WE ENDED UP CAMPING. I guess we were all a little too paranoid about suddenly respawning monsters to sleep in Aunty Em's. Instead we set up in a marshy clearing covered in flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers. 

While the others set up the blankets we had gotten from Aunty Em's, I went around and picked them up. I knew it was sort of pointless. There was no where to throw it away, and I really wasn't in the mood to stuff soggy food wrappers and muddy cans into my bag. It just made me feel a little better. Maybe it was sleeping on the ground, but I had been able to clean it up a bit, and in the morning I might even be able to find a trash can to put it in. 

It isn't a comfortable night. Obviously the blankets weren't enough to hide the fact we were basically sleeping in a swamp. The ground was somehow both frozen and squishy. I, at least, had the benefit of still having my backpack to use as a pillow. Our clothes were still damp, but we were too scared of monsters finding us to light a fire to dry them – or even provide some warmth. 

We decided to sleep in shifts. Percy volunteered to take first watch. 

Annabeth curled up on the blankets. She was snoring in seconds. Grover flittered with his flying shoes to the lowest branch of a tree, put his back on the trunk, and stared at the night sky. 

I tried to do the same, tucking my glasses on the other side of my bag to keep them from being rolled over on. I suspected no one had brought extra magic glasses. But too much was rolling through my mind. I stared off into the darkness. Nothing seemed to be lurking out there...Hopefully. Evidently I was not the master of sensing monsters. 

"It makes me sad, Percy," Grover suddenly said. 

"What does?" Percy asked. "The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?"

"No. This makes me sad." 

Since I couldn't sleep any way, I sat up and tried to see what he was talking about without my glasses. I think Percy was under the impression I was asleep, because he jumped. Grover was motioning to the garbage on the ground, which I had attempted to safely store under the tree. 

"And the sky. You can't even see the stars. They've polluted the sky. This is a terrible time to be a satyr." 

"Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist," Percy said. 

Grover glared at us (Hey! What did I do?) "Only a human wouldn't be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast...ah, ever mind. It's useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan."

I wanted to point out I'd literally picked up the trash while he was busy chewing on blankets, but I got his point. 

"Who's Pan?" I asked. 

Percy looked between us, confused. "Pam? Like the cooking spray?"

"Pan!" Grover cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher's license for?"

"I don't know..." I admitted sheepishly. "It's sort of a vague title." 

A breeze brushed through the clearing. For a moment, we weren't sitting a mushy trash heap. Instead smelt of a wildflower field after a soft rain – clean and fresh. I longed for that serious of this forest. It certainly would have been better to sleep in. 

"Tell us about the search," Percy said. 

Grover narrowed his eyes at us. After the Pam comment, I think he was suspicious that we weren't taking it seriously. I nodded, as if that might encourage him. 

"The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago," he told us. "A sailor off the coast of Ephesos heard a mysterious voice crying out from the shoe, 'Tell them that the great god Pan has died!' When humans heard the news, they believed it. They've been pillaging Pan's kingdom ever since."

I frowned. "Well, that's stupid. They didn't even have evidence."

"Us satyrs, we feel the same. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs place their lives to finding Pan."

"Why doesn't he just come back?" I asked. "You guys need him."

"Supposedly he's in a deep sleep. He'll only wake when a satyr is able to find him," Grover said. 

I wasn't sure about that, but I didn't want to say it. Grover seemed to really believe this and...well, why wouldn't he? Like he said, it was a bad time to care about the environment. The satyrs needed something to hold on to. 

"And you want to be a searcher," Percy said. 

"It's my life's dream," Grover said. "My father was a searcher. And my Uncle Ferdinand...the statue you saw back there –"

"Oh, right, sorry."

I nodded. Maybe I hadn't known him, I wished there was some way we could save Uncle Ferdinand. He didn't deserve that.

Grover shook his head. "Uncle Ferdinand knew the risks. So did my dad. But I'll succeed. I'll be the first searcher to return alive."

The world seemed to tilt. "Wait, what?"

"The first?" Percy asked. 

Grover took his reed pipes out of his pocket. "No searcher has ever come back. Once they set out, they disappear. They're never seen alive again."

