She made them cheeseburgers.
That was the strangest part, later, when Percy thought back on it. In his first life, the cheeseburgers had been a trap. Bait to keep them sitting, eating, staring at their plates, until she could take off her veil.
This time she made them because they were hungry.
They sat at a long wooden table in the back of the warehouse, surrounded by shelves of garden gnomes and stone birdbaths, while the Gorgon moved around a little kitchen in the corner with her back to them. She flipped burgers on a grill and hummed under her breath, a strange old tune in a language none of them knew. Lupe sat at Percy's feet with her nose in the air, drooling.
Nobody ate.
Ezra had his hand in his pocket on Riptide, and he was staring at the back of the veiled woman like a cat watching a bird. Grover was shaking so hard his chair rattled. He couldn't stop looking at the window, at the statue of the satyr frozen mid-step in the gravel lot outside. And Annabeth was sitting very straight and very still, white-faced, staring at Percy across the table.
Why are we still here? her eyes said.
Percy didn't answer. He was watching the Gorgon.
He let his Focus open, very carefully, and looked at her with the Divine Eye.
[DIVINE EYE: MEDUSA]
[Lineage: Daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, gods of the deep sea. Born mortal. Once a priestess of the temple of Athena in Athens.]
[CURSE DETECTED: The Gorgon's Bane.]
[Laid by: Athena. Bound to an oath sworn upon the River Styx.]
[Effect: All living things who meet the bearer's eyes are turned to stone. The bearer cannot control this. The bearer's hair has been transformed into serpents that act to defend her without her will.]
[Duration: Eternal.]
[Note: The bearer has not chosen to harm a living being in 2,140 years. Every statue on this property was created by the curse acting in her defense, or by accident.]
Percy read the last line twice.
He looked at the statues in the lot, through the window. The man with his hands over his face. The girl with her mouth open, screaming. The satyr with his pipes.
By accident.
He thought about what it would be like. To live for two thousand years knowing that if anyone looked at you, if anyone loved you enough to look you in the face, they died. To keep a garden of the people your face had killed, because you couldn't bear to break them up and throw them away.
He thought about the black shore of the Cocytus. About a gentle giant with a pot of stew, who'd been thrown into the Pit for the crime of being kind.
[NEW QUEST AVAILABLE]
[Quest: THE GORGON'S GRIEF]
[Medusa has been hunted by heroes for two thousand years. No one has ever asked her what she wants.]
[Stage 1: Earn her trust.]
[Stage 2: Meet her gaze.]
[Stage 3: ???]
[Reward: ???]
[Accept? YES / NO]
Yes, Percy thought.
"Your name's not Aunty Em," he said.
The humming stopped.
The Gorgon stood very still at the grill with the spatula in her hand. Under the veil, something hissed. Soft. A warning.
"Percy," Annabeth whispered. "Don't."
"Em is for M," Percy said. "M for Medusa."
Grover made a noise like a dying balloon.
Ezra's chair scraped back. He was on his feet, Riptide out of his pocket and growing into a sword in his hand, bronze blade gleaming. "I knew it," he said. "I knew it. The statues, the veil. You're the Gorgon. You're the monster."
The hissing under the veil got louder. A lot louder. A dozen voices, two dozen, rising.
"Ezra," Percy said, without turning around. "Put that away."
"Are you insane?" Ezra's voice cracked. "She's going to turn us all to stone! That's what she does! Heroes kill her! Perseus killed her! You're named after him! You should know that better than anybody!" He took a step toward the kitchen. "I'm going to cut her head off. That's what I'm supposed to do. That's what the real—"
"Sit. Down."
Percy didn't raise his voice much. He didn't have to. Something came into it that came from the black shore. Something that made Ezra stop mid-step, the sword wavering in his hand.
The Gorgon turned around.
She didn't lift the veil. She just stood there in front of the grill with the dark fabric over her face and her hands at her sides, and the serpents under the veil were writhing and hissing so loud it filled the warehouse.
"The son of the sea god," Medusa said. Her voice was very quiet. Very old. "Of course. Of course it would be him. Poseidon's son. Come to finish what his father started."
Ezra blinked. "What? What are you talking about? My dad doesn't have anything to do with—"
"Oh, child." The Gorgon laughed. It was the saddest sound Percy had ever heard. "No one has told you. Of course no one has told you. They never tell the sons."
The warehouse was silent.
And into the silence, very quietly, Annabeth Chase said: "I'll tell him."
