RED ¹ / Percy Jackson !

75

"TELL ME WHEN IT'S OVER," THALIA SAID. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding on to us so they couldn't fall, but still Thalia clutched his arm like it was the most important thing in the world. 

 "Everything's fine," Viviene promised.

"Are... are we very high?" 

 Viviene looked down. Below them, a range of snowy mountains zipped by. Percy  stretched out his foot and kicked snow off one of the peaks. 

 "Nah," Percy  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!" their 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?" Percy asked. 

 "We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" their statue said. "Those mechanics 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, Vivene swore Hank did. "Back to flying." 

They sped up, so Viviene could tell the angels were excited. The mountains fell away into hills, and then they 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 they flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store—and they  passed dozens of them—she would peg the store's sign with a few bulls-eyes at a hundred miles an hour. Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole way. She muttered to herself a lot, like she was praying.

"You did good back there," Viviene 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? You said they cornered you."

Viviene told her about the weird mortal girl, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to be able to see right through the Mist. 

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

"Well, the girl was annoying," Percy  said. "But I'm glad Viviene didn't vaporize her. That would've been bad." 

"I'm not glad." Viviene grumbled. "I don't like her."

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

***

"Where you guys want to land?" Hank asked, waking Percy  up from a nap. 

 Percy looked down and said, "Whoa."

He'd seen San Francisco in pictures before, but never in real life. It was probably the most beautiful city he'd ever seen: kind of like a smaller, cleaner Manhattan, if Manhattan had been surrounded by green hills and fog. There was a huge bay and ships, islands and sailboats, and the Golden Gate Bridge sticking up out of the fog. Percy  felt like he should take a picture or something. Greetings from Frisco. Haven't Died Yet. Wish You Were Here.