𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒, ᴘᴇʀᴄʏ ᴊᴀᴄᴋꜱᴏɴ

011 ── trust's fool.

        Percy shouldered his way around the old man and snatched stuff off the picnic table—a covered bowl of Thai noodles in mac-and-cheese sauce, and a tubular pastry that looked like a combination burrito and cinnamon roll. Before he could lose control and smash the burrito in Phineas's face, Percy said, "Come on, guys." He led his friends out of the parking lot.

        They stopped across the street. Theia's feet wandered further than that of her friend's, boots thudding against concrete, listless. She allowed her lungs to expand with air, biting from the rain still beating onto rooftop tiles. Dousing and soothing. She cricked her neck, straining an ear towards the conversation at her back.

        "That man..." Hazel smacked the side of a bus-stop bench. "He needs to die. Again."

        Hazel's shoulders trembled and shook within her windbreaker, as fragile as a stem ebbed by the biting cold of death. Her curls were plastered to her head, infiltrating her eyes, dulled to tin.

        She's supposed to be dead.

        Theia turned to her, then. Looked at the girl the seer had described, tried to place the weight of skeletons on her back and the brand of a traitor on her skin. Hazel Levesque; a ghost, a dead girl walking. But her mind couldn't yield to the bane of his contention. Hazel was quiet comfort and wildflowers in winter, the cocoon of comfort in the depths of cold. A hand clasping hers in the dark.

        "We'll get him," Percy promised. "He's nothing like you, Hazel. I don't care what he says."

        She shook her head. "You don't know the whole story. I should have been sent to Punishment. I—I'm just as bad—"

        "You're nothing like him." Hazel almost jolted as Theia's head snapped up, flaming copper flying about her features in a dizzying throng of orange, her eyes, behind them, steeled copper and intrepid.

        Frank balled his fists. He looked around like he was searching for anybody who might disagree with him—enemies he could hit for Hazel's sake. "She's a good person!" he yelled across the street. A few harpies squawked in the trees, but no one else paid them any fixing attention.

        Hazel stared at Frank. She reached out tentatively, as if she wanted to touch him but was afraid he might shake her hand from his. "Frank..." she stammered. "I—I don't..."

        Unfortunately, Frank seemed wrapped up in his own thoughts. He slung his spear off his back and gripped it uneasily. "I could intimidate that old man," he offered. His eyes fixed on Theia as his mind continued, speaking to her, kindling the violence rampant on her bones. "maybe scare him—"

        "Frank, it's okay," Percy said. "Let's keep that as a backup plan, but I don't think Phineas can be scared into cooperating. Besides, you've only got two more uses out of the spear, right?"

        Frank scowled at the dragon's-tooth point. "Yeah. I guess...."

        Frank's drifting of thought brought Theia's eyes to where she had previously neglected, trailing the profile of his face tentatively, as if her eyes trailed a boneyard only she could cultivate. A burnt stick. Frank's life was brittle, cradled between his own hands that he had always sought to keep at a distance from her. Her hand faltered against the metal of her lighter, thinking, spiralling, falling further and further. How many times had she put him close to death with her commonplace irrationality?

       "I've got an idea." Percy pointed up the street. "The red-feathered harpy went that way. Let's see if we can get her to talk to us."

        Hazel looked at the food in his hands. "You're going to use that as bait?"