“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said tensely. “Maybe it’s nothing.”
But I could tell it wasn’t nothing. I started looking over my shoulder, too.
I was relieved when we finally got on board and found seats together in the back of the bus. We stowed our backpacks. Annabeth kept slapping her Yankees cap nervously against her thigh.
As the last passengers got on, Annabeth clamped her hand onto my knee. “Percy.”
An old lady had just boarded the bus. She wore a crumpled velvet dress, lace gloves, and a shapeless orange-knit hat that shadowed her face, and she carried a big paisley purse. When she tilted her head up, her black eyes glittered, and my heart skipped a beat.
It was Mrs. Dodds. Older, more withered, but definitely the same evil face.
I scrunched down in my seat.
Behind her came two more old ladies: one in a green hat, one in a purple hat. Otherwise they looked exactly like Mrs. Dodds—same gnarled hands, paisley handbags, wrinkled velvet dresses. Triplet demon grandmothers.
They sat in the front row, right behind the driver. The two on the aisle crossed their legs over the walkway, making an X. It was casual enough, but it sent a clear message: nobody leaves.
The bus pulled out of the station, and we headed through the slick streets of Manhattan. “She didn’t stay dead long,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quivering. “I thought you said they could be dispelled for a lifetime.”
“I said if you’re lucky,” Annabeth said. “You’re obviously not.”
“All three of them,” Grover whimpered. “Di immortales!”
“It’s okay,” Annabeth said, obviously thinking hard. “The Furies. The three worst monsters from the Underworld. No problem. No problem. We’ll just slip out the windows.”
“They don’t open,” Grover moaned.
“A back exit?” she suggested.
There wasn’t one. Even if there had been, it wouldn’t have helped. By that time, we were on Ninth Avenue, heading for the Lincoln Tunnel.
“They won’t attack us with witnesses around,” I said. “Will they?”
“Mortals don’t have good eyes,” Annabeth reminded me. “Their brains can only process what they see through the Mist.”
“They’ll see three old ladies killing us, won’t they?”
She thought about it. “Hard to say. But we can’t count on mortals for help. Maybe an emergency exit in the roof…?”
We hit the Lincoln Tunnel, and the bus went dark except for the running lights down the aisle. It was eerily quiet without the sound of the rain.
Mrs. Dodds got up. In a flat voice, as if she’d rehearsed it, she announced to the whole bus: “I need to use the rest-room.”
“So do I,” said the second sister.
“So do I,” said the third sister.
They all started coming down the aisle.
“I’ve got it,” Annabeth said. “Percy, take my hat.”
“What?”
“You’re the one they want. Turn invisible and go up the aisle. Let them pass you. Maybe you can get to the front and get away.”
“But you guys—”
“There’s an outside chance they might not notice us,” Annabeth said. “You’re a son of one of the Big Three. Your smell might be overpowering.”
“I can’t just leave you.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Grover said. “Go!”
My hands trembled. I felt like a coward, but I took the Yankees cap and put it on.
When I looked down, my body wasn’t there anymore.
I started creeping up the aisle. I managed to get up ten rows, then duck into an empty seat just as the Furies walked past.
Mrs. Dodds stopped, sniffing, and looked straight at me. My heart was pounding.
Apparently she didn’t see anything. She and her sisters kept going.
I was free. I made it to the front of the bus. We were almost through the Lincoln Tunnel now. I was about to press the emergency stop button when I heard hideous wailing from the back row.
The old ladies were not old ladies anymore. Their faces were still the same—I guess those couldn’t get any uglier—but their bodies had shriveled into leathery brown hag bodies with bat’s wings and hands and feet like gargoyle claws. Their handbags had turned into fiery whips.
The Furies surrounded Grover and Annabeth, lashing their whips, hissing: “Where is it? Where?”
The other people on the bus were screaming, cowering in their seats. They saw something, all right.
“He’s not here!” Annabeth yelled. “He’s gone!”
The Furies raised their whips.
Annabeth drew her bronze knife. Grover grabbed a tin can from his snack bag and prepared to throw it.
What I did next was so impulsive and dangerous I should’ve been named ADHD poster child of the year.
The bus driver was distracted, trying to see what was going on in his rearview mirror.
Still invisible, I grabbed the wheel from him and jerked it to the left. Everybody howled as they were thrown to the right, and I heard what I hoped was the sound of three Furies smashing against the windows.
“Hey!” the driver yelled. “Hey—whoa!”
We wrestled for the wheel. The bus slammed against the side of the tunnel, grinding metal, throwing sparks a mile behind us.
We careened out of the Lincoln Tunnel and back into the rainstorm, people and monsters tossed around the bus, cars plowed aside like bowling pins.
Somehow the driver found an exit. We shot off the highway, through half a dozen traffic lights, and ended up barreling down one of those New Jersey rural roads where you can’t believe there’s so much nothing right across the river from New York. There were woods to our left, the Hudson River to our right, and the driver seemed to be veering toward the river.
Another great idea: I hit the emergency brake.
The bus wailed, spun a full circle on the wet asphalt, and crashed into the trees. The emergency lights came on. The door flew open. The bus driver was the first one out, the passengers yelling as they stampeded after him. I stepped into the driver’s seat and let them pass.
The Furies regained their balance. They lashed their whips at Annabeth while she waved her knife and yelled in Ancient Greek, telling them to back off. Grover threw tin cans.
I looked at the open doorway. I was free to go, but I couldn’t leave my friends. I took off the invisible cap. “Hey!”
The Furies turned, baring their yellow fangs at me, and the exit suddenly seemed like an excellent idea. Mrs. Dodds stalked up the aisle, just as she used to do in class, about to deliver my F– math test. Every time she flicked her whip, red flames danced along the barbed leather.
Her two ugly sisters hopped on top of the seats on either side of her and crawled toward me like huge nasty lizards.
“Perseus Jackson,” Mrs. Dodds said, in an accent that was definitely from somewhere farther south than Georgia. “You have offended the gods. You shall die.”
“I liked you better as a math teacher,” I told her.
She growled.
Annabeth and Grover moved up behind the Furies cautiously, looking for an opening.
I took the ballpoint pen out of my pocket and uncapped it. Riptide elongated into a shimmering double-edged sword.