He was beautiful the way an angel is beautiful - timeless, perfect, remote.

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.

Why does it have to be so hard? Why can't it be a happily-ever-after ride-into-the-sunset feeling all the time?

He [Death] pulled a pure-black iPad from thin air. Death tapped the screen a few times and all Frank could think was: Please don't let there be an app for reading souls

Just tell me, Percy, do you still have the birthday gift I gave you last summer?" I nodded and pulled out my camp necklace. It had a bead for every summer I'd been at Camp Half-Blood, but since last year I'd also kept a sand dollar on the cord. My father had given it to me for my fifteenth birthday. He'd told me I would know when to "spend it," but so far I hadn't figured out what he meant. All I knew that it didn't fit the vending machines in the school cafeteria.

Nico leaned over and plucked a grape. Probably that was the guy’s entire diet for the day.

[Percy] kept hoping things would get better for Annabeth and him, but their lives just got more dangerous, as if the Three Fates were up there spinning their futures with barbed wire instead of thread just to see how much two demigods could tolerate.