The Battle of the Labyrinth

for me to read it, but Rachel said, “Western Museum of Mining & Industry.”
    For a museum, it didn’t look like much—a little house like an old-fashioned railroad station, some drills and pumps and old steam shovels on display outside.
    “There.” Rachel pointed to a hole in the side of a nearby hill—a tunnel that was boarded up and chained. “An old mine entrance.”
    “A door to the Labyrinth?” Annabeth asked. “How can you be sure?”
    “Well, look at it!” Rachel said. “I mean . . . I can see it, okay?”
    She thanked the driver and we all got out. He didn’t ask for money or anything. “Are you sure you’ll be all right, Miss Dare? I’d be happy to call your—”
    “No!” Rachel said. “No, really. Thanks, Robert. But we’re fine.”
    The museum seemed to be closed, so nobody bothered us as we climbed the hill to the mine shaft. When we got to the entrance, I saw the mark of Daedalus engraved on the padlock, though how Rachel had seen something so tiny all the way from the highway I had no idea. I touched the padlock and the chains fell away. We kicked down a few boards and walked inside. For better or worse, we were back in the Labyrinth.
    The dirt tunnels turned to stone. They wound around and split off and basically tried to confuse us, but Rachel had no trouble guiding us. We told her we needed to get back to New York, and she hardly even paused when the tunnels offered a choice.
    To my surprise, Rachel and Annabeth started up a conversation as we walked. Annabeth asked her more about her background, but Rachel was evasive, so they started talking about architecture. It turned out that Rachel knew something about it from studying art. They talked about different facades on buildings around New York—“Have you seen this one,” blah, blah, blah, so I hung back and walked next to Nico in uncomfortable silence.
    “Thanks for coming after us,” I told him at last.
    Nico’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t seem as angry as he used to—just suspicious, careful. “I owed you for the ranch, Percy. Plus . . . I wanted to see Daedalus for myself. Minos was right, in a way. Daedalus should die. Nobody should be able to avoid death that long. It’s not natural.”
    “That’s what you were after all along,” I said. “Trading Daedalus’s soul for your sister’s.”
    Nico walked for another fifty yards before answering. “It hasn’t been easy, you know. Having only the dead for company. Knowing that I’ll never be accepted by the living. Only the dead respect me, and they only do that out of fear.”
    “You could be accepted,” I said. “You could have friends at camp.”
    He stared at me. “Do you really believe that, Percy?”
    I didn’t answer. The truth was, I didn’t know. Nico had always been a little different, but since Bianca’s death, he’d gotten almost . . . scary. He had his father’s eyes—that intense, manic fire that made you suspect he was either a genius or a madman. And the way he’d banished Minos, and called himself the king of ghosts—it was kind of impressive, but it made me uncomfortable, too.
    Before I could figure out what to tell him, I ran into Rachel, who’d stopped in front of me. We’d come to a crossroads. The tunnel continued straight ahead, but a side tunnel T’d off to the right—a circular shaft carved from black volcanic rock.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    Rachel stared down the dark tunnel. In the dim flashlight beam, her face looked like one of Nico’s specters.
    “Is that the way?” Annabeth asked.
    “No,” Rachel said nervously. “Not at all.”
    “Why are we stopping then?” I asked.
    “Listen,” Nico said.
    I heard wind coming down the tunnel, as if the exit were close. And I smelled something vaguely familiar— something that brought back bad memories.
    “Eucalyptus trees,” I said. “Like in California.”
    Last winter, when we’d faced Luke and the Titan Atlas on the top of Mount Tamalpais, the air had smelled just like that.
    “There’s something evil down that tunnel,” Rachel said. “Something very powerful.”
    “And the smell of death,” Nico added, which made me feel a whole lot better.
    Annabeth and I exchanged glances.
    “Luke’s entrance,” she guessed. “The one to Mount Othrys—the Titans’ palace.”
    “I have to check it out,” I said.
    “Percy, no.”
    “Luke could be right there,” I said. “Or . . . or Kronos. I have to find out what’s going on.”
    Annabeth hesitated.