❝ Does being a Child of Hermes automatically make you good at flirting? Or was that just a skill you picked up? ❞
Andromeda Jackson knew she was not cut out for the demigod life, and that was before she heard about her death from the creepy oracle i...
─── i swear to you, this time it really wasn't my fault
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ℑf we were in a horror movie, this would be the part where the music was getting suspenseful as we waited for something terrible to happen. This train ride was raising my anxiety levels way above manageable and that had been the case for two days.
I tried to keep a low profile because my name and picture were splattered over the front pages of several East Coast newspapers. The Trenton Register News showed a photo taken by a tourist as I got off the Greyhound bus.
Unfortunately, they didn't get my good side (not that I had a good side). I had this wild look in my eyes. My sword was a metallic blur in my hands, and looked sort of like a baseball bat or a lacrosse stick.
The picture's caption read: Seventeen-year-old Andromeda Jackson, wanted for questioning in the Long Island disappearance of her mother two weeks ago, is shown here fleeing from the bus where she accosted several elderly female passengers.
The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after Jackson fled the scene. Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the girl may be traveling with three teenage accomplices. Her stepfather, Gabe Ugliano, has offered a cash reward for information leading to her capture.
"Don't worry," Annabeth told me. "Mortal police could never find us."
But she didn't sound so sure. At least when Luke told me things like that, he sounded relatively convincing.
The rest of the time, I spent my time pacing the length of the train and looking out of the windows. Once, I spotted a family of centaurs galloping across a wheat field, bows at the ready, as they hunted lunch. The little boy centaur, who was the size of a second-grader on a pony, caught my eye and waved. I looked around the passenger car, but nobody else had noticed. The adult riders all had their faces buried in laptops or magazines.
Another time, toward evening, I saw something huge moving through the woods. I could've sworn it was a lion, except that lions don't live wild in America. Its fur glinted gold in the evening light. Then it leaped through the trees and was gone.
Our reward money for returning Gladiola the poodle had only been enough to purchase tickets as far as Denver. We couldn't get berths in the sleeper car, so we dozed in our seats. My neck got stiff, so I resorted to using Luke as a pillow once more, ignoring Annabeth's glare.
Grover kept snoring and bleating and waking me up. Once, he shuffled around and his fake foot fell off. Annabeth stuck it back on before any of the other passengers noticed, which left the three of us awake once more.
