The Sea of Monsters

something?”
    “Convenience store?”
    “Yeah, for snacks. Powdered donuts or something. Just don’t go too far.”
    “Powdered donuts,” Tyson said earnestly. “I will look for powdered donuts in the wilderness.” He headed outside and started calling, “Here, donuts!”
    Once he was gone, I sat down across from Annabeth. “Hey, I’m sorry about, you know, seeing Luke.”
    “It’s not your fault.” She unsheathed her knife and started cleaning the blade with a rag.
    “He let us go too easily,” I said.
    I hoped I’d been imagining it, but Annabeth nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. What we overheard him say about a gamble, and ‘they’ll take the bait’ . . . I think he was talking about us.”
    “The Fleece is the bait? Or Grover?”
    She studied the edge of her knife. “I don’t know, Percy. Maybe he wants the Fleece for himself. Maybe he’s hoping we’ll do the hard work and then he can steal it from us. I just can’t believe he would poison the tree.”
    “What did he mean,” I asked, “that Thalia would’ve been on his side?”
    “He’s wrong.”
    “You don’t sound sure.”
    Annabeth glared at me, and I started to wish I hadn’t asked her about this while she was holding a knife.
    “Percy, you know who you remind me of most? Thalia. You guys are so much alike it’s scary. I mean, either you would’ve been best friends or you would’ve strangled each other.”
    “Let’s go with ‘best friends.’”
    “Thalia got angry with her dad sometimes. So do you. Would you turn against Olympus because of that?”
    I stared at the quiver of arrows in the corner. “No.”
    “Okay, then. Neither would she. Luke’s wrong.” Annabeth stuck her knife blade into the dirt.
    I wanted to ask her about the prophecy Luke had mentioned and what it had to do with my sixteenth birthday. But I figured she wouldn’t tell me. Chiron had made it pretty clear that I wasn’t allowed to hear it until the gods decided otherwise.
    “So what did Luke mean about Cyclopes?” I asked. “He said you of all people—”
    “I know what he said. He . . . he was talking about the real reason Thalia died.”
    I waited, not sure what to say.
    Annabeth drew a shaky breath. “You can never trust a Cyclops, Percy. Six years ago, on the night Grover was leading us to Half-Blood Hill—”
    She was interrupted when the door of the hut creaked open. Tyson crawled in.
    “Powdered donuts!” he said proudly, holding up a pastry box.
    Annabeth stared at him. “Where did you get that? We’re in the middle of the wilderness. There’s nothing around for—”
    “Fifty feet,” Tyson said. “Monster Donut shop—just over the hill!”
    “This is bad,” Annabeth muttered.
    We were crouching behind a tree, staring at the donut shop in the middle of the woods. It looked brand new, with brightly lit windows, a parking area, and a little road leading off into the forest, but there was nothing else around, and no cars parked in the lot. We could see one employee reading a magazine behind the cash register. That was it. On the store’s marquis, in huge black letters that even I could read, it said:
    MONSTER DONUT
    A cartoon ogre was taking a bite out of the O in MONSTER . The place smelled good, like fresh-baked chocolate donuts.
    “This shouldn’t be here,” Annabeth whispered. “It’s wrong.”
    “What?” I asked. “It’s a donut shop.”
    “Shhh!”
    “Why are we whispering? Tyson went in and bought a dozen. Nothing happened to him.”
    “ He’s a monster.”
    “Aw, c’mon, Annabeth. Monster Donut doesn’t mean monsters! It’s a chain. We’ve got them in New York.”
    “A chain,” she agreed. “And don’t you think it’s strange that one appeared immediately after you told Tyson to get donuts? Right here in the middle of the woods?”
    I thought about it. It did seem a little weird, but, I mean, donut shops weren’t real high on my list of sinister forces.
    “It could be a nest,” Annabeth explained.
    Tyson whimpered. I doubt he understood what Annabeth was saying any better than I did, but her tone was making him nervous. He’d plowed through half a dozen donuts from his box and was getting powdered sugar all over his face.
    “A nest for what?” I asked.
    “Haven’t you ever wondered how franchise stores pop up so fast?” she asked. “One day there’s nothing and then the next day— boom , there’s a new burger place or a coffee shop or whatever? First a single