Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods(2)

“What did you do with the regular counselor?” I asked.

Eudora waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry about her. She couldn’t help you with New Rome. That’s why I’m here!”

Something about her tone made me feel . . . not reassured, exactly, but at least not personally threatened. Maybe she only ate other guidance counselors.

Her presence felt familiar, too—the salty tingle in my nostrils, the pressure in my ears as if I were a thousand feet underwater. I realized I’d encountered someone like her before, when I was twelve years old, at the bottom of the Mississippi River.

“You’re a sea spirit,” I said. “A Nereid.”

Eudora chuckled. “Yes, of course, Percy. Did you think I was a dryad?”

“So . . . my father sent you?”

She raised an eyebrow, as if she was starting to worry I might be a bit slow on the uptake. Weirdly, I get that look a lot.

“Yes, dear. Poseidon. Your father? My boss? Now, I’m sorry I can’t find a brochure, but I know you’ll need all the usual human requirements for New Rome University: test scores, official transcripts, and an up-to-date psychoeducational evaluation. Those aren’t a problem.”

“They aren’t?” After all I’d been through, it might’ve been too early to judge on that last one.

“But you’ll also need a few, ah, special entry requirements.”

The taste of salt water got sharper in my mouth. “What special requirements?”

“Has anyone talked to you about divine recommendation letters?” She looked like she really wanted the answer to be yes.

“No,” I said.

She fiddled with her jar of Jolly Ranchers. “I see. Well. You’ll need three letters. From three different gods. But I’m sure for a demigod of your talents—”

“What?”

Eudora flinched. “Or we could look at some backup schools. Ho-Ho-Kus Community College is very nice!”

“Are you kidding me?”

The Nereid’s face started to glisten. Rivulets of salt water trickled from her oyster-bed hair.

I felt bad about getting angry. This wasn’t her fault. I knew she was only trying to help me because my dad had ordered her to. Still, it wasn’t the kind of news I wanted to deal with on a Monday morning. Or ever.

I steadied my breathing. “Sorry. It’s just . . . I need to get into New Rome. I’ve done a lot of stuff for the gods over the years. Can’t I just, like, e-mail them a recommendation form . . . ?”

Eudora’s eyebrows knotted. Her dress was now sloughing off sheets of seawater. A pool of it spread across the green-tile floor, seeping ever closer to my textbooks.

I sighed. “Ugh. I have to do new quests, don’t I?”

“Well, dear, the college admissions process is always challenging, but I’m here to help—”

“How about this?” I said. “If my father really wants to help, maybe he should explain this to me himself, rather than sending you here to break the bad news.”

“Oh. Well, that would be, um—”

“Out of character,” I agreed.

Something buzzed in Eudora’s hairdo (shell-do?), making her jump. I wondered if maybe she’d gotten an electric eel stuck in her oyster bed, but then she plucked out one of the shells. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”

She put the shell to her ear. “Hello? . . . Oh, yes, sir! I . . . Yes, I understand. Of course. Right away.”

She set the shell on the desk and stared at it, as if afraid it might ring again.

“Dad?” I guessed.

She tried for a smile. The saltwater lake was still spreading across the office floor, soaking my textbooks, seeping through my shoes.

“He thinks you might be right,” Eudora said. “He’ll explain this to you in person.”

She said in person the way most teachers say in detention.

I tried to act cool, like I had won an argument, but my dad and I hadn’t talked in . . . a while. He usually only brought me to his underwater palace when a war was about to start. I was hoping maybe he’d give me a week or so to settle in at school before he summoned me.

“Great. So . . . I can go back to class?”

“Oh, no, dear. He means now.”

Around my feet, the water swirled into a whirlpool. The tiles began to crack and dissolve.

“But don’t worry,” Eudora promised. “We’ll meet again!”

The floor dropped out from under my chair, and I plunged into a churning maelstrom with a thunderous FLUSH!





You know you’ve been a demigod too long when you’re flushed out of your school straight into the Atlantic Ocean and you’re not even surprised.

I didn’t try to fight the current. I could breathe underwater, so that wasn’t an issue. I just sat in my blue plastic chair and rocketed through Poseidon’s Private Plumbing System?, powered by a five-billion-gallon tsunami. Faster than you could say, Well, that sucked, I erupted from the seafloor like I’d been coughed up by a mollusk.

As the sand cloud around me settled, I tried to get my bearings. My nautical senses told me I was about forty miles southeast of the Long Island coast, two hundred feet down; no big deal for a son of Poseidon, but, kids, don’t try this at home. A hundred yards in front of me, the continental shelf dropped into darkness. And right on the precipice stood a glittering palace: Poseidon’s summer villa.