A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward. "Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there." The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with shortcropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.
"This is Luke," Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could've sworn she was blushing. She saw me looking, and her expression hardened again. "He's your counselor for now."
"For now?" I asked.
"You're undetermined," Luke explained patiently. "They don't know what cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers."
I looked at the tiny section of floor they'd given me. I had nothing to put there to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur's horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves. I looked around at the campers' faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my pockets.
"How long will I be here?" I asked.
"Good question," Luke said. "Until you're determined."
"How long will that take?"
The campers all laughed.
"Come on," Annabeth told me. "I'll show you the volleyball court."
"I've already seen it."
"Come on." She grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven laughing behind me.
When we were a few feet away, Annabeth said, "Jackson, you have to do better than that."
"What?"
She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the one."
"What's your problem?" I was getting angry now. "All I know is, I kill some bull guy—"
"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth told me. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"
"To get killed?"
"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"
I shook my head. "Look, if the thing I fought really was the Minotaur, the same one in the stories ..."
"Yes."
"Then there's only one."
"Yes."
"And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So ..."
"Monsters don't die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don't die."
"Oh, thanks. That clears it up."
"They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them archetypes. Eventually, they re-form."
I thought about Mrs. Dodds. "You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword—"
"The Fur ... I mean, your math teacher. That's right. She's still out there. You just made her very, very mad."
"How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?"
"You talk in your sleep."
"You almost called her something. A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?" Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.
"You shouldn't call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."
"Look, is there anything we can say without it thundering?" I sounded whiny, even to myself, but right then I didn't care. "Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks right over there." I pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. "You don't just choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or ... your parent."
She stared at me, waiting for me to get it.
"My mom is Sally Jackson," I said. "She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to."
"I'm sorry about your mom, Percy. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about your other parent. Your dad."
"He's dead. I never knew him."
Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she'd had this conversation before with other kids. "Your father's not dead, Percy."
"How can you say that? You know him?"
"No, of course not."
"Then how can you say—"
"Because I know you. You wouldn't be here if you weren't one of us."
"You don't know anything about me."
"No?" She raised an eyebrow. "I bet you moved around from school to school. I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them."
"How—"
"Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."
I tried to swallow my embarrassment. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right?
That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."
"You sound like ... you went through the same thing?"
"Most of the kids here did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."