MIA LOVED FLYING.

It was probably bad for her considering she's Persephone's daughter, but what was she supposed to do about it? Nothing now. Besides, technically her other three teammates were at more risk than she was, so she was good.

She fiddled with the flower that was in her hair, braiding it into her hair as Frank and Hazel talked. Hazel was reassuring Frank that he'd done everything he could for his grandmother. Frank had saved them from the Laistrygonians and gotten them out of Vancouver. He'd been incredibly brave.

Frank kept his head down like he was ashamed to have been crying, but Mia didn't blame him. The poor guy had just lost his grandmother and seen his house go up in flames. As far as she was concerned, shedding a few tears about something like that didn't make you any less of a man, especially when you had just fended off an army of ogres that wanted to eat you for breakfast.

Besides, Mia had been in that exact situation before. Except for the fact that her house didn't burn down. Or at least, she hoped it hasn't. The point was, she felt for Frank. She knew what he was feeling right now.

He refused to explain exactly what his "family gift" was, but as they flew north, Frank did tell them about his conversation with Mars the night before. He explained the prophecy Juno had issued when he was a baby — about his life being tied to a piece of firewood, and how he had asked Hazel to keep it for him.

Some of that, Mia had already figured out. Hazel and Frank had obviously shared some crazy experiences when they had blacked out together, and they'd made some sort of deal. It also explained why even now, out of habit, Frank kept checking his coat pocket, and why he was so nervous around fire. Still, Mia couldn't imagine what kind of courage it had taken for Frank to embark on a quest, knowing that one small flame could snuff out his life.

"Frank," Percy said, "I'm proud to be related to you."

"And I'm proud to be on this quest with you," Mia agreed, checking her hair in her pocket mirror, though she gave Frank a smile.

Frank's ears turned red. With his head lowered, his military haircut made a sharp black arrow pointing down. "Juno has some sort of plan for us, about the Prophecy of Eight."

"Yeah," Percy grumbled. "I didn't like her as Hera. I don't like her any better as Juno."

Hazel tucked her feet underneath her. She studied Percy with her luminescent golden eyes. Sometimes, Mia wondered how Hazel could be so calm. She was the youngest one on the quest, but she was always holding them together and comforting them. Now they were flying to Alaska, where she had died once before. They would try to free Thanatos, who might take her back to the Underworld. Yet she didn't show any fear. Mia knew that she had seen potential in Hazel. And . . . some remnants of Sophia in her, though Mia tried not to compare her to Sophia.

"You're a son of Poseidon, aren't you?" Hazel asked. "You are a Greek demigod."

Mia froze, midway through putting her mirror down. But that only lasted for a moment before her facade went back up, shoving her mirror into her backpack.

Percy gripped his leather necklace. "I started to remember in Portland, after the gorgon's blood. It's been coming back to me slowly since then. There's another camp — Camp Half-Blood."

Gods, Mia hadn't heard those words in months. She and Nico avoided talking about camp as much as possible, because they isolated themselves from that camp for a reason. Still, she had flashbacks to when life was actually good — staying up late at the campfires, talking to her cabinmates, hanging out with her friends . . . Mia missed those days. She missed all of her friends. But they weren't her friends anymore.

Hazel and Frank stared at Percy as though he'd slipped into another language.

"Another camp," Hazel repeated. "A Greek camp? Gods, if Octavian found out—"

"He'd declare war," Frank said. "He's always been sure the Greeks were out there, plotting against us. He thought Percy was a spy."

"That's why Juno sent me," Percy said. "Uh, I mean, not to spy. I think it was some kind of exchange. Your friend Jason — I think he was sent to my camp. In my dreams, I saw a demigod that might have been him. He was working with some other demigods on this flying warship. I think they're coming to Camp Jupiter to help."

Frank tapped nervously on the back of his seat. "Mars said Juno wants to unite the Greeks and Romans to fight Gaea. But, jeez — Greeks and Romans have a long history of bad blood."

Hazel took a deep breath. "That's probably why the gods have kept us apart this long. If a Greek warship appeared in the sky above Camp Jupiter, and Reyna didn't know it was friendly—"

"Yeah," Percy agreed. "We've got to be careful how we explain this when we get back."

"If we get back," Frank said.