Everyone turned to look at her.
She was still sitting at the table. Her hands were flat on the wood in front of her. She was white as paper, and her gray eyes were fixed on the veiled woman at the grill, and her voice was steady. But Percy could see her hands. They were shaking.
"Medusa was a priestess," Annabeth said. "In Athens. In my mother's temple. She took a vow to serve Athena forever. She was the most faithful priestess in the city." She swallowed. "And Poseidon wanted her. And he came to the temple. Into my mother's temple. And she couldn't stop him."
Ezra's face went slowly white.
"When my mother found out," Annabeth went on, very quietly, "she was so angry. Poseidon had defiled her temple. Her sacred place. Right under her nose. And she couldn't punish Poseidon, because he's a god, and he's her uncle, and he's one of the Big Three. So she punished Medusa instead." Her voice cracked. "She cursed her. Turned her hair to snakes and her eyes to death. Exiled her to the edge of the world. And then she sent heroes to hunt her."
She looked up at the Gorgon.
"The stories always say Medusa was a monster," Annabeth said. "I used to believe them. I read every version. I thought Perseus was a hero." Her eyes were wet. "But that's not what happened, is it? My mother punished the wrong person. And everyone just... let her."
The Gorgon didn't move. The serpents under the veil had gone quiet.
"That's a lie," Ezra said. His voice was shaking. "That's a lie. My dad wouldn't— he's not—"
"I'm sorry," Annabeth said. And she meant it, Percy could see. She meant it for Ezra. "I'm sorry. But it's true. You can look it up. It's in Ovid."
Ezra stared at her. Then at the Gorgon. Then at Percy.
Then he sat down, very slowly. Riptide shrank back into a pen in his shaking hand.
[QUEST UPDATE: THE GORGON'S GRIEF]
[Stage 1 Progress: The truth has been spoken aloud. By a daughter of Athena.]
Percy looked across the table at Annabeth.
She was looking back at him. She was crying, silently, tears just running down her face. She didn't wipe them away.
I didn't know you'd do that, Percy thought. In my first life, you told me to cut her head off. You were twelve. You didn't know any better.
You're thirteen now. And you know better.
Something shifted in his chest. Something that had been locked tight since a rock by a canoe dock in another world. It didn't open. Not all the way. But it shifted.
The Gorgon came and sat down at the table.
She did it slowly, the way you'd approach a frightened animal. She sat at the very end, as far from them as she could get, with her hands folded in front of her and the veil still over her face.
"Two thousand years," she said quietly, "and no one has ever said that to me."
Nobody knew what to say.
"The satyr," Grover blurted suddenly. His voice was high and cracked. "The one outside. In the lot. With the pipes. That's my uncle Ferdinand. He was a searcher. He went looking for Pan, years ago, and he never came back." His eyes were full of tears. "Did you— did you—"
The Gorgon bowed her head.
"He was kind," she said. "He came to my door in a storm. He was lost, and cold. He asked for directions. I tried to give them to him without lifting my veil. But the wind took it." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I am so sorry, little goat. I am so sorry. I kept him. I couldn't bear to break him. I talk to him, sometimes. In the evenings."
Grover put his face in his hands and sobbed.
Percy looked at Medusa. Really looked. At her bowed head and her folded hands and the snakes lying still under the veil, as if they were grieving too.
"You want it gone," he said quietly. "Don't you. The curse."
The Gorgon was silent for a long, long time.
"I want," she said at last, "to look someone in the face. Once. Before the end. I want to look into someone's eyes and see them look back at me. And not die." She laughed, small and broken. "It is a very small thing to want, for two thousand years. Isn't it?"
[QUEST UPDATE: THE GORGON'S GRIEF]
[Stage 1 Complete: Medusa has told the Host what she wants.]
[Stage 2: Meet her gaze.]
[WARNING: The Host has no resistance to petrification.]
[Great Sage notes: There is no known method of surviving the Gorgon's gaze except a mirror or blindness.]
[Great Sage strongly advises the Host to—]
I know, Sage, Percy thought. I know.
"Okay," Percy said.
Everyone looked at him.
"Okay," he said again, and stood up. "Look at me."
The warehouse went dead silent.
"No," Annabeth said. She was on her feet so fast her chair fell over. "No. Percy. No. Are you out of your mind? She'll turn you to stone. You'll die."
"Maybe," Percy said.
"There's no maybe! That's what the curse does!"
