𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬'𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 • 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘺 𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘰𝘯

I Wrestle Santa's Evil Twin

A/N: SO...DAM...LONG...

Percy's Pov:

"Tell me when it's over," Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding on to us so we couldn't fall, even so, Thalia clutched his arm like it was the most essential thing in the world. 

"Everything's fine," I promised. 

"Are... are we very high?" 

I looked down. Below us, a range of snowy mountains zipped by. I stretched out my foot and kicked the snow off one peak. 

"Nah," I said. "Not that high." 

"We are in the Sierras.'" Zoe yelled. She and Grover were hanging from the arms of the other statue. "I have hunted here before. At this speed, we should be in San Francisco in a few hours." 

"Hey, hey, Frisco!" our angel said. "Yo, Chuck! We could visit those guys at the Mechanics Monument again! They know how to party!" 

"Oh, man," the other angel said. "I am so there!" 

"You guys have visited San Francisco?" I asked. 

"We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" our statue said. "Thosemechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble lady statues, see. And—" 

"Hank!" the other statue Chuck cut in. "They're kids, man." 

"Oh, right." If bronze statues could blush, I swear Hank did. "Back to flying." 

We sped up, so I could tell the angels were excited. The mountains fell away into hills, and then we were zipping along over farmland and towns and highways. 

Grover played his pipes to pass the time. Zoe got bored and started shooting arrows at random billboards as we flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store—and we passed dozens of them—she would peg the store's sign with a few bulls-eyes at a hundred miles an hour. Grayson quietly sang a song in French while bobbing his fingers along to the rhythm. He tried not to look down, since, you know, motion sickness.

Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole way. She muttered to herself a lot like she was praying. 

"You did good back there," I told her. "Zeus listened." 

It was hard to tell what she was thinking with her eyes closed. 

"Maybe," she said. 

"How did you get away from the skeletons in the generator room, anyway?" asked Grayson, squeezed in the same hand as Thalia. "You said they cornered you." 

I told them about the weird mortal girl, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to be able to see right through the Mist. I thought Thalia and Grayson would call me crazy, but they just nodded. 

"Some mortals are like that," Thalia said. "Nobody knows why."

Suddenly I flashed on something I'd never considered. 

My mom was like that. She had seen the Minotaur on Half-Blood Hill and known exactly what it was. She hadn't been surprised at all last year when I'd told her my friend Tyson was a Cyclops. Maybe she'd known all along. No wonder she'd been so scared for me as I was growing up. She saw through the Mist even better than I did. 

"When I found out Y/n was a demigod, she said that I was either a demigod too or a mortal who saw through the mist," spoke Grayson. "I was the first option, but maybe that Raquelle girl is a mortal who sees through the mist?"

"Rachel," I said. "Well, she was annoying. But I'm glad I didn't vaporize her. That would've been bad." 

Thalia nodded. "Must be nice to be a regular mortal." She said that as if she'd given it a lot of thought.