Read Online Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Demigod Files by Rick Riordan - Free Book Online Page A

on me. “I have to do this, Percy. He’s my father.”
    “Oh, no way,” Thalia protested. “You can’t believe this is a good idea!”
    “Would you rather have the sword in Kronos’s hands?” He had a point there.
    “Time is wasting,” Persephone said. “The thief may have accomplices in the Underworld, and he will be looking for a way out.”
    I frowned. “I thought you said the realm was locked.”
    “No prison is airtight, not even the Underworld. Souls are always finding new ways out faster than Hades can close them. You must retrieve the sword before it leaves our realm, or all is lost.”
    “Even if we wanted to,” Thalia said, “how would we find this thief?”
    A potted plant appeared on the table: a sickly yellow carnation with a few green leaves. The flower listed sideways, as if it were trying to find the sun.
    “This will guide you,” the goddess said.
    “A magic carnation?” I asked.
    “The flower always faces the thief. As your prey gets closer to escaping, the petals will fall off.”
    Right on cue, a yellow petal turned gray and fluttered into the dirt.
    “If all the petals fall off,” Persephone said, “the flower dies. This means the thief has reached an exit and you have failed.”
    I glanced at Thalia. She didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the whole track-a-thief-with-a-flower thing. Then I looked at Nico. Unfortunately, I recognized the expression on his face. I knew what it was like wanting to make your dad proud, even if your dad was hard to love. In this case, really hard to love.
    Nico was going to do this, with or without us. And I couldn’t let him go alone.
    “One condition,” I told Persephone. “Hades will have to swear on the River Styx that he will never use this sword against the gods.”
    The goddess shrugged. “I am not Lord Hades, but I am confident he would do this—as payment for your help.”
    Another petal fell off the carnation.
    I turned to Thalia. “I’ll hold the flower while you beat up the thief ?”
    She sighed. “Fine. Let’s go catch this jerk.”
    The Underworld didn’t get into the Christmas spirit. As we made our way down the palace road into the Fields of Asphodel, it looked pretty much like it had on my previous visit—seriously depressing. Yellow grass and stunted black poplar trees rolled on forever. Shades drifted aimlessly across the hills, coming from nowhere and going nowhere, chattering to each other and trying to remember who they were in life. High above us, the cavern ceiling glistened darkly.
    I carried the carnation, which made me feel pretty stupid. Nico led the way since his blade could clear a path through any crowd of undead. Thalia mostly grumbled that she should’ve known better than to go on a quest with a couple of boys .
    “Did Persephone seem kind of uptight?” I asked.
    Nico waded through a mob of ghosts, driving them back with Stygian iron. “She’s always acts that way when I’m around. She hates me.”
    “Then why did she include you in the quest?”
    “Probably my dad’s idea.” He sounded like he wanted that to be true, but I wasn’t so sure.
    It seemed strange to me that Hades hadn’t given us the quest himself. If this sword was so important to him, why had he let Persephone explain things? Usually Hades liked to threaten demigods in person.
    Nico forged ahead. No matter how crowded the fields were—and if you’ve ever seen Times Square on New Year’s Eve, you have a pretty good idea—the spirits parted before him.
    “He’s handy with zombie crowds,” Thalia admitted. “Think I’ll take him along next time I go to the mall.”
    She gripped her bow tight, like she was afraid it would turn into a honeysuckle vine again. She didn’t look any older than she had last year, and it suddenly occurred to me that she would never age, now that she was a huntress. That meant I was older than she was. Weird.
    “So,” I said. “How’s immortality treating you?”
    She rolled her eyes.