"Child," the Gorgon said. Her voice was shaking. "She's right. Sit down. I could not bear another. Not you. Not after what you—"
"Everybody else, turn around," Percy said. "Face the wall. Close your eyes. Ezra. Grover. Annabeth. Please."
None of them moved.
"Please," Percy said again, quieter.
Grover turned first. Shaking, sobbing, he turned his chair to face the wall and squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over them for good measure.
Ezra turned next. He didn't say anything. He just turned. His shoulders were stiff.
Annabeth was last.
She stood there staring at Percy across the table with her fists clenched and her face white and furious and wet.
"Why?" she said. "Why would you do this? You don't even know her. You don't know any of us. Why do you care so much?"
Percy looked at her. At the girl who'd held his hand while they fell into Tartarus. Who'd read out the charges against him in a clear calm voice, in another world, while the boy who killed his mother held her hand.
And who had just, five minutes ago, told the truth about her own mother. Because it was right.
"Because somebody should," he said. "Turn around, Wise Girl. Please."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she turned around and faced the wall.
Percy walked around the table to where the Gorgon sat.
He stood in front of her. Up close, he could hear the snakes breathing under the veil, a soft whispering sound, like wind through dry grass. He could see her hands. Pale, long-fingered, folded tight in her lap. Trembling.
"Are you sure?" Medusa whispered.
"No," Percy said honestly. "But I'm going to do it anyway."
He reached out. He took the edge of the veil in his fingers.
And he lifted it.
She was beautiful.
That was the first thing. Not the snakes, though they were there, dozens of them, green and gold and black, rising up from her scalp and turning to look at him. Not the scales at the edges of her face, or the long elegant fangs. She was beautiful. The bones of her face were fine and strong. Her skin was pale and smooth. She looked like a statue from the Met. Like a priestess. Like someone who'd been young once, a very long time ago.
And her eyes.
They were golden. Pure molten gold, like the sun on the sea at dawn. And the second Percy met them, he felt it start.
Cold.
It started in his feet. A creeping, numbing cold, like stepping into a frozen river. He looked down. His sneakers were gray. Then his ankles. Gray stone, spreading upward through his body like frost across a window.
[PETRIFICATION: 8%]
[HP: 1,040 / 1,040 → HP cannot prevent this effect.]
[PETRIFICATION: 15%]
The Gorgon's golden eyes were filling with tears. "No," she whispered. "No, no. Look away. Child. Please. Look away."
Percy didn't look away.
[PETRIFICATION: 27%]
His knees were stone. His thighs. He couldn't move his legs.
Fear, he thought. That's what it feeds on. Fear and hate. That's what every hero brought her. A sword and a shield and a mirror, and they were all afraid of her, and they all hated her, and they all called her a monster.
[PETRIFICATION: 41%]
His waist. His stomach. The cold was climbing toward his heart.
He thought about the black shore. About Damasen, the gentle giant, cast into Tartarus for being kind. Who had looked at a filthy, hate-filled, half-dead boy stumbling out of the fog and set down his spear and given him stew instead.
He wasn't afraid of me, Percy thought. Even though he should have been. He just saw me. He saw me and he wasn't afraid.
[PETRIFICATION: 58%]
His chest. His arms. He couldn't feel his hands anymore.
He kept looking into those golden eyes.
"I see you," he said. His voice was thin and cold and coming from very far away. "Medusa. Priestess of Athena. I see you."
[PETRIFICATION: 71%]
"I'm not afraid of you," he said. "I don't hate you. I'm sorry for what they did to you. I'm sorry nobody stopped it. I'm sorry for every hero who came here with a sword." His throat was going stiff. He forced the words out. "And I'm sorry about me. In another life. I was one of them."
The Gorgon's golden eyes went wide.
[PETRIFICATION: 84%]
His neck was stone. His jaw was going.
He couldn't speak anymore. He just looked at her. He looked at her with everything he had left. No fear. No hate. Just seeing her.
The tears spilled over and ran down the Gorgon's face.
[PETRIFICATION: 93%]
And then it stopped.
The cold stopped climbing. It hung there at his cheekbones, at the edge of his eyes, frozen. For one long, long second, Percy Jackson stood in the middle of a garden gnome warehouse in New Jersey, ninety-three percent stone, looking into the eyes of the Gorgon. The Gorgon looked back.
And then the cold started to go down.
