KITTY WAS STILL SNICKERING AT Alex's choice to rent a car under the name of Quintus O'Leary two hours into their drive south. Every so often, she'd start laughing and Alex would break into a smirk. He couldn't punch Daedalus beyond the grave but they could connect him to credit card fraud.

Using the last little bits of the early morning shadows, Ophelia had used the Mist and Kitty had used her luck to get them a nice car. With two quivers of Quinn Coleman's arrows, an extra handful of ambrosia, and a hundred dollars from the Kennedy Center's safe, they began the fifteen or sixteen-hour drive to Orlando that lay before them.

Fifteen hours provided no monsters attacked them, of course. That was a big ask. Kitty's muscles still ached in the morning when she woke up from the Colchis bull.

She tried to stretch across the back seat of the small SUV. Alex hogged all the driving time again. Not fair. Sure, his dad was god of travelers and he was the only one with a license, but she'd been driving. What the cleaning harpies didn't know wouldn't kill them. Kitty looked out the window. Besides, I-95 seemed to stretch on straight for hours and hours. What better place to practice?

Gods, she wanted something to do. Only three hours in and she'd have been okay with a couple of harpies or a dracaena to fight. Those were easy. Even she could kill them. Instead, she had the Alt 18 on repeat on SiriusXM radio and two quiet road buddies.

At least Alex looked better this morning than he had when Quinn left. Kitty wondered about him. What was it like, living in the real world? She'd never really thought about what to do after Camp. She had another year before college. Another year of listening to Chiron tutor the year rounders and completing math books and English assignments. After Camp Half-Blood was future Kitty's problem.

Hour four passed, and Kitty started counting the number of stitches in the fabric of the car ceiling. Three hundred, four hundred, nine hundred, eternity. Maybe Ophelia would play the license plate game again. They'd gotten half the states before the Colchis bull had totaled their car.

By hour five, Kitty resigned herself to counting the number of McDonald's's symbols on Exit signs. In the front, Ophelia had fallen asleep. Alex kept driving, eyes on the road, heart on the task at hand. At least he could channel his ADHD into hyperfocusing on the road. What did she have to hyperfocus on? Her lack of things to hyperfocus on?

Kitty had never been so excited to see a gas station than when hour six and the sign for South Carolina passed. She ignored the horrible humid heat that blasted her in the face when the car door opened, instead making a beeline for the restroom, the snacks, and hopefully an aisle with a deck of playing cards.

"In and out," Alex told her. "Make it fast. I don't know how active monsters are in South Carolina, but I don't wanna risk it."

"Keep your socks on," Kitty said. "We'll be fine."

She didn't wait for him or for Ophelia before rushing inside the Sunoco. A tiny bell rang as she opened the door. Alternating scuffed black and scuffed white tiles stretched from wall to wall. A couple of people wandered around the aisles and a single male employee stood behind a counter, staring down at a cellphone. She wished she could use a cellphone.

By the time she perused the snacks, Alex and Ophelia had both come inside. While they slipped back through the small store to the restrooms, Kitty looked around. She pocketed a Hershey's bar when no one was watching. The tingling adrenaline cascading down her neck made her smile. Gods, she missed this.

Kitty spent fifty dollars on lottery scratch cards and a small sandwich to go. She spent zero dollars on the pack of playing cards, dice set, and Hershey bar she stuffed into her pocket. Hermes kids weren't the only ones who could do a bit of shoplifting. Hermes's grandkids could, too.

With a grin, Kitty looked up into the sky while walking back to their car. She wondered if Hermes enjoyed being reminded that he was a grandfather. Probably made him feel old. Hopefully it made him feel old. He was old.

Hour seven came and went. Kitty made her way through a handful of scratch lottery tickets, winning five of them, knowing full well she'd not cash them in. It didn't matter. What mattered was the win itself. The breath she held before each rub of her celestial bronze coin against the ticket.

At hour right, Kitty found herself in a conference room. Pristine white walls surrounded a massive matte black table made of three circles. Slightly carved into the largest circle was the silver symbol of a wine goblet. In the same minimalist style, the upper left black circle held an etching of a pair of wings, and the right circle was the all too familiar symbol of Hermes: a caduceus. Three. Trigon.

She felt a bit stupid only realizing the three black circles made a Mickey Mouse head after connecting the Ancient Greek symbols. Kitty looked further around the room. The white walls held some display cases.

Dozens of photos decorated the furthest wall. Staggered at different angles, all framed in red, yellow, or blue, Kitty saw pictures probably ripped straight out of the handbook for Disney employees. Smiling, laughing faces. Cinderella's castle tearing up in the background. Anthropomorphic animal suits. She moved over to get a closer look. Some of the photos featured costumed cast members, some in business clothes, and frequently a genuinely beautiful white man with black hair in casual jeans and a polo shirt.

