The Lightning Thief

Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and I’ve got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving. No , godling. I need no help getting subjects! I did not ask for this war.”
    “But you took Zeus’s master bolt.”
    “Lies!” More rumbling. Hades rose from his throne, towering to the height of a football goalpost. “Your father may fool Zeus, boy, but I am not so stupid. I see his plan.”
    “His plan?”
    “ You were the thief on the winter solstice,” he said. “Your father thought to keep you his little secret. He directed you into the throne room on Olympus. You took the master bolt and my helm. Had I not sent my Fury to discover you at Yancy Academy, Poseidon might have succeeded in hiding his scheme to start a war. But now you have been forced into the open. You will be exposed as Poseidon’s thief, and I will have my helm back!”
    “But . . .” Annabeth spoke. I could tell her mind was going a million miles an hour. “Lord Hades, your helm of darkness is missing, too?”
    “Do not play innocent with me, girl. You and the satyr have been helping this hero—coming here to threaten me in Poseidon’s name, no doubt—to bring me an ultimatum. Does Poseidon think I can be blackmailed into supporting him?”
    “No!” I said. “Poseidon didn’t—I didn’t—”
    “I have said nothing of the helm’s disappearance,” Hades snarled, “because I had no illusions that anyone on Olympus would offer me the slightest justice, the slightest help. I can ill afford for word to get out that my most powerful weapon of fear is missing. So I searched for you myself, and when it was clear you were coming to me to deliver your threat, I did not try to stop you.”
    “You didn’t try to stop us? But—”
    “Return my helm now, or I will stop death,” Hades threatened. “That is my counterproposal. I will open the earth and have the dead pour back into the world. I will make your lands a nightmare. And you, Percy Jackson— your skeleton will lead my army out of Hades.”
    The skeletal soldiers all took one step forward, making their weapons ready.
    At that point, I probably should have been terrified. The strange thing was, I felt offended. Nothing gets me angrier than being accused of something I didn’t do. I’ve had a lot of experience with that.
    “You’re as bad as Zeus,” I said. “You think I stole from you? That’s why you sent the Furies after me?”
    “Of course,” Hades said.
    “And the other monsters?”
    Hades curled his lip. “I had nothing to do with them. I wanted no quick death for you—I wanted you brought before me alive so you might face every torture in the Fields of Punishment. Why do you think I let you enter my kingdom so easily?”
    “Easily?”
    “Return my property!”
    “But I don’t have your helm. I came for the master bolt.”
    “Which you already possess!” Hades shouted. “You came here with it, little fool, thinking you could you threaten me!”
    “But I didn’t!”
    “Open your pack, then.”
    A horrible feeling struck me. The weight in my backpack, like a bowling ball. It couldn’t be. . . .
    I slung it off my shoulder and unzipped it. Inside was a two-foot-long metal cylinder, spiked on both ends, humming with energy.
    “Percy,” Annabeth said. “How—”
    “I—I don’t know. I don’t understand.”
    “You heroes are always the same,” Hades said. “Your pride makes you foolish, thinking you could bring such a weapon before me. I did not ask for Zeus’s master bolt, but since it is here, you will yield it to me. I am sure it will make an excellent bargaining tool. And now . . . my helm. Where is it?”
    I was speechless. I had no helm. I had no idea how the master bolt had gotten into my backpack. I wanted to think Hades was pulling some kind of trick. Hades was the bad guy. But suddenly the world turned sideways. I realized I’d been played with. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades had been set at each other’s throats by someone else. The master bolt had been in the backpack, and I’d gotten the backpack from . . .
    “Lord Hades, wait,” I said. “This is all a mistake.”
    “A mistake?” Hades roared.
    The skeletons aimed their weapons. From high above, there was a fluttering of leathery wings, and the three Furies swooped down to perch on the back of their master’s throne. The one with Mrs. Dodds’s face grinned at me eagerly