[PETRIFICATION: 85%]
[PETRIFICATION: 60%]
[PETRIFICATION: 22%]
[PETRIFICATION: 0%]
The stone drained out of him like water out of a sponge. His legs came back. His hands. His heart. He staggered and nearly fell, and caught himself on the edge of the table, gasping, shaking, alive.
And Medusa was looking at him.
Right at him. Into his eyes. And he was looking back.
And he didn't die.
[DING!]
[QUEST UPDATE: THE GORGON'S GRIEF]
[Stage 2 Complete: The Host met the Gorgon's gaze without fear and without hatred.]
[Unique Passive acquired: GORGON'S REGARD — Immunity to petrification of all kinds. The Host may meet any gaze that kills, and live.]
[CHA +5.]
The Gorgon put her hands over her mouth.
She made a sound. It wasn't a word. It wasn't a sob. It was something that came up from the bottom of two thousand years, from a girl in a temple in Athens who had never, not once since, been looked at the way Percy was looking at her now.
She reached out a trembling hand and touched his face. Just the tips of her fingers, on his cheek, like she was afraid he'd shatter.
He didn't.
"You're real," she whispered.
"Yeah," Percy said hoarsely. "I'm real."
Behind them, facing the wall, Annabeth Chase was crying so hard her whole body shook.
[QUEST UPDATE: THE GORGON'S GRIEF]
[Stage 3: Loosen the curse.]
[The curse of the Gorgon's Bane is bound to an oath upon the Styx. No mortal power can break it.]
[But someone has been watching.]
The lights in the warehouse flickered.
The air changed. Not like a storm, the way it changed when his father was near. Different. Colder, stranger, with a scent like wet stone and torch smoke and something burning at a crossroads in the dark. The shadows in the corners of the warehouse stretched. Somewhere outside, very far off, a dog howled. Then another. Then a third.
And a voice spoke in Percy's head.
It was a woman's voice, low and amused and very, very old.
Well, it said. Isn't this interesting.
[DIVINE PRESENCE DETECTED: HECATE, Goddess of Magic, Crossroads, and the Mist.]
A mortal boy, the voice said, with the sky in his blood and a dead man's memories and a loom I don't recognize spinning behind his eyes. Walks into a Gorgon's den and doesn't draw his sword. Looks her in the face and doesn't die. A low chuckle. Do you know, I've been watching crossroads for four thousand years, and I've never seen one quite like you.
Percy swallowed. Hi, he thought.
Hello, Perseus. The amusement deepened. You want to break her curse.
Yes.
You can't. No one can, except the one who laid it. Athena swore on the Styx. That's an iron chain, child. Not even I can cut it.
Percy's heart sank.
But, said Hecate, and the voice went soft and sly and pleased, a chain can be loosened. Even an iron one. Made long enough that the one who wears it can walk around a bit. Pick it up. Put it down. Choose when it touches someone, and when it doesn't. A pause. Would that be of interest?
Yes, Percy thought. Gods, yes.
I thought it might be. The voice was smiling. Very well. I'll give you a gift. Not for her. For you. Because I want to see what you do at the next crossroads. And the one after that. The torch-smoke smell grew stronger. Use it well, little mortal. Most people waste my gifts on love spells.
[PATRON BLESSING ACQUIRED!]
[BLESSING OF HECATE, Goddess of Magic, Crossroads, and the Mist]
[Hecate granted this blessing freely. She remembers why. She is very curious about you.]
[Active: UNRAVEL (Lesser) — Loosen a curse or binding. Cannot break a curse sworn on the Styx, but can return control of it to the one who bears it. Cost: 200 MP. Once per curse.]
[Passive: MIST-SIGHT — See through the Mist and minor illusions.]
The torch smell faded. The dogs stopped howling. The lights steadied.
Percy turned to the Gorgon.
"Hold still," he said. "I think this might feel weird."
He put his hand on her forehead, just above her golden eyes, where the snakes began. He reached into the place in his chest where the sky lived. Then deeper, into somewhere new, somewhere that smelled like crossroads and torch smoke.
[UNRAVEL!]
[MP: 260 → 60]
He felt it. The curse. Like a chain of black iron wound around and around her, tight, cutting in, two thousand years of it. He couldn't break it. He could feel that too. It was sworn too deep, bound to something too old and too cold.
But he could find the links. And he could pull them apart. Just a little. Just enough to give her slack.
The Gorgon gasped.
