Daughter of Wine

Leo

I'm in the engine room when the alarm sounds. Calli had invited me to go play cards, and I'd told her I'd be there in a minute. But I'm so focused on my newest project that I don't notice the time passing. 

But the alarm sounds, pulling me out of my concentration immediately. I rush abovedeck, expecting to see some sort of monster battling my friends, but instead I find everyone crowding over the sides of the ship, looking confused. 

"Guys?" I ask. 

"Leo!" Hazel grabs my arm. "I don't know what happened!"

"What... where are Calli and Percy?" I instantly realize that the two of them are missing.

Hazel shakes her head. "We were playing go-fish, and there was this weird wind... Calli said she heard a voice, and then we all heard it. Then the wind picked up and everything smelled like grapes and then... I don't know. It looked like something hit her, and she went overboard."

Panic rises up in my throat. "Weird wind?"

"That's the best way to describe it." Piper agrees, turning to face us. "Calli said it wasn't her dad, but that it wasn't evil, either. She said it felt... chaotic."

"Hazel..." My voice is squeaky. "Can you... sense her? Is she...?"

Hazel shakes her head. "I'm not as good as Nico at that kind of stuff, but I'm fairly certain she isn't dead. I think I'd be able to feel that."

"But she never resurfaced." Piper adds. "It's like she just... disappeared."

Percy lunges from the water, looking distraught. I very quickly realize he's empty-handed. "No sign of her. She just vanished. No fish have seen her either." 

"Well she has to be down there somewhere!" I cry out. "Keep looking!"

"Leo, dude, I've looked everywhere. Whatever it is that just happened, it was magic. Calli isn't under the water. She got taken somewhere." 

"Well, why didn't it take any of the rest of us?" Hazel asks, her eyes full of worry. "It just picked her up and disappeared."

"It smelled like grapes." Piper recalls. "Maybe something Dionysus-y?"

"Or, evil wind monsters that eat Dionysus kids for dinner." I look at my friends incredulously. "We have to look for her! Where's the closest island, or land mass, or anything?" I run to my control console, where Festus is already scanning with his sonar. 

"Leo, we're not near anything." Annabeth says calmly. "We have no information, no sign of her, not even a monster that we can trace back to anything. We just have to..." Her voice cracks. "We have to keep going and hope that she finds her way back to us." 

I stare at them all in disbelief. "If it were any of you, she'd stop the ship, and she wouldn't stop searching until she found you." 

"We don't have time to stop the ship." Jason says, his eyes misty. He's huddled over, his wound probably hurting like crazy. "When you were missing, I had to convince Calli to let us move, too. And we found you. We'll find her. Hazel said she's not dead." 

"Yet!" I yell. Everyone seems taken aback by my sudden burst of anger. "She's not dead yet. How can you guys just not care? Calli watches out for all of you. And you just want to leave her?"

No one meets my gaze, which only infuriates me more. I smell smoke, and realize my entire body is on the verge of a spontaneous combustion. 

Percy looks warily at me, as if worried I'll explode. "Okay. Okay, you're right. I'll... I'll go take another look." He makes nervous eye contact with Annabeth before jumping back into the sea. 

"Leo, take a breath." Piper says. I don't know if she means to do it, but her voice is so heavy with magic that I fill my lungs with a deep breath. It doesn't help. I feel panicky and nervous and shaky. She got knocked overboard and disappeared? I was supposed to be up here with her. She'd invited me to go play a game, and I chose to work by myself in the engine room instead. My beautiful, gorgeous girlfriend who loves me more than anything wanted to spend time with me, and I ignored it. And now she's vanished. 

My eyes pore over the sonar while Festus creaks behind me, retelling the same story that Hazel said. "Annabeth, are there any stories about this stuff? Wine wind, whispering voices, crewmembers disappearing overboard?"

Annabeth's super-scary eyes look thoughtful. "Not that I can think of. I'll... I'll check through my books. See if I'm forgetting something." She disappears below deck. 

"She's gonna be fine." Hazel promises. "Calli is tough. She's probably gonna come up with some crazy escape plan and tell us all about it."

"You found your way back to us." Piper reminds me. "Calli will too."

A new wave of anxiety washes over me. When I disappeared, I ended up in Ogygia with Calypso. I was stranded with a beautiful gardener-girl who fell in love with me. What if Calli is in a similar situation? What if she's on another island with Calypso's hunky hot mechanic brother? 

I push that train of thought out of my mind. Thinking up doomsday scenarios isn't going to help.  Instead, I focus my eyes on the sonar, watching for any sign of where she could have gone. The more time passes, the more it feels like she really has vanished. She's not on the ship, obviously. She's not in the sea, or swimming on the surface, or flying in the air. She's just... gone.