As she passed along the bottom of the Mickey table and the right-hand wall, she looked at the decorations there. This wall held much less than the furthest one. Instead of a collage of a hundred photos, there hung four keys each the size of her arm. Blue, yellow, red, and green, if she'd been reading them left to right they would've said "Safety," "Courtesy," "Show," and "Efficiency." But coming from the direction of the door, she passed the green one, Efficiency, first.

A door opened. Kitty scrambled, nowhere to hide. Three people moved inside, two men and a woman. One of the two men, with pristine, unblemished pale skin and tousled black hair, wore jeans, high top Nike sneakers, and a tee-shirt with Thor on it. His oval blue name tag read "Julien" and listed the home town as Athens, GA.

Behind him trailed a man and a woman in business clothes. The former had tanned fair skin with light brown hair, as if he spent a lot of time out in the sun. A blue name tag called him "Cole" from Lake Placid, NY. He had on a black polo and His brown eyes scanned the room.

The woman, Phoebe from Chicago, IL, resembled other children of Hermes that Kitty had met: sharp features, mischievous grin, dark hair. But she couldn't have been a demigod. She typed away at a Blackberry phone, entirely unconcerned about the monsters it would attract.

But she had to be a Half-Blood. As Julien sat before the wine glass etching and Cole the pair of wings, Phoebe took her spot by the caduceus. Julien, son of Hebe, goddess of youth. Cole, son of Nike goddess of Victory. Phoebe, daughter of Hermes, the god of commerce, trickery, thievery.

Kitty realized in that moment, watching the three older demigods take their seats and not quite able to make out their words, that she was dreaming. That's when she saw it.

The wall across from her, across from the Four Keys, lay bare, starkly white. It held only one decoration. Behind glass hung the most intricate golden lyre Kitty had ever seen. Remarkably simple, it must've been crafted by some combination of gold, adamantine, and celestial bronze. Hermes had decorated it with ornamentation in the shape of serpents, ivy, and feathers. Even in the well-lit conference room, it shone with soft gold light, almost as if it held a single drop of the sun itself.

"We better come up with a backup plan, and fast," Cole said. "We've only got access to the southern States with the Labyrinth right now."

"Yeah, I know, and half our clientele is in the north," said Phoebe. She still typed away at her phone, not bothering to spare them more than a few glances.

Cole rolled his eyes. "Isn't shipping your problem, Phoebe?"

The phone hit the table top with a light smack. Even Kitty recoiled for a moment, hundreds of miles away in an SUV. Phoebe turned her hazel eyes on Cole. "If I had an easy fix, it would be fixed already. I don't see you helping! Go say a prayer or something."

"Yeah, because my mother would be so pleased that I'm profiting off mortals and demigods who never even got the chance to compete with me," he muttered.

Phoebe scoffed, the hint of a bemused smirk in the corner of her mouth. She picked up the phone again. "Don't come crying to me. I already outsmart my father on a daily basis. Pick up your slack."

Smacking the table, Cole shot out of his chair. "You know what—"

"Okay, okay. Calm down." Julien propped his feet up on the table, chewing on some gummy bears. "Let's look at this from a different angle. Maybe this is a good thing?"

"How typically naive of you," Cole hissed.

Julien stopped chewing his gummies. The room went dead silent as Phoebe stopped typing, glancing up from her work phone to glance between the two men. Even Kitty, standing in the dream in the corner of the room, could feel the tension. Looking closer at Julien as he took his feet off the table, it struck Kitty how ageless he appeared. Was he young? Or did he just seem young? Kitty had never met a child of Hebe. As she looked into his brown, almost amber, eyes and saw reflected back the same narrowed eyes that reminded her of nasty school children on playground equipment.

"Wait." Phoebe broke the silent tension, standing up slowly in her chair. "Someone's watching us."

Cole shot up at once, grabbing for something in his pocket. "What?"

Phoebe glanced around the room. Just as Kitty thought for sure she'd be discovered, though how that would work in a dream she didn't know, a hand grabbed her shoulder. Screaming, she fell backwards into oblivion.

"Hey, we found an IHOP."

Kitty gasped. Grey car ceiling replaced white walls. Ophelia spoke to her, not Phoebe. She stopped her hands shaking and sat up, sending half scratched lottery cards all over the back of their mini SUV. She groaned, running a hand through her blue hair.

"Come on," Alex said. He unbuckled his seat and opened the door. "I need a break."

Kitty smirked. She opened her door as well, getting in the face by humidity and heat despite the cloudy sky. Her smirk fell. "I could always drive."

"I just want some pancakes," Ophelia said.

Kitty looked around. The last time she'd seen a palm tree had been in Las Vegas. The sight of rows towering around them in the relatively empty IHOP parking lot stopped her in her tracks. She gripped her Tyche coin tightly. "Where are we?"

"Daytona Beach."

Kitty took another long, deep breath. Florida already. A few hours from Disney World. A few hours from the lyre. The Lyre! Kitty hurried after Ophelia and Alex as they opened the door to the IHOP. She had so much to tell them.