I hefted the chalice of the gods. “I don’t suppose we can send this Hermes Express?”
Annabeth frowned. “Percy . . .”
“Don’t they have one-hour delivery in Manhattan?”
“Ganymede needs it now. And you have to bring it. It’s—”
“My job.” I sighed. I was familiar with the rules of quest completion, which included white-glove delivery by the demigod in charge. It was looking increasingly unlikely that I would make it to school in time for my first-period quiz.
“Fine,” I said. “Any suggestions on how I can sneak into Olympus and infiltrate a godly brunch?”
“Um, actually?” Grover blinked like what he was about to say would be painful for me to hear. “I might have an idea.”
The easy part was getting a taxi uptown. Normally I wouldn’t have sprung for a cab, but after Grover and I said good-bye to Annabeth, it seemed like the fastest way to get to the Empire State Building, and also the fastest way to avoid Annabeth’s wrath.
With great reluctance, she had lent me her New York Yankees cap. She never does that. The invisibility hat was a gift from her mom, so borrowing it just wasn’t something you did without a really good reason. It would’ve been like me letting another demigod use Riptide in a fight. Nope.
But when Grover pleaded that it was the only way, Annabeth had handed it over. She glared at me and said, “You will bring it back. Good luck. Don’t die.” Then she ran off to start her school day, since her campus was only a couple of blocks away.
In the cab, Grover tapped his hooves nervously on the floorboard as he explained the rest of his plan. I wasn’t too worried about the cabdriver listening in, because this was New York. A plan to break into Mount Olympus was not the craziest thing any cabbie would hear on any given day. Also, Grover had insisted on bringing the Hula-Hoop in the cab with us, and I had a giant chalice in my lap, so we were already unreliable narrators.
“A cloud nymph,” I said, just to make sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Yeah.” He glanced behind us, though as far as I could tell, we weren’t being followed.
“Is this the same nymph who gave you the info on Washington Square Park?” I asked.
“No, no. But cloud nymphs, man . . . they’re like school secretaries. They know everyone and everything. This one, Naomi—she’s been dating Maron for the past few months. She works in the kitchens of Zeus’s palace. If you can get to the side entrance, she should be able to slip you inside.”
I shivered. Maron was one of Grover’s fellow Cloven Council elders—a nice enough goat dude, but he was only slightly below Gary on the weird-old-man spectrum. The idea of him having a dating profile on Satyr-er was not something I wanted to ponder.
I curled Annabeth’s hat between my hands. “I don’t suppose the invisibility cap will fool the gods?”
“Not likely,” Grover said. “The cap is to fool any spirits or minor gods you might come across. As long as you’re not waving your arms and screaming in their faces, you should be invisible to them. But the Olympians themselves? You’d need Hades’s helm of darkness for that. The best Annabeth’s cap might do is make you look, I don’t know, unimportant?”
“Perfect,” I grumbled. I wasn’t sure how Grover knew this much about Annabeth’s hat, but since he was telling me bad news, I figured he was probably right on target. “So I get to the side door of the palace kitchen as fast as possible.”
“You do the special knock.”
“Shave and a haircut,” I said. “Because that is a knock no one would ever use.”
“When Naomi opens the door, tell her Grover sent you. And you need her help.”
“Okay . . .” Why were my hands trembling? Oh, right, I’d just had a wrestling match with Old Age. I was exhausted. Also, I was about to sneak into an Olympus palace uninvited, where several major gods were founding members of the We Hate Percy Jackson Club. “Then I just have to figure out how to get the cup to Ganymede.”
“Right.”
We pulled up in front of the Empire State Building. Wow, that was disappointingly fast. Looking at the black marble entrance, which I’d gone through too many times, I suddenly thought of another problem.
“What about the sentry guy at the front desk?” I asked. “He’s not going to let me go up to Olympus unannounced. Will the Yankees cap work on him?”
“Definitely not,” Grover said. “You’ll need a distraction. That’s me.”