A 1

His hair was dark and tangled as usual, but Annabeth thought about the streak of gray he used to
have on one side. When the two of them were fourteen, they’d taken turns (unwillingly) holding the
weight of the sky. The strain left them both with some gray hair. Over the last year, while Percy had
been missing, the gray streaks had finally disappeared from both of them, which made Annabeth sad
and a little worried. She felt like she’d lost a symbolic bond with Percy.
Annabeth kissed him. “Good luck, Seaweed Brain. Just come back to me, okay?”
“I will,” he promised. “You do the same.”
Annabeth tried to push down her growing unease.
She turned to Piper and Hazel. “Okay, ladies. Let’s find the ghost of the Battery.”
Afterward, Annabeth wished she’d jumped into the harbor with Percy. She even would’ve preferred a
museum full of ghosts.
Not that she minded hanging out with Hazel and Piper. At first, they had a pretty good time
walking along the Battery. According to the signs, the seaside park was called White Point Gardens.
The ocean breeze swept away the muggy heat of the summer afternoon, and it was pleasantly cool
under the shade of the palmetto trees. Lining the road were old Civil War cannons and bronze statues
of historical figures, which made Annabeth shudder. She thought about the statues in New York City
during the Titan War, which had come to life thanks to Daedalus’s command sequence twenty-three.
She wondered how many other statues around the country were secretly automatons, waiting to be
triggered.
Charleston Harbor glittered in the sun. To the north and south, strips of land stretched out like
arms enclosing the bay, and sitting in the mouth of the harbor, about a mile out, was an island with a
stone fort. Annabeth had a vague memory of that fort being important in the Civil War, but she
didn’t spend much time thinking about it.