Jason moke to the sound of thunder. Then he remembered where he was. It was always thundering in Cabin One.
Above his cot, the domed ceiling was decorated with a blue-and-white mosaic like a cloudy sky. The cloud tiles shifted across the ceiling, changing from white to black. Thunder rumbled through the room, and gold tiles flashed like veins of lightning.
Except for the cot that the other campers had brought him, the cabin had no regular furniture—no chairs, tables, or dressers. As far as Jason could tell, it didn’t even have a bathroom. The walls were carved with alcoves, each holding a bronze brazier or a golden eagle statue on a marble pedestal. In the center of the room, a twenty-foot-tall, full-color statue of Zeus in classic Greek robes stood with a shield at his side and a lightning bolt raised, ready to smite somebody.
Jason studied the statue, looking for anything he had in common with the Lord of the Sky. Black hair? Nope. Grumbly expression? Well, maybe. Beard? No thanks. In his robes and sandals, Zeus looked like a really buff, really angry hippie.
Yeah, Cabin One. A big honor, the other campers had told him. Sure, if you liked sleeping in a cold temple by yourself with Hippie Zeus frowning down at you all night.
Jason got up and rubbed his neck. His whole body was stifffrom bad sleep and summoning lightning. That little trick last night hadn’t been as easy as he had let on. It had almost made him pass out.
Next to the cot, new clothes were laid out for him: jeans, sneakers, and an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt. He definitely needed a change of clothes, but looking down at his tattered purple shirt, he was reluctant to change. It felt wrong somehow, putting on the camp shirt. He still couldn’t believe he belonged here, despite everything they’d told him.
He thought about his dream, hoping more memories would come back to him about Lupa, or that ruined house in the redwoods. He knew he’d been there before. The wolf was real. But his head ached when he tried to remember. The marks on his forearm seemed to burn.
If he could find those ruins, he could find his past. Whatever was growing inside that rock spire, Jason had to stop it.
He looked at Hippie Zeus. “You’re welcome to help.” The statue said nothing.
“Thanks, Pops,” Jason muttered.
He changed clothes and checked his reflection in Zeus’s shield. His face looked watery and strange in the metal, like he was dissolving in a pool of gold. Definitely he didn’t look as good as Piper had last night after she’d suddenly been transformed.
Jason still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d acted like an idiot, announcing in front of everyone that she was a knockout. Not like there’d been anything wrong with her before. Sure, she looked great after Aphrodite zapped her, but she also didn’t look like herself, not comfortable with the attention.
Jason had felt bad for her. Maybe that was crazy, considering she’d just been claimed by a goddess and turned into the most gorgeous girl at camp. Everybody had started fawning over her, telling her how amazing she was and how obviously she should be the one who went on the quest—but that attention had nothing to do with who she was. New dress, new makeup, glowing pink aura, and boom: suddenly people liked her. Jason felt like he understood that.
Last night when he’d called down lightning, the other campers’ reactions had seemed familiar to him. He was pretty sure he’d been dealing with that for a long time—people looking at him in awe just because he was the son of Zeus, treating him special, but it didn’t have anything to do with him. Nobody cared about him, just his big scary daddy standing behind him with the doomsday bolt, as if to say, Respect this kid or eat voltage!
After the campfire, when people started heading back to their cabins, Jason had gone up to Piper and formally asked her to come with him on the quest.
She’d still been in a state of shock, but she nodded, rubbing her arms, which must’ve been cold in that sleeveless dress.
“Aphrodite took my snowboarding jacket,” she muttered. “Mugged by my own mom.”
In the first row of the amphitheater, Jason found a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “We’ll get you a new jacket,” he promised.
She managed a smile. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, but he restrained himself. He didn’t want her to think he was as shallow as everyone else—trying to make a move on her because she’d turned all beautiful.
He was glad Piper was going with him on the quest. Jason had tried to act brave at the campfire, but it was just that—an act. The idea of going up against an evil force powerful enough to kidnap Hera scared him witless, especially since he didn’t even know his own past. He’d need help, and it felt right: Piper should be with him. But things were already complicated without figuring out how much he liked her, and why. He’d already messed with her head enough.
He slipped on his new shoes, ready to get out of that cold, empty cabin. Then he spotted something he hadn’t noticed the night before. A brazier had been moved out of one of the alcoves to create a sleeping niche, with a bedroll, a backpack, even some pictures taped to the wall.
Jason walked over. Whoever had slept there, it had been a long time ago. The bedroll smelled musty. The backpack was covered with a thin film of dust. Some of the photos once taped to the wall had lost their stickiness and fallen to the floor.
One picture showed Annabeth—much younger, maybe eight, but Jason could tell it was she: same blond hair and gray eyes, same distracted look like she was thinking a million things at once. She stood next to a sandy- haired guy about fourteen or fifteen, with a mischievous smile and ragged leather armor over a T-shirt. He was pointing to an alley behind them, like he was telling the photographer, Let’s go meet things in a dark alley and kill them! A second photo showed Annabeth and the same guy sitting at a campfire, laughing hysterically.
