We did eventually make it back to the Pelhams.

  Eventually.

  Instead of taking the bus, Vicky offered to drive us back to the neighborhood where both halves of New Wave lived. It would be both faster and easier than dealing with so many bags on public transportation and she was heading that way anyway.

  Well, her initial suggestion was that we should fly home. She offered to carry me and Crystal could use her forcefields to bring all of our bags along without risking losing something along the way.

  Thankfully, Crystal shot that idea before I needed too. I think she was much more upset about the idea of Vicky being the one carrying me than the argument she actually used with her cousin, but I’d take it. Flying really didn’t agree with me, and I wasn’t too keen on Vicky carrying me all the way home either.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her to not drop me. I did. Trust her, I mean. After all, she often flew around with her sister, who, unlike me, wouldn’t be completely fine even if something did make her lose her grip. But well…you know. Things were already complicated enough, I didn’t need to throw more fuel on the fire.

  And I really hadn’t enjoyed my most recent flight with the two girls. Even though we’d flown a lot lower than I usually did with Blackjack, not having a horsey bit of dad’s power up in the sky with me had left me feeling rather unwell. Even without Zeus around (probably) to blast me out of the sky for my impudence, flying sucked.

  Vicky left Crystal and I to watch our bags while she flew off back in the direction of Arcadia High School where she’d left her car. Despite being able to fly, she drove to school most days, both to avoid Brockton’s frequent bad weather and so she could bring Amy with her in the mornings in comfort.

  As soon as Vicky flew behind the mall, Crystal slumped down on the bench and exhaled hugely. For several long moments, she cradled her head in her hands, her hair falling forward in a pale curtain to cover her face. Then she sat up, shook her head, and looked at the bags piled around her like she was seeing them for the first time.

  She turned towards me with big, round eyes. “That, uh, just happened, huh? I didn’t imagine it?”

  If I was one of those people who could raise one eyebrow at a time, I would have. Since I couldn’t, I settled for just looking at her flatly. “Sure did.”

  Crystal buried her rapidly reddening face in her hands again. “I’m so sorry,” she told me, her voice muffled. “I don’t know what came over me. I mean we just had that conversation about boundaries and stuff and then I go and do something like this. Vicky can be… a lot, but I’m supposed to be the older, responsible one. I should have put my foot down.”

  She peaked out from between her hands and I saw her head turn towards one particular bag lying innocently among its neighbors. I was pretty sure I knew exactly which one that was. It was from the last store we’d visited, the one with the terribly overpriced swimsuits––if you could even call what they’d bought that. I didn’t think you’d be able to do much swimming in them without the help of tape, glue, or demigod powers. They were more like beachsuits or poolside suits. Or possibly never-see-the-light-of-day suits.

  Crystal’s blush darkened and she made a slightly choked sound before swiftly clapping her hands together over her eyes once more. “Oh god, mom can never know about this,” she mumbled. “She’d ground me till I was forty. And what if someone got a picture of us in the changing rooms? Aunty Carol would kill me.”

  I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to hear that part, but enhanced senses were part of the whole demigod package. “I don’t think anyone did?” I tried. “Maybe while we were picking out clothes, but definitely not while you and Vicky were trying them on.”

  Crystal turned towards me, spreading her fingers apart just wide enough that I could see her shining blue eyes from between the digits. “Is that another…” she trailed off, then let go of her face and used her hands to pantomime… something. I assumed she was trying to refer to my demigod powers, so I nodded my head a fraction of an inch.

  I had a pretty good sense for when someone was watching me and could feel people moving around me. It wasn’t perfect, but it tended to be reliable and I was pretty sure we’d managed to avoid drawing too much attention.

  I would have liked to have offered her more reassurance, but unfortunately, the Mist here just wasn’t thick enough to properly hide someone from the sight of mortals, particularly with the weird anti-Mist aura that Crystal, Vicky, and every other parahuman I’d met had around them. Or well, not thick enough for me to hide someone. Hecate or one of her more talented kids could probably have pulled it off.

