Things started off well the next day, or at least they did in Percy's opinion. Everything was going normally, which was how he needed it to be. He didn't avoid Nico, but made sure not to seek him out any more than he had back during winter break, and he spent plenty of time with Annabeth, and it seemed like she had actually started to put her suspicions that something fishy was going on with Nico and Percy aside.

Then dinner happened.

It started off smoothly, with Percy sitting by himself at the Poseidon table, Nico sitting by himself at the Hades table, and everyone else sitting with their half-brothers and half-sisters at all their respective tables, in accordance with the camp's rules. But Percy couldn't help but notice how lonely Nico looked during the meal. He'd noticed last night as well, but hadn't thought much further on it, but after the IM he'd gotten from Bianca the previous evening, Percy now started to wonder when the last time Nico had a meal with his family had been.

Sunday dinners at the Blofis-Jackson residence aside, since they were extended family, and Nico had an immediate family. He just couldn't have dinner with them because they were all in the Underworld, and everyone knew the rules about Underworld food. If you ate it, you could never leave. That kind of ruled out family dinners for Nico.

And that was sad. Percy had always loved it when he and his mother had the chance to have meals together, just the two of them, and more recently now with Paul, since he had become a welcome addition to their family. The years that they'd been stuck with Smelly Gabe had made what Percy thought of as 'real' family dinners few and far between, which might have been what made Percy appreciate them so much. But whatever the reason Percy had always thought that eating with your family was something special. And until now he hadn't really given much thought to how that didn't apply to Nico.

He was out of his seat, with his cup of blue Coke in one hand, and his plate in the other before he realized what he was doing, and where he was going. But even as he realized it, he didn't hesitate, or even think about turning around. Nico looked up in surprise, his lips actually forming an O when Percy sat down on the bench across from him.

"Percy? What are you doing?" asked Nico, looking surprised, hopeful, and anxious all at once.

"Mind if I join you?" asked Percy in return. "I don't really feel like eating alone again tonight, and you seem to have some room at your table."

"Yeah, but . . ." Nico glanced around. Several other campers had seen Percy take a seat at the Hades table and they were pointing it out to their brothers and sisters, or watching to see what this development would lead to. "It's against the rule . . ." said Nico softly, as though by keeping his voice down he might keep Chiron or Mr. D from calling them out for this infraction.

"It's not hurting anything," said Percy, trying a practical approach. "Besides, I don't think it's written down anywhere. If Chiron has a problem, or Mr. D cares enough to get off his butt and make me move, then I'll move. Until then, it's better to ask forgiveness than permission."

Nico perked up a bit, his anxiousness seeping away. "I like that philosophy."

Percy made it a point not to look Chiron's way. He didn't want to make eye contact, because Chiron might shake his head or point back at the Poseidon table, and then Percy would have to get up and leave. So it was better just to act like he didn't think he was doing anything wrong, and if anyone had a problem with it, they could come over and fix it themselves.

Besides, he knew he made the right decision when Nico immediately began filling the silence with casual chatter. Nothing too serious and none of their banned topics were brought up, but like the happy ten-year-old Percy had first met several years ago, it seemed that Nico had a lot to say. For his part, Percy was able to keep up the conversation well too. Beach week seemed like a fifty-fifty shot right now, he let Nico know, and it would probably come down to whether or not he got decent grades. And no, he didn't want Nico taking his Italian quizzes for him, because his teachers would definitely notice that a shrimpy twelve-year-old didn't belong in their classes, but setting a prism on his desk during his exam, "for luck" might be a good idea as long as Rachel didn't find out.

For a few minutes Percy actually managed to forget that he and Nico were at Camp Half-Blood as they talked. It felt more like one of those Sunday afternoons when they hung out at Percy's apartment, or an evening on the weekend where they went to the arcade, or a party at one of Percy's friends' places.

Reality came crashing back down however, when a disturbance arrived. A small group of demigods back from an extraction stumbled into the dining area, led by Brendan Noonan and Clarisse LaRue.

