Annabeth loaded them into the back of a Vegas taxi, 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."
Daphne handed him her green LotusCash card.
He looked at it skeptically.
"Swipe it," Annabeth invited.
He did.
Daphne prayed silently to her father. Come on, just let us get to LA and I'll leave your car keys somewhere for you.
In her pocket, she touched the car keys. His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.
Daphne sighed out of relief and in that moment her father's car keys materialised out of her pocket.
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. Daphne 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. Daphne told Annabeth and Grover about his latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more he tried to remember them.
The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited their memory. Percy couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like, though he was sure it was somebody they knew.
The servant 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, though 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."
Annabeth's eyes widened.
"What?" Daphne 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," 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."
"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt," Percy said, "why would I be traveling to the Underworld?"
"To threaten Hades," Daphne suggested.
"To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back." Grover added.
Percy whistled. "You have evil thoughts for a goat."
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A web of fates | Percy Jackson and the Olympians
FanfictionDaphne Evans, a thirteen year old girl. On the outside, she's just an ordinary girl but in reality that's not true. At the age of nine, she watched her mother die and then she was dragged to Camp Halfblood by a satyr. She's a demigod. That's what th...