Finally Jason picked up one of the photos that had fallen. It was a strip of pictures like you’d take in a do-it-yourself photo booth: Annabeth and the sandy-haired guy, but with another girl between them. She was maybe
fifteen, with black hair—choppy like Piper’s—a black leather jacket, and silver jewelry, so she looked kind of goth; but she was caught mid-laugh, and it was clear she was with her two best friends.
“That’s Thalia,” someone said. Jason turned.
Annabeth was peering over his shoulder. Her expression was sad, like the picture bought back hard memories. “She’s the other child of Zeus who lived here—but not for long. Sorry, I should’ve knocked.”
“It’s fine,” Jason said. “Not like I think of this place as home.”
Annabeth was dressed for travel, with a winter coat over her camp clothes, her knife at her belt, and a backpack across her shoulder.
Jason said, “Don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about coming with us?”
She shook her head. “You got a good team already. I’m off to look for Percy.”
Jason was a little disappointed. He would’ve appreciated having somebody on the trip who knew what they were doing, so he wouldn’t feel like he was leading Piper and Leo off a cliff.
“Hey, you’ll do fine,” Annabeth promised. “Something tells me this isn’t your first quest.”
Jason had a vague suspicion she was right, but that didn’t make him feel any better. Everyone seemed to think he was so brave and confident, but they didn’t see how lost he really felt. How could they trust him when he didn’t even know who he was?
He looked at the pictures of Annabeth smiling. He wondered how long it had been since she’d smiled. She must really like this Percy guy to search for him so hard, and that made Jason a little envious. Was anyone searching for him right now? What if somebody cared for him that much and was going out of her mind with worry, and he couldn’t even remember his old life?
“You know who I am,” he guessed. “Don’t you?”
Annabeth gripped the hilt of her dagger. She looked for a chair to sit on, but of course there weren’t any. “Honestly, Jason … I’m not sure. My best guess, you’re a loner. It happens sometimes. For one reason or another, the camp never found you, but you survived anyway by constantly
moving around. Trained yourself to fight. Handled the monsters on your own. You beat the odds.”
“The first thing Chiron said to me,” Jason remembered, “was you should be dead.”
“That could be why,” Annabeth said. “Most demigods would never make it on their own. And a child of Zeus—I mean, it doesn’t get any more dangerous than that. The chances of your reaching age fifteen without finding Camp Half-Blood or dying—microscopic. But like I said, it does happen. Thalia ran away when she was young. She survived on her own for years. Even took care of me for a while. So maybe you were a loner too.”
Jason held out his arm. “And these marks?”
Annabeth glanced at the tattoos. Clearly, they bothered her. “Well, the eagle is the symbol of Zeus, so that makes sense. The twelve lines—maybe they stand for years, if you’d been making them since you were three years old. SPQR—that’s the motto of the old Roman Empire: Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and the People of Rome. Though why you would burn that on your own arm, I don’t know. Unless you had a really harsh Latin teacher …”
Jason was pretty sure that wasn’t the reason. It also didn’t seem possible he’d been on his own his whole life. But what else made sense? Annabeth had been pretty clear—Camp Half-Blood was the only safe place in the world for demigods.
“I, um … had a weird dream last night,” he said. It seemed like a stupid thing to confide, but Annabeth didn’t look surprised.
“Happens all the time to demigods,” she said. “What did you see?”
He told her about the wolves and the ruined house and the two rock spires. As he talked, Annabeth started pacing, looking more and more agitated.
“You don’t remember where this house is?” she asked. Jason shook his head. “But I’m sure I’ve been there before.”
“Redwoods,” she mused. “Could be northern California. And the she- wolf … I’ve studied goddesses, spirits, and monsters my whole life. I’ve never heard of Lupa.”
“She said the enemy was a ‘her.’ I thought maybe it was Hera, but—”
“I wouldn’t trust Hera, but I don’t think she’s the enemy. And that thing rising out of the earth—” Annabeth’s expression darkened. “You’ve got to stop it.”
“You know what it is, don’t you?” he asked. “Or at least, you’ve got a guess. I saw your face last night at the campfire. You looked at Chiron like it was suddenly dawning on you, but you didn’t want to scare us.”
Annabeth hesitated. “Jason, the thing about prophecies …the more you know, the more you try to change them, and that can be disastrous. Chiron believes it’s better that you find your own path, find out things in your own time. If he’d told me everything he knew before my first quest with Percy… I’ve got to admit, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to go through with it. For your quest, it’s even more important.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Not if you succeed. At least … I hope not.”
“But I don’t even know where to start. Where am I supposed to go?” “Follow the monsters,” Annabeth suggested.
Jason thought about that. The storm spirit who’d attacked him at the Grand Canyon had said he was being recalled to his boss. If Jason could track the storm spirits, he might be able to find the person controlling them. And maybe that would lead him to Hera’s prison.