"And this, my fine demigod friends, is where we eat," said Brendan, obviously having taken it upon himself to give them the tour. "It seems that we've arrived just in time. Like sleeping arrangements, what table you sit at here depends on who your godly parent is, and until you are claimed, Hermes, the God of Travelers, is your sponsor. You lovely ladies don't need to worry about not having been claimed yet. It usually happens at campfire in the evening, so if you girls will just follow me this way . . . and, uh, you . . . Hephaestus guy, you go over there . . . and you other person, you can come this way too, I guess."

Percy rolled his eyes at Brendan's behavior and knew he'd be hearing complaints about it at the next counselor meeting, how Brendan had acted like a ladies man to the ladies and completely ignored the new demigod boys. Out of curiosity he let his gaze drift away from Nico's animated face as the boy chattered about an aquarium in Seattle that had a real live sea serpent, but that the Mist made people see as a shark.

A Hispanic demigod drifted toward the Hephaestus table, while Brendan led the other new demigods over to the Hermes table. Hovering close to him, and actually holding his hand was a tiny girl with brown hair and an elfin face that looked like she might actually be a daughter of Hermes. On Brendan's other side, looking as though she was thinking about twisting the arm Brendan had slung around her shoulders was a very pretty girl who seemed to be actively trying not to be attractive. Her hair was cut unevenly and she was bundled up in a puffy skiing jacket that hid her figure. He couldn't peg her at a glance like he could a lot of new demigods who'd stumbled in. She was pretty enough to be one of Aphrodite's but her aversion to looking pretty made that seem unlikely.

Maybe Demeter, or Ares, Percy thought to himself. Plenty of the girls from that cabin were as beautiful as the flowers they grew without putting any effort into their appearances, and some of the daughters of Ares were beautiful in an Amazonian-kick-butt-River Tam kind of way.

His eyes drifted to the last two members of the small group, just as he raised his cup and took a drink. Familiarity struck him like a bolt out of the blue, much the same way that a geyser of blue Coke struck Nico as Percy spit out his drink in shock.

Nico yowled and jumped up, his expression somewhere between alarm and annoyance. "Percy! What was that for?" he yelped. "You could have just said, 'No, Nico, I don't really care to go see the stupid aquarium.' You didn't have to spit all over me!"

"Nico," said Percy, his eyes now locked on Sadie and Carter who had spotted him because of this outburst.

"I thought you would like to go!" wailed Nico, looking hurt. "I was trying to be nice!"

"Nico," said Percy, raising his voice urgently. "Turn around and look behind you."

Nico blinked at him several times, blue Coke still running down his face. Then he calmed down and turned around, and saw Sadie and Carter. He spun back around to look at Percy, wide-eyed, and tipped over his own drink by mistake. "Gods, damn it!"

"Settle down," said Percy urgently.

"What are they doing here?" hissed Nico. "How'd they even get in?"

"I don't know. Just be quiet," Percy hissed back. "Everyone's staring at us now."

"Probably because you spit on me! And you have the nerve to tell me to settle down?" Nico looked livid.

"I'm sorry," apologized Percy. He handed Nico his napkin. "They took me by surprise."

He turned and watched as the group of new demi-gods and the renegade Egyptian magicians reached the Hermes table. Brendan unslung his arm from around the older girl's neck, picked up the tiny girl, and set her up on the bench, then said something that made her giggle and nod, before he stepped back and went to join his own table. But not before giving a gallant bow to Sadie who glared at him, unimpressed.

Carter hesitated before sitting down, and looked to Percy who gave him a nod and mouthed, "Play along." Carter returned the nod and sat at the Hermes table. Sadie did the same.

"Not good," Nico was muttering. "This is definitely not good. What are they doing here?"

"I don't think they're here by choice," said Percy. "Or at least not by design."

"How did they trick Clarisse and Brendan into thinking they were demigods?" wondered Nico. "Wait, never mind, I can guess. Bigger question: What do we do now?"

