"you could be the king, but watch the queen conquer"
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Rosalyn Carter is the daughter of Aphrodite and the last thing Percy expected to find at Camp Half-Blood.
But he wouldn't want to fight deadly battles with anyone else.
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It was Annabeth's idea to load up into the back of a Vegas taxi. She ushered them all inside and slammed the door shut, giving her idea of a convincing smile to the cabbie.
She told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."
"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 LotusCash card. When he swiped it, his meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed, displaying an infinity symbol 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." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."
The cab's speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert.
Percy used the drive to explain his latest dream to them. His memory was fuzzy, but he recalled a monster in a pit and a servant using a special title for the monster.
"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."
"That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said. "That's the way it's usually described."
Percy shook his head, saying, "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 and Rosie both had wide eyes at the boy's statement.
"What?" He 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?" Percy interrupted Annabeth.
"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."
She looked pale, and Rosalyn wasn't faring much better.
"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt," Percy drawled, "why would I be traveling to the Underworld?"
"To threaten Hades," Grover suggested. "To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back."
"But the thing in the pit said it was waiting for two items," Percy argued. "If the master bolt is one, what's the other?"