“Okay,” he said. “How do I find storm winds?”
“Personally, I’d ask a wind god,” Annabeth said. “Aeolus is the master of all the winds, but he’s a little … unpredictable. No one finds him unless he wants to be found. I’d try one of the four seasonal wind gods that work for Aeolus. The nearest one, the one who has the most dealings with heroes, is Boreas, the North Wind.”
“So if I looked him up on Google maps—”
“Oh, he’s not hard to find,” Annabeth promised. “He settled in North America like all the other gods. So of course he picked the oldest northern settlement, about as far north as you can go.”
“Maine?” Jason guessed. “Farther.”
Jason tried to envision a map. What was farther north than Maine? The oldest northern settlement …
“Canada,” he decided. “Quebec.”
Annabeth smiled. “I hope you speak French.”
Jason actually felt a spark of excitement. Quebec—at least now he had a goal. Find the North Wind, track down the storm spirits, find out who they worked for and where that ruined house was. Free Hera. All in four days. Cake.
“Thanks, Annabeth.” He looked at the photo booth pictures still in his hand. “So, um … you said it was dangerous being a child of Zeus. What ever happened to Thalia?”
“Oh, she’s fine,” Annabeth said. “She became a Hunter of Artemis— one of the handmaidens of the goddess. They roam around the country killing monsters. We don’t see them at camp very often.”
Jason glanced over at the huge statue of Zeus. He understood why Thalia had slept in this alcove. It was the only place in the cabin not in Hippie Zeus’s line of sight. And even that hadn’t been enough. She’d chosen to follow Artemis and be part of a group rather than stay in this cold drafty temple alone with her twenty-foot-tall dad—Jason’s dad— glowering down at her. Eat voltage! Jason didn’t have any trouble understanding Thalia’s feelings. He wondered if there was a Hunters group for guys.
“Who’s the other kid in the photo?” he asked. “The sandy-haired guy.” Annabeth’s expression tightened. Touchy subject.
“That’s Luke,” she said. “He’s dead now.”
Jason decided it was best not to ask more, but the way Annabeth said Luke’s name, he wondered if maybe Percy Jackson wasn’t the only boy Annabeth had ever liked.
He focused again on Thalia’s face. He kept thinking this photo of her was important. He was missing something.
Jason felt a strange sense of connection to this other child of Zeus— someone who might understand his confusion, maybe even answer some questions. But another voice inside him, an insistent whisper, said: Dangerous. Stay away.
“How old is she now?” he asked.
“Hard to say. She was a tree for a while. Now she’s immortal.” “What?”
His expression must’ve been pretty good, because Annabeth laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s not something all children of Zeus go through. It’s a long story, but … well, she was out of commission for a long time. If she’d aged regularly, she’d be in her twenties now, but she still looks the same as in that picture, like she’s about … well, about your age. Fifteen or sixteen?”
Something the she-wolf had said in his dream nagged at Jason. He found himself asking, “What’s her last name?”
Annabeth looked uneasy. “She didn’t use a last name, really. If she had to, she’d use her mom’s, but they didn’t get along. Thalia ran away when she was pretty young.”
Jason waited.
“Grace,” Annabeth said. “Thalia Grace.”
Jason’s fingers went numb. The picture fluttered to the floor. “You okay?” Annabeth asked.
A shred of memory had ignited—maybe a tiny piece that Hera had forgotten to steal. Or maybe she’d left it there on purpose—just enough for him to remember that name, and know that digging up his past was terribly, terribly dangerous.
You should be dead, Chiron had said. It wasn’t a comment about Jason beating the odds as a loner. Chiron knew something specific—something about Jason’s family.
The she-wolf ’s words in his dream finally made sense to him, her clever joke at his expense. He could imagine Lupa growling a wolfish laugh.
“What is it?” Annabeth pressed.
Jason couldn’t keep this to himself. It would kill him, and he had to get Annabeth’s help. If she knew Thalia, maybe she could advise him.
“You have to swear not to tell anyone else,” he said. “Jason—”
“Swear it,” he urged. “Until I figure out what’s going on, what this all means—” He rubbed the burned tattoos on his forearm. “You have to keep a secret.”
Annabeth hesitated, but her curiosity won out. “All right. Until you tell me it’s okay, I won’t share what you say with anyone else. I swear on the
River Styx.”
Thunder rumbled, even louder than usual for the cabin. You are our saving Grace, the wolf had snarled. Jason picked up the photo from the floor. “My last name is Grace,” he said. “This is my sister.” Annabeth turned pale. Jason could see her wrestling with dismay, disbelief, anger. She thought he was lying. His claim was impossible. And part of him felt the same way, but as soon as he spoke the words, he knew they were true.
Then the doors of the cabin burst open. Half a dozen campers spilled in, led by the bald guy from Iris, Butch. “Hurry!” he said, and Jason couldn’t tell if his expression was excitement or fear. “The dragon is back.”