"We get them out of here," said Percy. "Them being here is not a good idea."

Since the incident a month ago, a unit on the House of Life had been added to the Camp Half-Blood curriculum. Percy had snuck a look at Annabeth's notebook earlier that day to see what they were being taught about the Egyptian magicians, and for the most part approved of the material.

'House of Life freaks are irrational and unpredictable, and should be avoided whenever possible,' was the gist of it. Percy would have added a couple paragraphs about them being sadistic, child-torturing bitches, as well as tasty treats for tiger fish, but no one had asked him. The important things were covered, at least, along with some warnings about the newly unleashed Egyptian gods and their past attempts at kidnapping demigods and trying to use them as hosts. Over all, Percy thought that it was good that his fellow demigods had all been forewarned (even if it was too late to do Nico any good) but the problem now was that the material had painted all things Egyptian in a negative light. Percy didn't know what would happen if the Kane siblings revealed what they were. He didn't want to find out either.

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

To say that Sadie was annoyed was an understatement. All day one thing had been going wrong after another. If it wasn't House of Life freaks, it was demigods and their problems. Going along with the extraction team hadn't been a good idea either, because the chariot turned out to be a nonstop flight to Camp Half-Blood, and trying to talk Clarisse and Brendan into landing and letting them off hadn't worked.

"You'd get killed in a heartbeat," Clarisse had told them. "We need to take you to camp so you can get trained."

"It goes against all my instinct to leave a beautiful lady out there all alone," Brendan had told her.

"I wouldn't be alone," snapped Sadie. "I'd be with my brother."

Carter had spoken up too. "We really would be fine, if you could just land and let us off. We've been working together fine for awhile now and had no plans of going to your camp."

Clarisse had looked at them with something like grudging respect, but Sadie noticed that it seemed aimed more toward Carter. Maybe because Clarisse had seen Carter engage that hellhound, and as a child of Ares she could appreciate stupid acts of violence like that. "You've got guts, I'll give you both that, but things have gotten a lot more dangerous lately. It's only been half a year since we got rid of one enemy, and now we have a bunch of new ones to deal with. Ones that have no rhyme or reason."

"You're talking about those Egyptian whack-jobs, Clarisse?" asked Brendan.

"Who else?"

"I don't know why we're suddenly on alert about those guys when no one's even seen them," said Brendan.

"We've heard about them," said Clarisse angrily. "And we have seen them. Or at least some of us have. You heard how a bunch of those bastards jumped Nico di Angelo!"

"Corpse Kid?" scoffed Brendan. "If they'd taken him out they'd have been doing us a favor."

Sadie had clenched her fists in anger and decided right then that she hated Brendan. Carter had grabbed her shoulder and gave her a warning look, but there was no way Sadie could let a remark like that about their friend go unaddressed. She opened her mouth, but Clarisse spoke first.

"You ungrateful scrap of crow-bait," said Clarisse venomously. "How dare you talk that way about him after he saved all our lives?"

"Umm, he does use death magic, remember? Raises the dead and forces their corpses to fight for him? If that's not unnatural I don't know what is."

An argument had broken out between the two senior demigods then. Some of the things they said about Nico weren't exactly encouraging to the real demigods they'd picked up, Sadie couldn't tell, but she was pretty sure that none of it was lies. All the abilities they talked about seemed well within the scope of Nico's power, except maybe the death touch Brendan insisted Nico had, but which Clarisse said wasn't true. And Clarisse did a good job sticking up for Nico, which made Sadie like her.

But she and Carter both got the idea that it might not be a good idea to reveal that they were both Egyptian magicians.

She'd wondered if they'd see Nico and Percy at the camp, and when they arrived at the picnic tables she'd started scanning the crowded ones at first, sure that they'd be surrounded by friends. It wasn't until Brendan mentioned that their lineage determined which table they sat at that she started looking at the less crowded tables. She found Percy the same second that he found her, if his timing for spitting out his drink all over Nico was anything to go by. Despite the seriousness of the situation, she still found herself smirking over that.

