I do not own Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.

AN: Sooooo...it's been a while? It's a good thing I didn't make promises on how long this chapter would take. Since the last time I updated this, I started another massive Star Wars AU, took a multi-year plunge into Batman-and-related-fandoms, got a new job, and hyper-focused on several other fandoms before managing to come back to this one. This chapter fought me tooth and nail. I have been actively trying to finish this for months.

I barely edited this, since you all have waited so long, so apologies for any mistakes!

I really am sorry about how long I left this fic on a cliffhanger though.

Chapter Thirty-Two: Nico and the Haunted City

Nico scrambled backwards, hands and feet running into the bones that littered the floor of the monster's lair as he did his best to get away. He couldn't draw his sword from this position – not without slicing himself open – and the monster was still far too close for him to get up. Those teeth would be able to rip his throat out before he'd gotten halfway up.

"Now, now, Nico," Bianca's voice continued in an almost pitying tone. The words hadn't come from the monster in front of him. Nico's head jerked to the left to see another of the monsters coming up from behind the first.

"There's no need to run. There's nowhere for you to go," Bianca's voice said again, this time from a third monster to the right of the first.

Nico's hand grabbed something, so he automatically threw it at the lead monster. The skull – and it was a skull, though not of a human or any animal Nico could identify – bounced off the monster's head and clattered to the ground behind it.

"That wasn't very nice of you," Bianca's voice chided in a three-part harmony as all the monsters spoke as one. "You shouldn't be so mean to my collection – your bones will be joining it soon."

"Bones," Nico said to himself. The whole room was filled with bones – all of the monsters' meals, going back who knows how long. This pack of monsters could have been down here for generations. All those bones, tingling at the edge of his senses. He might not be able to draw his sword, but that didn't mean he was defenseless.

He reached out with his power – though he didn't dare to close his eyes – and thrust his power out at the bones around him. It was uncontrolled, sloppy, and it really shouldn't have surprised him when the thousands of bones around him coalesced into an array of badly-assembled chimeric skeletons.

At least they did what they were meant to do and charged the trio of monsters in front of him.

Nico took advantage of the distraction and scrambled further backwards and then to his feet. He stumbled as a wave of dizziness overcame him upon standing upright, but caught himself and started running.

He almost tripped again a moment later, but managed to dodge around the loose rocks and stumble into the next corridor.

Behind him, he could heard Bianca's voice in triplicated, screeching in fury far worse than she ever had when he'd annoyed her.

It's not Bianca, he reminded himself as he kept running. It's not Bianca.

He hesitated when he came to an intersection, seven identical corridors meeting in a perfect star with no hint of which way to go.

"This way, Master!" Minos called from his left.

Nico stared hard into the darkness and finally caught a glimpse of Minos' shade a hundred feet down the second tunnel to his left. He darted down the tunnel, praying desperately that he wouldn't trip again. His backpack thumped against his back with every step he took.

"Nico, why did you leave me?" the monsters called from behind him.

Nico kept running. The tunnel around him changed from concrete to mosaic to what looked like an old mine shaft, but he kept going anyway.

"Nico?"

Not Bianca, he told himself once more.

Minos finally stopped at a seemingly random support in the mine shaft.

"Here, Master!" he instructed. A ghostly finger pointed out the barely visible Δ that looked like it had been scratched into the wood.

Nico pressed it quickly, then had to deal with a moment of anxious waiting before the exit appeared.

Minos disappeared as it opened; it must have been daylight wherever he was.

Nico climbed out of the mine shaft into a dark room. He quickly pressed the Δ to close the entrance behind him. He did not want those monsters getting out.

As soon as it was shut, he let out a breath of relief. He was safe.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of a door opening as a beam of light pierced the dark room. He scrambled for the shadows.

"– basement is the home of one of Moon River's most-often-seen ghosts! The staff calls him Toby, and he can often be seen out of the corner of your eye, slinking through the shadows."

Nico winced as he ducked further into the shadows. If these people were already looking for people (ghosts) in the shadows…

He wrapped the shadows further around himself, wincing at the strain on his already over-extended powers, and slowly crept around the edges of the room toward the stairs.

