“Oh.” I said softly. Then I looked back up. “When exactly will I meet Persia?”

Hades shrugged. “I don’t exactly know when, right now, but you will soon. I promise.”

Then his mouth twitched. “But now you have to go tell the other demigods that Percy has… dissolved. Or just tell them he died. That would be better for them.”

I froze. Then I sighed in resignation. “Can I tell them about Persia? Otherwise they’ll just lose hope with the war.”

Hades tilted his head to the side. “I suppose. They will need something to cheer them up.”

I stared at him for a few seconds, thinking, then asked, “Will you help the Olympians fight in the war? They need you father. Olympus will fall if we don’t have your help.“

His face twisted. “They don’t deserve my help, do they? They have never treated me like family. And I am sending Persia to help the demigods. Is that not enough?”

I hesitated, and he glared at me. “Just go, child. I will consider it. But I make no promises.”

I got up from the couch and left.

~PJO~

I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.

Of course, the Mist helped. People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large, loud, very friendly hearse. I snorted. How morbid. Even my thoughts were about death.

I took the risk of using Percy's mom's cell phone to call Annabeth for the second time.

I'd called her once from the runnel but only reached her voice mail. I'd gotten surprisingly good reception, seeing as I was at the mythological center of the world and all, but I didn't want to see what his mom's roaming charges were going to be.

This time, Annabeth picked up.

"Hey," I said. "You get my message?"

"Percy, where have you been? Your message said almost nothing! We've been worried sick!"

“It’s not Percy, it’s me Nico.” I said, feeling a little sick. How was I going to explain this?

“Nico? Where’s Percy? Is he alright? Why isn’t he on the phone?” I felt the tears coming, but I blinked them away.

"I'll fill you in later," I said, though how I was going to do that I had no idea. "Where are you?" My voice cracked a little.

If Annabeth noticed, she didn’t comment on it. "We're on our way like you asked, almost to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. But Nico, what are you and Percy planning? We've left the camp virtually undefended, and there's no way the gods—"

"Trust me," I said. "I'll see you there."

I hung up. My hands were trembling. I wasn't sure if it was from exhaustion, or nerves, from thinking about what I was going to tell them. I had no idea what to say, and I didn’t know how they were going to react.

It was late afternoon when the taxi dropped me at the Empire State Building. Mrs. O'Leary bounded up and down Fifth Avenue, licking cabs and sniffing hot dog carts. Nobody seemed to notice her, although people did swerve away and look confused when she came close.

I whistled for her to heel as three white vans pulled up to the curb. They said Delphi Strawberry Service, which was the cover name for Camp Half-Blood. I'd never seen all three vans in the same place at once, though I knew they shuttled our fresh produce into the city.

The first van was driven by Argus, our many-eyed secu-rity chief. The other two were driven by harpies, who are basically demonic human/chicken hybrids with bad atti-tudes. We used the harpies mostly for cleaning the camp, but they did pretty well in midtown traffic too.

The doors slid open. A bunch of campers climbed out, some of them looking a little green from the long drive. I was glad so many had come: Pollux, Silena Beauregard, the Stoll brothers, Michael Yew, Jake Mason, Katie Gardner, and Annabeth, along with most of their siblings. Chiron came out of the van last.

His horse half was compacted into his magic wheelchair, so he used the handicap lift.

The Ares cabin wasn't here, but I tried not to get too angry about that. Clarisse was a stubborn idiot. End of story.

I did a head count: forty campers in all.

Not many to fight a war, but it was still the largest group of half-bloods I'd ever seen gathered in one place outside camp. Everyone looked nervous, and I understood why. We were probably sending out so much demigod aura that every monster in the northeastern United States knew we were here.

As I looked at their faces—all these campers I'd known for so few summers—a nagging voice whispered in my mind: One of them is a spy.

But I couldn't dwell on that. They were my friends. Or sorta my friends. It’s not like they ever really liked me, since they found out I was a child of Hades.

All of them were gathered in a crowd in front of me and Annabeth stepped forward, looking around anxiously.

“Nico, where’s Percy? Did something happen? Is he coming?” She asked.

I swallowed. I guess now was the time. I took a deep breath and said softly. “Percy’s not coming, Annabeth. He’s dead.”