I tried not to get too depressed about our chances. I didn't want to send Grover into a panic, but I knew we had another huge deadline looming, aside from saving Artemis in time for her council of the gods. The General had said Annabeth would only be kept alive until the winter solstice. That was Friday, only four days away. And he'd said something about a sacrifice. I didn't like the sound of that at all.
We stopped in the middle of town. You could pretty much see everything from there: a school, a bunch of tourist stores and cafes, some ski cabins, and a grocery store.
"Great," Thalia said, looking around. "No bus station. No taxis. No car rental. No way out."
"There's a coffee shop!" said Grover.
"Yes," Zoe said. "Coffee is good."
"And pastries," Grover said dreamily. "And wax paper."
Thalia sighed. "Fine. How about you two go get us some food. Percy, Bianca, and I will check in the grocery store. Maybe they can give us directions."
We agreed to meet back in front of the grocery store in fifteen minutes. Bianca looked a little uncomfortable coming with us, but she did.
Inside the store, we found out a few valuable things about Cloudcroft: there wasn't enough snow for skiing, the grocery store sold rubber rats for a dollar each, and there was no easy way in or out of town unless you had your own car.
"You could call for a taxi from Alamogordo," the clerk said doubtfully. "That's down at the bottom of the mountains, but it would take at least an hour to get here. Cost several hundred dollars."
The clerk looked so lonely, I bought a rubber rat. Then we headed back outside and stood on the porch.
"Wonderful," Thalia grumped. "I'm going to walk down the street, see if anybody in the other shops has a suggestion."
"But the clerk said—"
"I know," she told me. "I'm checking anyway."
I let her go. I knew how it felt to be restless. All half-bloods had attention deficit problems because of our inborn battlefield reflexes. We couldn't stand just waiting around. Also, I had a feeling Thalia was still upset over our conversation last night about Luke.
Bianca and I stood together awkwardly. I mean… I was never very comfortable talking one-on-one with girls anyway, and I'd never been alone with Bianca before. I wasn't sure what to say, especially now that she was a Hunter and everything.
"Nice rat," she said at last.
I set it on the porch railing. Maybe it would attract more business for the store.
"So… how do you like being a Hunter so far?" I asked.
She pursed her lips. "You're not still mad at me for joining, are you?"
"Nah. Long as, you know… you're happy."
"I'm not sure 'happy' is the right word, with Lady Artemis gone. But being a Hunter is definitely cool. I feel calmer somehow. Everything seems to have slowed down around me. I guess that's the immortality."
I stared at her, trying to see the difference. She did seem more confident than before, more at peace. She didn't hide her face under a green cap anymore. She kept her hair tied back, and she looked me right in the eyes when she spoke. With a shiver, I realized that five hundred or a thousand years from now, Bianca di Angelo would look exactly the same as she did today. She might be having a conversation like this with some other half-blood long after I was dead, but Bianca would still look twelve years old.
"Nico didn't understand my decision," Bianca murmured. She looked at me like she wanted assurance it was okay.
"He'll be all right," I said. "Camp Half-Blood takes in a lot of young kids. They did that for Annabeth."
Bianca nodded. "I hope we find her. Annabeth, I mean. She's lucky to have a friend like you."
"Lot of good it did her."
"Don't blame yourself Percy. You risked your life to save my brother and me. I mean, that was seriously brave. If I hadn't met you, I wouldn't have felt okay about leaving Nico at the camp. I figured if there were people like you there, Nico would be fine. You're a good guy."
The compliment took me by surprise. "Even though I knocked you down in capture the flag?"
She laughed. "Okay. Except for that, you're a good guy."
A couple hundred yards away, Grover and Zoe came out of the coffee shop loaded down with pastry bags and drinks. I kind of didn't want them to come back yet. It was weird, but I realized I liked talking to Bianca. She wasn't so bad. A lot easier to hang out with than Zoe Nightshade, anyway.
"So what's the story with you and Nico?" I asked her. "Where did you go to school before Westover?"
She frowned. "I think it was a boarding school in D.C. It seems like so long ago."
"You never lived with your parents? I mean, your mortal parent?"
"We were told our parents were dead. There was a bank trust for us. A lot of money, I think. A lawyer would come by once in a while to check on us. Then Nico and I had to leave that school."
"Why?"
She knit her eyebrows. "We had to go somewhere. I remember it was important. We traveled a long way. And we stayed in this hotel for a few weeks. And then… I don't know. One day a different lawyer came to get us out. He said it was time for us to leave. He drove us back east, through D.C. Then up into Maine. And we started going to Westover."
It was a strange story. Then again, Bianca and Nico were half-bloods. Nothing would be normal for them.
"So you've been raising Nico pretty much all your life?" I asked. "Just the two of you?"
She nodded. "That's why I wanted to join the Hunters so bad. I mean, I know it's selfish, but I wanted my own life and friends. I love Nico—don't get me wrong—I just needed to find out what it would be like not to be a big sister twenty-four hours a day."
I thought about last summer, the way I'd felt when I found out I had a Cyclops for a baby brother. I could relate to what Bianca was saying.