If you'd sat there any longer,' Annabeth said, 'you would have spontaneously combusted. I hope the conversation was worth it?

You're alive!" Percy said to the others. "The giants said you were captured. What happened?" Leo shrugged. "Oh, just another brilliant plan by Leo Valdez. You'd be amazed what you can do with an Archimedes sphere, a girl who can sense stuff underground, and a weasel." "I was the weasel," Frank said glumly.

You mean a bad heel?" I said. "Couldn't I just, like, wear something besides sandals? No offense." -Percy

Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests. "You know," Grover mumbled, "I bet Hades doesn't have trouble with door-to-door salesman.

Annabeth came up to me. She was dressed in black camouflage with her Celestial bronze knife strapped to her arm and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder—ready for stabbing or surfing the Internet, whichever came first.

Hephaestus glowered up at us. “I didn’t make you, did I?” Uh,” Annabeth said, “no, sir.” Good,” the god grumbled. “Shoddy workmanship.

She looked at me, like she was drinking in the fact that I was still here. And I realized I was doing the same thing. The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.