Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Demigod Files

but she was wearing full Greek armor, so it kind of hurt. Her gray eyes sparkled under her helmet. Her blond ponytail curled around one shoulder. It was hard for anyone to look cute in combat armor, but Annabeth pulled it off.
    “Tell you what.” She lowered her voice. “We’re going to crush you tonight, but if you pick a safe position . . . like right flank, for instance . . . I’ll make sure you don’t get pulverized too much.”
    “Gee, thanks,” I said, “but I’m playing to win.”
    She smiled. “See you on the battlefield.”
    She jogged back to her teammates, who all laughed and gave her high fives. I’d never seen her so happy, like the chance to beat me up was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
    Beckendorf walked up with his helmet under his arm. “She likes you, man.”
    “Sure,” I muttered. “She likes me for target practice.”
    “Nah, they always do that. A girl starts trying to kill you, you know she’s into you.”
    “Makes a lot of sense.”
    Beckendorf shrugged. “I know about these things. You ought to ask her to the fireworks.”
    I couldn’t tell if he was serious. Beckendorf was lead counselor for Hephaestus. He was this huge dude with a permanent scowl, muscles like a pro ballplayer, and hands calloused from working in the forges. He’d just turned eighteen and was on his way to NYU in the fall. Since he was older, I usually listened to him about stuff, but the idea of asking Annabeth to the Fourth of July fireworks down at the beach—like, the biggest dating event of the summer—made my stomach do somersaults.
    Then Silena Beauregard, the head counselor for Aphrodite, passed by. Beckendorf had had a not-so-secret crush on her for three years. She had long black hair and big brown eyes, and when she walked, the guys tended to watch. She said, “Good luck, Charlie.” (Nobody ever calls Beckendorf by his first name.) She flashed him a brilliant smile and went to join Annabeth on the red team.
    “Uh . . .” Beckendorf swallowed like he’d forgotten how to breathe.
    I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the advice, dude. Glad you’re so wise about girls and all. Come on. Let’s get to the woods.”
    Naturally, Beckendorf and I took the most dangerous job.
    While the Apollo cabin played defense with their bows, the Hermes cabin would charge up the middle of the woods to distract the enemy. Meanwhile, Beckendorf and I would scout around the left flank, locate the enemy’s flag, knock out the defenders, and get the flag back to our side. Simple.
    Why the left flank?
    “Because Annabeth wanted me to go right,” I told Beckendorf, “which means she doesn’t want us to go left.”
    Beckendorf nodded. “Let’s suit up.”
    He’d been working on a secret weapon for the two of us—bronze chameleon armor, enchanted to blend into the background. If we stood in front of rocks, our breastplates, helms, and shields turned gray. If we stood in front of bushes, the metal changed to a leafy green. It wasn’t true invisibility, but we’d have pretty good cover, at least from a distance.
    “This stuff took forever to forge,” Beckendorf warned me. “Don’t mess it up!”
    “You got it, Captain.”
    Beckendorf grunted. I could tell he liked being called “captain.”The rest of the Hephaestus campers wished us well, and we sneaked off into the woods, immediately turning brown and green to match the trees.
    We crossed the creek that served as the boundary between the teams. We heard fighting in the distance— swords clashing against shields. I glimpsed a flash of light from some magical weapon, but we saw no one.
    “No border guards?” Beckendorf whispered. “Weird.”
    “Overconfident,” I guessed. But I felt uneasy. Annabeth was a great strategist. It wasn’t like her to get sloppy on defense, even if her team did outnumber us.
    We moved into enemy territory. I knew we had to hurry, because our team was playing a defensive game, and that couldn’t last forever. The Apollo kids would get overrun sooner or later. The Ares cabin wouldn’t be slowed down by a little thing like arrows.
    We crept along the base of an oak tree. I almost jumped out of my skin when a girl’s face emerged from the trunk. “Shoo!” she said, then faded back into the bark.
    “Dryads,” Beckendorf grumbled. “So touchy.”
    “Am not!” a muffled voice said from the tree.
    We kept moving. It was hard to tell exactly where we were. Some landmarks stood out, like the