¹POCKET FULL OF POSIES. p. jackson

𝐗𝐈. stretched to the limit

pocket full of posies
❛ xi. stretched to the limit ❜

━━━━━ IT WAS ANNABETH'S IDEA.

She loaded the other questers 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 the four questers up. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay upfront."

"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.

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," the daughter of wisdom 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 the four, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles ... uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. Josephine 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 seventy the whole way through the Mojave Desert.

On the road, the questers had plenty of time to talk. Percy told Annabeth, Grover, and Josephine about his latest dream, but seemed to forget more and more as he tried to tell. The Lotus Casino had short-circuited all of their memories.

"The servant called the ..." the boy trailed off, not knowing what to name the other person talking. "It was the same voice from the dream with my dad and Zeus on the beach shore. The servants ... I thought I recognized the voice, but I'm not sure anymore. But the servant called him 'my lord', or something like that. I don't remember that well." He shrugged, looking bothered.

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

"Maybe ..." Percy said, but he sounded unsure.

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

The son of Poseidon 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."

Josephine was sunk in her seat, chewing on her bottom lip as she racked through her knowledge of Greek mythology. She was coming up with nothing. If it was the same voice she had heard in that dream back at Camp, Percy was right, that voice didn't sound like a god's voice. God's voices don't make the blood run cold immediately, that's only after they're pissed off. It was a time like this when she wished Onesimus would speak up and at least offer up something ( even if that offer would also include an insult about Josephine with it ).

Annabeth's eyes widened. It looked like she had come to a horrible conclusion.

"What?" Josephine asked, sitting up.

"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—"