The tour guide was still talking about other supernatural experiences people had in this basement. If he hadn't already been exhausted, he might've messed with them.

He fought back a yawn.

He was definitely far too tired to be using his powers. Mamma and Papà had been very clear about the consequences of a child of Hades overusing their powers (usually death in a way that related to the powers they were overusing).

He couldn't die now. Dying would not stop his parents from grounding him for all eternity.

He stayed hidden under the staircase as the tour guide finished her spiel about all the ghosts in the basement and led the group back upstairs.

If this basement was a regular stop for ghost tours, then it would be a bad place to take a nap, despite its proximity to the Labyrinth and easy escape.

Whatever. Minos would be able to help him find another entrance later. Or he could always sneak back in once he was more rested.

He shifted his backpack and climbed the stairs, waving to the spirit hovering in the shadows before exiting onto the main level.

Apparently the mortals had decided to use the main level of a haunted building as a restaurant.

Weird.

He marched towards what he thought was the exit as quickly as he could without running, dodging around waiters and tables and customers as he went.

He was almost to the exit when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Hey, kid, where're ya going?" a waiter asked him.

Nico tried not to panic.

"Um…my cousin dared me to sneak into the basement to see the ghost," he said, looking down at his shoes. "I promise I didn't mess with anything!"

Apparently this happened a lot, because the waiter just laughed.

"Don't worry 'bout it. Y'all here on vacation?" he asked.

"Yeah," Nico fabricated. "How did you know?"

"Nobody 'round here sounds like you when they talk," the waiter said, not unkindly. "Where ya from?"

"Venice, originally, but we moved to New York City last year," Nico admitted.

The waiter let out a low whistle.

"Well, you're a long ways from home," he said. "Stay safe out there. Enjoy your stay here! And don't let your cousin dare you to sneak into more haunted buildings!"

"I won't," Nico promised.

It was even true. None of his cousins would ever need to dare him to go into a haunted building. He was the son of Hades. He wasn't scared of ghosts.

Nico walked out the door, only to be hit by a wall of heat and humidity. If the waiter's accent hadn't revealed he was somewhere in the American South, this would have.

He wasn't quite sure where he was going, but his feet led him half a mile through the city until he found himself at the gates of a cemetery. The plaques on the gates read:

Erected by

the Savannah Chapter

Daughters of the American Revolution

1913

In Memory of

Patriots of War

American Revolution

1775-1783

Presented to

Colonial Cemetery

Nico slipped inside the open gate. Despite the heat, there were nearly a dozen people wandering around the old cemetery. They weren't mourners – no one had been buried in this cemetery for a long time. He couldn't sense any bodies, and even the bones he could sense were mere fragments.

He wandered around the old cemetery for a bit, reading the signs about famous people buried there – none of whom he'd ever heard of – before sitting down under a tree. The shade was marginally cooler than the rest of the outdoors, though it did nothing for the humidity.

The adrenaline from his encounter with the creatures that spoke with Bianca's voice was wearing off. He wanted a nap, but he knew better than to go to sleep right away. He forced himself to set up the wards before unrolling his sleeping bag and collapsing onto it.

His dream played like a movie scene.

The room was white marble, which made Nico think of Olympus, but it wasn't a part of Olympus he'd ever seen before. The room had a low ceiling and no windows. If there was a door, he couldn't see it. The only light came from torches affixed to the walls with silver brackets. The firelight cast dark shadows around the room and turned the while marble orange and grey.

Two figures stood there, on either side of a cylinder of black marble that stood in the center of the room. It was high enough that the taller of the two figures was leaning comfortably with his hands on the edge as he peered down into the hollow cylinder, and half as wide.

Nico couldn't tell what was inside the cylinder, but it must have been important with how focused the man was on it. He had graying black curls that fell past his shoulders, and a beard the same color and length. He was dressed like a king from ancient Greece, with a crown of gold oak leaves on his head. His storm-grey chiton fell to his feet and was half-covered by a royal purple himation edged with golden lightning bolts.