They sat down at the Hermes table and Sadie tried to avoid looking at Percy and Nico, not sure if it was good to tip people off that they knew each other yet. Instead she looked around at the other campers and tried to get a read on them.

Some of them weren't too hard to figure out. Sadie didn't know a lot about Greek mythology, just what she'd learned in school, but she figured it was enough. It was pretty easy to see which table Aphrodite's kids sat at, and she thought she could have guessed the Ares table even without knowing that was where Clarisse had a seat reserved. The camouflage was a give-away.

The few times that she dared to sneak glances at Nico and Percy's table she saw them deep in a discussion, heads close together, talking in urgent tones. It was obvious to anyone, not just Sadie who already knew, that they were up to something. She glanced around to see if anyone else was paying attention and noticed a girl with blonde hair and grey eyes watching Percy and Nico shrewdly.

She's going to be a problem, Sadie knew instinctively. She glanced back at Nico and Percy, willing them to look up so that she could try to signal them somehow, but Percy was watching Nico intently, and Nico was . . . Nico was scrawling something into his food and mumbling something. He seemed to be concentrating very carefully.

Sadie looked back down at her own food and picked up her fork, and prepared to dig into her mashed potatoes and gravy. A slight shimmering caught her eye and she froze. Then blinked. The shimmering didn't disappear, but rather began to form hieroglyphics. Sadie elbowed Carter who looked at her curiously, then followed her gaze as a message began to appear.

CAPTURE THE FLAG IS NEXT. WE'LL SPEAK THEN. DO NOT REVEAL YOU'RE MAGICIANS.

It was signed with the hieroglyphic that represented Anubis' name, but Sadie got the feeling the message was from all three of the boys sitting at Percy and Nico's table (even though Nico and Anubis were sharing a body.) Some of the hieroglyphics were actually written backward so that the reeds or the birds or eyes were facing the wrong way, probably because of Nico's dyslexia. But whichever of them it was from, and however many typos were in the message, it was still clear. Sadie nodded to the boys to let them know that the message had been received, then quickly stirred the gravy into her mashed potatoes, getting rid of the evidence.

Then something else happened that caused much more of a stir than a couple of new demigods and undercover magicians arriving at the camp in the middle of dinner. Some more guests appeared whose arrival seemed much more unexpected than Sadie's, Carter's, and their fellow newcomers' arrival had been.

Sadie noticed the change in attitude immediately, even before she saw them. People started murmuring, and there were even a few angry hisses and mumbled insults.

"Who are they?" asked Piper, the other new girl who'd come in with Sadie and Carter. Sadie liked Piper well enough. The other girl had the same attitude toward Brendan Noonan as Sadie had, which said something about her intelligence in Sadie's opinion.

"The Hunters of Artemis," said one of the Hermes girls. "They're not normal campers, though some of them used to be."

"You know what this means," said one of the Hermes boys.

"Tonight's going to be one heck of a game," said one of his brothers.

"We have sort of a rivalry with them," explained the Hermes girl. "My name is Christine, by the way. The Hunters . . . well, they're not bad people, but they don't do things the way we do, and sometimes things get out of hand."

"Femi-Nazis," muttered one of the Hermes boys.

"Hey, hey, look at the Corpse Kid!" hissed another Hermes daughter.

Sadie immediately looked over toward Nico, without pretending to wait and see where the other campers at her table looked. She frowned. Nico's expression was odd. It was somewhere between being hurt and being angry, and even though Percy was talking to him, Nico didn't seem to hear a word his cousin said until Percy actually grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

"Who are they?" Piper asked again. Sadie glanced her way and saw that she was looking at Nico's and Percy's table now.

"Our resident heroes," said a Hermes son who'd already introduced himself as Ashton. "Percy Jackson and Nico di Angelo."

"Only one can really be called a hero," said Christine. "Percy, the taller one with green eyes, is the son of Poseidon. Last summer he saved the world."

