❝ 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...
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𝔗he news painted it as a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He accidentally hit a gas main that had then ruptured causing an explosion. It was complete bullshit, but they were feeding me so I just nodded to everything they said.
This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted me and three other adolescents in New York and brought us across country on a ten-day odyssey of terror.
Poor Andromeda Jackson wasn't an international criminal after all. She'd caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away from her captor (and afterward, witnesses would even swear they had seen the leather-clad man on the bus—again, bullshit). The crazy man had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. After all, no teenager could've done that. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo, and notified the police. Finally, brave Andromeda Jackson had stolen a gun from her captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the beach. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. Andromeda Jackson and her three friends were safely in police custody.
Complete bullshit.
The reporters fed us this whole story. We just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted (which wasn't that hard), and played victimized children for the cameras.
"All I want," I said, choking back my tears, as Luke patted my hand, "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew...somehow...we would be okay. And I know he'll want to reward each and every person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here's the phone number."
The police and reporters were so moved that they passed around the hat and raised money for four tickets on the next plane to New York. I knew there was no choice but to fly. I hoped Zeus would cut me some slack, considering the circumstances. But it was still hard to force myself on board the flight.
Take off was a nightmare. Every spot of turbulence was scarier than a Greek monster. I didn't unclench my hands from Luke's until we touched down safely at La Guardia. The local press was waiting for us outside security, but we managed to evade them thanks to Annabeth, who lured them away in her invisible Yankees cap, shouting, "They're over by the frozen yogurt! Come on!" then re-joined us at baggage claim.
We split up at the taxi stand. I told Luke, Annabeth and Grover to get back to Half-Blood Hill and let Chiron know what had happened. They protested, Luke had said no chance and he was coming with me, and it was hard to persuade the other two younger ones to go back after all we'd been through, but I knew I had to do this last part of the quest by myself (with the supervision of Luke to make sure I didn't do anything stupid). If things went wrong, if the gods didn't believe us...I wanted Annabeth and Grover to survive to tell Chiron the truth.