Percy nodded reluctantly. "I mean, I trust you guys. I hope you trust me. I feel . . . well, I feel as close to you two — you three," he corrected, looking up at Mia, "as to any of my old friends at Camp Half-Blood. But with the other demigods, at both camps — there's going to be a lot of suspicion."

Hazel leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, smiling at him.

"Of course we trust you," she said. "We're a family now. Aren't we, Frank? Amelia?"

"Uh huh," Mia said, a little too quickly. She brought out hand lotion and slowly rubbed that into her seriously fucking dry hands. "Family."

"What she said," Frank said. "Do I get a kiss?"

Hazel laughed, but there was nervous tension in it. "Anyway, what do we do now?"

"I've got to contact a friend," Percy said. "To keep my promise to Ella."

"How?" Frank said. "One of those Iris-messages?"

"Still not working," Percy said sadly. "I tried it last night at your grandmother's house. No luck. Maybe it's because my memories are still jumbled. Or the gods aren't allowing a connection. I'm hoping I can contact my friend in my dreams."

At that, Mia looked away and out the window. Below them, snowcapped mountains broke through a blanket of clouds.

"I'm not sure I can sleep," Percy said. "But I need to try. We can't leave Ella by herself with those ogres around."

"Yeah," Frank said. "We've still got hours to fly. Take the couch, man."

Percy nodded. He fell asleep, and Mia, Hazel, and Frank played games that were stocked in the plane until it started descending. That was when Percy finally woke up.

"Sleep okay?" Mia asked, sitting on the armrest next to his head.

Percy sat up groggily. "How long was I out?"

Frank stood in the aisle, wrapping his spear and new bow in his ski bag. "A few hours," he said. "We're almost there."

A glittering inlet of the sea snaked between snowy mountains. In the distance, a city was carved out of the wilderness, surrounded by lush green forests on one side and icy black beaches on the other.

"Welcome to Alaska," Hazel said. "We're beyond the help of the gods."

* * *

As they took a taxi into downtown Anchorage, Percy told Frank, Mia, and Hazel about his dreams. They were anxious but not surprised when he told them about the giant's army closing in on camp.

Frank choked when he heard about Tyson, which just made Mia's heart clench. "You have a half-brother who's a Cyclops?"

"Sure," Percy said. "Which makes him your great-great-great—"

"Please." Frank covered his ears. "Enough."

"As long as he can get Ella to camp," Hazel said. "I'm worried about her."

The taxi turned on Highway One, which looked more like a small street to Mia, and took them north toward downtown. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still high in the sky.

"I can't believe how much this place has grown," Hazel muttered.

The taxi driver grinned in the rearview mirror. "Been a long time since you visited, miss?"

"About seventy years," Hazel said.

The driver slid the glass partition closed and drove on in silence. Mia snickered.

According to Hazel, almost none of the buildings were the same, but she pointed out features of the landscape: the vast forests ringing the city, the cold, gray waters of Cook Inlet tracing the north edge of town, and the Chugach Mountains rising grayish-blue in the distance, capped with snow even in June. Mia had never smelled air this clean before. The town itself had a weather-beaten look to it, with closed stores, rusted-out cars, and worn apartment complexes lining the road, but it was still beautiful. Lakes and huge stretches of woods cut through the middle. The arctic sky was an amazing combination of turquoise and gold.

Then there were the giants. Dozens of bright-blue men, each thirty feet tall with gray frosty hair, were wading through the forests, fishing in the bay, and striding across the mountains. The mortals didn't seem to notice them. The taxi passed within a few yards of one who was sitting at the edge of a lake washing his feet, but the driver didn't panic.

"Um . . ." Frank pointed at the blue guy.

"Hyperboreans," Percy said. "Northern giants. I fought some when Kronos invaded Manhattan."

"Wait," Frank said. "When who did what?"

"Long story. But these guys look . . . I don't know, peaceful."

"They usually are," Hazel agreed. "I remember them. They're everywhere in Alaska, like bears."

"Bears?" Frank said nervously.

"The giants are invisible to mortals," Hazel said. "They never bothered me, though one almost stepped on me by accident once."