Though Nico had never seen him like this, had only ever seen him in a pinstriped suit, this was obviously his uncle. This was Zeus at the height of ancient Greece.

The other figure in the room was focused on his uncle. She was shorter, and obviously female, though she was half-hidden by the shadows. She was dressed in a knee-length tunic that was such a dark black that the flickering torchlight did nothing to make a difference to its shade. Her knee-high leather boots were the same inky black. The shawl she wore over her head and shoulders seemed to be made of pure shadow, but it still did nothing to hide the piercing emerald eyes that had remained consistent through all her incarnations.

Leuke still looked like his mother, but different at the same time. His mother was one of the most beautiful women in the world, with the same almost-too-much, more-than-human beauty that was common among the more powerful demigods, the perfection that attracted and repelled mortals with equal fervor.

Leuke took that to another level.

While his mother hovered at the edge of perfection, Leuke surpassed it. Her flawlessness crossed into the uncanny valley – an eerie representation of his mother that made him uncomfortable to see. There wasn't anything specific that he could say looked different about his mother than how she looked now, not like the minute changes in facial features that he could point out from when she was Maria di Angelo, or even from before her partial ascension, but there was still something so very off.

Other gods had the same sense of perfection, but it had never felt as disconcerting as when he saw it on his mother.

"Are you certain?" Zeus asked as he looked up at her, his voice like a low rumble of thunder in the distance.

"I would not have approached you were I not," his mother replied, though Nico had never heard her voice so emotionless.

Zeus' hands tightened on the edge of the cylinder.

"Who stands with them?" he demanded.

"The younger two Kriodai," Leuke replied promptly, making a gesture towards the cylinder, causing Zeus to look back down. "It was my sister who first brought this to my attention, though her concern was that her husband was straying. I agreed to observe him for her and found treason. Surprisingly, the Kriod and Hyperid who are wed are the two that seem uninvolved. My sister, however, was right to be concerned. Her husband is involved with Selene."

Zeus' eyes were narrow as he frowned at whatever he was looking at in the cylinder.

"They could not imagine they have the strength to stand against Olympus where their fathers already failed?" he demanded.

"They are not so foolish as to attempt something so blatant as what we accomplished. Their plan is more insidious. They have concocted a scheme to whisper in the ears of the mortals, suggesting that the Sun is the most powerful of the gods, and thereby eroding away our power while increasing theirs. It is a slow scheme, but it has potential."

Leuke's voice had shifted slightly, into something almost…admiring? Zeus seemed to notice too.

"Treason is not something appreciable," he pointed out.

Leuke raised an eyebrow in response.

"We committed treason," she pointed out. "Just because we won does not change what it started out as. The Hyperides and Kriodai came up with an exceptional plan, and it is only because of Styx that we caught it this early. However, we did catch it early, and they will not manage to succeed."

Her tone was even throughout, with barely only the faintest hints of emotion, which wasn't like his mother at all.

Zeus seemed to realize he didn't have an argument and brushed past that to ask, "Do they simply desire my throne?"

"No, though they do think they could do better," Leuke reported. She gestured towards the cylinder once more, drawing Zeus' attention back to it. "Their first concern was the newer gods and how the young ones are pushing out the ancients. Aphrodite and I are the only ancients left, and Aphrodite was never involved in Othrian politics. Especially after what you did to Prometheus…well, some people have made comments that you are starting to resemble your father."

Sparks danced across Zeus' knuckles.

"Who?" he demanded.

Leuke seemed completely unconcerned.

"The Hyperides, for one. The others do not concern you – they are merely grumblers."

Zeus didn't seem to like that answer, but he didn't press the issue.

"This needs to be ended," he said. "Quickly."

"I agree," Leuke replied. "What do you want done?"

"Have they had a chance to spread their ideas among the mortals yet?" Zeus questioned.

"No," Leuke said. "They are still in the planning stages."

Zeus nodded tightly, eyes distant.

