with a vertical tabletop on duct-tape hinges. Nothing but the best security for us. “Really wore herself out last night. Here, eat and tell us what happened.”
She’d made me breakfast: a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich. If I hadn’t already been in love with her, that would’ve sealed the deal. Grover was also in love—with my sandwich—because he kept stealing bites while I told them about the Midnight Ride of Percy Jackson.
“Oh, a German nightclub!” Grover nodded vigorously. “Was it Berghain? I’ve always wanted to go there.”
I frowned. “I didn’t figure you for a nightclub guy.”
“Are you kidding? I can hoof-boogie with the best of them! I’ve still got that wedding-dress outfit from the Sea of Monsters, too.” He sighed.
“Maybe someday.”
I decided I didn’t want to know any more about Grover’s secret disco
dreams at the moment. It was bad enough we’d probably have to cancel our Halloween party tomorrow. At some point today, unless we managed to
solve all our problems, I would need to remind Grover to send warnings to all our friends not to come unless they wanted to watch us get incinerated.
But I didn’t have the heart to bring that up right now. “I don’t suppose Gale turned up on her own?” I asked.
Annabeth shook her head. “That’s your job for today. You and Grover.” My spirits lifted. “You mean …?”
“Afraid so,” she said. “I have to go to school. Dave, Hana, and I have a presentation I can’t get out of. I already Iris-messaged your mom, and she’s going to call AHS. You’re taking a sick day.”
“Awesome!”
“To find a polecat.” “I’ll take it.”
“Well, good luck.” She kissed me. “I left some notes about Gale in the library.” Then she turned to Grover. “Keep an eye on him, okay, Mr.
Protector?”
Grover gulped down the last of my bagel sandwich. “Always.”
After Annabeth left, Grover and I got ready for our day. He cleaned up breakfast by eating everything that was left. I fed the eels, showered in an antigravity bathroom (don’t ask how that went), got dressed, and headed into the library.
The Room of Dangerous Knowledge did not disappoint. It was shaped like a trident: three vast halls of floor-to-ceiling ebony bookshelves with a statue of Hecate at the intersection because … Oh, right, goddess of the crossroads. I see what she did there. Iron candelabras hung from the vaulted ceiling, illuminating the room with guttering torchlight. Flames and books seemed like a bad combo, but what did I know? At least Grover’s strawberry rampage hadn’t made it this far into the mansion.
The books went on forever—leatherbound spines, gilt titles, fancy silk bookmark ribbons. I kind of expected to find a guy in a smoking jacket sitting in an overstuffed chair and holding a pipe. But it was just me and the statue in the room.
None of the books called out to me, tempting me with secret spells or forbidden wisdom. They probably saw it was just Percy Jackson and decided to save their breath.
On the nearest table, next to a pile of books, Annabeth had left a yellow legal pad scribbled with notes. I’d never understood how Annabeth could be just as dyslexic as me and still have legible handwriting. Mine looked like cuneiform chiseled by a drunk Sumerian. I was grateful that she’d left me such a helpful cheat sheet, though.
According to the notes, Gale had been a mortal witch back in ancient times. (I knew that.) She had terrible personal hygiene and gas. (I smelled
that.) She’d been a seller of potions and magical fragrances and had
somehow gotten on Hecate’s bad side, possibly because she was a terrible spokesperson for magic, what with the constant farting and all. (Just a guess.) In a rage, Hecate turned her into a polecat, but then took pity on her and decided to keep her around. In the margin of one page, Annabeth had scrawled some questions: Potions? Fragrances? Anti-gas medicine?
Chickens?
I imagined those were the things she thought Gale might go after now that she was free. Maybe Grover and I should wander around Manhattan with a package of Gas-X and a dead chicken and see what happens, I thought.
I was staring at the nearest bookshelf, thinking about our polecat problem, when something caught my eye. On one of the shelves, covered in glass, was a display of papers and small shiny objects.
I walked over to check it out. Books might not have much power over me, but I’m a sucker for small shiny objects.
On the left side of the display were yellowed pamphlets with old-timey lettering with titles like Practickal forcery and Potionf for Beginnyng Uferf.
In the middle, a flyer for HECATE’S SCHOOL OF MAGIC, 1913–14
Academic Year had been ripped to pieces, then matted and framed that way, as if Hecate wanted to memorialize the moment of rage when it was shredded. On the right was a collection of old seeing devices—binoculars, monocles, some contact lenses preserved in a bottle of solution, and half a
dozen pairs of children’s eyeglasses. Yeah. Not creepy at all. Under this collection was a brass plaque engraved with WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN.
I lifted the top of the display case. I picked up a pair of blue-framed glasses that were snapped in half at the bridge. They were the same ones I’d seen in my vision of the child pedaling away from the manse in terror. On the right stem, the initials SEJ were monogrammed in gold.
