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“We have to eat it?” I asked.
“Bark!”Gale agreed.
Suddenly I wasn’t so sure about this recipe. The process of making it had been a blur, but I remembered the iron filings, a few bubbling toxins, and some things that had looked like insect shells.
“How much?” Grover asked.
I looked in the bowl. My heart sank. There wasn’t nearly as much as I’d thought. The paste had congealed into three golf-ball-size lumps, almost like it had divided itself into suggested serving sizes. But if we only had three…
I started to say, “I’m not sure—”
“Gimme,” said Grover.
He scooped out one blob of paste and stuck it in his mouth.
As soon as he swallowed, he doubled over and gagged. “ACK!”
I put my hand on his back. “Grover?”
My polecat lab partner skittered across my shoulders, anxious to see what would happen to Patient Zero. Despite my newfound respect for Gale, I had a horrible thought that this paste might be an elaborate prank to make us all fart forever.
Grover shuddered violently. He staggered over to a dumpster and retched.
“WHO!”Annabeth ruffled her head plumage.
“Oh, gods,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Grover! We’ll get you back to the manse. Maybe there’s an antidote or—”
“No,” Grover gasped. “Wait.”
He retched a little more. Tufts of goat hair started sprouting on his legs. His knees bent backward. His feet hardened and turned into hooves.
Praise the squirrels! Grover was a satyr again.
He turned and spat out a toenail. “Blah.”
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“That is definitelynotcinnamon toothpaste.” He gave me a weak smile. Even the welts on his face were starting to fade. “But you did it, Percy! I feel like me.”
“Gale is the real hero,” I said.
Gale chittered, obviously pleased.
I turned to Annabeth. “Okay…so if you’re ready…”
Annabeth tore into the second ball of paste with her sharp, hooked bill. Gale jumped off my shoulder and scampered to a nearby fruit crate.…I guess because giant owls are something polecats have nightmares about.
Annabeth gagged. Her beak opened wide. Her owl eyes got even larger. Her crown feathers stood on end like blades. She brought her hands to her throat—the universal sign for choking.
I panicked. Would the Heimlich maneuver work on a half human, half raptor? I only had octopus tentacles, but I hustled behind her and did my best to find her sternum the way my fourth-grade health teacher had taught us. I thrust upward into her diaphragm.
COUGH!
An owl pellet the size of a melon shot from her throat and bounced off the opposite wall. She doubled over, breathing heavily. When she straightened again, she was normal Annabeth—human face, human hair with the scent of her usual apple shampoo.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I’ll take stupid questions for five hundred, please,” she said hoarsely.
