Rick Riordan
The Last Olympian - 05
to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it."
When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.
I could've stayed that way forever, except a voice behind us growled, "Well, it's about time!"
Suddenly the pavilion was filled with torchlight and campers. Clarisse led the way as the
eavesdroppers charged and hoisted us both onto their shoulders.
"Oh, come on!" I complained. "Is there no privacy?"
"The lovebirds need to cool off!" Clarisse said with glee.
"The canoe lake!" Connor Stoll shouted.
With a huge cheer, they carried us down the hill, but they kept us close enough to hold
hands. Annabeth was laughing, and I couldn't help laughing too, even though my face was
completely red.
We held hands right up to the moment they dumped us in the water.
Afterward, I had the last laugh. I made an air bubble at the bottom of the lake. Our friends
kept waiting for us to come up, but hey—when you're the son of Poseidon, you don't have to hurry.
And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We Say Good-Bye, Sort Of
Camp went late that summer. It lasted two more weeks, right up to the start of a new school
year, and I have to admit they were the best two weeks of my life.
Of course, Annabeth would kill me if I said anything different, but there was a lot of other
great stuff going on too. Grover had taken over the satyr seekers and was sending them out across
the world to find unclaimed half-bloods. So far, the gods had kept their promise. New demigods
were popping up all over the place—not just in America, but in a lot of other countries as well.
"We can hardly keep up," Grover admitted one afternoon as we were taking a break at the
canoe lake. "We're going to need a bigger travel budget, and I could use a hundred more satyrs."
"Yeah, but the satyrs you have are working super hard," I said. "I think they're scared of
you."
Grover blushed. "That's silly. I'm not scary."
"You're a lord of the Wild, dude. The chosen one of Pan. A member of the Council of—"
"Stop it!" Grover protested. "You're as bad as Juniper. I think she wants me to run for
president next."
He chewed on a tin can as we stared across the pond at the line of new cabins under
construction. The U-shape would soon be a complete rectangle, and the demigods had really taken
to the new task with gusto.
Nico had some undead builders working on the Hades cabin. Even though he was still the
only kid in it, it was going to look pretty cool: solid obsidian walls with a skull over the door and
torches that burned with green fire twenty-four hours a day. Next to that were the cabins of Iris,
Nemesis, Hecate, and several others I didn't recognize. They kept adding new ones to the
blueprints every day. It was going so well, Annabeth and Chiron were talking about adding an
entirely new wing of cabins just so they could have enough room.
The Hermes cabin was a lot less crowded now, because most of the unclaimed kids had
received signs from their godly parents. It happened almost every night, and every night more
demigods straggled over the property line with the satyr guides, usually with some nasty monsters
pursuing them, but almost all of them made it through.
"It's going to be a lot different next summer," I said. "Chiron's expecting we'll have twice as
many campers."
"Yeah," Grover agreed, "but it'll be the same old place."
He sighed contentedly.
I watched as Tyson led a group of Cyclops builders. They were hoisting huge stones in place
for the Hecate cabin, and I knew it was a delicate job. Each stone was engraved with magical
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