THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH Percy Jackson ... - No one's invited.

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There was no time to argue. Even if we stayed, I wasn’t sure we could help.
“None of us know how to fly!” Nico protested.
“Great time to find out,” I said. And together, the four of us jumped out the window into open sky.
SIXTEEN
I OPEN A COFFIN
Jumping out a window five hundred feet aboveground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I’m
wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.
I plummeted toward the valley and the red rocks below. I was pretty sure I was going to become a
grease spot in the Garden of the Gods, as Annabeth yelled from somewhere above me, “Spread your
arms! Keep them extended.”
The small part of my brain that wasn’t engulfed in panic heard her, and my arms responded. As soon as
I spread them out, the wings stiffened, caught the wind, and my descent slowed. I soared downward, but
at a controlled angle, like a kite in a dive.
Experimentally, I flapped my arms once. I arced into the sky, the wind whistling in my ears.
“Yeah!”I yelled. The feeling was unbelievable. After getting the hang of it, I felt like the wings were part
of my body. I could soar and swoop and dive anywhere I wanted to.
I turned and saw my friends—Rachel, Annabeth, and Nico—spiraling above me, glinting in the sunlight.
Behind them, smoke billowed from the windows ofDaedalus’s workshop.
“Land!”Annabeth yelled. “These wings won’t last forever.”
“How long?”Rachel asked.
“I don’t want to find out!” Annabeth said.
We swooped down toward the Garden of the Gods. I did a complete circle around one of the rock
spires and freaked out a couple of climbers. Then the four of us soared across the valley, over a road,
and landed on the terrace of the visitor center. It was late afternoon and the place looked pretty empty,
but we ripped off our wings as quickly as we could. Looking at them, I could see Annabeth was right.
The self-adhesive seals that bound the wings to our backs were already melting, and we were shedding
bronze feathers. It seemed a shame, but we couldn’t fix them, and couldn’t leave them around for the
mortals, so we stuffed the wings in trash bins outside the cafeteria.
I used the tourist binocular camera to look up at the hill whereDaedalus’s workshop had been, but it had
vanished. No more smoke. No broken windows.Just the side of a hill.
“The workshop moved,” Annabeth guessed. “There’s no telling where.”