This Dark Night ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase¹

―xvi. welcome to l.a.

ONCE THE PANIC HAD EBBED ENOUGH, Annabeth loaded them into the back of a Vegas taxi as if they actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized them up. He eyed Grover, who'd gotten stuck in the front seat next to the smoking man, then the three preteens in his backseat. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Annabeth asked.

He shrugged. "Some of 'em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe 'em through, first."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card.

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," Annabeth invited.

He did.

His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.

The cigar fell out of the driver's mouth. He looked back at them, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles... uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter—clearly she liked the 'Your Highness' thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

Maybe she shouldn't have told him that.

The cab's speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert.

❊

On the road, they had more than enough time to talk. Percy told them about his latest dream, but it seemed the Lotus Casino had messed with his memory. Apparently the invisible servant from his dream had called the monster in the pit something other than 'my lord'... some special name or title...

"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."

"Maybe..." Percy said, but he didn't sound sure.

"That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said, leaning precariously between the passenger and the driver's seat to get close enough to them to whisper—not that the cabbie was paying them any mind. He kept tapping his meter, like he was expecting the infinity symbol to glitch out and praying it wouldn't. "That's the way it's usually described."

Percy shook his head. "Something's wrong. The throne room wasn't the main part of the dream. And that voice from the pit... I don't know. It just didn't feel like a god's voice."

"So... like something less than a god or... something more?" Naomi asked nervously.

Annabeth's eyes widened.

"What?" Percy asked.

"Oh... nothing. I was just—No, it has to be Hades. Maybe he sent this thief, this invisible person, to get the master bolt, and something went wrong—"

"Like what?"

"I—I don't know," Annabeth said. "But if he stole Zeus's symbol of power from Olympus, and the gods were hunting him, I mean, a lot of things could go wrong. So this thief had to hide the bolt, or he lost it somehow. Anyway, he failed to bring it to Hades. That's what the voice said in your dream, right? The guy failed. That would explain what the Furies were searching for when they came after us on the bus. Maybe they thought we had retrieved the bolt."

Despite her confident words, Annabeth seemed off. She looked pale, like she was beginning to realize something she did not want to realize.

"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt," Percy said, "why would I be traveling to the Underworld?"