The snakes on her head went still. Then they lowered themselves, all at once, slowly, the way a dog lies down when its owner comes home. They settled around her face like a dark crown. Quiet. Calm. Hers.
And her golden eyes changed.
They dimmed. Not much. Just a little. Like a lantern turned down. The gold was still there, but softer, warmer. Human.
"I can feel it," Medusa whispered. Her hands were at her face, touching her own cheeks, her own eyes. "I can feel it. Like a door. I can open it. And I can close it." She looked at Percy with her soft gold eyes, and her voice broke. "I can close it."
[QUEST COMPLETE: THE GORGON'S GRIEF]
[Medusa has regained control of the Gorgon's Bane.]
[+30,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 42 → Level 43]
[LEVEL UP! Level 43 → Level 44]
[FAITH EARNED: The Host freed a victim of the gods from their punishment.]
[+600 Faith Points.]
[VESSEL RANK UP! E → D]
[All stats +5. Shadow Capacity: 8 → 12.]
[LEGENDARY QUEST ISSUED: THE PRIESTESS'S PARDON]
[The Gorgon's curse can only be broken by the one who laid it.]
[Objective: Convince Athena to revoke her oath.]
[Time Limit: None.]
[Reward: ???]
"You can turn around now," Percy said.
They turned.
They saw him standing next to the Gorgon. Her veil was in his hand. Her face was bare, the snakes lying calm around it like a crown. And her eyes were open. Gold and soft, looking right at them.
Grover screamed and covered his face.
And nothing happened.
He peeked through his fingers. He was still flesh. Still warm. Still Grover.
"It's okay," Medusa said softly. She looked at him with her lantern-gold eyes, turned all the way down, and she smiled. "It's okay, little goat. I can close the door now. I won't hurt you. I'll never hurt anyone again unless I choose to."
Then she stood up, and walked to the front door of the warehouse, and out into the gravel lot.
They followed her.
She walked through the crowd of statues in the dusk until she came to the satyr with the reed pipes. The one frozen mid-step, with a look of mild surprise on his stone face. Uncle Ferdinand.
She stood in front of him for a long time.
Then she opened the door. Just a crack.
Not the killing gaze. Something else. Something gentler. The gold flared, soft and warm, and the light washed over the stone satyr like sunrise.
And the stone began to crack.
Not to shatter. To peel. Like old paint. Flakes of gray falling away and showing the brown fur underneath, the pink skin, the curly hair. The pipes came free of the stone in his hand.
Ferdinand the satyr blinked. Gasped. Fell forward onto his knees in the gravel and stared around wildly.
"Wh— what— where's the storm? Where— I was just asking for directions—"
"UNCLE FERDINAND!"
Grover hit him at a dead run and the two of them went down in the gravel together, and Grover was sobbing and laughing and bleating all at once, and his uncle was patting his back, utterly confused.
Medusa turned to the next statue. A man with his hands raised over his face.
She reached for him with the soft gold light. It washed over him. The stone flaked. Cracked.
And then stopped.
Underneath, there was nothing. Just more stone, crumbling into dust.
"Too long," Medusa whispered. Her shoulders shook. "He has been here too long. Two hundred years. There's nothing left to come back."
She went through the whole garden. One by one. Most of them were too old. They crumbled into gentle gray dust that blew away across the gravel lot on the evening breeze. She wept over every one, and Percy stood beside her, and didn't say anything, and didn't leave.
But not all of them.
The girl with her mouth open, screaming, came back. A hiker who'd stopped for directions three years ago, who stumbled away into the dark sobbing and didn't remember any of it. And a mail carrier, eight months stone. And a stray dog, who ran in circles barking and then licked Medusa's hand.
Five, in all. Five out of a hundred and forty.
It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.
But it was five.
Later, much later, when the stars were out and the others were inside eating the cheeseburgers Medusa had remade for them, Percy sat on the front steps of the warehouse with Lupe in his lap and looked out at the empty lot.
The door opened behind him. Annabeth came out and sat down next to him.
She didn't say anything for a long time.
"How did you know?" she said finally. "Her name. Her story. That she wanted to be looked at. You knew all of it before you walked in the door."
Percy didn't answer right away.
"I've been here before," he said finally. "Kind of. A long time ago."
"That's not possible."
"Yeah. I know."
Annabeth was quiet. Then: "The prophecy. The last line. The son of the sky has walked this road before." She turned and looked at him, and her gray eyes were very bright in the starlight. "That's you. Isn't it. You've done this. All of this. Somewhere."
