Indigo Eyes

Chapter 7

Cressida bungee jumped. Six times. Then she went snowboarding on an artificial ski slope and went down the waterslide before she found a dancing game. A dancing game she dominated at. With her love of music, of course, she was good at dancing. She was having the time of her life. She had never had this much fun before.

When Percy, Annabeth and Grover found her, she was laughing with a group of people on a multi-coloured dance floor.

"Cressida? Cressida! We have to go!" Percy said as he grabbed her arms, pulling her to face him.

"Why would we leave?" she laughed. "I have friends, Percy! Look. I've never had friends before! And they said I was a dancing queen like the song."

"Come on, dancing queen," a boy with sandy blond hair said as he walked over to her, taking her arm. "Another dance!"

The crowd cheered before Percy pulled Cressida back. "Grape Girl, listen to me, alright? We are your friends. We're your real friends. And we need your help to finish the quest!"

Her brows furrowed before Annabeth came up to his side and reached for Cressida's wrist, opening the locket to show her the photos inside. "If you stay, you will never see your brothers again. Castor and Pollux. You will never see them again."

She froze at the sight of the pictures inside and blinked hard as if waking up from a daydream. "Di immortales. How long have we been here?!"

"Long enough. Time to go," Percy said, Cressida's bag and the one Ares gave him on his shoulders as he took her hand, and they began heading for the exit.

"Well, now, are you ready for your platinum cards?" the Lotus bellhop said as he found them.

"We're leaving," Percy told him.

"Such a shame," he said, and it seemed as if he was genuinely sad about them leaving. "We just added an entire new floor full of games for platinum-card members."

Cressida seemed hypnotised as if she was tempted to take it, but she knew that if she stayed, she really wouldn't leave. And part of her didn't want to. This place had literally everything she could want, except for her brothers.

Grover didn't have that much restraint though as he reached for the card before Annabeth yanked his arm back. "No thanks," she spoke for him, and they headed for the door. But as they did, the delicious smell of food and the sound of the games seemed to get more and more inviting, and it seemed harder to not turn around. To go back upstairs, sleep in a real bed, have another shower, make more friends...

But she was snapped out of the trance as they burst out of the Lotus Casino and ran down the sidewalk. It felt like the afternoon which was the same time of day they'd gone into the casino but what should've been a few hours, didn't seem like it. The weather was all whacked out, a once clear sky now stormy with lightning flashing out across the desert.

And as if things needed to get worse, considering they were still stuck in Vegas with no clue how to get to L.A., Percy then ran to a newspaper stand and read the date.

While the year was still the same, the day had changed. What should've read June 15, read June 20th. They'd been in the Casino for five days, leaving them only one day left until the summer solstice. One day left to complete the quest, stop a war and save the world.

No pressure at all.

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Annabeth was the one that solved at least one of their problems. how to get to L.A. She pushed all of them into a taxi and told the driver to take them to L.A. And she paid for them using the LotusCash card, an infinity symbol coming up next to the dollar sign.