the_blood_of_olympus_-_rick_riordan

xvii
Piper
PIPER COULDN’T BELIEVE how hard it was to find deadly poison.
All morning she and Frank had scoured the port of Pylos. Frank allowed only Piper to come with
him, thinking her charmspeak might be useful if they ran into his shape-shifting relatives.
As it turned out, her sword was more in demand. So far, they’d slain a Laistrygonian ogre in the
bakery, battled a giant warthog in the public square and defeated a flock of Stymphalian birds with
some well-aimed vegetables from Piper’s cornucopia.
She was glad for the work. It kept her from dwelling on her conversation with her mother the night
before – that bleak glimpse of the future Aphrodite had made her promise not to share …
Meanwhile, Piper’s biggest challenge in Pylos was the ads plastered all over town for her dad’s
new movie. The posters were in Greek, but Piper knew what they said: TRISTAN MCLEAN IS JAKE
STEEL: SIGNED IN BLOOD.
Gods, what a horrible title. She wished her father had never taken on the Jake Steel franchise, but it
had become one of his most popular roles. There he was on the poster, his shirt ripped open to reveal
perfect abs (gross, Dad!), an AK-47 in each hand, a rakish smile on his chiselled face.
Halfway across the world, in the smallest, most out-of-the-way town imaginable, there was her
dad. It made Piper feel sad, disoriented, homesick and annoyed all at once. Life went on. So did
Hollywood. While her dad pretended to save the world, Piper and her friends actually had to. In eight
more days, unless Piper could pull off the plan Aphrodite had explained … well, there wouldn’t be
any more movies, or theatres, or people.
Around one in the afternoon, Piper finally put her charmspeak to work. She spoke with an Ancient
Greek ghost in a Laundromat (on a one-to-ten scale for weird conversations, definitely an eleven) and
got directions to an ancient stronghold where the shape-shifting descendants of Periclymenus
supposedly hung out.
After trudging across the island in the afternoon heat, they found the cave perched halfway up a
beachside cliff. Frank insisted that Piper wait for him at the bottom while he checked it out.
Piper wasn’t happy about that, but she stood obediently on the beach, squinting up at the cave
entrance and hoping she hadn’t guided Frank into a death trap.
Behind her, a stretch of white sand hugged the foot of the hills. Sunbathers sprawled on blankets.
Little kids splashed in the waves. The blue sea glittered invitingly.
Piper wished she could surf those waters. She’d promised to teach Hazel and Annabeth someday,
if they ever came out to Malibu … if Malibu still existed after 1 August.
She glanced up at the cliff’s summit. The ruins of an old castle clung to the ridge. Piper wasn’t sure