NICO’S POV
You could see L.A. from miles away because the smog lifting up from the ground and steaming in the humid December air. It was pollution mixed with sweat mixed with mist and mixed with monster essence. The easiest most accessible door to my dad’s realm was in Los Angeles, and there was bound to be monsters storming in and out, especially if the doors are weak, and my dad’s busy. And judging by the way he had been ignoring me even more than usual lately, I’m pretty sure he was busy.
I drive in through the palm trees, looking around in amazement. Everyone was wearing shorts and sunglasses in December. I put a hand on Jade’s shoulder and slowly shake her awake. As soon as I touched her she sat bolt upright panting looking around frantically. Demi gods were light sleepers, we had to be, it was unusual for us to wake up without a nightmare running through our veins.
“You ok?” I ask, not taking my eyes of the road. I clear my throat, “40 minutes, and we’ll be right in downtown. You wanna stop by Rodeo Drive first, do some shopping, tourism stuff, or just go straight to hell?” I ask.
“Let’s just get hell over with” she answers. I clear my throat again, this was going to be tough.
“Um, I need ot talk to you about something” She doesn’t answer, but turns her head to look at me, I don’t match her. “Walking into hades…”
“I was meaning to ask you about that, how would I get out, I mean it would easy for you I mean you’re the son of hades and everything, but me? I mean, only a couple of demigods that have gone in came out, and mostly never with what they wanted.” She says, shivering.
“Exactly. I think I have a way to get you out that involves, begging, lying, and threatening, but you need to help me out with that.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Stay quiet, stay behind me, don’t make eye contact, don’t touch anything, and I swear to the gods Jade if you eat something I will kill you!” She laughs and rolls her eyes but otherwise agrees.

Once we finally drive up to downtown Los Angeles, I gawk at the busy streets chalk full of girls in short skirts and high heels walking small dogs. There were monsters everywhere, some not that dangerous, but I made sure to keep my head down, and Jade avoided looking out the window as well. But I think that was mostly because she was afraid she would see the woman who forced into the pits. Jade hadn’t talked to me personally about that yet.
“Jade?” I ask, nervously drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, she turns her head to look at me, and I pull into a parking lot overlooking a beach. “It’s not a good idea to walk in there with secrets between us, it would just be used agasint us” I take a deep breath, “you wanna talk a walk? It’s easier to go into hades during sundown, during daylight and nighttime, it’s fiercely protected, but the guards change during sundown and sun up” I clarify. She nods as if that makes sense when I know it didn’t.
“Um, yea” she says, and unbuckles her seat belt, stepping out of the car. I do the same and follow her as she walks down the mostly empty beach towards the shore side. I stop and watch in amazenemnt as the water, almost as if having a mind of its own, rushes toward her, greeting her gently and excitedly. I guess the Pacific Ocean was jealous that she was over on the east coast lately. She laughs and puts her hand in the water, and I step closer to watch as the droplets travel up, defying gravity, and run around on her arm before plopping back in the water.
“if you don’t want to get wet I could-“ she says sort of awkwardly.
“no, its fine, a little water never hurt anyone” I say shaking my head and taking of my shoes. She shrugs and does the same, and the two of us begin to walk along the wet sand, our feet getting occasionaly flooded when the wave came and went.
We traveled silently for a moment, none of us wanting to say anything, but I know we didn’t have much time as I look out to the horizon. One amazing thing about California was the sunsets. Nothing better than those sunsets.
“I was born in 1943” I say abruptly. She stops and looks at me alarmed, as if I was joking. I keep a calm and straight face, waiting for the questions. They don’t come.
“I was four years old when my dad was pressured into sigining the Big Three Degree. The other gods didn’t know about me and my sister, so he decided to hide us. He put me and my sister in the lotus casino in Nevada, which alters time, you think you were there a few years, and it turns out you were there for 70.” I shrug. She still doesn’t say anything, letting me continue my story.
“My dad was trying to convince my mother to put us in there, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around being stuck in a hotel that didn’t let her age correctly, and didn’t let her see the outside world.” My throat tightens, and I have to clear it before I continue, “almighty Zeus found out before he could hide us, and killed my mom instantly. He barely got us to the hotel in time. Zeus couldn’t hurt us there. Nothing could” she stops walking, and I stop as well, looking at her. She takes a few careful steps toward me, positioning herself right underneath me, and nods motioning for me to continue the story.
“Some time later a lawyer came and got us out. I don’t know who he was, or why he did it, but he gt us out, put some money in our bank account, and arranged for us to go to boarding school in New York. I had aged right around to the age of eleven. We had only been at the school a few months before they showed up” I finally look down at her, her face still hasn’t changed, still as patient and caring as before. I continue my story forcing myself to look at her. “Percy, Annabeth, and Thalia” I say, waiting for the recognition to pass and the confusion to dawn. “Thalia was, she was a daughter of Zeus, who was with Annabeth and a friend of hers named luke when they were first coming to the camp. And she was almost killed fighting for them, so her dad took pity and made her into a tree. Some time later she turned into a girl again after a long story that I will tell you some day, and she was doing quests and all that stuff. At that time Percy was feeling threatened because he wasn’t the only child of the big three, and he was about to meet me and my sister, so poor Percy. Anyway, they and grover, fought with a few monsters and got me and my sister out and to the camp” I finish. But I wasn’t finished, and she knew I wasn’t finished.