"The Sun and Moon chariots cannot be left unattended in perpetuity," he said slowly. "That would give other pantheons a foothold to infiltrate. They must remain in service, but Helios and Selene can no longer be trusted. We will use their own plot against them. I want you to begin whispers among the mortals. Whisper that Apollo and Artemis drive the Sun and Moon across the sky. If the whispers are repeated enough, they will believe it and Apollo and Artemis will be able to take their roles."

"Am I to leave the Hyperides alone?" Leuke questioned.

"For now," Zeus said grudgingly. "The whispers need time to spread."

"Helios and Selene are not commonly worshipped," Leuke offered. "Apollo and Artemis are much more well-known, despite their relative youth."

Zeus nodded slowly. The sparks on his hands had finally disappeared.

"Once the associations begin to build, once Apollo and Artemis have the slightest of connections to the chariots, you will take care of Helios and Selene," he ordered.

Leuke nodded sharply.

"It will be done."

"For now," Zeus continued, "Begin your work with the Kriodai instead. You said your sister came to you seeking information on her husband's perceived infidelity? Would she be willing to assist you in sending him to the Void?"

"I do not need her assistance in sending him to the Void," Leuke stated, "unless your wish is her involvement to hide mine."

"It is," Zeus said. "This must be done quietly. The Hyperides may suspect your involvement, but if your sister has reason to end her husband's existence, they may think their plot is yet undiscovered."

Leuke raised an eyebrow.

"Are you certain you wish to set a precedent for a man's infidelity being a crime worthy of the Void?" Leuke asked. "I do not believe that will turn out well for you."

Zeus glowered at her, but Leuke didn't seem phased.

"I do not wish it to be anything official," he said. "Just make certain the Hyperides do not realize you are working against them."

Leuke's smirk made her look almost realistic enough to be his mother.

"Have I ever failed you, my king?" she asked before disappearing into the shadows.

Nico woke to his stomach growling. It was still daylight, though the sun was well on its way to setting. The trees in the cemetery were casting longer shadows now then they had at noon, and there were only a few people wandering through the paths of the park anymore. He dug out his magic lunchbox and pulled out a bowl of pasta e faglioli and a spoon.

As he ate, he considered what he'd dreamt. While he hadn't had so-called 'demigod dreams' before, Mamma had told him they were a possibility. She had also never had any, but that was due to a mix of her weird immortal status and her childhood connection to Voldemort permanently damaging her ability to dream. She claimed she got all the information she needed from her shadows anyway.

…That was an idea.

He couldn't hear secrets in the shadows like Mamma could, but Hecate had given him another option for information. There were no secrets among the dead, and even if they were reluctant, they would tell him the truth.

Minos was a good source for information on Daedalus – Mamma had made it clear that archenemies often had the most knowledge of someone – but he was also biased against him. If he wanted the full picture of Daedalus, he needed to talk to someone who'd loved him.

There was nothing they could say to excuse his crimes though. Attempting to cheat death was a surefire way for his father to handle someone's punishment personally. Nico wasn't sure exactly what had been done to Voldemort, but the smirks on his parents' faces whenever the matter was brought up said that it wasn't pretty.

But he needed someone who'd known Daedalus, and the only person besides Minos that he knew of – and could summon – was Daedalus' son, Icarus.

Nico finished his dinner with renewed vigor before packing his things up. He needed to find a store…and another cemetery. This one was comfortable enough, but none of the skeletons were intact enough for him to do something with them.

Unfortunately, he couldn't find a grocery store with the same ease he'd found a cemetery. His father was the god of the dead, not the god of stores-that-had-food-and-drink-that-could-he-could-use-to-summon-the-dead.

He wondered if Hermes' kids could let their feet lead them to a store the way he could let his feet lead him to a gravesite. He'd have to ask if he ever managed to get his mother to let him go to Camp again.

By the time he'd finished packing up his ramshackle campsite, he'd just about decided to pick a direction and start walking. He'd just made it to the gate when he noticed a tour group dispersing. Their leader, a woman who was probably in college, was left standing by the gates, flipping through a book she'd pulled out of her bag.

