"You okay?" Sadie asked. When Nico didn't look up she put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a rough but affectionate shake. "Hey? You okay?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" It looked to Sadie like Nico was trying to put on a carefree expression, but it was actually painful to see, so she looked away.

"We're sorry, by the way," said Carter.

"Don't be. It's not your fault that Drew is such a shrew," said Percy.

"Well, we're sorry about that too, but I was talking about the stuff that we did," said Carter. "Turning Piper into a fruit bat and starting that fight."

"I'm not sorry about the fight," said Sadie. "Sorry that you broke it up so fast, yeah, but not sorry for starting it."

"Sadie -"

"Don't 'Sadie' me. Drew deserved it."

"What's done is done," said Percy. "And since you turned Piper into a bat to keep her from getting hurt, then turned her right back, I think it'll be okay. Unless she complains directly to Chiron, but since she's new I don't think she'll take her complaints straight to him. He doesn't have a whole lot to do with most new campers now, which is lucky for you guys right now."

They were in the Hades cabin, where Percy said people were least likely to disturb them, and Sadie could see why. Nico's cabin was like a crypt of the creepiest kind. The only light in the room came from green flames on the torches and the shadows looked like they were alive. There were several beds that were little more than slabs of marble, and Sadie had the feeling that anyone sleeping on one of them would look eerily like a carved coffin cover, which was probably the point. She wondered how Nico could stand living there. His room at their place looked like a room of death as well, but at least it had a few homey touches, like a pedestal table for playing Mythomagic, and a bed that didn't make him look like a corpse laid out for viewing.

"So do we have a plan now?" Sadie asked.

"Actually, we do," said Percy. "Nico came up with one. Didn't you, Nico?"

Again, Nico seemed to be staring off into space.

"Hey," said Sadie. She gave him another shake. "Pay attention when people are talking to you."

"What?" Nico asked. "I was paying attention."

"You weren't."

"Was too."

"Were not."

"Too."

"Not."

"I was!"

"You're a liar is what you are!"

"Focus, please," said Percy, his voice quite tolerant all things considered. "The plan, Nico?"

"Oh yeah, the plan." Nico sat up a bit straighter, definitely paying attention now. "We're leaving tonight. I don't want you here while the investigators are here. So we're going to make a break for the camp's borders and then I'm shadow traveling us someplace very far away, so far that the hunters won't be able to track us, and we'll lay low until the investigators catch the killer."

"If we run, won't they think -"

"Yes, which is why we're going so far away that they can't trace us," said Nico. "They'll realize you're not the killer when they do their investigation, or if someone else gets killed. The former is preferable, but if they decide not to have an investigation just because they think you must be the guilty ones, and the latter happens then that's their fault, not ours. I'm not going to risk your secrets getting out while the investigators investigate everyone here, because I don't trust them not to automatically think you're guilty."

"You'll be coming with us?" asked Carter.

Nico nodded.

"Good," said Sadie. "I don't trust these people with your safety either."

"Plus we like having you with us," added Carter. "Things aren't the same when you're not around."

Their encouraging words seemed to have the opposite effect on Nico than what they'd desired, because the boy seemed to shrink in on himself and his gaze dropped to the stone floor.

"Nico," said Percy. "You know what Drew said was complete BS."

"Yeah . . ."

"You know. All the people in this room are proof of it. I'm still here. Sadie and Carter are still here. And you belong with us. So forget about what that stupid daughter of Aphrodite said. You know they're not known for their brains."

That made Nico smirk. "Too true."

"Feel better now?" asked Sadie. "Or do you need a hug? Because Carter will be happy to give you one."

"That won't be necessary," Nico said quickly as Carter gave Sadie a deadly glare but stayed silent, probably afraid of hurting Nico's feelings if he protested about not wanting to hug him.

---------------------------------------------

By lunch time Thalia was more convinced than ever that something was going on between Nico, Percy, and those two new demigods. She heard about what happened at the rock wall, and how Percy and Nico had taken Sadie and Carter with them away from the rest of the campers. Her suspicions were not assuaged when she saw that the two unclaimed newbies had returned to the Hermes Cabin's table for lunch.

