Can you surf really well, then?" I looked at Grover, who was trying hard not to laugh. "Jeez, Nico," I said. "I've never really tried." He went on asking questions. Did I fight a lot with Thalia, since she was a daughter of Zeus? (I didn't answer that one.) If Annabeth's mother was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, then why didn't Annabeth know better than to fall off a cliff? (I tried not to strangle Nico for asking that one.) Was Annabeth my girlfriend? (At this point, I was ready to stick the kid in a meat-flavored sack and throw him to the wolves.)

Suspecting and knowing are not the same.

He remembered his home now, and that gave him new determination to succeed. He was fighting for two camps now -- two families.

Another guy barked orders to a small army of brooms, mops, and buckets that were scuttling around, cleaning up the city. "Like that cartoon," Sadie said. "Where Mickey Mouse tries to do magic and the brooms keep splitting and toting water." "'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,'" Zia said. "You do know that was based on an Egyptian story, don't you?

On the bright side," Percy said, "both Jason and I outrank you, Octavian. So we can both tell you to shut up.

He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.

I nodded, looking at Rachel with respect. "You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.