The Lightning Thief

want it to.”
    I pointed at the storm. “What the heck is that, then?”
    He glanced uneasily at the sky. “It’ll pass around us. Bad weather always does.”
    I realized he was right. In the week I’d been here, it had never even been overcast. The few rain clouds I’d seen had skirted right around the edges of the valley.
    But this storm . . . this one was huge.
    At the volleyball pit, the kids from Apollo’s cabin were playing a morning game against the satyrs. Dionysus’s twins were walking around in the strawberry fields, making the plants grow. Everybody was going about their normal business, but they looked tense. They kept their eyes on the storm.
    Grover and I walked up to the front porch of the Big House. Dionysus sat at the pinochle table in his tiger-striped Hawaiian shirt with his Diet Coke, just as he had on my first day. Chiron sat across the table in his fake wheelchair. They were playing against invisible opponents—two sets of cards hovering in the air.
    “Well, well,” Mr. D said without looking up. “Our little celebrity.”
    I waited.
    “Come closer,” Mr. D said. “And don’t expect me to kowtow to you, mortal, just because old Barnacle-Beard is your father.”
    A net of lightning flashed across the clouds. Thunder shook the windows of the house.
    “Blah, blah, blah,” Dionysus said.
    Chiron feigned interest in his pinochle cards. Grover cowered by the railing, his hooves clopping back and forth.
    “If I had my way,” Dionysus said, “I would cause your molecules to erupt in flames. We’d sweep up the ashes and be done with a lot of trouble. But Chiron seems to feel this would be against my mission at this cursed camp: to keep you little brats safe from harm.”
    “Spontaneous combustion is a form of harm, Mr. D,” Chiron put in.
    “Nonsense,” Dionysus said. “Boy wouldn’t feel a thing.
    Nevertheless, I’ve agreed to restrain myself. I’m thinking of turning you into a dolphin instead, sending you back to your father.”
    “Mr. D—” Chiron warned.
    “Oh, all right,” Dionysus relented. “There’s one more option. But it’s deadly foolishness.” Dionysus rose, and the invisible players’ cards dropped to the table. “I’m off to Olympus for the emergency meeting. If the boy is still here when I get back, I’ll turn him into an Atlantic bottlenose. Do you understand? And Perseus Jackson, if you’re at all smart, you’ll see that’s a much more sensible choice than what Chiron feels you must do.”
    Dionysus picked up a playing card, twisted it, and it became a plastic rectangle. A credit card? No. A security pass.
    He snapped his fingers.
    The air seemed to fold and bend around him. He became a hologram, then a wind, then he was gone, leaving only the smell of fresh-pressed grapes lingering behind.
    Chiron smiled at me, but he looked tired and strained. “Sit, Percy, please. And Grover.”
    We did.
    Chiron laid his cards on the table, a winning hand he hadn’t gotten to use.
    “Tell me, Percy,” he said. “What did you make of the hellhound?”
    Just hearing the name made me shudder.
    Chiron probably wanted me to say, Heck, it was nothing. I eat hellhounds for breakfast. But I didn’t feel like lying.
    “It scared me,” I said. “If you hadn’t shot it, I’d be dead.”
    “You’ll meet worse, Percy. Far worse, before you’re done.”
    “Done . . . with what?”
    “Your quest, of course. Will you accept it?”
    I glanced at Grover, who was crossing his fingers.
    “Um, sir,” I said, “you haven’t told me what it is yet.”
    Chiron grimaced. “Well, that’s the hard part, the details.”
    Thunder rumbled across the valley. The storm clouds had now reached the edge of the beach. As far as I could see, the sky and the sea were boiling together.
    “Poseidon and Zeus,” I said. “They’re fighting over something valuable . . . something that was stolen, aren’t they?”
    Chiron and Grover exchanged looks.
    Chiron sat forward in his wheelchair. “How did you know that?”
    My face felt hot. I wished I hadn’t opened my big mouth. “The weather since Christmas has been weird, like the sea and the sky are fighting. Then I talked to Annabeth, and she’d overheard something about a theft. And . . . I’ve also been having these dreams.”
    “I knew it,” Grover said.
    “Hush, satyr,” Chiron ordered.
    “But it is his quest!” Grover’s eyes were bright with excitement. “It must be!”
    “Only the Oracle can