Oops! … I Killed You Again
The naiad stormed out of her store and across the street, ignoring a honking cab and a swerving delivery truck. I didn’t like the many vials she carried in either hand, or the murderous look on her face. She was definitely targeting me, not Grover.
“Maybe step away from me,” I told him. “If she starts splashing that stuff around—”
“Not happening.” Grover stood firm, his fists clenched, like today was his day to laugh in the face of death, squirrels, and also perfume.
I deliberated whether to draw my sword. I didn’t want to escalate things.
Also, swords aren’t much good at repelling liquids. I had other ways to do that.
The woman stopped at the curb a few feet away from us. She snarled, “You shall not pass!”
“Wait, I know that line,” I said. “It’s from the wizard guy in Lord of the Rings.”
She momentarily lost her murderous look in confusion. “What?” “What?” I repeated.
“Maybe it’s the other wizard,” Grover offered. “From that other movie.” “No, I’m pretty sure it’s—”
“Percy Jackson!” the woman howled. “How dare you show your face here!” “Oh, good, you know me,” I said. “Well, uh, Ms. Aye-aye-aye—”
“What?” she demanded again.
“What?” I asked. “Isn’t that your name?”
My plan to confuse her until her head exploded was going well. She looked at me, then back at the sign on her storefront, then at Grover, as if wondering how a reasonable-looking satyr could hang out with someone so dense.
“My name is Filomena,” she said, her jaw clenched. “Aeaea was my home island. But you don’t even remember, do you?”
“Oh. Um …”
“He totally remembers!” Grover offered. “He never forgets a friendly face! He told me all about you. You helped him on … Aeaea! When he was on the island of Aeaea, which is where you’re from.”
He nodded so vigorously I worried his horns would fall off. Maybe he thought he could make her believe him through sheer enthusiasm.
“I never helped him,” she snarled. “I was not his friend.”
“Oh, he never forgets an enemy face, either!” Grover said. “That’s what I meant to say.”
Filomena wagged her finger at me, which couldn’t have been easy while holding a bunch of vials. “My sisters and I won’t tolerate your interference.
If you think you’ll deprive me of my turn with the weasel—” “Your turn?” I asked. “Sisters?”
“It’s not a weasel,” Grover muttered, but I elbowed him to be quiet. “Where is Gale?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” she screamed.
“That’s … kind of what I just said. Sorry, how do you know me? I can tell I offended you at some point, and I apologize for that, but I offend so many people—”
“BAH!” She threw a fistful of vials at our feet.
My first instinct was to put myself between Grover and danger. Grover’s first instinct was to put himself between me and the same danger. We ended up running into each other and both being directly in the splash zone. Five
different fragrances splattered us from the waist down. A noxious purple fog started to rise around us. I recovered my senses, yelled, “Aeaea!”
(because it was on my mind), and blasted the potion fog right back at Filomena.
“Ack!” she complained, now speckled head to toe in magical whatever-it- was. “How dare you!”
She burst into a fine rose-scented mist. The rest of her vials clanked on the asphalt and rolled into the nearest storm drain.
Grover and I looked at each other. Our legs were starting to smoke.
I cursed, then concentrated as hard as I could to pull every bit of potion off my friend. Droplets floated away from his cargo shorts and his fur like a cloud of bees. I must have gotten carried away, because sweat popped from his pores, too. Tears floated from his eyes. I threw the cloud of moisture at the pavement.
My blood was starting to hum. My skin burned. I closed my eyes and used my last bit of strength to expel the liquid from my system.
The next thing I knew, I was passed out on the sidewalk. Grover was shaking me.
“Hey, hey, wake up,” he said.
My eyes fluttered open. “What …? Are we still alive?” “Thanks to you,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Super thirsty.”
“Yeah. I think you dehydrated us. Here.” He handed me a Gatorade. “Where did you get this?” I mumbled. “How long was I out?” “About an hour.”
“What?!”
Just saying that made my lips crack. I had a throbbing headache. I decided just to sip my Gatorade.
Grover offered me eyedrops and some lip balm. “I’ve been trying to
moisturize,” he said. “Thank goodness you dehydrated us right next to a drugstore.”
I grunted. Finding a drugstore in Manhattan wasn’t hard. Most city blocks had one. Grover and I sat together on the sidewalk and tried to get our
moisture back from Sahara Desert level.
