My girlfriend: sophomore honors student, demigod, and — oh, yeah — head architect for redesigning the palace of the gods on Mount Olympus in her spare time.

It'll be dangerous," Nyssa warned him. "Hardship, monsters, terrible suffering. Possibly none of you will come back alive." "Oh." Suddenly Leo didn't look so excited. Then he remembered everyone was watching. "I mean... Oh, cool! Suffering? I love suffering! Let's do this.

Mrs. O' Leary is my pet. I couldn't let you stick a sword in her rump, now, could I? That might've scared her.

He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He look like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.

Let me explain: there are dragons, and then there are drakons. Drakons are several millennia older than dragons, andmuch larger. They look like giant serpents. Most don't have wings. Most don't breathe fire (though some do). All are poisonous. All are immensely strong, with scales harder than titanium. Their eyes can paralyze you; not the turn-you~to-stone Medusa-type paralysis, buttheoh~my~gods-that~big~snake~is~going~to~eat~me type of paralysis, which is just as bad.

This is Leo. I'm the... What's my title? Am I like, admiral, or captain, or..." "Repair boy." "Very funny, Piper.

You said your mom is the goddess of balance," I reminded him. "The minor gods deserve better, Ethan, but total destruction isn't balance. Kronos doesn't build. He only destroys.