Indigo Eyes

Chapter 16

Since she took up residence in Cabin twelve, Cressida was the last one to reach the dining pavilion, ready to stuff her face with a brilliantly cooked steak soaked in gravy and some curly fries after everything that happened today.

She had only just gotten her plate when the sound of her father's voice made her shoulders sag with exhaustion.

"Well, well, if it isn't Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete," he drawled as he spotted the boy walking with Tyson.

Percy gritted his teeth. "Percy Jackson ... sir," he corrected.

Mr D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes. Well, as you young people say these days, whatever."

Where all of Percy's attention was usually taken up by Mr D and his vexing comments, the stranger that usually sat in Chiron's distracted him. A pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner's jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails and badly cut grey hair, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker.

"This boy," Dionysus said. "You need to watch. Poseidon's child, you know."

"Ah!" the prisoner exclaimed. "That one."

"If by that one you mean the demigod of the prophecy who helped save Olympus last year so that we wouldn't be embroiled in a war of the gods right now, then yes, he is that one," Cressida retorted as he approached the head table that her father and the prisoner sat on. Cressida held out the packet of purple sour patch kids as Dionysus reached for it only for her to snatch it back. "Do we need to have another conversation, Papa?" she asked, almost sounding like a parent herself and Percy had a feeling that he was the one that needed to apologise to her because it felt as if she'd defended him a lot when he wasn't around.

"No, my dearest Jewel, we do not," Dionysus answered and Cressida gave him a pointed look before giving him the sour patch kids that he automatically dug into. Cressida then sat on the table and she began snacking on her curly fries, ignoring the look Tantalus sent her.

"I am Tantalus," the prisoner said, smiling coldly. 'On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise -"

Cressida cleared her throat loudly, leaning her head towards the prisoner as if she was trying to listen for something.

"Or the Lady Cressida is offended."

"That's what I like to hear," she said, her mouth half full and Percy had to try not to smile, which was easy to do when Tantalus began talking again.

"And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble."

"Trouble?" Percy demanded and Dionysus snapped his fingers as a newspaper appeared on the table with Percy's yearbook photo from his new school, Meriwether Prep, on the front.

"Oh my gods," Cressida gaped as she swallowed her food, an open-mouthed smile on her face as she picked up the paper and Percy grimaced. He was never going to hear the end of this now. "I'm gonna have this framed. Papa, can I have this framed?" she asked as she began to read the front-page article.

"You can have whatever you like, Jewel," he answered, and her eyes lit up, but her father stopped her before she could even say anything. "Whatever you like, within reason."

"Killjoy."

Dionysus snapped his fingers and the newspaper in her hands vanished and was replaced with a polished wooden frame as the smile returned to her face. "Care to rephrase that?" he asked, and she pecked his cheek.

"Best father ever."

"Better," he said with a content expression. "Go on then, old fellow," Dionysus invited as Cressida moved to sit on the armrest of her father's chair, still snacking on curly fries as both her eyes and her father's sparkled with mischief. "Perhaps now it will work."