Miss Quinn

73 ~ The Wild Boar

Emma, Percy, Thalia, Grover, Zoe, and Bianca had arrived on the outskirts of a little ski town nestled in the mountains. The sign said WELCOME TO CLOUDCROFT, NEW MEXICO. The air was cold and thin. The roofs of the cabins were heaped with snow, and dirty mounds of it were piled up on the sides of the streets. Tall pine trees loomed over the valley, casting pitch-black shadows, though the morning was sunny.

Even with Emma's thick sweater, she was freezing by the time the group got to Main Street, which was about half a mile from the train tracks. As they walked, Percy and Emma told Grover about their conversation with Apollo the night before—how he'd told them to seek out Nereus in San Francisco.

Grover looked uneasy. "That's good, I guess. But we've got to get there first." Emma tried not to get too depressed about their chances.

They stopped in the middle of town. They could pretty much see everything from there: a school, a bunch of tourist stores and cafes, some ski cabins, and a grocery store.

"Great," Thalia said, looking around. "No bus station. No taxis. No car rental. No way out."

"There's a coffee shop!" said Grover.

"Yes," Zoe said. "Coffee is good."

"And pastries," Grover said dreamily. "And wax paper."

Thalia sighed. "Fine. How about you two go get us some food. Percy, Emma, Bianca, and I will check in the grocery store. Maybe they can give us directions."

Everyone agreed to meet back in front of the grocery store in fifteen minutes. Bianca looked a little uncomfortable coming with the campers, but she did.

Inside the store, they found out a few valuable things about Cloudcroft: there wasn't enough snow for skiing, the grocery store sold rubber rats for a dollar each, and there was no easy way in or out of town unless you had your own car.

"You could call for a taxi from Alamogordo," the clerk said doubtfully. "That's down at the bottom of the mountains, but it would take at least an hour to get here. Cost several hundred dollars."

The clerk looked so lonely, Percy bought a rubber rat. Then they headed back outside and stood on the porch.

"Wonderful," Thalia grumped. "I'm going to walk down the street, see if anybody in the other shops has a suggestion."

"But the clerk said—"

"I know," she told Percy. "I'm checking anyway." He let her go.

Bianca, Emma, and Percy stood together awkwardly. Emma didn't know what to say to Percy. After revealing her secret to him the night before, she hadn't spoken to him one-on-one at all, and she had no idea what to say. Emma wasn't really friends with Bianca, though she'd helped save them from Dr. Thorn. Emma wasn't sure what to say to her, either, especially now that Bianca was a Hunter.

"Nice rat," Bianca said at last.

Percy set it on the porch railing. Maybe it would attract more business for the store.

"So... how do you like being a Hunter so far?" Percy asked.

She pursed her lips. "You're not still mad at me for joining, are you?"

"Nah. Long as, you know... you're happy."

"I'm not sure 'happy' is the right word, with Lady Artemis gone. But being a Hunter is definitely cool. I feel calmer somehow. Everything seems to have slowed down around me. I guess that's the immortality."

Emma stared at her, trying to see the difference. She did seem more confident than before, more at peace. She didn't hide her face under a green cap anymore. She kept her hair tied back, and she looked Emma and Percy right in the eyes when she spoke. With a shiver, Emma realized that five hundred or a thousand years from now, Bianca di Angelo would look exactly the same as she did today. She might be having a conversation like this with some other half-blood long after Percy and Emma were dead, but Bianca would still look twelve years old.