Sadie watched with interest as Nico, Percy, and Thalia left the eating area with a sense of urgency and for a second wondered if maybe she and Carter should go after them. Something had happened right before they got up. She hadn't missed Nico's feverish expression, or the grave looks on their face as they hurried away.

"Don't," Carter told her, guessing what she was thinking. "If they needed us, they'd get us."

"That's something you don't see every day," remarked one of the Hermes' campers. "All three of the Big Three's kids collaborating with each other."

"Ten drachma that Annabeth . . . oh never mind," muttered Connor Stoll. Sadie saw the girl she'd learned was Percy's girlfriend go racing after them. "She could have at least given us time to place bets on how long it would take her to follow them."

"The nerve of her," said Travis.

"I have to go to the bathroom," said Maya, the other unclaimed demigod who'd been picked up along with Sadie, Carter, and Piper when they'd been brought to camp.

"Then go," said Travis.

"Go back to the cabin and go, he means," said Connor. "Don't just go here at the table."

"But we're not supposed to go anywhere on our own," Piper reminded them.

"Oh yeah, right." Connor glanced over his campers. "Then you go with her, new girl. And you other new girl, you go too."

"We have names, you know," said Sadie.

"And after you get claimed we'll probably learn them," said Travis.

Sadie scowled but Piper and Maya were already standing up. She glanced at Carter who shook his head, obviously not wanting her to make a big deal out of it, and decided that he was right, it wasn't worth it to pitch a fit or protest now. Besides, she didn't mind being with Piper or Maya. But before leaving she did make it a point to snag the cinnamon scone off her plate, not trusting it to still be there when she came back since she was among the children of the patron god of thieves.

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

Nico hesitated at the entrance of Artemis' Cabin, not sure if boys were allowed inside or not.

"Well, are you coming or not?" asked Thalia. She looked at him and Percy who was hovering behind him impatiently.

"We're not going to get transformed into jackelopes if we step inside or anything, are we?" Percy asked.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Thalia. "Come on, already. I want to know what Nico figured out."

"I'd like to know too," said Percy.

"I want to see the body first," said Nico. "I was on the verge of hypothermia the last time I saw her and I want to make sure . . . just let me see her." He didn't feel like trying to explain his hypothesis until he had all the facts.

Inside Artemis' Cabin looked like the inside of a fancy hunting lodge, with polished log walls, stuffed animal and monster heads hanging from the walls, along with weapons, a big stone fire place, and rows of wood framed bunk beds lining the walls. Nico couldn't help but hate it. This was what his sister had given him up for, so by its very nature he found it loathsome.

All of the bunk beds except one had animal skins on them in place of blankets or sheets. The one bed that was covered with a linen sheet was one of the bottom ones, and beneath the sheet was the unmistakable form of a human body. Nico wondered if the Hunters would be making a shroud for Karena, or if that was just a Camp Half-Blood tradition. Not that he cared. But he also wondered if they'd made one for Bianca even though there hadn't been a body to bury or burn . . .

Stop that, he told himself. You have a job to do.

He felt Anubis at the edges of his consciousness, looking in on what was going on, but was grateful that the god chose not to comment on his weakness. Nico steeled his nerves and then walked to the linen covered bed. Carefully, and as respectfully as he could, he pulled the sheet down, away from Karena's face and throat, folding it so that it creased just below her collarbone. Then he examined the wound that had caused Karena's death.

Immediately his suspicions were confirmed. "Damn," he whispered and gingerly touched the lacerations on Karena's neck, tracing the downward angle of the marks. "I was right."

"Right about what?" demanded Annabeth. She stormed into the Artemis Cabin with none of the hesitation that Nico and Percy had shown. "Did you figure something out?"

Nico nodded. "I'm pretty sure I know who the killer is now. And if it's not her, then we can still narrow it down to probably three or four people, or less."

"How?" asked Percy.

"What do you see?" Thalia wanted to know.

"The angle of these marks," said Nico. "They were made by someone much shorter than her. And Karena is on the short side to begin with. I mean was on the short side to begin with."

"What makes you say that someone short made them?" asked Annabeth.

Nico held back a sigh. It would be so much easier if people just accepted his morbid familiarity with death, but no. They had to make him explain every gruesome fact. And then they thought he was weird for knowing it, even though they were the ones who asked him to elaborate on his knowledge. "Do you have a piece of rope?" he asked Thalia. "Or string? Something to simulate the murder weapon?"

Thalia looked a bit suspicious but went to one of her packs and pulled out a length of rope that was probably meant for climbing. "You need this cut?"

"Two feet of it or so, please," Nico told her. Once she cut the rope and handed it to him, Nico in turn gave it to Percy. "Here. Strangle me."

"Er . . ."

"Not for real," Nico said. "I'm proving a point." He turned his back to Percy, just as Karena's back would have been to her killer.

Percy sighed then draped the rope around Nico's neck, then pulled on it just the slightest amount, taking care to be pathetically gentle.

"Oh never mind." Nico snatched it from him and tossed it back to Thalia. "Here. You strangle me then." He turned his back to Thalia and Thalia didn't disappoint. She wrapped the rope around his throat as though she really planned on garroting him, and pulled it back, not tight enough to actually hurt him, but enough to mimic how the real motion would have gone.

"Good," Nico told her. "Now look at the angle of the rope."

"It's sloped upward," Annabeth stated.

"Pulling upward on the rope is something of a natural reaction," Nico said. "Even if you don't know that it cuts off the blood flow to the brain, it's what feels right to your arms. So anyone taller than Karena, or the same height, would have pulled upward on the rope on instinct. It's not impossible that they would have pulled it back perfectly horizontally if they'd put their mind to it, but that didn't happen. You can see by those marks that they pulled downward."

"But there are any number of people here who are shorter than her," Annabeth pointed out.

"Look at the angle again." Nico tugged on the rope that was still around his neck and Thalia immediately released him. He stepped back toward Karena's body and brushed her hair away from the rope marks so that they could be seen more clearly by everyone."

"It's angled so that it's nearly vertical," whispered Thalia.

"Which means that her killer was either a midget or a very small child," said Nico. "There aren't many demigods that small here. But there is one who arrived yesterday. The same day that Martina was murdered." He blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. "Martina's wounds are further proof. The way that arrow was stabbed into her . . ."

"At an upward angle," Percy remembered.

Nico nodded, still blinking, then turned back to Karena. He pulled the sheet back up to cover her face again.

The four demigods stood in silence for several moments, Percy, Thalia, and Annabeth taking in what Nico had come to terms with already since he'd been thinking about it all the way there.

"But why?" asked Thalia, finally breaking the silence. "What did she do it for? Why would she do that? She didn't even know Karena or Martina? She only just got here."

"I think in her case it's probably that she's mentally insane," Nico said. "I'm sorry, Thalia."

Thalia clapped her hand down on his shoulder. "You have nothing to be sorry for. You just solved a murder. You did good, little cousin."

Nico looked at Thalia uncertainly, then nodded. "Thanks, Thalia." He didn't feel like he should be getting compliments for this since what he'd discovered hadn't made the situation suck any less, but Thalia's reaction was much nicer than some peoples' was going to be, Nico knew. The Aphrodite cabin would be lining up to call him morbid after this . . . not that he planned to stick around for that. Getting Sadie and Carter away from here was still his top priority.

"We should tell Chiron," said Percy.

"Yeah," Annabeth agreed, reaching for Percy's hand. "Let's go."