I felt like I had shadow-traveled into a block of ice. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. SEJ. I knew those initials.
Chiron had tried to warn me. Ghosts seemed to crowd around me—not just the spirits of the dead, but the memories and regrets entombed in this little display. I managed to put the glasses back. I couldn’t process what this meant right away. It was already Thursday morning. We had a polecat to find, a mansion to repair, and only forty-eight hours before Hecate came
home ….
I backed out of the library, doing my best not to break into a run. “What’s wrong?” Grover asked when I joined him in the great room. “You look like—”
“Don’t say like you’ve seen a ghost,” I pleaded.
He studied my expression. I knew he could sense my fear and confusion, but he didn’t press the issue. “Okay … Did you learn anything? About
Gale?”
I nodded weakly. I did my best to shelve my unanswered questions and anxiety inside a glass case in the back of my mind. I told Grover what I’d read in Annabeth’s notes.
Grover scratched his goatee. “Fragrances or medicine for gas … We need to narrow things down or we’ll never find her.”
I looked over at the sleeping hellhounds. I had a feeling they wouldn’t be joining us on this particular hunt. I also wasn’t too worried about Hecuba
trying to escape again. If my experience with Mrs. O’Leary was any guide, Hecuba and Nope would be asleep all day. I just wished I could join them.
“So, we walk around town with chicken carcasses, then?” I asked.
Grover looked troubled, like Annabeth’s comment about being a protector was still replaying in his mind. “No. I have a—well, maybe not a better idea, but one that might work. Come on.”
He grabbed the house keys. “Where we going?” I asked.
“I need to ground myself,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.” He led me across the street to Gramercy Park.
I wasn’t sure what Grover had in mind. Maybe he just needed a moment to focus his thoughts in a natural environment. Peaceful spots like that are tough to find in Manhattan.
I didn’t realize that when he’d said ground himself, he’d meant literally cover himself with the ground. He sat down in a flower bed and started to heap leaves and dirt over his legs.
“Um … you good there, G-man?”
He closed his eyes like he wanted to be at one with the bark mulch.
“Yes,” he muttered, trancelike. “Preparing for squirrels. Need silence, please.”
That totally cleared things up.
I sat on the nearest bench and waited. If anyone walked past, I’d have had a hard time explaining why my friend was digging himself a fort, but
we had the park to ourselves.
The morning air was cool and crisp. The leaves were turning from gold to red. Under other circumstances, I would’ve been happy to enjoy my
“sick day” hanging out with my best friend, but last night’s trip was still making my stomach churn. I felt like I’d ingested some shadows along with a few lacy undergarments. My short visit to Hecate’s library hadn’t helped, either.
After a few minutes, Grover was almost completely buried up to the waist. I was getting worried. I wanted to say something like Can I get you
anything? More leaves? More dirt?
Then the squirrels began to arrive. Three scrambled down the nearest tree trunk and hopped onto Grover’s back. Another raced out of the bushes and leaped onto his shoulder. Two more tunneled through the leaves and skittered up Grover’s legs. Within a minute, there were dozens, maybe hundreds. Honestly, I had no idea. I’d never had to count squirrels in
numbers that high before.
Grover’s torso disappeared under a tidal wave of chittering fur and twitching bushy tails. Somewhere in the mix of brown and gray, I spotted one very large black rat, who quickly disappeared in the sea of its squirrely comrades.
“Er, Grover …?”
One of the squirrels turned and barked at me like, Silence, human!
Apparently, the park’s vegetation wanted in on the fun. The nearest tree
roots started snaking toward Grover. Vines wrapped around his chest. Tree branches bent and swayed, trying to reach him.
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. But just start walking was 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.”
I stopped, took him by the shoulders, and made him look me in the eye.
“Grover, what aren’t you telling me? Why haven’t I ever seen you do that before, with the squirrels and everything?”
He hesitated. I got the feeling he was about to faint.
“Come.” I sat him down on the nearest bench, which happened to be
outside a bakery. It wasn’t Papou’s Pastries, but the stuff inside smelled pretty good. “Wait here a sec.”
I went in and bought a slice of strawberry cheesecake for Grover, plus a couple of ice teas. I figured food might help him get his energy back.
As he nibbled his cake, I said, “Okay. Tell me.”
He shrugged listlessly. “It’s just … grounding myself like that? It’s pretty powerful magic. I can only do it because I’m a Cloven Elder.”
Grover was too modest. He rarely talked about it, but after the Battle of Manhattan, he’d been promoted to the council of the three most important satyrs in the world, which in my mind made him an elite boss.
“It’s dangerous?” I guessed.
“Oh … nothing I’d worry about,” he said. “Not a big deal. It’s just when I do that, when I connect with nature on that level, there’s always a small
chance …” “Yes?”
He nibbled more cheesecake. “That I might dissolve into nothing.”
