Daughter of Poseidon

The Pink French Confection

The Lotus hotel and casino loomed ahead, its neon lights not lit due to the sun that filtered from the sky. It was early morning, the strip just waking up. Some dives were still open from the night before, along with the stench of overpowering alcohol and clove cigarettes. Smells of breakfast floated around: waffles cooking on their grills, bacon frying, and wafts of crepes floated through the air, along with that of coffee. Odd people stumbled around, obviously hung-over. There was a lone taxi parked on the kerb, mine, as I walked up the drive. It felt awfully lonely.

The great glass doors came swishing open and a cool drought of wind rushed out. It was refreshing and just seemed to entice me into walking in. The Lotus hotel was a towering, modern building with a hollow centre, topped with a glass roof, that suites were built around. There were comfortable leather sofas dotted around the art-deco foyer, more glass doors leading to the coolest video games that I'd ever seen: 3D design games, a few shoot 'em ups and some that weren't supposed to come out until next year.  A green-garbed butler with a too-cheesy smile greeted me and passed me a green plastic card that had a lotus engraved on the front.

"Unlimited cash!" He beamed. "This is your LotusCash card. And please drop your things off and enjoy yourself - the chefs are willing to prepare anything if you're hungry. Our games are state of the art!" 

I felt something was wrong. What sort of hotel didn't charge cash but offered it instead? There was an addictive atmosphere to the place, as though they put hallucinogenics into the air vents, and it just seemed to tell me to relax and to enjoy myself and . . . I told myself to snap out of it. Luke hadn't known much about the hotel, but we knew it was monster-run and these places were pretty secretive. After all, Annabeth, Percy and Grover had been in here for three days already so I was probably right to keep my guard up.

The surgically clean floor squeaked under my feet, with a shine that made it obvious it was polished every day. Cool, modern lily-light fittings, one with an odd, greeny light, spiralled across the walls as I made my way to the suite I'd been allocated - room 167. It was pleasant with clean sheets, and I dropped my bags on the side-table and had a quick look in the mirror, then dashed back downstairs to 'the floor', what I'd nicknamed the games room.

If you could call it a room. The ceiling was cavernous, the walls glass and white ceramic, almost like a hospital. Hundreds of kids ran around in riot, throwing peanuts and popcorn whilst tapping on tablets. A girl with blonde hair stood at a huge city that she was designing on a simulator, using only her hands to manipulate the pixels in a game with technology that shouldn't exist. I recognized a familiar orange collar under the jacket that she was wearing and walked round to the other side of her to get a closer look.

It was Annabeth.

Quickly, I pressed the winged invisibility charm on my bracelet, careful so that she wouldn't see me. But I soon realised there was no need, she was so engrossed in what she was doing that I didn't exist to her, with a slightly medicated expression of dope on her face. She leaned to grab a small pink-coloured cake as a waitress walked by with a plate of them and chewed on it, the dopiness growing bigger.

They were drugging us, and it wasn't hard to think of names in Greek mythology that began with 'L' and belonged to people who self-medicated. The Lotus Eaters. In the myth, the tribe was addicted to the fruit of the lotus tree. When Odysseus encountered them during one of his travels, some of his men tasted the fruit and never wanted to leave. Odysseus solved this problem by binding them and dragging them back. I hoped that I wouldn't have to do that, but then, all I was being sent to do was report back on what they were doing and how far along in the quest they were.

I pressed my charm again and walked around and tried to spot Percy and Grover. The place was huge and teeming with kids, it was like tying to find a piece of straw in a haystack.