A Fire Burns Within Me (completed)

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"Guys, you won't believe what we found out," Shadow said, bursting into Thalia's room.

"Don't you knock?" Thalia snapped, looking up from her conversation with Tyler and Grover.

This made Shadow falter for a moment and glance back at me to see my amused expression as I shut the door behind me.

"What is it Shadow?" Grover asked, elbowing the daughter of Zeus in the ribs.

"The castle, is haunted," Shadow revealed, grinning like it was the best thing in the universe.

"What do you mean?" Tyler asked, frowning.

"According to the few people who would actually talk about the castle," I said, cutting off the over-excited Shadow as he took a deep breath to most likely babble about what we learned, "there is a spirit there that fights something no one can see every day at noon. No one can see the spirit either and it always picks up anyone who goes in and plops them right outside the gates."

"Great, just what we needed," Grover grumbled, "the place is guarded by a ghost."

"You don't believe it do you?" Tyler spoke up. "I mean haunted? Really?"

"What's not to believe?" I asked, "we're demigods, our entire lives is dealing with the impossible. And have you seen Nico summon ghosts?"

"Well, yes but the dead can't stay in the place of the living for long," Tyler countered, "sooner or later they need to go back to the Underworld. How old did you say this rumor is?"

"About several centuries?" Shadow said, looking to me for confirmation.

"At lease several generations," I said firmly.

"There, you see?" Tyler said triumphantly as though his point had just been proven. "A ghost would have had to go back by the time the first decade was up."

"Ah, but you see, Tyler," I said, lifting a finger, ready to contradict the son of Athena, "we are not on Earth. The rules there do not necessarily apply here."

Tyler opened his mouth but stopped. He opened and closed his mouth, at loss for words, obviously not expecting to be stumped by a son of Poseidon. No matter how old he was. Ha, take that.

"So what now?" Grover asked as Thalia coughed to hide a laugh.

"Tomorrow we are going to the castle," I said, feeling excessively accomplished. "Hopefully we get there around noon."

"Hopefully?" Thalia asked incredulously.

"That way the spirit will be too busy fighting whatever they are fighting to take us back to the gates," I said as if it should have been obvious.

"Right, of course," Thalia said dryly, "I should have remembered your tendency to run at a sprint towards danger."

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Tyler was roughly shaken awake by Grover really early in the morning with a hand over his mouth. He woke with a start, his heart beating wildly, his mind flashing back to his time alone on the streets. When he saw it was Grover, he slumped back down on his pillow in relief as Grover took his hand off.