“Did Filomena …? Did I vaporize her?” I asked.
The naiad hadn’t exactly been friendly, but I still didn’t like the idea of accidentally sending her to the Great Water Faucet in the Sky, or wherever naiads went to reincarnate.
Grover shuddered. “She would’ve vaporized us if you hadn’t acted so quickly.”
I emptied the bottle of saline drops into my eyes. I felt like I’d spent the last hour staring into an oven.
“We need to figure out what she was talking about. She said she had sisters. She mentioned Gale. You think …?” I pointed to the perfumery.
“No one else has come out and tried to kill us,” Grover said. “But if Gale’s inside, we should check. Should we buy, like, protective gear first?
Raincoats? Umbrellas?” He helped me to my feet.
“Nah,” I said. “Anyone else starts throwing potions, I’ll go full hurricane on them.”
Those sounded like fighting words. How heroic did I feel marching across the street and into Aeaea, ready for battle, only to find the place empty except for a college-age sales dude with green hair, typing away on his
phone while humming along to an all-violin version of “So Yesterday”? That’s right. I felt pretty heroic.
“Hey, I love this song!” Grover said.
“Shh,” I said. “I’m trying to be intimidating.”
I marched over to Green Hair, who looked up at me and sighed, then squinted at the door like there might be somebody more interesting coming in behind me. “I thought you were my boss. She left like an hour ago, and I’m supposed to go on lunch break.” He typed for another few seconds, then apparently remembered he was supposed to be working. He looked up and said, “Help you?”
Not in a friendly way. More like Obviously you won’t be buying expensive perfume, kid; can you stop bothering me?
“Your boss is Filomena,” I guessed.
“Afraid so.” He sighed. “Oh, please tell me you’re not a friend of hers.” He said that as if it were physically impossible.
“Do her sisters work here?” I asked.
He was so shocked he actually put down his phone. “Are you kidding? She has sisters? That is so sad for them.”
“I’ll take that as a no. And I don’t suppose you have a polecat in the store?” “A what?” asked Green Hair.
“It’s a type of mustelid,” Grover pitched in. “Kind of like a weasel, but you can tell the difference from the hair pattern around their eyes.”
I suspected Green Hair’s brain disconnected somewhere around the word
mustelid.
“Um, no,” he said. “No polecats.”
I could’ve demanded to search the place, but I believed Green Hair was telling the truth. He seemed way too apathetic to spend energy lying. If he were secretly a monster, I wanted to encounter more monsters like this, who just didn’t care, hated their job, and wanted to go on lunch break.
“Never mind,” I said. “Has anything been … different in the store the last couple of days?”
Green Hair snorted. “You mean aside from our new product line?” He gestured toward a nearly empty display table. The only thing on it was a
little placard that read MIRACLE BY AEAEA. “What’s Miracle?”
“I don’t know,” complained Green Hair. “The last two days, it has sold out in, like, ten minutes. It’s supposed to make you irresistible, but I’ve never even gotten a free sample.”
I frowned at Grover. “You think that’s what she doused us with?”
Green Hair snorted. “Filomena doused you with something? Not likely it was Miracle. That stuff is pricier than gold. You smell more like …” He wrinkled his nose. “Dry Number Two.”
Of course I would get doused with Dry Number Two.
“So let me guess,” I said. “Filomena started producing Miracle on Tuesday?”
Green Hair went back to his phone screen. “I guess. You would think having a new hit product would make her happy, but she’s meaner than ever. Keeps grumbling about having to share.”
Grover and I locked eyes. I was starting to think our polecat friend was being used for nefarious naiad capitalism, though I wasn’t sure how.
“Who would Filomena share with?” I asked. “Absolutely no one!” said Green Hair.
“She has competitors?”
“Everyone! But she really hates this place.” Green Hair took a business card from his shirt pocket and showed me the name: FANCY WATER. “They’re two blocks away. I keep this card handy so when she fires me I can go work there. That’ll teach her.”
“Someone she hates …” Grover mused. “Maybe a sister?”
“Bet you a vial of rose-scented dissolving fluid,” I agreed. Then to Green Hair: “I’d go ahead and lock up for the day. I don’t think Filomena will be back in time for your lunch break.”