"Excuse me?" he asked, walking up to her with what he hoped was a charming smile.

She looked up, a polite smile on her face that turned a bit more genuine when she saw him.

"Are you lost?" she asked kindly. "Do you need help finding your parents?"

"Oh no, Miss," Nico replied quickly. "My Mamma's just in the bathroom. I was just wondering if you could tell me where the nearest library was. We're doing a scavenger hunt and I need to look up where it is we need to go to next."

"Where is it you need to go?" the woman asked. "I can just give you directions."

"Oh no, Miss, I wouldn't want to trouble you. We have a lot of places to go still, and it would be easiest if we could go look up the directions." Nico glanced over his shoulder, then looked back to the woman and whispered conspiratorially, "We had all the directions printed out, but Mamma accidentally threw them away with our lunch trash while we were walking here. So now we need to go to the library so we can print them out again."

The woman let out a small laugh.

"My mom has done the same thing. Are you just visiting Savannah?"

"Yes, Miss," Nico said, bobbing his head. "We live in New York City."

"Wow! That's really far away!" the woman said, sounding impressed.

If only she knew that he'd gone from Los Angeles (the Underworld) to Wichita to Dallas to Savannah in just two days.

"It's been a fun trip," Nico said with a smile, hoping he sounded convincing. Fun wasn't really the word he'd use for his adventures so far.

"So, the nearest library is Chatham Public Library, it's about a mile and a half away," the woman said. "Go that way," she pointed down the road, "down Abercorn Street until you get to East 35th, then make a right by Thomas Square Park. Turn left at the next block; the library is just on the other side of the park."

"Thank you!" Nico said with a smile. "Mamma will be really happy that we don't have to go all the way back to the hotel to print new directions out."

Nico calmly went back through the gate and back towards the restrooms, not stopping or looking back until he was out of sight of the tour guide. He made his way to the other entrance to the cemetery before circling back around and following the tour guide's directions from the other side of the street. Thankfully, she still seemed to be looking into the cemetery.

It didn't take long to get to the library. A mile and a half was nothing compared to some of the endurance runs Mamma had insisted on, even though the stickiness of Savannah meant he was sweating through his clothes ten minutes in.

The library was much smaller than the one near their house in New York (which Mamma said was one of the biggest in the mortal world), and that one had nothing on Papà's library in the Underworld.

What it did have was air conditioning. Walking through the doors into a blast of cool air practically had him melting. The Labyrinth had mostly been the cool of the underground, and hiding in the shadows – or behind Mamma's wardstones – was always cool as well. He was not built for this sort of heat.

It wasn't hard to find the publicly available computers. There were two rows of them tucked just around the corner from the front door. He ran into a small problem when the computer required a library card ID to log in, but the teenager at the next one over was willing to lend him her library card to access one when Nico admitted he didn't have one because he was from out of town.

It only took ten minutes of searching on Google Maps – something Aunt Sally had shown them while he and Bianca were still getting used to New York – to find everything he was looking for. He sent the directions off to the printer and waited impatiently for the old device to print out directions to the nearest active cemetery and the convenience stores along the way. He was in luck: Bonaventure Cemetery was only three miles away, and there was a McDonald's en route, with a convenience store across the street. Instinct told him that ghosts did better with more liquids than he'd given them before, so this time he'd add more soda to the mix.

Nico had just shoved the folded papers into his bag when he heard footsteps coming up from behind him.

One hand swung his bag onto his back while the other crept towards his sword as he turned around, still crouching low.

It wasn't a monster, or a Titan, or even another demigod. It was a mortal policeman.

"Hello there, son," the policeman said. "Where's your mom or dad?"

Nico mentally repeated a rant he'd heard his father say that his mother had rebuked him for.

"Who are you?" he asked instead of answering.

"My name is Officer Williams. What's yours?"

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," Nico replied immediately, ignoring the fact that he had already asked the man's name and therefore talked to a stranger.

The man smiled at him, but his face was tight around his eyes.