Percy looked at her. He thought about lying. He thought about telling her everything.
He did neither.
"Last time," he said quietly, "I cut her head off."
Annabeth stared at him.
"I was twelve," Percy said. "I was scared. Somebody told me she was a monster, and I believed them. I cut her head off, and I put it in a box, and I mailed it to Olympus as a joke." He looked down at his hands. "I thought it was funny. For years, I thought it was funny."
"Who told you she was a monster?"
Percy didn't answer.
Annabeth was very quiet for a long time. Then, slowly, as if she was figuring it out one piece at a time, the way she figured out everything, she said: "It was me. Wasn't it? Somehow. Somewhere. It was me."
Percy didn't answer that either. He didn't have to.
Annabeth looked out at the empty lot, at the place where a hundred and thirty-five statues had crumbled into dust.
"I'm glad," she said finally, very softly, "that this time you didn't listen to me."
They sat there together on the steps, not talking, while the stars wheeled overhead and the wolf cub snored in Percy's lap.
After a while, without looking at him, Annabeth leaned over and put her head on his shoulder.
Percy went very still.
He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what he felt. The girl on the rock with Ezra's arm around her. The girl in the gray dress with her hands shaking. The girl beside him on these steps, who'd just told the truth about her own mother because it was right, and turned her back and faced the wall because he asked.
They were the same person, and they weren't. And he didn't know how to hold both of those things at once.
So he didn't try. He just sat there and let her lean on him. And he didn't move until she fell asleep.
And behind them, in the doorway of the warehouse, Ezra Coleman stood in the shadows with a cheeseburger in his hand that he'd forgotten to eat. He watched the two of them on the steps. His face was perfectly blank.
Then he turned around and went back inside without a sound.
In the morning, Medusa gave them two things.
The first was the keys to an old green station wagon parked behind the warehouse. It had belonged to the mail carrier, who had very gratefully driven off in his own truck at dawn and didn't seem to want it.
The second was for Percy alone.
She pressed it into his hand on the front steps, while the others were loading the car. A small glass vial, sealed with wax, with two chambers inside it, divided down the middle. One side held something dark red. The other held something dark green.
"My blood," Medusa said quietly. "Taken from my right side, and my left. Asclepius used it once, the god of healing. From the right side, it can heal any wound. Even bring back the dying, if you're quick. From the left side..." She hesitated. "It kills. Anything. Even things that should not be able to die."
[Item acquired: BLOOD OF THE GORGON (Legendary) — One dose of each. Right: Resurrection (Lesser). Left: True Death.]
Percy looked at the vial in his hand. Then at her.
"I can't take this," he said.
"You can. You will." Her lantern-gold eyes were soft. "You gave me my face back, Perseus. The least I can give you is a little of my blood."
"Come with us," Percy said suddenly.
She blinked.
"Not now. Not on the quest. But after." He thought about Gardiners Island. About a city in the trees, by the sea. "We're building something. A home, for demigods. For nature spirits. For anybody who wants to live in peace with us. Anybody the gods threw away." He met her eyes. "There'd be a place for you. If you wanted it. No one would hunt you there. I promise."
The Gorgon looked at him for a long, long moment.
Then she smiled. And for the first time in two thousand years, it was a smile that someone could see.
"I will think about it," she said. "That's more than I've done about anything in a very long time."
She leaned down and kissed his forehead, the way his mother did. Then she turned and went back into the warehouse with her veil in her hand, not over her face. She didn't put it on.
Percy stood on the steps for a long moment, holding the vial.
[STATUS UPDATE]
Vessel Rank: D
Level: 44
Patron Blessings: Hestia · Apollo · Hecate
New: Gorgon's Regard (Petrification Immunity) · Unravel (Lesser) · Mist-Sight
Shadow Capacity: 7 / 12
Legendary Quests Active: The City of the Unclaimed · The Priestess's Pardon
"Percy!" Ezra yelled from the car. He was in the driver's seat. Of course he was. "Come on! We've got a bolt to find! Or are you gonna adopt every monster in New Jersey?"
Percy looked at him. Ezra was trying to sound annoyed. But his eyes kept going back to the warehouse door, where the Gorgon had gone. There was something in them that Percy had never seen before, in either life.
Shame.
My dad, Ezra's eyes were saying. My dad did that.
Percy walked down the steps and got in the back seat.
"Not every monster," he said. "Just the ones who need it."