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.

I stared at him (Dionysus). "You're...you're married? But I thought you got in trouble for chasing a wood nymph-

Plus, humor ws a good way to hide the pain. And if that didn't work, there was always Plan B. Run aaway. Over and over.

She deserved at least one person who saw her and knew how good she was.

Bast crouched down and began making weird chittering noises. Uh-oh. She was imitating birds. I'd seen enough cats do this when they were stalking. Suddenly my own obituary flashed in my head: Carter Kane, 14, tragically died in Paris wen he was eaten by his sister's cat, Muffin.

Percy pushed on his side furiously and the crack closed. His eyes blazed with anger. She hoped he wasn’t mad at her, but if he was she couldn’t blame him. If it keeps him going, she thought, then let him be angry.

I pressed PLAY and started up Chiron's favorite--the All-Time Greatest Hits of Dean Martin. Suddenly the air was filled with violins and a bunch of guys moaning in Italian. The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out.