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

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He lumbered off, leaving his breakfast half-eaten.
Chiron tried for a smile. He probably wanted to look reassuring, but in centaur form he towered over
me, casting a shadow across the table. “Well, Percy, how did you sleep?”
“Uh, fine.” I wondered why he asked that. Was it possible he knew something about the weird
Iris-message I’d gotten?
“I brought Grover over,” Chiron said, “because I thought you two might want to, ah, discuss matters.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Iris-messages to send. I’ll see you later in the day.” He gave
Grover a meaningful look,then trotted out of the pavilion.”
“What’s he talking about?” I asked Grover.
Grover chewed his eggs. I could tell he was distracted, because he bit the tines of his fork and chewed
those down, too. “He wants you to convince me,” he mumbled.
Somebody else slid next to me on the bench: Annabeth.
“I’ll tell you what it’s about,” she said.“The Labyrinth.”
It was hard to concentrate on what she was saying, because everybody in the dining pavilion was
stealing glances at us and whispering. And Annabeth was right next to me. I meanright next to me.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said.
“We need to talk,” she insisted.
“But the rules…”
She knew as well as I did that campers weren’t allowed to switch tables. Satyrs were different. They
weren’t really demigods. But the half-bloods had to sit with their cabins. I wasn’t even sure what the
punishment was for switching tables. I’d never seen it happen. If Mr. D had been here, he probably
would’ve strangled Annabeth with magical grapevines or something, but Mr. D wasn’t here. Chiron had
already left the pavilion. Quintus looked over and raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t say anything.
“Look,” Annabeth said, “Grover is in trouble. There’s only one way we can figure to help him. It’s the
Labyrinth. That’s what Clarisse and I have been investigating.”
I shifted my weight, trying to think clearly. “You mean the maze where they kept the Minotaur, back in
the old days?”
“Exactly,” Annabeth said.
“So…it’s not under the king’s palace in Crete anymore,” I guessed. “The Labyrinth is under some
building in America.”
See? It only took me a few years to figure things out. I knew that important places moved around with
Western Civilization, like Mount Olympus being over the Empire State building, and the Underworld
entrance being in Los Angeles. I was feeling pretty proud of myself.