That sounded fairly bothersome to Mia, but the taxi kept driving. None of the giants paid them any attention. One stood right at the intersection of Northern Lights Road, straddling the highway, and they drove between his legs. The Hyperborean was cradling a Native American totem pole wrapped in furs, humming to it like a baby. If the guy hadn't been the size of a building, he would've been almost cute.

The taxi drove through downtown, past a bunch of tourists' shops advertising furs, Native American art, and gold. Mia hoped that Hazel wouldn't get agitated and make the jewelry shops explode.

As the driver turned and headed toward the seashore, Hazel knocked on the glass partition. "Here is good. Can you let us out?"

They ( Mia ) paid the driver and stepped onto Fourth Street. Compared to Vancouver, downtown Anchorage was tiny — more like a college campus than a city, but Hazel looked amazed.

"It's huge," she said. "That — that's where the Gitchell Hotel used to be. My mom and I stayed there our first week in Alaska. And they've moved City Hall. It used to be there."

She led them in a daze for a few blocks. They didn't really have a plan beyond finding the fastest way to the Hubbard Glacier. Mia trailed behind them, answering frantic emails on her phone that she'd gotten over the past few days. The Starfury corporation never sleeps.

"Food," Percy said suddenly. "Come on."

They found a café right by the beach. It was bustling with people, but they scored a table at the window and perused the menus.

Frank whooped with delight. "Twenty-four-hour breakfast!"

"It's, like, dinnertime," Percy said, as if the sun wasn't, like, right above their heads.

"It is around six thirty," Mia reported, narrowing her eyes as she typed an angry email. She loved writing angry emails. At least then you didn't have to try and be cordial. She glanced up when she felt a stare on her to see Percy staring at her phone. "Gift from Trivia, goddess of magic," she said. "I've done her a few favors while Nico was busy. There's no demigod tracking parts in here."

". . . right," he said. Mia didn't bother with trying to discern his expression. She just turned back to her phone and rapidly typed out her angry email.

"I love breakfast," Frank said. "I'd eat breakfast, breakfast, and breakfast if I could. Though, um, I'm sure the food here isn't as good as Hazel's."

Hazel elbowed him, but her smile was playful.

Seeing them like that made Mia happy. Those two definitely needed to get together. But it also made her sad, because in another universe, she could've had that. She had had that, with the boy next to her, who was definitely still staring at her. But she didn't dwell on it. She couldn't.

"You know," Percy finally said, "breakfast sounds great."

They all ordered plates of eggs, pancakes, and reindeer sausage, though Frank looked a little worried about the reindeer. "You think it's okay that we're eating Rudolph?"

"Dude," Percy said, "I could eat Prancer and Blitzen, too. I'm hungry."

"You're disgusting," Mia scrunched up her nose.

The food was excellent. She had never seen anyone eat as fast as Frank, except for maybe Tyson and Percy. The red-nosed reindeer did not stand a chance.

Between bites of blueberry pancake, Hazel drew a squiggly curve and an X on her napkin. "So this is what I'm thinking. We're here." She tapped X. "Anchorage."

"It looks like a seagull's face," Percy said. "And we're the eye."

Hazel glared at him. "It's a map, Percy. Anchorage is at the top of this sliver of ocean, Cook Inlet. There's a big peninsula of land below us, and my old home town, Seward, is at the bottom of the peninsula, here." She drew another X at the base of the seagull's throat. "That's the closest town to the Hubbard Glacier. We could go around by sea, I guess, but it would take forever. We don't have that kind of time."

Frank polished off the last of his Rudolph. "But land is dangerous," he said. "Land means Gaea."

Hazel nodded. "I don't see that we've got much choice, though. We could have asked our pilot to fly us down, but I don't know . . . his plane might be too big for the little Seward airport. And if we chartered another plane—"

"No more planes," Percy said. "Please."

Mia pouted, finishing her eggs. "What a shame," she said. "I love planes."

He stared at her, appalled. "How?"

"Sneaking onto first class is fun," she said. "Especially if you're going somewhere very far away. They treat you like you're royalty."

Hazel held up her hand in a placating gesture. "Anyway, we're not going on a plane. There's a train that goes from here to Seward. We might be able to catch one tonight. It only takes a couple of hours."

She drew a dotted line between the two X's.

"You just cut off the seagull's head," Percy noted.

