My eyes slowly fluttered open. We weren’t up in the security office anymore but from the sound of the rain and smell of the sea I knew we were still in Seattle. I was on a concrete floor in what looked to be a cell curled up next to Nico. My face burned at the realization that we were spooning and I sat up quickly to wake him up.
“That’s not possible!” the Muses’ mother screeched from the other side of the bars.
My head snapped up and I glared at her. “It’s not very nice to mess with my memories,” I sneered.
“How did you wake up?”
“It wasn’t reality. There were too many differences and I noticed them. And nothing you could do could ever make me forget my friends. Now wake them up, too.”
Mnemosyne glowered at me. “No. I don’t think I will. You’re a bigger nuisance than I thought, Naida Hale, and I think I might have to take extreme measures.”
I really didn’t like the sound of that. She yanked open the cell door and dragged me out. I yelped as I was caught off guard and the cell slammed shut with the others still inside before I could do anything. She whistled, a high pitched noise that had my ears ringing, and in a second I heard the deep growling and a bark from a dog.
“Oh crap,” I muttered before the demonic greyhound from earlier appeared. The thing started snarling at me and I knew there wasn’t much I could do. My eyes darted around quickly and my brain worked at hyper speed trying to calculate my chances and for the first time ever I was glad I had ADHD. My mind worked at a million miles an hour and I figured that everyone’s best chance was for me to get the dog as far away as possible. I scrambled to my feet then booked it out the door.
My lungs ached and my legs burned from running so damn much this afternoon but I couldn’t slow down because the dog was right on my tail. I pushed past people in the street and just started heading west. People complained at me and screamed when they saw the huge dog running after me but I didn’t waste any energy on the regular humans milling about. I darted across a busy street just as the crosswalk light was flashing and a second later cars started racing down the road between me and Laelaps.
I breathed a sigh of relief and jogged down the beach to the waterfront instead of sprinted. I yanked off my tennis shoes and socks and stepped into the surf, letting the calming water revitalize me. Okay, I was safe now and I needed to think. I had to come up with some way to get back to my friends, wake them up, and then find and free the Fates before midnight. No problem.
I was so bad at this planning stuff and really wished that Annabeth was able to help when my fourth bad idea to get away from Mnemosyne fluttered through my head. I huffed and yanked on a lock of hair when I heard the immortal dog’s booming bark again. It flew over the sand toward me and I knew I was screwed. I ran my fingers through my auburn hair in frustration but they got caught in the tangles caused by the barrette. My eyes widened a fraction because I knew the blue hair ornament had definitely not been holding my hair back when I’d ran from the cell.
I pulled it from my hair and squeezed the hinge so that my icy-looking sword popped out. The dog leaped at me but in a quick strike I slashed at it and it backed off a bit. I could see its black eyes calculating while mine did the same. The last fight with this beast hadn’t ended well and I had no idea how I was going to change that outcome. I could be on the defensive but one wrong move and I’d be history and I didn’t have time to wait out the monster mutt.
“Use the water,” a very familiar voice whispered in my head.
The dog, as if sensing my brief distraction, launched itself like a rocket and snapped its jaws at me. I moved my hand in an attempt to at least shield my face and the waves around me responded by crashing into Laelaps. I blinked for a moment in shock and a crazy idea slowly formed in my head that would either save me or get me killed. With the sword still in my right hand I used my left to try to control the waves.
Nothing much happened at first. The tide licked at my bare feet impatiently, like a puppy begging for attention. The snarling dog edged closer, taking its time like it knew I had nowhere else to run. I was so dead.
“Come on,” I muttered to the gentle water. “A little cooperation would be so nice right now.”
Laelaps tensed to spring and my heart pounded in my chest. The waves became more impatient as the lapped at my feet. The dog jumped and I tucked and rolled deeper into the ocean so that the surf was up to my knees. Laelaps growled menacingly. I think it was getting bored with the chase and just wanted to end things now, which was definitely not in my best interest. The dog charged again and I felt the water work its way up my body and into my sword hand. I raised the barrette/sword at the absolute last second instinctively and it went straight through the dog’s body. I felt my stomach twist in guilt as it fell to the ground and let out a little whine. But that unease quickly faded when it got up and tried coming at me again.
“Okay, enough,” I ordered. My free hand clenched into a fist and the saltwater between me and the dog turned to ice and had it skidding away from me. I opened my hand again and in a motion like I was pushing something away, the waves crashed around the dog’s body and started dragging it deeper into the ocean and away from me.
I huffed and collapsed to the ground. Okay, now that that was taken care of, I had to find my way back to the cell and free my friends. The water flowed around me and gave me strength and I was surprised to find that I was completely dry when I stepped back onto the mushy sand. I quickly slipped into my shoes before I started retracing my steps back down Broad St. Hopefully, this would be the easy part and it gave us a little less than twelve hours to find where the Fates had been moved and rescue them.
Yeah, no problem at all.

Notes

can i just start off by saying that i love all of you? and special thanks to my comments from: Evil espresso drinks DaughterOfTheSky Icarus_falling and FJM818.
also, randomness for today: so my friend and I are kinda racing to read the heroes of olympus books. i'm winning :)