  “Huh.” Crystal sighed again, this time in relief. “I guess that’s something. But I still made a total fool of myself.” She picked up the bag she’d been looking at earlier and peaked into it. “Like, when the hell would I even wear this?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  Crystal groaned, dropping the bag and picking through some of the others whose contents I was less sure of. “I can’t wear like, half of this out in public. What the hell were you thinking, Crystal?”

  Despite generally agreeing with her, I still felt the urge to raise her spirits. “You know, back home there are some absolutely gorgeous islands out in the middle of the Atlantic with no one around for hundreds of miles. I bet most of them are just as deserted here and I can swim pretty dang fast, even with a passenger.”

  Crystal looked up and started to say something, then paused, one finger half extended towards me. “Uh, hold that thought. My last final exam is on the 29th of April. If I haven’t managed to completely screw everything up before that,” her voice dropped to a bare whisper, “not likely at this rate,” she muttered under her breath before continuing at a more normal volume, “then I’m going to hold you to that.”

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  I managed not to laugh and smiled broadly at her instead. “Sure. That sounds good to me.” Then, feeling mischievous, I snatched up the bag with the two bathing suits and peaked into it. “You know, there’s two suits in here. You don’t happen to know when Arcadia lets out this year, do you?”

  I had to dodge a half-dozen swipes from Crystal, but it was worth it to see the last traces of her worried frown vanish from her lips. By the time Vicky finally pulled up to where we were sitting, Crystal was animatedly telling me about Miller’s Cakes and Confections––her favorite bakery in Brockton Bay––her earlier embarrassment all but forgotten.

  Vicky was going to just drop Crystal and I off, but our stuff was all mixed up in the same bags so instead she parked in the empty driveway and helped us carry everything up to Crystal’s room where we could sort it out in peace. As she was getting ready to leave, she turned around towards me, her hands full of bags.

  “Hey Percy, I need to finish up some homework, but I was planning to go out patrolling after dinner. Wanna come? Last time was great, and I think this time will be even better. There’s a few spots I’d love to show you.”

  A couple of days ago I would have thought nothing of the wink Vicky gave me as she spoke. Now, it took all my self control to fight down a blush every bit as red as Crystal’s had been earlier. “Uhh,” I started to stammer, but Crystal cut in before I said something stupid.

  “That sounds like a great idea! I’ll come with you guys. I’ve really been slacking on that since I started at BBU. What time are you thinking?”

  I felt Vicky’s annoyance wash over me for a single moment, her expression fixed in a smile the whole time. Crystal definitely felt it too, but she remained undeterred. Vicky looked between the two of us, and then her smile widened. “Hmm, how about eightish? Of course you’re welcome to tag along too, cous. Well, as long as Percy doesn’t mind. You don’t mind, do you, Percy?”

  Both cousins were staring at me. I could feel Crystal’s eyes boring into my skull and Vicky had a dangerous smile on her face.

  This felt like a trap. “I…don’t mind?” I tried?

  “Great,” both of them chorused.

  I looked between Vicky and Crystal, who were staring daggers at each other and seemed to have completely forgotten I was still here.

  Yeah. Great. Great.

  At least the rest of the afternoon wasn’t so bad. Crystal really did have homework she needed to be doing, no matter how much she didn’t want to do it, and I took the opportunity to head to the backyard to do some training.

  I started with sword forms as usual, but quickly got tired of just going through the motions. Maybe Vicky would be up for some sparing during or after our patrol? Or I could try to reach out to Armsmaster. From what I’d seen from his fight with Crusader’s ghosts, he was pretty damn handy with that halberd of his. At least as good as Clarisse was with her spear, but more technical compared to her ferocious style.

