The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5)

by Rick Riordan

He growled and muttered as he tapped on his keyboard. Maybe he was messaging his friends on uglyface.com.

Annabeth sighed. “Not that again. Last time Apollo cursed a cabin, it took a week for the rhyming couplets to wear off.”

“Why didn’t the nymphs try to wake you?” I asked. Grover shrugged. “Most nymphs aren’t good with time. Two months for a tree—that’s nothing.

They probably didn’t think anything was wrong.”

Lines of the dead stood outside waiting to get in. It must’ve been a heavy day for funerals, because even the EZ-DEATH line was backed up.

A pair of thrones, one bone and one silver, sat on the balcony with a view of the Fields of Asphodel. It would’ve been a nice place to spend a Saturday morning except for the sulfurous smell and the cries of tortured souls in the distance.

I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.

Just for you non-sea-god types out there, don’t go swimming in New York Harbor. It may not be as filthy as it was in my mom’s day, but that water will still probably make you grow a third eye or have mutant children when you grow up.