"Not once in two thousand years?"

"No."

"And your dad? You have no idea what happened to him?"

"None."

"But you still want to go," Percy said. "I mean, you really think you'll be the one to find Pan?"

Percy sounded amazing. Personally? My only feeling was the distinct urge to grab Grover and haul him back to the camp. Forget the lightening bolt! I didn't want my friend to go die. 

Maybe I should have been more positive. Yeah, Grover, you'll totally do it! It wasn't even that I didn't believe in Grover. I'm sure he had the skills to find Pan. He was cool like that. But...well, we had been out for about two days – one of which was just driving – now and we had already fought two monsters. How much of it was skills and drive, and how much of it was just dumb luck? 

Grover seemed to pick up on my concern. "I have to believe that, Attie. Every searcher does. It's the only thing that keeps us from despair when we look at what humans have done to the world. I have to believe Pan can still be awakened." 

I sighed. I supposed I couldn't judge. I was still holding out on convincing the gods to save Mom. 

"How are we going to get into the Underworld?" Percy asked. "I mean, what chance do we have against a god?"

"I don't know," Grover admitted. "But back at Medusa's, when you were searching her office? Annabeth was telling us –"

"Oh, I forgot. Annabeth will have a plan all figured out," Percy muttered bitterly. 

"Actually, she doesn't," I said. "We were trying to figure something out."

"Really? That's new."

"Don't be so hard on her, Percy. She's had a tough life, but she's a good person. After all, she forgave me..." Grover's voice faltered. 

I perked up at that. Suspicious comment alert. 

"What do you mean?" Percy asked. "Forgave you for what?"

Suddenly, Grover seemed very interested in playing notes on his pipes. I was confused, but it seemed Percy was working a lot faster than I was. 

"Wait a minute," he said. "Your first keeper job was five years ago. Annabeth has been at camp five years. She wasn't...I mean, your first assignment that went wrong –"

"I can't talk about it," Grover said. He looked close to crying, and I wished he was close enough I could give him a hug. "But as I was saying, back at Medusa's, Annabeth, Attie, and I agreed there's something strange going on with this quest. Something isn't what it seems."

"Well, duh. We're getting blamed for stealing a thunderbolt that Hades took," Percy said. 

"Yeah, that, but also Annabeth thinks the...uh..." I paused to keep myself from saying the Furies. "'old lady squad' was holding back. Like they didn't really want to kill us." 

"Like Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy...why did she wait so long to try to kill you? Then on the bus, they just weren't as aggressive as they could've been," Grover explained. 

"They also did a lot of talking when they could have just ripped our faces off." 

"They seemed plenty aggressive to me," Percy said. "And bad guys just do that. Maybe they just wanted us to know why they're killing us."

Grover shook his head. "They were screeching at us: 'Where is it? Where?'"

"Asking about us," Percy said. 

"Do we look like an it, Percy?" I pointed out. 

He frowned. I took that as a no. 

"Maybe they were looking for the master bolt," I suggested. 

"But doesn't Hades have it already?" Percy said. "If he does, why would he send the Furies to find it?" 

I remembered PB. What had she said? Something about Hades's kids being in the Hermes cabin, but that he probably didn't have any? At the time I thought she had just been dismissing the idea Hades had used his own kid. Now I wondered if she thought it might be someone else entirely. 

I shook my head. No way. It had to be Hades. Because otherwise...who else could it be? We had no where else to look. 

"If we've misunderstood something about this quest, and we only have nine days to find the master bolt..." Grover turned to us. I stared back for a moment, before realizing he wanted us to tell him what to do. 

All I could do was shake my head. I was just as confused as he was. 

"I haven't been straight with you," Percy suddenly said. "I don't care about the master bolt. I agreed to go the Underworld so I could bring back our mother."

Grover blew a soft note on his pipes. "I know that, Percy. But are you sure that's the only reasons?"

"I'm not doing it to help my father. Maybe Attie is, but...he doesn't care about us. I don't care about him."

