A/N: Sorry for taking so long to upload, I really have no excuse since I wrote this chapter about four weeks ago:/...Sorry again..

I opened my eyes. The cool sea breeze was wafting in the through the window and cooling down my sweating body. I threw the covers off and sat up. I leaned my back up against the cold glass and sighed. Grover was still fast asleep in his bed but Nico was sat up, his back against the wall, reading.

"What are you reading?" I asked. He lifted the book up without looking so I could see the cover. He was reading 'The Dark Tower.' It was ridiculous. He'd read that book series a thousand times. "Again!" I exclaimed. He looked up then and glared at me.

"Yeah. I like it." His gaze turned back down to the book.

"Well that was a statement of the obvious." I looked at the door, as the door handle started moving down. The person on the other side of the door let go of the handle and it snapped back into position.

"You decent?" Thalia called.

I laughed. "Yeah, you can come in," I replied. Thalia opened the door and wandered in still wearing her pyjamas.

"You almost forgot," I stated. She gave me a look.

"Shut up. You still did the worst."

"Just 'cause I saw your lovely lacy bra." Nico sniggered, still staring at the book in his hands. Thalia spun on her heel to stare at me.

"You said you saw nothing!" she shrieked. Did I? I couldn't remember. I probably did.

"I lied," I admitted. Thalia ran at me and launched herself onto the bed. She held my arms down as she straddled me.

"How much did you see?" she demanded. Her eyes were blazing and her forehead was crinkled.

"This isn't at all awkward," I said. I avoided looking at Thalia. That would just make it even more awkward. Nico looked up and saw Thalia on top of me.

"I'm sure Annabeth will want to know about this," he muttered. Thalia glared at me before turning back to me.

"Answer!" she yelled pushing my arms into the bed.

"What do you want me to say?" I cried.

"The truth! How much did you see?" She pinched my arm and dug her knee into my private area. I howled with pain.

"Argh! Thalia!"

"ANSWER!" She pinched my arm even harder. And her knee was close to doing some serious damage.

"Your underwear! I saw you bra and panties!" I screamed. "Okay?" Thalia relaxed her grip slightly.

"That it?"

"Yes!" I clenched my fists in pain.

"Well, this is interesting." I looked to my left and saw Annabeth and Rachel stood at the door smirking.

"You're dead," Nico muttered.

"He lied!" Thalia announced. "He did see!" The two girls came running over. I leaped off the bed and ran to Nico's bed. I jumped up onto it and stood with my arms up.

"What the fuck?" Nico demanded.

"I saw Annabeth and Thalia's underwear! Okay?" I shrieked. I crossed my legs in case any of them tried to do a Thalia.

"What about me?" Rachel yelled. She approached the bed. I put my bed against the wall and put my hands in front of my face. These girls were being pretty scary right now.

"Nothing!" I replied. "I saw nothing!"

"Fine." Rachel relaxed slightly.

"Wait," Annabeth said. She walked slowly over looking into my eyes the whole time. Then, when she was about half a metre away she turned to Nico and charged. "WHAT'S HE BEEN TELLING YOU?" Nico jumped up in the air and ended up in the same position as me.

"Nothing!" he yelled. "He told me nothing!" Annabeth jumped up onto the bed and twisted his arm. "NOTHING!"

"STOP DEFENDING HIM!"

"HE TOLD ME NOTHING!"

"TELL THE TRUTH!" Annabeth twisted Nico's arm even more.

"NOTHING!"

"Annabeth?" I said quietly. Annabeth looked at me. "I actually didn't tell him anything."

Her eyes widened. "Really?" She still had hold of Nico's arm.

"Really."

"Oh."

Nico whimpered with pain. "Fancy letting go of my arm now?" Annabeth let go of his arm sheepishly.

"Sorry. I forgot."

"You forgot you were causing someone immense pain?"

"Basically."

