The Last Olympian

minute. I swore to myself that if I ever found the spy who’d cost her boyfriend his life, I would give him to Mrs. O’Leary as a chew toy.
    “You’re a great camper,” I told Silena. “You’re the best pegasus rider we have. And you get along with people. Believe me, anyone who can make friends with Clarisse has talent.”
    She stared at me like I’d just given her an idea. “That’s it! We need the Ares cabin. I can talk to Clarisse. I know I can convince her to help us.”
    “Whoa, Silena. Even if you could get off the island, Clarisse is pretty stubborn. Once she gets angry—”
    “Please,” Silena said. “I can take a pegasus. I know I can make it back to camp. Let me try.”
    I exchanged looks with Annabeth. She nodded slightly.
    I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t think Silena stood a chance of convincing Clarisse to fight. On the other hand, Silena was so distracted right now that she would just get herself hurt in battle. Maybe sending her back to camp would give her something else to focus on.
    “All right,” I told her. “I can’t think of anybody better to try.”
    Silena threw her arms around me. Then she pushed back awkwardly, glancing at Annabeth. “Um, sorry. Thank you, Percy! I won’t let you down!”
    Once she was gone, I knelt next to Annabeth and felt her forehead. She was still burning up.
    “You’re cute when you’re worried,” she muttered. “Your eyebrows get all scrunched together.”
    “You are not going to die while I owe you a favor,” I said. “Why did you take that knife?”
    “You would’ve done the same for me.”
    It was true. I guess we both knew it. Still, I felt like somebody was poking my heart with a cold metal rod. “How did you know?”
    “Know what?”
    I looked around to make sure we were alone. Then I leaned in close and whispered: “My Achilles spot. If you hadn’t taken that knife, I would’ve died.”
    She got a faraway look in her eyes. Her breath smelled of grapes, maybe from the nectar. “I don’t know, Percy. I just had this feeling you were in danger. Where . . . where is the spot?”
    I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But this was Annabeth. If I couldn’t trust her, I couldn’t trust anyone.
    “The small of my back.”
    She lifted her hand. “Where? Here?”
    She put her hand on my spine, and my skin tingled. I moved her fingers to the one spot that grounded me to my mortal life. A thousand volts of electricity seemed to arc through my body.
    “You saved me,” I said. “Thanks.”
    She removed her hand, but I kept holding it.
    “So you owe me,” she said weakly. “What else is new?”
    We watched the sun come up over the city. The traffic should’ve been heavy by now, but there were no cars honking, no crowds bustling along the sidewalks.
    Far away, I could hear a car alarm echo through the streets. A plume of black smoke curled into the sky somewhere over Harlem. I wondered how many ovens had been left on when the Morpheus spell hit; how many people had fallen asleep in the middle of cooking dinner. Pretty soon there would be more fires. Everyone in New York was in danger—and all those lives depended on us.
    “You asked me why Hermes was mad at me,” Annabeth said.
    “Hey, you need to rest—”
    “No, I want to tell you. It’s been bothering me for a long time.” She moved her shoulder and winced. “Last year, Luke came to see me in San Francisco.”
    “In person?” I felt like she’d just hit me with a hammer. “He came to your house?”
    “This was before we went into the Labyrinth, before . . .” She faltered, but I knew what she meant: before he turned into Kronos . “He came under a flag of truce. He said he only wanted five minutes to talk. He looked scared, Percy. He told me Kronos was going to use him to take over the world. He said he wanted to run away, like the old days. He wanted me to come with him.”
    “But you didn’t trust him.”
    “Of course not. I thought it was a trick. Plus . . . well, a lot of things had changed since the old days. I told Luke there was no way. He got mad. He said . . . he said I might as well fight him right there, because it was the last chance I’d get.”
    Her forehead broke out in sweat again. The story was taking too much of her energy.
    “It’s okay,” I said. “Try to get some rest.”
    “You don’t understand, Percy. Hermes was right. Maybe if I’d gone with him, I could’ve changed his mind. Or, or I had a knife. Luke was unarmed. I