“You know about the winter solstice quest for the goddess Artemis, I assume percy told you something about it” I say. She nods, but doesn’t say a word. “Well, my sister, Thalia and Percy were on that quest. My sister had recently joined the hunt with the goddess Artemis, I assume you also know about that. And on that quest, while they were in the god’s dumping ground, my sister picked up a small figurine for a game I used to play, called mythomagic” I shake my head in disgust with the thought, and her eyes soften. She moves her hand as if she was going to touch me but she doesn’t. “Anyway, the gods didn’t like that, and they had a guardian, a metal monster whatever that guarded the trash, and he killed my sister for trying to grab me a present for a stupid game.” I wait for a response, but it doesn’t come.
“By the end of the quest, artemis was saved, Annabeth was saved, the other huntress died, and Thalia joined the hunt, that’s why you’ve never met her” my voice catches every time I think of Thalia. I shake all the thoughts out of my head; the late night talking, and glances, the few golden stolen kisses that were against huntress code. She could be kicked out if they ever found out. That was not something Thalia was willing to give up, even for me.
I wait for a response. It might have been polite that she didn’t talk before, but now that I was done with my story I kind of wanted her to say something. I look at her squarely in the eye, our foreheads almost touching, my hair falling into her eyes.
“My mom died when I was a baby.” She starts, not noting on my story. I was relieved and upset at the same time. “Giving birth or something like that. I stayed with my aunt for a while after that, my dad says he was there too, but I don’t know, I was so young. She was an alcoholic” Jade begins walking further down the beach and doesn’t wait for me to catch up to her. I stand there stunned for a minute before running to be by her side.
“-died by drowning or something. Which, if you think about it, is very ironic. Anyway, that’s when Ms. Graceou came along. She was old, fifties, with so much botox you thought she just put plastic under her skin. Anyway, foul, sick, evil woman. She um, ran a business, right? You wouldn’t believe how many people participated, how many people knew, how many people put money, how many people would watch children, children! Get killed. They were bloodthirsty, the worst monster I had ever encoutnred. She taught me about mythology, and combat, thought not extensively. She didn’t know I was the child of a powerful god with a will to survive, so when I emerged voctious from my firt scrapple with an empousi, I became a golden child. People would come from all over the world to watch me fight, and kill. Since I was six years old. And that was my life, as I got older, I had more responsibility. I had to teach the younger ones to fight, and I had to bury them when they died afterwards.” She takes a breath, as if she was going to reveal something she didn’t think she was supposed to.
“But I wasn’t completely alone, there was another powerful demigod, not like you or me, he was different. I don’t know who his father was, he never got claimed, we barely ever got claimed, and if we did, we dissapeared the next day. We hoped that it was the guardian god who came to rescue them. But I think Ms. Graceou just didn’t want to deal with that, so she killed them. I don’t know how she hasn’t been smitted yet, but she hasn’t. Anyway, his name was Josh. And I think he's the one who’s supposed to join us” he says, her eyes suddenly lighting up at the thought of him. All kind of emotions turn in my stomach at her reaction, and none of them were good.
“Join us?”
“Athena said that if we wanted to succeed, someone else would join us. I think it might be him” she answers, a small smile threatening to break out on her lips. My heart deflates and my stomach builds in anger at the same time.
I rub my hand through my hair, and she narrows her eyes, waiting for the pessimistic thing I’m about to say. “um, jade, don’t get your hopes up to high” she turns her back to me, “I just mean the gods are cruel, and they enjoy watching us run around in circles” I say, putting hand on her shoulder. She tenses up at first, but then relaxes, and turns to face me.
“That’s why I think it’s Josh who’s supposed to join us Nico” she says, her eyes reaching up to me, begging me to understand. “Seeing josh again, after… after everything that’s happened, after everything I’ve leanred, after all the people I’ve met” she stops and steps closer to me, craning her head up. We were so close that if I shifted casually, our lips would accidently brush. The thought of that sent a chill through me. “That would be the cruelest things the gods could ever do to me” she says, and looks down, breaking the moment. “We should go, the sun’s setting” she says, and I look up, surprised to see the orange horizon, and glittering ocean, as if it were made of gold.
“Yea” I mutter, trying to shake myself out of the haze. Being with the daughter of the ocean next to the ocean almost blew me over. She radiated power, the golden sunset tinge on the water was showing on her skin. Her hair blew with the ocean breeze, and her essence was so powerful it was threatening to suck me in. I watch her as she bends down one more time, touching the water, and then begins hiking up to the car. It turns out we had walked a lot, and it took s a while to get to the car. Potentially problematic since there only a few more minutes of sunset, and if we don’t get this done today, we wouldn’t have enough time to get to San Diego tomorrow and do everything we need to do by the day after tomorrow, which was the day of the feast.

Notes