In fact, those four seemed to be trying too hard not to draw attention, or at least that was how it looked to Thalia. She noticed that Percy and Nico were both eating at their own assigned tables for that meal, which they hadn't done since Thalia had arrived. But that was just as well, Thalia thought. It would give her a chance to confront Nico alone for once, something she hadn't managed since arriving at the camp, unless you counted that fiasco when she pinned him to the tree with her arrows and was interrupted by Sadie and Carter.

After scraping a chunk of her venison into the fire as her offering to Artemis, Thalia made a beeline for the Hades table where Nico already sat eating a hamburger and French fries.

"Go away," he greeted her. "I don't wanna talk to you."

"That's real mature," Thalia told him. "How old are you again?"

"If I tell you, will you leave?"

"Why don't you grow up?" Thalia asked.

"You have no one but your own father to blame. If he hadn't murdered my mother I'd be like seventy or eighty. Or dead. Now go away."

"I heard about what happened at the lava wall today," Thalia told him. "How your friends turned a girl into a vampire bat -"

"Fruit bat."

"Whatever. They turned her into a bat. So either they're the children of a god or goddess who's a patron to magicians, or they've been trained by an experienced sorcerer or sorceress."

"Hmm. I wonder."

"What I really want to know though, is have you been hanging around them since Bianca stopped being able to look in on you?" asked Thalia.

Nico glared at her. "Since she stopped being able to spy on me, you mean. Why is it that everyone thinks this is a bad thing?"

"Because it takes serious magic to block powers like Bianca has -"

"I've already told you, it was because Anubis gave me this pendant." Nico touched the cord that he wore the pendant on, though the pendant itself remained tucked inside his shirt, out of sight.

"I looked at that pendant, remember? I don't think it's powerful enough to block a Child of the Underworld's powers like that."

"Because you're an expert on magic artifacts? Or Egyptian gods? Or are you an expert on Children of the Underworld?" Nico asked. "Because if not you'll forgive me for doubting your ability to judge something like that."

Thalia scowled, but had to admit that Nico did have a point. She could no more tell if a pendant had a protective or shielding spell on it than she could tell if it had a death curse on it. "Why would Anubis give you something like that?" she asked instead.

"I already told you, because we're friends." Nico crossed his arms, looking angry, and annoyed, and a little bit hurt. "And I wasn't lying about that. There are actually people in this world that want to be my friends."

"I never said there weren't," Thalia said defensively. "But I heard . . . I heard one of those Aphrodite tramps said something to that effect this morning, which was why that new girl who is your friend broke her nose." She looked toward the Aphrodite table. "But I don't see any of them with nose splints."

"You heard a garbled version of the story, I think," said Nico. "Sadie punched her in the jaw. Do you remember Drew? If you ever knew her? She's the Asian girl with the huge bruise just below her mouth."

Thalia smirked as her eyes rested on the girl in question. "That's something you don't see every day. How'd Sadie manage to do that?"

"By hitting her really hard, I imagine."

"Yeah, I know that," said Thalia. "But in that spot? From that angle?"

Nico blinked thoughtfully. "I think I remember Drew backing up onto some rocks, which put her at a higher vantage point. Sadie stayed on the ground and was punching upward . . . Upward . . . Ahh!"

"What?" Thalia looked at him alarmed by his strangled cry and his suddenly feverish expression. "What's wrong, Nico?"

"Th-that - it - she - the angle!"

"Nico, calm down." Thalia reached out to grab his shoulder, because she wasn't sure if he was about to have a seizure or something. "Breathe. Take your time and use your words."

"Nico? What's wrong?" Percy was immediately by Nico's side, having seen that something was going on. "Are you sick?"

"No. I just . . . I thought of something." Nico stood up so fast that the bench he was sitting on fell down, and Thalia kept a tight hold on him because she was afraid he'd go toppling down after it. But Nico remained on his feet, surprisingly steady, and when he looked from Thalia, to Percy, then back to Thalia again, his expression was grim and serious and composed. "Thalia, this may sound weird, but I need to see Karena's body again. Something just occurred to me . . . about the way both she and Martina were killed, and if I'm right . . . If I'm right we'll be able to narrow the suspect pool down to about three or four people."