I picked at a blade of grass near the blanket I sat on. I had felt the same, sure, but hearing it aloud felt embarrassing. Maybe 'I don't care about saving the world, I just want my mom!' was true, but it also felt sort of...selfish. Most people would expect you to put your personal wishes aside for the good of the world...or something. 

But the truth was, I was still just a kid. There were a hundred other people more qualified to save the world. Only Percy and I could save our Mom. We were the only ones who would care to. 

Grover gazed down at us. "Look, Percy, Attie, I'm not as smart as Annabeth. I'm not as brave as you." I scoffed. I wasn't feeling very brave. "But I'm pretty good at reading emotions. You're glad your dad is alive. You feel good that he's claim you, and part of you wants to make him proud. That's why you mailed Medusa's head to Olympus. You want him to notice what you'd done."

"Yeah? Well maybe satyr emotions work differently than human emotions. Because you're wrong. I don't care what he thinks," Percy said. 

"We did fine without him before." I tugged the blade of grass out. "We don't need him now."

So why we where my eyes burning? I laid back down and rolled over. I squeeze my eyes shut so I wouldn't start crying. At some point, I fell asleep. 

♆

I ACHED WHEN I WOKE UP. Like I had rolled down a hill or two in my sleep. My mouth was cottony, and I realized I hadn't drunk any water – or anything, actually – since we left the Greyhound Station. I pulled my backpack up, unzipped the top section, and pulled out the canteen of water. I sipped just enough to get rid of the dry feeling. 

Only Percy was still asleep. Annabeth was tooling around the camp and Grover was missing. He had gone exploring, she explained. While we waited I fished two bags of nacho-flavored corn chips from my bag and passed her one. 

As I sat there, I dug through my mind. You know that feeling, where you know that you had a dream but you can't remember it? Vaguely I remembered the voice. Standing over a pit as it called out to me. Help me rise. Help me rise. There had been something more, but it kept slipping away. Like my memory wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good look. 

Grover returned, but not along. Held tightly in his arms was a...a small pink poodle? I frowned, confused. 

"Did you steal someone's pet?" I asked. 

"This is Gladiola. Gladiola, this is Attie and Annabeth," Grover said. Then, to us, he said. "Say hi." 

Annabeth and I shared a look. We both said hi. 

"You can talk to them?" I asked. 

"Of course. All satyrs can."

I could only shake my head. After awhile, I just stopped asking questions. Besides, it made more sense that satyrs could talk to animals than it did that they could feel emotions. 

While we waited for Percy to wake up, because Grover only wanted to explain once, we talked to Gladiola. Apparently Gladiola was a boy, and he was quite happy being pink because it went well with his eyes (personally I thought they just looked like any other dog eyes, but at least it wasn't something his owner forced on him.) He told us all about his favorite food and toys. I gave him some of the jerky I had taken from Aunty Em's store, which he liked. 

Soon enough, Gladiola was sat in my lap as I scratched the bright pink fur puff on his head. I think we were friends.

It was a good while before Percy woke up. Once he did so – and also said hi to Gladiola, though he was very dramatic about it – Grover explained how he had come across the dog in the woods. Gladiola had been running away from a rich local family, who'd posted a $200 reward for his return. Gladiola didn't really want to go back to his family, but he was willing to if it meant helping grover. 

"Wow, that's..." I blinked. I felt weirdly emotional about this dog. "Thanks, Gladiola. That's really nice of you." 

"How does Gladiola know about the reward?" Percy asked.

"He read the signs," Grover said. "Duh."

"Of course. Silly me."

I gave him a flat look. "Percy, we've almost been murdered twice in the last day. The gods are real. I think dogs can read." 

"So we turn in Gladiola," Annabeth explained. "We get money, and we buy tickets to Los Angeles. Simple."

I nodded. Between the twenty dollars I had saved (I was finally able to count them) and the new two hundred dollars, we could at least get close. What was the worse that could happen?

Well, aside from getting cornered by monsters. Again. 

"Not another bus," Percy said warily.

"No," Annabeth agreed. She pointed downhill, toward train tracks I hadn't been able to see last night in the dark. "There's an Amtrak station half a mile that way. According to Gladiola, the westbound train leaves at noon."