"That doesn't apply to police officers, son. We're here to keep you safe."

Nico had heard stories from some of the campers about their experiences with mortal policemen – including Annabeth and Thalia, who had bad encounters with them when they were younger. Even more campers had stories of monsters who had just been disguised as mortal policemen.

"I'm just here to check on you," the policeman continued. "My friend Nicole does tours at Colonial Park Cemetery, and she mentioned there was a boy who asked her for directions to the library. He said his momma was with him, but she saw him walking away alone a little later. Nicole said that the boy was about four foot six, and wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black leather aviator jacket, with pale skin, green eyes, and messy dark hair."

The policeman gave him an obvious once over, and asked drily, "Sound familiar?"

Nico did his best not to shrink at the scrutiny.

"I didn't think asking for directions was illegal, sir," he replied, doing his best to be polite, since avoidance didn't seem to be helpful.

"It's the fact that you're alone that we're more worried about, son. Where's your mom or dad?" the policeman asked.

This was going to take all of his acting skills to get out of.

Nico rolled his eyes, doing his best to channel Percy's teenage petulance.

"I'm sixteen. Just because I'm short doesn't mean I can't wander around on my own. Mam– Mom," he said, stumbling over the unfamiliar phrasing, "and Dad are touring the boring buildings, so they said I could find something to do myself. I lost the directions I had, so I had to come print some new ones."

The policeman didn't look convinced.

"Nicole said you seemed maybe ten," he said doubtfully.

Nico tried not to scowl. He was eleven! But he had to pretend to be sixteen for now.

"People are nicer to kids, and I'm short," he said bluntly. "I didn't think it was a crime to act a bit younger than I am."

The policeman raised an eyebrow.

"Got any ID to prove that?"

"You can't get your permit in New York until you're sixteen –" True. Percy had been complaining about it. He was turning fifteen at the end of the summer, which in some places meant he could get his permit, but not in New York. "– and my birthday was last week. I haven't gotten mine yet."

The policeman sighed.

"Look, son, I'm going to have to take you down the station. You can call your parents and they can come down and get you if what you're saying's true. But son, teenagers on vacation don't carry bags as big as yours."

He reached out and grabbed Nico's shoulder. His grip felt like iron.

Nico wished he could stab him. He could, technically, but mortals didn't react well to Stygian Iron. It could hurt them, unlike celestial bronze. It also tended to drain part of their life force away, which would be fine if he was in actual danger, but the policeman was just doing his job. If Nico was a mortal kid, the policeman would even be doing a good job.

The policeman guided him towards the library exit, hand still tight on his shoulder.

Nico debated the pros and cons of running. He was not getting taken to the police station. His mother was unavailable to answer a phone call, Aunt Sally couldn't make it to Georgia to pick him up, and even if he did call someone, questions would come up as to how he ended up in Georgia without adult supervision. That wasn't happening, even ignoring how it would completely ruin his self-assigned mission.

Getting caught by the cops three days in was not how to be a hero.

Nico waited until they exited the double doors. The police car was right out front, not even in a parking space. He didn't have much time.

Nico slammed his elbow into the policeman's groin and took off running to the side as soon as his grip loosened.

"Hey!" the policeman yelled from behind him. "Hey! Kid! Get back here!"

Nico kept bolting for the side of the building. He darted around the corner and into a small shadow between the building and the bushes. That was all he needed. Just a shadow, and a demand that they hide him, hide him…He clenched his eyes shut as he focused on that singular thought.

Footsteps rounded the corner.

"What in the world?" the policeman breathed. "Where did he go?"

Nico could hear the officer moving parts of the bush aside, but the shadows held. They were his Mamma's, and they would never betray him.

He waited until the policeman walked away to open his eyes. He stared at the greenery in front of him and let out a huff.

This was not going as planned.

AN: I know I once said that this was the last Nico chapter, but I was wrong. Nico has decided that he is a main character now. Expect at least one more Nico chapter. Of the seven things Nico was supposed to do in this chapter, he only managed two.

I am giving up on making promises about my update schedule.

Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you thought!