Percy v Mrs. Dodds

| don’t remember touching her, but the next thing | knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, ‘Percy pushed me!’
Mrs Dodds materialized next to us.


I then turned to face Mrs Dodds, but she wasn’t there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.
How’d she get there so fast?
| have moments like that a lot, when my

| went after Mrs Dodds.
Halfway up the steps, | glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr Brunner, like he wanted Mr Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr Brunner was absorbed in his novel.
| looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Your time is up,’ she hissed. Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn’t human. She was a Shrivelled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.
Then things got even stranger.
Mr Brunner, who’d been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.
‘What ho, Percy!’ he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.
Mrs Dodds lunged at me.
With a yelp, | dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. | snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn’t a pen any more. It was a sword - Mr
22
Brunner’s bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.
Mrs Dodds spun towards me with a murderous look in her eyes.
My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad | almost dropped the sword.
She snarled, ‘Die, honey!’
And she flew straight at me.
Absolute terror ran through my body. | did the only thing that came naturally: | swung the sword.
The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!
Mrs Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulphur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.
| was alone.

TLT ch.1