Invisible ― Jason Grace

ix. mean old seers

PORTLAND WAS A LOT RAINIER than Camilla was expecting—then again, she'd never left California in her life, so maybe her expectations were a little warped.

She wasn't sure how long it had been raining when Percy lurched awake.

"I thought I slept heavily," Hazel quipped. "Welcome to Portland."

Percy sat up, taking in the scene around him. They were floating down an iron-black river through the middle of the city. Heavy clouds hung low overhead. The cold rain was so light, it seemed suspended in the air. To the left were industrial warehouses and railroad tracks. To the right was a small downtown area—an almost cozy-looking cluster of towers between the banks of the river and a line of misty forested hills.

Percy rubbed his eyes. "How did we get here?"

"The killer whale took us as far as the Columbia River," Frank explained. "Then he passed the harness to a couple of twelve-foot sturgeons. The sturgeons pulled us for a long time. The three of us took turns sleeping. Then we hit this river—"

"The Willamette," Hazel offered.

"Right," Frank said. "After that, the boat kind of took over and navigated us here all by itself. Sleep okay?"

As the Pax glided south, Percy told them about his dreams. He tried to focus on the positive: a warship might be on the way to help Camp Jupiter. A friendly Cyclops and a giant dog were looking for him.

When he described the Roman fort on the ice, Hazel looked troubled.

"So Alcyoneus is on a glacier," she said. "That doesn't narrow it down much. Alaska has hundreds of those."

Percy nodded. "Maybe this seer dude Phineas can tell us which one."

The boat docked itself at a wharf. The three demigods stared up at the buildings of drizzly downtown Portland.

Frank wiped the rain off his flat-top hair.

"So now we find a blind man in the rain," Frank said. "Yay."

◈

It wasn't as hard as they'd been expecting. The screaming and the weed whacker definitely helped.

They all pulled on their raincoats and walked for a few blocks through the mostly deserted streets. They saw some bicycle traffic and a few homeless guys huddled in doorways, but the majority of Portlanders seemed to be staying indoors.

As they made their way down Glisan Street, they passed a few coffee shops. Before anyone could suggest stopping for breakfast, though, they heard a voice yelling down the street: "HA! TAKE THAT, STUPID CHICKENS!" followed by the revving of a small engine and a lot of squawking."

Percy glanced at his companions. "You think—?"

"Probably," Frank agreed.

They ran toward the noise.

The next block over, they found a big open parking lot with tree-lined sidewalks and rows of food trucks facing the streets on all four sides.

In the center of the lot, behind all the food trucks, an old man in a bathrobe was running around with a weed whacker, screaming at a flock of bird-ladies who were trying to steal food off a picnic table.

"Harpies," Hazel said. "Which means—"

"That's Phineas," Frank guessed.

They ran across the street and squeezed between a Korean/Brazilian fusion truck and a Chinese egg roll burrito vendor.