I breathed a sigh of relief as I pushed our apartment door open. The world was still spinning from my encounter, refusing to stay still as the floor titled and moved, floating up and down as if we were at sea.

I had managed to hitch a ride back with the Gray sisters who were still squabbling about the eye and tooth, but otherwise were all in good health and didn't seem to be too affected by the whole Apollo-is-now-mortal business.

I leaned on the door frame, panting heavily. What I needed was my well deserved cookies and a lie down. A break from the thunderstorm of chaos.

"Percy," Mom said, running up to hug me, immediately frowning at my disshelleved appearance.

"Mom!" I exclaimed, looking up at her, "I'm okay, I promise."

She traced the scar on my forehead, raising an stern eyebrow. "You're a terrible liar. What happened?"

"I ran into some draugar," I admitted at last, though I was now convinced they had not been under their own control.

She inhaled sharply. "I knew this was a bad idea. I knew it. Yet I somehow thought it was a good idea to force you out into the horrors of the Norse world as well as the Greek."

"I'm fine, Mom," I said, "I'm okay."

Sighing, she brushed off some dried blood on my faded camp t-shirt, the logo hardly visible anymore.

"I'm sorry?" I offered and Mom sighed and kissed my forehead, a wave of comfort washing over me. I missed being home.

"I don't know a cure," she said, "but I will try my best to find one."

"So you're not mad?" I asked, a tiny tinge of hope to my helpless tone.

"Oh, I'm very mad. But your safety comes first."

I looked down at Mom's feet. "Look, um, I may have also dented Paul's car again. A little. "

Paul raised an eyebrow from behind his stack of papers, a teacher look that somehow held the tiniest hint of amusement in it.

"It's just a bit dented!" I protested, though desperately praying that he wouldn't go and check it out. It was a little tiny bit more than slightly dented.

Paul, thankfully just nodded, mentally noting the fact as he hitched his glasses up his nose and went back to his marking.

"I'm sorry I keep messing things up for you guys," I said, "I try to be careful, I really do."

"Oh, Percy," Mom whispered, embracing me in a big, warm, loving hug, "everyone makes mistakes."

I snorted. "Is it because we're only human? Oh, wait, I'm not."

"Gods are especially prone to mistakes." Mom grinned, as if she were telling me the world's greatest secret. "Because they have more time to make them. But that also means they have more time to correct them. We can't live in a world where everyone made mistakes and never made them right. That's why you're special, Percy. You are going to show the gods what it is like to be human. To make them understand the value of life."

I nodded. I got what she was talking about. The Olympians just sat around on their thrones all day, making the half-bloods do their dirty work. They didn't care if their children lived or died.

They didn't care that many of the half-bloods' only wish was to live a normal life. They simply didn't care about anything but their puffed up, self absorbed selves. Apollo, messed up as he is, had hardly even known how selfish he was being.

A loud bang interrupted me from my train of thought.

I glanced up, preparing to shoot daggers at whatever was there. But then a man appeared.

Literally, like out of thin air. His forest green eyes sparkled with a type of mischievous glint that I often saw in Hermes kids' eyes. They seemed to scream,"Look at me! I'm always causing trouble!"

Mom scowled at the visitor, though quickly rearranging it to remain impassive. "Loki."

"Hey," he said, in a way that definitely reminded me of Hermes, and with a gut-twisted way, also reminded me of Luke, "I have just come to see young Perseus"

Mom raised an eyebrow and placed a hand on her hip, the way she did with me when she was unhappy with my behaviour, though it never lasted long.

"Now? You hardly have the right to just turn up here," she stated, an age long grudge that I didn't know about seeming to hold her back from embracing the guy and crying helplessly.

"Did you miss me, mother?"

"I..." Mom faltered, lost for words to say, not wanting to admit it, but somehow still doing so.

"Well," Loki said, his mouth curling up in a devilish smirk, "I have heard that this youngling is born of two pantheons. Am I right?"

Mom opened her mouth to answer but Loki cut her off.

"That was a rhetorical question," he drawled, "and before you even think of lying, remember that I can always tell when someone is lying."

Mom sighed. "Yes, he is."

Loki nodded slowly. "And you have raised him believing that he is only of the Greek pantheon, am I right?"

Mom nodded, the slightest hint of regret in her eyes. She glanced over to me, mouthing an apologetic sorry.

"Perfect," Loki said, rubbing his hands together eagerly, causing a cold chill run down my back, not exactly putting me at ease.

"What do you want?" Mom asked, putting a hand on my shoulder protectively, while I fiddled with Riptide in my pocket.

Something about Loki somehow just seemed off. Like the draugar. Like the nosoi, though his was much more subtle, as if they didn't want anyone finding out.

Our visitor laughed, a dry, humourless laugh that held no real humour, and no real purpose besides from making us feel uncomfortable.

"I would like to teach him seiðr," the Tricker said, with a seemingly sincere look in his eyes.