BLOODSHOT . . . piper mclean

81.

THE PAST FEW days had been uneventful, but that was mostly because the one mission they'd had, Eden didn't want to go on it. Like, sure, raid Odysseus's palace, cool. Whatever. She didn't really care. She'd already been on one of his adventures, through the Sea of Monsters. That had been a nightmare and a half.

But so far, her tasks had required fighting things, sitting in on strategy meetings she wanted no part of, trying to heal Perfect Jason and failing, and being Piper's bitch. Which was a task she could get behind.

And those tasks were bad. So Eden was relieved to go and get Leo, because that was the easiest task there.

"Leo!" she called, and she was totally just staring down at only his lower body, but she was gay. That shit didn't affect her, unless Piper was the one doing it. "We need you."

  Leo sighed. "Talk to the pants, Water Girl! 'Cause the hands are busy!"

"I am not talking to the pants. I'm gay. Meeting in the mess hall. We're almost at Olympia or wherever."

"Yeah, fine. I'll be there in a sec."

"What are you doing, anyway? You've been poking around inside the hull for days. It's fucking loud."

Leo answered slowly. "Routine maintenance."

  Silence. Eden knew he was lying. That shit hadn't been that loud before. "Fire Boy–"

"Hey, while you're out there, do me a favour. I got this itch right below my –"

"You're disgusting, I'm leaving!"

Eden left then, going up to her room to check herself out in the mirror — damn, she looked good — before going back into the mess hall.

The other six demigods were eating breakfast. Leo was still in the fucking engine room.

Percy was eating a huge stack of blue pancakes ( Eden still didn't get that shit ) while Annabeth chided him for pouring on too much syrup.

"You're drowning them!" she complained.

"Hey, I'm a Poseidon kid," he said. "I can't drown. And neither can my pancakes."

Uh huh. Rome didn't exist then.

  To their left, Frank and Hazel used their cereal bowls to flatten out a map of Greece. They looked over it, their heads close together. Every once in a while Frank's hand would cover Hazel's, just sweet and natural like they were an old married couple, and Hazel didn't even look flustered, which was real progress for a girl from the 1940s. Until recently, if somebody said gosh darn, she would nearly faint, except for Eden, who she got used to swearing. Eden was okay with that. She loved swearing.

  At the head of the table, Perfect Jason sat uncomfortably with his T-shirt rolled up to his ribcage as Nurse Piper changed his bandages.

"Hold still," she said. "I know it hurts."

"It's just cold," he said.

Eden could hear the pain in his voice. That gladius blade had pierced him all the way through. The entrance wound on his back was an ugly shade of purple and it steamed. Not a good sign.

"If you do it the other way, babe, it's better on the wound," Eden hopped onto her chair, kicking off her sandal heels. "Not better for him, but I presume you want that healed."

"What's up, guys?" Leo strolled into the mess hall. "Aw, yes to brownies!"

He grabbed the last one – from a special sea-salt recipe they'd picked up from a fish centaur at the bottom of the Atlantic. Long story.