The goddess waved her hand, and everything faded.

 

Suddenly I was home. Nico and I were sitting on the couch in my mom's apartment

on the Upper East Side. That was the good news. The bad news was that the rest

of the living room was occupied by Mrs.

 

O'Leary.

 

I heard a muffled yell from the bedroom. Paul's voice said, "Who put this wall

of fur in the doorway?"

 

"Percy?" my mom called out. "Are you here? Are you all right?"

 

"I'm here!" I shouted back.

 

"WOOF!" Mrs. O'Leary tried to turn in a circle to find my mom, knocking all the

pictures off the walls. She's only met my mom once before (long story), but she

loves her.

 

It took a few minutes, but we finally got things worked out. After destroying

most of the furniture in the living room and probably making our neighbors

really mad, we got my parents out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where we

sat around the kitchen table. Mrs. O'Leary still took up the entire living room,

but she'd settled her head in the kitchen doorway so she could see us, which