This Dark Night ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase¹

―v. touring the summer camp of death

ALL NAOMI COULD DO was stare at the others around the table.

She waited for Ashton Kutcher to pop out of nowhere and reveal that all of this was the elaborate set-up to a giant prank. That the one-eyed man had been an actor, that Skia teleporting her out of the alley and into the woods was just some kind of large-scale sleight-of-hand or some sort of TV magic.

All she got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.

"Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"

"Eh? Oh, all right."

Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.

"Wait," Percy said. "You're telling me there's such a thing as God."

"Well, now," Chiron said. "God—capital G, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."

Naomi's mind was spinning. If the nuns heard what she was hearing, they'd go on a tirade about devil-worshipping sinners and force Naomi to recite an entire book in the Bible to "cleanse her soul." Probably one of the gospels. They loved the gospels.

"Metaphysical?" Percy asked. "But you were just talking about—"

"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."

"Smaller!"

"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."

"Zeus," Percy said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."

In the distance, thunder rumbled in the cloudless sky.

"Young man," Mr. D said sternly. "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."

"But they're stories," Percy said. "They're—myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."

"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson—"

Percy flinched at the sound of his full name.

"—what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals—they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come so-o-o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."

There was something about the way Mr. D kept referring to mortals, as if they were a group separate from him. As if he wasn't a mortal. It was enough to make Naomi want to get as far away from him as fast as she could, even more than she already did.

"Percy," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"

"You mean, whether people believed in you or not," Percy said.

"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"

Percy's face turned into a scowl, but he seemed to be fighting his anger. "I wouldn't like it," he said, keeping his eyes on the tabletop. "But I don't believe in gods."