I could tell you stories of all the ones I’ve had to kill or transform into herbs-” “Meg,” I said, “I realize some demigods are not good. Perhaps those meetings had not gone well. It occurred to me she might have met demigods before. She had shown no fear while pelting muggers with garbage in a blind alley, but now she seemed to be having second thoughts about ringing a doorbell. (Why the mortal woman found that attractive, I have no idea.) My own father, Zeus, once took the form of a shiny blob to woo a mortal woman. I saw nothing amiss, but I didn’t doubt Meg had seen shiny blobs. “But if they are following us,” I said, “that would be bad.” “Shiny blobs? Why didn’t you say anything?” My pulse increased from an andante tempo to a lively allegretto. “Them?” I followed her gaze but saw nothing unusual. She stared back toward Second Avenue, her dark eyes turbulent. “Voilà!” I cried.Īt the front steps, Meg stopped as if she’d run into an invisible barrier. Half a block down, I recognized the building: a five-story brick row house with rusty air conditioner units sagging from the windows. Also normal horses do not gallop over Toyotas. Its hood bore the unmistakable dents of pegasus hooves. I found that annoying.Īfter several failed attempts, we turned a corner and there - parked under a crape myrtle - sat an older model blue Prius. The Upper East Side had a surprising number of Jacksons. We began searching side streets, checking names on apartment mailboxes and intercom panels. No point scaring myself to death with what ifs. And if he came looking for me in my weakened state…
But I could only think of one adversary who might be able to tell the future. One of the natural consequences of being so awesome is that I attracted envy from all quarters. After all, I had been the god of prophecy, master of the Oracle of Delphi, distributor of the highest quality sneak previews of destiny for millennia. In fact, the more I thought about it, I didn’t see how even a god (other than myself) could have foreseen the future so accurately. I still wondered about their boss, and how he had known where I would fall to earth. I shivered and concentrated on happy thoughts: the Bahamas, the Nine Muses in perfect harmony, the many horrible punishments I would visit on Cade and Mikey when I became a god again. Meg tried to catch the precipitation on her tongue, which I thought a very ineffective way to get a drink of dirty water. Honestly, how do you humans stand it?Īfter a few more blocks, a mixture of sleet and rain began to fall. I felt as if my brain had been stuffed with wet cotton. Mortal fears and needs clouded my thoughts. I wasn’t used to traveling at street level.Īlso, in this mortal form, my flawless memory had become… flawed. I knew that Percy Jackson lived around here somewhere, but my trips across the sky in the sun chariot had given me something of a Google Earth orientation. By the time we reached Second Avenue, the neighborhood started to look familiar-rows of low-rise apartment buildings, run-down hardware shops, convenience stores, and Indian restaurants.