After that little catastrophe we went downstairs to get some breakfast. We wandered into the kitchen where Alison was making pancakes. Just the smell was enough to make my mouth water.

"Hey Alison," Rachel called. Alison turned away from the hob and smiled at us.

"Hello," she replied pleasantly. She brushed a stray hair out of her face as she piled 6 plates with pancakes. "Sit down, sit down." We sat down at the table. Alison came over after about two minutes and placed a plate of pancakes in front of each one of us. There must have been at least ten pancakes on each. Our jaws dropped.

"You're expecting us to eat all this?" Nico asked. He was staring at his pancakes nervously. Alison laughed.

"Not at all. Eat as much as you want. I've got neighbours that I give any leftovers to," she explained.

"Like Stephanie?" I asked, still staring at the pancakes.

"Uh huh."

"Stephanie?" Annabeth asked.

"Hmm?" I stared at Annabeth. I was trying to think of something to say. The question had taken me by surprise. Why would Annabeth care who Stephanie was?

"Who's Stephanie?"

"My neighbour. I was talking to her last night when Percy came down to get you some food," Alison answered for me. I nodded and smiled at Alison gratefully. She smiled back.

"Oh," Annabeth said. She began eating. We sat at that table for what felt like hours, stuffing ourselves with pancakes until our stomachs were close to bursting. Eventually, Rachel gave in.

"I can't eat anymore," she said leaning back on her chair, her hand on her stomach.

"Me neither," Annabeth agreed. We all gave up and dumped our cutlery on our plates.

"Let's explore," Grover announced after we'd sat bloated for about five minutes. I thought this was a pretty good idea but I could barely drag myself out of my chair. I eventually managed it.

"Hurry up!" I called up the stairs. Me, Rachel and Nico were stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the others to come downstairs. We had been stood there for ages.

"Will you be patient?" Annabeth cried, her head popping over the banister to glare at me. "We'll be two minutes."

"You said that ten minutes ago," I reminded her. She snorted. This time though, they did keep their promise and around two minutes later, the three of them wandered downstairs.

"Happy?" Thalia asked waving in her arms to motion that she was there.

"Very," I replied. She smirked at me as she walked out of the door.

The six of us wandered round the town, looking in every shop window, smiling at every passer by. Everything in this little town seemed really story-like. The lampposts were old; there were red post boxes and telephone boxes on every street corner. As we were passing a little post office with a bright red door I couldn't help noticing the man that was walking behind them. He'd been walking behind them for a rather long time now and I was beginning to become paranoid. He was wearing all black the man, and his face was being hidden by a large black hood. You actually couldn't see a single part of his skin.

"Guys? Is that guy like…following us?" I asked under my breath, still walking.

"Perce, you're just being paranoid," Grover replied, patting me on the back.

"No. I've noticed it too," Annabeth said. "He's been following us for ages. I don't know what he's up to." Thalia glanced back at the man.

"He looks creepy," she decided.

"Let's turn the corner and see if he follows," Rachel suggested. So, on the next corner, we turned onto the street and carried on walking. A few seconds later and the man in black turned onto the street after us.

"Oh dear," Nico muttered. We carried on walking. As we turned another corner I saw 2 other men, both wearing black, join the man that was following us.

"Shit." I couldn't help myself. My friends glanced behind them quickly and joined in my cursing.

"What do we do?" Rachel asked. I didn't know. I turned back round to look where I was walking and was immediately confronted by two more people in black.

"Bigger shit." My cursing is getting worse and worse.

"Wha-" Annabeth turned around. "Oh, crap."

"What do you want?" Thalia asked the people. They stayed silent and didn't move. For some reason, this was creepier than if they'd told us they were going to kill us. "What do you want?" she repeated. Still no answer. Well, not a verbal one anyway. All the people took their hoods off apart from the man who had originally been following us. Well, I say man, now I couldn't be sure if he was a man. Since half the other 'men' were actually women. There were two men and two women. The men were both tall and strong looking. One had dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. He had a bunch of stubble around his skin and bushy eyebrows. He was about forty. The other guy was younger, maybe early twenties. He had dark blonde hair and green/brown eyes. Both women had mousy brown hair. One had brown eyes while the other had yellow/green. They began advancing on us. I took riptide out, not sure if it would do any good, they looked pretty human to me.

