The Battle of the Labyrinth

him?”
    “Madness is my specialty. It was quite simple.”
    “But . . . you did something nice. Why?”
    He raised an eyebrow. “I am nice! I simply ooze niceness, Perry Johansson. Haven’t you noticed?”
    “Uh—”
    “Perhaps I felt grieved by my son’s death. Perhaps I thought this Chris boy deserved a second chance. At any rate, it seems to have improved Clarisse’s mood.”
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    The wine god sighed. “Oh, Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.”
    He left me alone to think about that. And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile.

TWENTY

MY BIRTHDAY PARTY TAKES A DARK TURN
    The rest of the summer seemed strange because it was so normal. The daily activities continued: archery, rock climbing, pegasus riding. We played capture the flag (though we all avoided Zeus’s Fist). We sang at the campfire and raced chariots and played practical jokes on the other cabins. I spent a lot of time with Tyson, playing with Mrs. O’Leary, but she would still howl at night when she got lonely for her old master. Annabeth and I pretty much skirted around each other. I was glad to be with her, but it also kind of hurt, and it hurt when I wasn’t with her, too.
    I wanted to talk to her about Kronos, but I couldn’t do that anymore without bringing up Luke. And that was one subject I couldn’t raise. She would shut me out every time I tried.
    July passed, with fireworks on the beach on the Fourth. August turned so hot the strawberries started baking in the fields. Finally, the last day of camp arrived. The standard form letter appeared on my bed after breakfast, warning me that the cleaning harpies would devour me if I stayed past noon.
    At ten o’clock I stood on the top of Half-Blood Hill, waiting for the camp van that would take me into the city. I’d made arrangements to leave Mrs. O’Leary at camp, where Chiron promised she’d be looked after. Tyson and I would take turns visiting her during the year.
    I hoped Annabeth would be riding into Manhattan with me, but she only came to see me off. She said she’d arranged to stay at camp a little longer. She would tend to Chiron until his leg was fully recovered, and keep studying Daedalus’s laptop, which had engrossed her for the last two months. Then she would head back to her father’s place in San Francisco.
    “There’s a private school out there that I’ll be going to,” she said. “I’ll probably hate it, but . . .” She shrugged.
    “Yeah, well, call me, okay?”
    “Sure,” she said half-heartedly. “I’ll keep my eyes open for . . .”
    There it was again. Luke. She couldn’t even say his name without opening up a huge box of hurt and worry and anger.
    “Annabeth,” I said. “What was the rest of the prophecy?”
    She fixed her eyes on the woods in the distance, but she didn’t say anything.
    “ You shall delve in the darkness of the endless maze ,” I remembered. “ The dead, the traitor, and the lost one raise . We raised a lot of the dead. We saved Ethan Nakamura, who turned out to be a traitor. We raised the spirit of Pan, the lost one.”
    Annabeth shook her head like she wanted me to stop.
    “ You shall rise or fall by the ghost king’s hand ,” I pressed on. “That wasn’t Minos, like I’d thought. It was Nico. By choosing to be on our side, he saved us. And the child of
    Athena’s final stand —that was Daedalus.”
    “Percy—”
    “ Destroy with a hero’s final breath . That makes sense now. Daedalus died to destroy the Labyrinth. But what was the last—”
    “ And lose a love to worse than death .” Annabeth had tears in her eyes. “That was the last line, Percy. Are you happy now?”
    The sun seemed colder than it had a moment ago. “Oh,” I said. “So Luke—”
    “Percy, I didn’t know who the prophecy was talking about. I—I didn’t know if . . .” She faltered helplessly. “Luke and I—for years, he was the only one who really cared about me. I thought . . .”
    Before she could continue, a sparkle of light appeared next to us, like someone had opened a gold curtain