“Oh…” His smile faded. “Uh, actually…can you conjure up money?”
So, naturally, lunch was on me. I could pull money out of thin air, since I kept some stored in the Duat along with my other emergency supplies; so in no time we had cheeseburgers and fries in front of us, and life was looking up.
“Cheeseburgers,” Percy said. “Food of the gods. ”
“Agreed,” I said, but when I glanced over at him, I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was: that we were referring to different gods.
Percy inhaled his burger. Seriously, this guy could eat. “So, the necklace,” he said between bites. “What’s the story?”
I hesitated. I still had no clue where Percy came from or what he was, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask. Now that we’d fought together, I couldn’t help but trust him. Still, I sensed we were treading on dangerous ground. Everything we said could have serious implications—not just for the two of us, but maybe for everyone we knew.
I felt sort of like I had two winters ago, when my uncle Amos explained the truth about the Kane family heritage—the House of Life, the Egyptian gods, the Duat, everything. In a single day, my world expanded tenfold and left me reeling.
Now I was standing at the edge of another moment like that. But if my world expanded tenfold again, I was afraid my brain might explode.
“The necklace is enchanted,” I said at last. “Any reptile that wears it turns into the next petsuchos, the Son of Sobek. Somehow that little crocodile got it around his neck. ”
“Meaning someone put it around his neck,” Percy said.
I didn’t want to think about that, but I nodded reluctantly.
“So who?” he asked.
“Hard to narrow it down,” I said. “I’ve got lots of enemies. ”
Percy snorted. “I can relate to that. Any idea why, then?”
I took another bite of my cheeseburger. It was good, but I had trouble concentrating on it.
“Someone wanted to cause trouble,” I speculated. “I think maybe…” I studied Percy, trying to judge how much I should say. “Maybe they wanted to cause trouble that would get our attention. Both of our attention. ”
Percy frowned. He drew something in his ketchup with a french fry—not a hieroglyph. Some kind of non-English letter. Greek, I guessed.
“The monster had a Greek name,” he said. “It was eating pegasi in my…” He hesitated.
“In your home turf,” I finished. “Some kind of camp, judging from your shirt. ”
He shifted on his bar stool. I still couldn’t believe he was talking about pegasi as if they were real, but I remembered one time at Brooklyn House, maybe a year back, when I was certain I saw a winged horse flying over the Manhattan skyline. At the time, Sadie had told me I was hallucinating. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
Finally Percy faced me. “Look, Carter. You’re not nearly as annoying as I thought. And we made a good team today, but—”
“You don’t want to share your secrets,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask about your camp. Or the powers you have. Or any of that. ”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not curious?”
“I’m totally curious. But until we figure out what’s going on, I think it’s best we keep some distance. If someone—something—unleashed that monster here, knowing it would draw both of our attention—”
“Then maybe that someone wanted us to meet,” he finished. “Hoping bad things would happen. ”
I nodded. I thought about the uneasy feeling I’d had in my gut earlier—the voice in my head warning me not to tell Percy anything. I’d come to respect the guy, but I still sensed that we weren’t meant to be friends. We weren’t meant to be anywhere close to each other.
A long time ago, when I was just a little kid, I’d watched my mom do a science experiment with some her college students.
Potassium and water, she’d told them. Separate, completely harmless. But together—
She dropped the potassium in a beaker of water, and Ka-blam! The students jumped back as a miniature explosion rattled all the vials in the lab.
Percy was water. I was potassium.