My only thought was to keep him away from Annabeth.

Tantalus made a wild grab, but the marshmallow committed suicide, diving into the flames.

We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents.

The Cyclopes growled, "I don't see very well since the last hero poked my eye out, but you're... NO... LADY... CYCLOPES!

'Are you guys busy?' Juniper asked. 'Well,' I said, 'we're in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we're trying not to die.' 'We're not busy,' Annabeth said.

I'm calm," Rachel insisted. "Every time I'm around you, some monsters attack us. What's to be nervous about?" "Look," I said. "I'm sorry about the band room. I hope they didn't kick you our or anything." "Nah. They asked me a lot of questions about you. I played dumb." "Was it hard?" Annabeth asked.

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.