"Nico helped," argued Ashton.

"Nico's kind of a freak of nature, if you haven't already noticed," said Christine.

"Without him we'd all be dead and you know it," said Ashton.

"That doesn't mean he's not a freak."

Sadie opened her mouth to speak up on her friend's behalf, but Carter elbowed her and gave her a warning look. Sadie toned down the scalding comment that had been on her tongue but couldn't make herself stay silent. "If he saved your lives then why is he a freak?"

"He's the son of Hades," said Christine. "He summons dead people. Talks with dead people. Spends more time with dead people than live people Picture the most emo-goth loser you can think of and that's him. I don't know why they even let him in here."

"If he saved your lives then isn't he on the same side as you?" asked Piper. Sadie was liking this girl more and more. "If the only way I could save my friends was to summon the dead then I'd sure as heck get out grab a vial of the T-virus, or a ouiji board, or the Deathly Hallows ring, or whatever else was handy."

"He belongs here, the same as us," said Ashton hotly. "And he's a good guy once you get to know him."

"Why's he upset about the Hunters being here?" Carter wanted to know.

"His sister ditched him to join the Hunters," said Christine. "Can you blame her?"

"Yes I can," said Sadie angrily. "There's no excuse for abandoning your brother." She glanced sideways at Carter, but her fierce expression didn't lessen a bit. "Families should stay together. If you ask me, Nico deserved better."

"Just so you're forewarned, you might be asked to join," said Ashton. "The Hunters always make a point of asking unclaimed campers in the Hermes cabin."

"If they ask me I'll tell them to shove their offer where the sun don't shine," growled Sadie.

Piper laughed softly and looked from Sadie to Carter, then back again. She had been made aware of their familial relationship on the ride there, and now there was definite admiration in her eyes.

"You shouldn't be so quick to throw that chance away," said Christine. "There are advantages to being a Hunter. For starters, you're pretty much immortal. You stop aging, magically get stronger -"

"And have to swear off dating for eternity," put in Ashton, "which if I remember is why you turned it down, Christine."

"They can keep their offer," decided Piper.

"Will I be offered too?" asked Maya, the little girl who had almost gotten turned into the hellhound's chew toy.

"Maybe," said Ashton. "You're a little bit younger than they usually invite. If you want to join them when you're older they'll probably let you, but in the mean time don't you want to stay with us and make friends here?"

Maya bobbed her head.

"How long are they going to be here?" asked Sadie. She glanced over at Nico again and saw that he was staring down at his dinner but not touching it.

"Who knows?" asked Christine. She glanced at the Hunters then gave a laugh. "Ha. Would you look at that?"

Sadie turned to watch too. Most of the Hunters had gotten food and drinks and moved to an empty table, but one of them was walking toward the table where Percy and Nico were sitting. Unlike the others, this one wore a silver diadem and carried herself a bit differently, like she had an air of command.

"Much more of this and they might start letting all of us sit wherever we want to during mealtimes," said another of the Hermes boys.

"I don't know about that," said Ashton. "I'm pretty sure Chiron's only turning a blind eye because it's Percy and Nico."

"Now it's Percy, Nico, and Thalia," commented Christina.

"Or just Percy and Thalia now," said Ashton.

Nico had stood up and turned tail when he saw Thalia headed his way. The next thing Sadie knew, Nico was rushing past the Hermes table at a dead run. Instinctively, Sadie started to stand, ready to go after him. Carter grabbed Sadie by the arm and jerked her back down.

"What was that all about?" wondered Christine.

Sadie bit her lip and looked back at the table where Percy and Thalia were talking. Their voices were too soft for her to hear them, but Percy was shaking his head, obviously trying to deny something. Thalia had a stern expression on her face, like she was suspicious of something.

She wasn't the only one. Sadie glanced back at the grey-eyed blond girl and saw that she was watching Percy and Thalia with a wary expression as well.

"Great," she muttered too softly for anyone except Carter to hear her. "This is probably going to complicate things."