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{ 🔮 } · soulmates ─ part one . ݁ ٬٬ ࣪
THE METAL DOOR WAS half hidden behind a laundry bin full of dirty hotel towels. Percy didn't see anything strange about it, but Rachel showed him where to look, and he recognized the faint blue symbol etched in the metal.
"It hasn't been used in a long time," Annabeth said.
"I tried to open it once," Rachel said, "just out of curiosity. It's rusted shut."
"No." Endora stepped forward. "It just needs the touch of a half-blood."
Sure enough, as soon as she put her hand on the mark, it glowed blue. The metal door unsealed and creaked open, revealing a dark staircase leading down.
"Wow." Rachel looked calm, but Percy couldn't tell if she was pretending or not. She'd changed into a ratty Museum of Modern Art T-shirt and her regular marker-colored jeans, her blue plastic hairbrush sticking out of her pocket. Her red hair was tied back, but she still had flecks of gold in it, and traces of the gold glitter on her face. "So. . . after you?"
"You're the guide," Annabeth said. "Lead on."
The stairs led down to a large brick tunnel. It was so dark Percy couldn't see two feet in front of them. Endora let blue fire appear in her hand lightening up the room and as soon as it did, Rachel yelped. A skeleton was grinning at them. It wasn't human. It was huge, for one thing ─ at least ten feet tall. It had been strung up, chained by its wrists and ankles so it made a kind of giant X over the tunnel. But what really sent a shiver down Percy's back was the single black eye socket in the center of its skull.
"A Cyclops," Annabeth said. "It's very old. It's not. . . anybody we know."
It wasn't Tyson, she meant. But that didn't make the boy feel much better. Percy still felt like it had been put here as a warning. Whatever could kill a grown Cyclops, Percy didn't want to meet.
Rachel swallowed. "You have a friend who's a Cyclops?"
"Tyson," Percy said. "My half brother."
"Your half brother?"
"Hopefully we'll find him down here," he said. "And Grover. He's a satyr."
"Oh." her voice was small. "Well then, we'd better keep moving."
She stepped under the skeleton's left arm and kept walking. Endora, Annabeth and Percy exchanged looks. Annabeth shrugged. They followed Rachel deeper into the maze. After fifty feet the group came to a crossroads. Ahead, the brick tunnel continued. To the right, the walls were made of ancient marble slabs. To the left, the tunnel was dirt and tree roots.
