𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬'𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 • 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘺 𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘰𝘯

Pearls & Waterbeds

Y/n Pov:

I had an idea.

I loaded Annabeth, Percy, and Grover into the back of a Vegas taxi and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized us up. 

"That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front." 

"Do you accept casino debit cards?" I asked. 

He shrugged. 

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

I handed him my green LotusCash card. He looked at it sceptically. 

"Swipe it," I 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 us, his eyes wide. I cocked my eyebrow, fixing my posture.

"Where to in Los Angeles...uh, Your Highness?" 

"The Santa Monica Pier, "I said, sitting up a little straighter. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change." 

Maybe I 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, we had plenty of time to talk. Percy told us about my latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more he tried to remember them. The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited his memory. Percy couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like, though he was sure it was somebody he knew. The servant had called the monster in the pit something other than "my lord".

"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. 

"Perhaps The Rich One? " I said.

"Both of those are nicknames for Hades." 

"Maybe ..." Percy said hesitantly. 

"That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said. "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." 

A pit. That reminds me of something, but what?

My eyes widened in realization.

Tartarus. That voice came from Tartarus.

Many threatening things were down there, but if Percy meant a god's voice was coming from the pit, it wasn't a god, it was a titan. Kronos.

Percy seemed to have noticed my facial expressions.

"What?" he asked. 

"Oh ..." I said, "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," I 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."