Hazel sighed. "It's the train line. Look, from Seward, the Hubbard Glacier is down here somewhere." She tapped the lower right corner of her napkin. "That's where Alcyoneus is."

"But you're not sure how far?" Frank asked.

Hazel frowned and shook her head. "I'm pretty sure it's only accessible by boat or plane."

"Boat," Percy said immediately.

"Fine," Hazel said. "It shouldn't be too far from Seward. If we can get to Seward safely."

Mia gazed out the window. So much to do, and only twenty-four hours left. This time tomorrow, the Feast of Fortuna would be starting. Unless they unleashed Death and made it back to camp, the giant's army would flood into the valley. The Romans would be the main course at a monster dinner.

Across the street, a frosty black sand beach led down to the sea, which was as smooth as steel. A Hyperborean giant lumbered across the street. Nobody in the café noticed. The giant stepped into the bay, cracking the ice under his sandals, and thrust his hands in the water. He brought out a killer whale in one fist. Apparently that wasn't what he wanted, because he threw the whale back and kept wading.

"Good breakfast," Mia said. "Who's ready for a train ride?"

The station wasn't far. They were just in time to buy tickets for the last train south. As they climbed on board, Percy asked Mia, "can I borrow your phone?"

She frowned, but she took off her backpack, searched for it, then offered it to him. "If you break it, I will break you."

Then she slung her backpack over her shoulder and strutted off to find a good seat.

She eventually found an empty booth that was in a relatively empty car and sat down, Hazel and Frank following her.

"What do you think he's doing?" Frank asked as Mia propped her legs up on the seat, taking out her laptop and opening it.

"Calling someone," Mia said. "But it's probably for the best to not ask him." She sent Hazel a meaningful look, before logging into her laptop and starting to work.

Eventually, Percy arrived, looking disheveled, and Mia slid her legs off of the seat so he could sit.

Hazel frowned. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he croaked. "Just . . . made a call."

They didn't ask for details. Well, at least they followed her advice.

Soon they were heading south along the coast, watching the landscape go by. Mia tried to concentrate on her work, but some seriously cool things kept happening outside. Bald eagles soared overhead. The train raced over bridges and along cliffs where glacial waterfalls tumbled thousands of feet down the rocks. They passed forests buried in snowdrifts, big artillery guns ( to set off small avalanches and prevent uncontrolled ones, Hazel explained ), and lakes so clear, they reflected the mountains like mirrors, so the world looked upside down.

Brown bears lumbered through the meadows. Hyperborean giants kept appearing in the strangest places. One was lounging in a lake like it was a hot tub. Another was using a pine tree as a toothpick. A third sat in a snowdrift, playing with two live moose like they were action figures. The train was full of tourists ohhing and ahhing and snapping pictures, but Mia felt sorry they couldn't see the Hyperboreans. They were missing the really good shots.

Meanwhile, Frank studied a map of Alaska that was on the table. He located Hubbard Glacier, which looked discouragingly far away from Seward. He kept running his finger along the coastline, frowning with concentration.

"What are you thinking?" Percy asked.

"Just . . . possibilities," Frank said.

Mia didn't know what that meant, but to be honest, she couldn't care.

After about an hour, she started to relax. She bought them hot chocolate from the dining car. The seats were warm and comfortable, and she thought about taking a nap.

Then a shadow passed overhead. Tourists murmured in excitement and started taking pictures.

"Eagle!" one yelled.

"Eagle?" said another.

"Huge eagle!" said a third.

"That's no eagle," Frank said.

Mia looked up just in time to see the creature make a second pass. It was definitely larger than an eagle, with a sleek black body the size of a Labrador retriever. Its wingspan was at least ten feet across.

"There's another one!" Frank pointed. "Strike that. Three, four. Okay, we're in trouble."

The creatures circled the train like vultures, delighting the tourists. Mia wasn't delighted. The monsters had glowing red eyes, sharp beaks, and vicious talons.

"Those things look familiar . . ." Percy frowned, his hand in his pocket.

"Seattle," Mia said. "The Amazons had one in a cage. They're—"

Then several things happened at once. The emergency brake screeched, pitching them forward. Tourists screamed and tumbled through the aisles. The monsters swooped down, shattering the glass roof of the car, and the entire train toppled off the rails.