  Were there any other sword-wielding heroes in Brockton Bay? Armsmaster’s name implied that he could use all sorts of weapons, but I’d only ever seen pictures of him with a halberd. Then there was Dauntless, who also used a spear, and I was pretty sure one of the Wards had a crossbow, but that was all the weapons I could think of.

  Ugh. Maybe I could convince someone from New Wave to pick up a sword? Vicky and Neil would both make fantastic sparring partners.

  My phone chimed and capped Riptide and reached into my pocket for my phone. I had a new text from Carol asking me to come talk to her when I had some time tonight. I was about to text her back when I stopped and blinked rapidly, suddenly feeling like an idiot.

  I’d completely forgotten that there already was a member of New Wave who used a sword. I’d been thinking of Carol as a lawyer first and a hero a distant second, completely forgetting about her role as Brandish, one of New Wave’s founding members.

  I deleted the last sentence that I’d typed out and painstakingly poked out a new message. Crystal made it look so easy, her fingers flying across the little tiny keyboard, but I had to go letter by letter, carefully double checking my progress after every other word.

  I squinted at it one last time. I was pretty sure that looked right, and none of the words had the little red underline that meant they were spelled wrong. Crystal had shown me how to make the font on my phone big enough that my dyslexia didn’t make it completely unreadable, but it was still a struggle sometimes.

  I hit send and made to put the phone away, but Carol’s response arrived so quickly I doubted I’d have been able to read my first text that fast, much less compose a reply. ‘Come at seven,’ it read. A moment later I got another message from her. ‘Will discuss over dinner…’

  I waited for another minute, then shrugged and tucked the phone back into the pocket of my jeans. I was wearing one of the new outfits Crystal and I had picked out––jeans plus my new hawaiian shirt. The jeans were black and super stretchy in a way I didn’t know jeans could be and the shirt reminded me of home.

  Maybe it wasn’t exactly the perfect clothes for exercising, but it wasn’t like I needed to worry about getting them sweaty and gross. Plus, Chiron always said that you should practice in the same gear you expected to fight in, which for demigods usually meant everyday wear like this. Practicing in my armor could wait until tonight.

  It was five thirty, so I had plenty of time left. I could just keep doing drills, but Crystal’s comment earlier had reminded me that I really needed to buckle down and spend some time relearning how to manipulate the Mist. Chiron always said that a demigod needed to know how to use all the weapons in their arsenal, not just the ones they were most comfortable with.

  Even if the Mist wasn’t really dense enough around here to cloud the eyes of mortals the way it did back home, that didn’t mean it was useless to me. For one, it so far seemed like a pretty foolproof way of detecting parahumans. Every hero and villain I’d met so far had repelled the Mist in a bubble around them, burning it away if it got too close and repelling it otherwise.

  That meant that that girl I’d seen at Buns 'n' Roses had probably been a parahuman too, and I was pretty sure I’d seen at least one or two other people while out and about with Crystal who had the same effect on their surroundings without really giving it much thought.

  Normally, I didn’t really bother focusing on the Mist too much. There usually wasn’t much of a point. It had taken a few years, but these days I could see through most of the lies it showed mortals without really needing to think about it. I

  However, my experience with the Undersiders showed that in this world, it was a lot more useful to be able to perceive the Mist rather than see through it. Shifting to that mindset for a few minutes at a time or while I was focusing wasn’t too hard, but making it my new normal was going to take some time and effort.

  Plus, I was pretty sure that, in a pinch, I still could use the Mist the way everyone did back home. It wouldn’t work if I was standing right next to a parahuman, but my gut told me I could probably do a good job hiding from one if I was standing on the other side of a big room or something, and normal mortals would be just as susceptible as ever.

  I just needed to practice gathering up the Mist that wafted off of me and the magic items I’d brought with me to this world instead of depending on what was already present in the environment. The tricks Thalia had shown me just didn’t work here, so it was up to me to figure out what did.

  I groaned. This was going to be so boring.

  Well, no time like the present!

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