"Don't even think about it, boy," the guy that hadn't taken his hood off said. His voice was low and raspy. I made no attempt to take the top off riptide.

"What do you want?" Grover asked, trying again to figure out what was going on.

"We just want a little talk," the blonde haired guy near me replied.

"About what?"

"How you can help us," answered the woman with the brown eyes.

"We can't help you," I said.

"We'll see about that." They came down on us faster than I could even say 'great,' which I had been planning to say. Darkness was suddenly whipping around us.

"Necromancy!" Nico yelled. We tried to fight back as the strands of darkness came to bind our arms together. But it's impossible to fight against darkness, but somehow possible for it to fight you. That's rather unfair in my opinion. As the darkness wrapped itself around my wrists I could feel a tickling in my nose. We'd been gassed. I fought against the vertigo that was sending the world spinning around me, but the gas won and my world went black.

When I awoke, I was sat in a chair, my arms tied behind me back with rope. To my left was Grover and to my right was Rachel. I couldn't see the others but from the way Rachel and Grover were on an angle from me I guessed we were in a circle facing away from each other. The room was dark but I could make out two dark figures about a metre away from me.

"Are they awake yet?" I heard an impatient. Well, I wasn't going to give him the pleasure of knowing I was awake.

"For the thirtieth time. I. Don't. Know." I smirked at the sound of the woman's voice. She was getting really annoyed with this guy.

"Chill, Melancholia." He guy sounded older than the woman, but for some reason he thought he was so much cooler. I gathered he'd been spending a lot of time around a kid recently.

"God! You're spending way too much time with Valkyrie!" Thought so.

"Actually, she hasn't been turning up for lessons recently." I actually felt a bit sorry for him. He sounded a bit depressed.

"Pha! So much for your death bringer!" This woman was spiteful and nasty. I didn't like her in the slightest. The man didn't reply. I saw his dark figure shift as he turned away from the woman so she wouldn't be able to see his face.

"I think you should apologise," Rachel said next to me. "That was really mean." I couldn't help it. I laughed. Rachel was there, wanting our captors to apologise to one another.

"Excuse me?" the woman asked. Rachel looked at her.

"You. Should. Apologise." The man was almost smiling.

"Why?"

"Because you're a tight arse." The man laughed with me.

"Why are you laughing?" the woman demanded, squaring up to her colleague.

"Jeez Melancholia, will you please calm down!" he replied. "They're just teasing!"

"Then why are you laughing?"

"Because they're funny!"

"We're just hilarious," I agreed. The man looked at me and smirked.

"Are you all awake?" he asked. As I suspected, this guy seemed pretty nice. He had stepped out of the shadows now and I could see that he was quite a tall man. He had shaggy black hair and dark eyes; he also had really bushy eyebrows. The woman on the other had, she just looked evil. Her black hair was glossy and long, falling down her back like a curtain. Her blue eyes were just plain scary.

"Wreath shut the hell up! You're not helping!" she cried. I still didn't know her name, despite the fact I'd heard it twice. I think it was Melinshomia, or something like that.

"I'm doing fine!"

"Shut up!"

"Fine." Silence fell.

"Uh, I'm awake," Nico mumbled.

"Same," Thalia added. Grover and Annabeth agreed soon after.

"I'm awake."

"And me."

"See," Wreath muttered. "That was so much easier."

"SHUT UP!" the woman yelled. She looked back at us. "You will come with us." She sounded half way in between terrifying because she was and not terrifying because she was trying to be.

"Do we have a choice?" Grover asked hopefully. The woman gave him a distasteful look.

"No."

"Didn't think so."