Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods(17)

“SQUAWK!” Grover yelled. “CLUCK! CLUCK!”

Judging by how much this enraged the flock, it must have been a scathing comment about chicks’ mothers. Grover disappeared into the arcade, followed by most of the poultry mob.

“Keep up.” Annabeth waded through the ball pit, holding her hands above her head like she didn’t want her nonexistent rifle to get wet. Meanwhile, I kept my ballpoint pen handy, which I guess would’ve been super useful if the chickens had decided they wanted an autograph.

“Whatever you do,” Annabeth warned, “don’t hurt the hens. They’re still Hebe’s sacred animals.”

“That’s my top priority,” I muttered. “Not hurting the chickens.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “This will only work if we don’t make Hebe even angrier.”

I didn’t know what Annabeth’s plan was, or how it would work, but you can file that under I Had No Better Ideas, which was already a pretty thick folder.

Annabeth climbed out of the ball pit and offered me a hand. I’d like to say I got out gracefully. I didn’t. I shook about a dozen plastic balls out of my big pant cuffs and scraped a half-chewed cheeseburger off the bottom of my shoe. I wondered what else might be slowly turning into fossil fuel at the bottom of that ball pit . . . probably a bunch of demigods who had dared to lodge age-based complaints.

“Coop,” Annabeth said, and took off running.

Even as an eight-year-old, she had more single-mindedness than I ever would, which might have bothered me if I’d had the bandwidth to focus on it.

We found the chicks in the coop, right where we’d left them. They didn’t look happy about missing out on the chase. When Sparky had unleashed the predators, she’d apparently triggered a control that rolled the chicken-wire fence down exactly halfway—low enough for the adult hens to jump over, but too high for the baby chicks to clear. I guess this was Hebe’s version of an amusement-ride sign: YOU HAVE TO BE THIS TALL TO MURDER OUR CUSTOMERS!

Annabeth studied the chicks, which were running in circles, stomping in the straw, and hurling untranslatable insults in our direction. The chick I’d noticed earlier with the pink fluff on her face seemed particularly angry—she was peeping at the top of her tiny lungs.

“Hope I can catch one,” Annabeth muttered, mostly to herself.

Before I could say, For a wise girl, that does not seem like a wise move, she reached into the coop.

“OWW!”

Li’l Killer had bitten her finger and clamped on. Annabeth yanked her hand back, shaking the fluffy little chick around like a sock with static cling, but Li’l Killer refused to let go.

“Remember not to hurt her,” I said.

“Really helpful,” Annabeth grumbled.

Blood dripped from her finger, but she cupped her free hand around the chick, holding it against her chest so it wouldn’t get away, assuming it ever got tired of the taste of human flesh. “Let’s get to the karaoke bar.”

“Is one chick enough?” I asked.

“If you’re jealous, you can have this one.”

“She is kinda cute for a killer chicken.”

From across the arcade came a sudden roar of customers cheering, hens screeching BAWK! BAWK!, and one panicked satyr yelling, “Incoming!”

How quickly I’d forgotten the herd of holy hens that wanted to tear us apart.

Annabeth and I raced for the karaoke bar, though with my newly youngified legs, it was more of a waddle. I didn’t even have the time or energy to make the diving pool explode as we ran by.

Grover reached the lounge at the same time we did. He had feathers stuck in his fur, and the back of his shirt was shredded like he’d been rolling around on a really dangerous mattress.

“That was super fun,” he wheezed.

“Get the doors!” Annabeth said.

Grover and I grabbed the big mahogany panels and started sliding them together. Why the karaoke bar had its own partition, I wasn’t sure—maybe to protect the rest of the center from the music, or to create a private event space for birthday parties or intimate interrogation sessions.

We’d just closed the doors when the flock slammed against them.

The hens squawked in outrage. The mahogany panels shuddered and creaked. I couldn’t imagine they’d hold for long under a full chicken onslaught.

“What now?” Grover asked, gasping for breath.

He looked so young and terrified that I felt bad for getting a little kid like him into this situation. Then I remembered I was also a little kid like him.

“Now comes the hard part,” Annabeth said.

“That was the easy part?” I demanded.

Annabeth winced as she yanked Li’l Killer off her finger and set the chick on the floor.

Li’l Killer ruffled her blood-speckled feathers. She looked up at us with her shiny black eyes, peeped in a smug sort of way, like, Yeah, you best put me down, then wandered off, contentedly pecking pizza crumbs off the carpet.

Annabeth wrapped a napkin around her wounded finger. “This karaoke bar is Hebe’s temple, right? Her inner sanctum?”

I usually didn’t associate those words with karaoke bars, but I nodded. “And?”

“On Hebe’s holy days, petitioners used to come to her altar,” Annabeth continued.