The Forbidden Daughter | PJO Book One

twelve

THEY NEARLY GET STRETCHED

It was Annabeth's idea.

She 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. "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 Lotus Cash card. He looked at it sceptically.

"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. Anyone could tell 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 plenty of time to talk. Percy told them about his latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more he tried to remember them.

The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited his memory. He couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice.

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

"Maybe..." he said.

"That throne room sounds like Hades's" Grover said. "That's the way it's usually described."

"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?"

Annabeth's and Ariana's eyes widened. Could the voice in his dreams be a Titan?

"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 -" Annabeth tried to say.

"Like what?"

"I don't know." she 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."

She looked pale. Ariana knew she was thinking the exact same thing as her.

"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt." Percy said,
"Why would I be travelling to the Underworld?"

"To threaten Hades." Ariana said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Grover suggested. "To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back?"

Percy 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?"