The Titan's Curse

shrieked, until he was engulfed in a huge mass of vines, leaves, and full clusters of purple grapes. Finally the grapes stopped shivering, and I had a feeling that somewhere inside there, the manticore was no more.
    “Well,” said Dionysus, closing his refrigerator. “That was fun.”
    I stared at him, horrified. “How could you . . . How did you—”
    “Such gratitude,” he muttered. “The mortals will come out of it. Too much explaining to do if I made their condition permanent. I hate writing reports to Father.”
    He stared resentfully at Thalia. “I hope you learned your lesson, girl. It isn’t easy to resist power, is it?”
    Thalia blushed as if she were ashamed.
    “Mr. D,” Grover said in amazement. “You . . . you saved us.”
    “Mmm. Don’t make me regret it, satyr. Now get going, Percy Jackson. I’ve bought you a few hours at most.”
    “The Ophiotaurus,” I said. “Can you get it to camp?”
    Mr. D sniffed. “I do not transport livestock. That’s your problem.”
    “But where do we go?”
    Dionysus looked at Zoë. “Oh, I think the huntress knows. You must enter at sunset today, you know, or all is lost. Now good-bye. My pizza is waiting.”
    “Mr. D,” I said.
    He raised his eyebrow.
    “You called me by my right name,” I said. “You called me Percy Jackson.”
    “I most certainly did not, Peter Johnson. Now off with you!”
    He waved his hand, and his image disappeared in the mist.
    All around us, the manticore’s minions were still acting completely nuts. One of them had found our friend the homeless guy, and they were having a serious conversation about metal angels from Mars. Several other guards were harassing the tourists, making animal noises and trying to steal their shoes.
    I looked at Zoë. “What did he mean . . . ‘You know where to go’?”
    Her face was the color of the fog. She pointed across the bay, past the Golden Gate. In the distance, a single mountain rose up above the cloud layer.
    “The garden of my sisters,” she said. “I must go home.”

SIXTEEN

WE MEET THE DRAGON OF ETERNAL BAD BREATH
    “We will never make it,” Zoë said. “We are moving too slow. But we cannot leave the Ophiotaurus.”
    “Mooo,” Bessie said. He swam next to me as we jogged along the waterfront. We’d left the shopping center pier far behind. We were heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was a lot farther than I’d realized. The sun was already dipping in the west.
    “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why do we have to get there at sunset?”
    “The Hesperides are the nymphs of the sunset,” Zoë said. “We can only enter their garden as day changes to night.”
    “What happens if we miss it?”
    “Tomorrow is winter solstice. If we miss sunset tonight, we would have to wait until tomorrow evening. And by then, the Olympian Council will be over. We must free Lady Artemis tonight.”
    Or Annabeth will be dead, I thought, but I didn’t say that.
    “We need a car,” Thalia said.
    “But what about Bessie?” I asked.
    Grover stopped in his tracks. “I’ve got an idea! The Ophiotaurus can appear in different bodies of water, right?”
    “Well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, he was in Long Island Sound. Then he just popped into the water at Hoover Dam. And now he’s here.”
    “So maybe we could coax him back to Long Island Sound,” Grover said. “Then Chiron could help us get him to Olympus.”
    “But he was following me ,” I said. “If I’m not there, would he know where he’s going?”
    “Moo,” Bessie said forlornly.
    “I . . . I can show him,” Grover said. “I’ll go with him.”
    I stared at him. Grover was no fan of the water. He’d almost drowned last summer in the Sea of Monsters, and he couldn’t swim very well with his goat hooves.
    “I’m the only one who can talk to him,” Grover said. “It makes sense.”
    He bent down and said something in Bessie’s ear. Bessie shivered, then made a contented, lowing sound.
    “The blessing of the Wild,” Grover said. “That should help with safe passage. Percy, pray to your dad, too. See if he will grant us safe passage through the seas.”
    I didn’t understand how they could possibly swim back to Long Island from California. Then again, monsters didn’t travel the same way as humans. I’d seen plenty evidence of that.
    I tried to concentrate on the waves, the smell of the ocean, the sound of the tide.
    “Dad,” I said. “Help us. Get the Ophiotaurus and Grover safely to