The Omnitrix holder and the lighting theif

Shopping for water beds

Amara's pov

It was Luke's idea. He loaded us into the back of a Vegas taxi as if we actually had money, 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 upfront."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Luke asked.

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

Luke handed him her green LotusCash card which the driver looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," Luke invited. He did and 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. "Where to in Los Angeles. . . uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica Pier." Luke sat up a little straighten I could tell He liked the "Your Highness" thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

Maybe he 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 Luke and Grover about our latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more he tried to remember them. The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited his memory and a bit. I couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like, though I was sure it was somebody I knew. The servant had called the monster in the pit something other than "my lord". . some special name or title. . . .

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

"No the Crooked one," I said, as neither sounded quite right. "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."

Luke's eyes widened.

"What?" I 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," He 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."

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

"To threaten Hades," Grover suggested. "To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back."

I whistled. "You have evil thoughts for a goat."

"Why, thank you."

"But the thing in the pit said it was waiting for two items," Percy said. "If the master bolt is one, what's the other?"

" The helm of darkness" I spoke which made all the boys turn to me. " the helm was also stolen that same time. this is a three-way war we are trying to avoid. Hades is a stop....the god who turned is someone else, not Hades. The crooked one is Kronos...the titan"

"you mean that titan who ate his kids?" Percy said

"Yes him.....I saw those dreams but most of them he was able to see me and tried to manipulate me. But lady nyx and hey son Hypnos helped me escape those dreams safely"