¹POCKET FULL OF POSIES. p. jackson

xi. Stretched Limits

chapter eleven
❛ stretched limits ❜

━━━━━ TO NO ONE'S surprise, it was Annabeth's idea. She loaded the other questers into the back of a Vegas taxi (as if they actually had money), telling the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

        The cabbie chewed his cigar, sizing up the four questers. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay upfront."

        Annabeth shifted in her seat, starting to pull out her green LotusCash card. "You accept casino debit cards?" she asked.

        He shrugged. "Some of 'em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe 'em through, first."

        She leaned forward, holding the green card between her pointer and middle fingers. "Here."

        However, the man only looked at it skeptically. Josephine didn't blame him — the card looked like one that would come with a playset for kids to learn how money transactions work.

        The blonde noticed his skepticism. "Swipe it," she invited him, nodding at the machine up front.

        Wordlessly, he passed the cigar from his right to his left, snatching the card out of Annabeth's fingers. He reached forward, swiping the LotusCash in the machine — the meter machine started rattling on the dashboard. The lights flashed, and 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 through his rearview mirror, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles — uh — Your Highness?"

        Annabeth sat up a little straighter. Josephine could tell she liked the Your Highness title. "The Santa Monica pier. Get us there fast — and you can keep the change."

        Maybe she shouldn't have told him that — the "you can keep the change" part. 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; however, the more he spoke, the more he seemed to be forgetting. 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 — it was the same voice from the dream with my dad and Zeus on the beach shore. The dream where they were fighting, you know? 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 annoyed and bothered.

        "The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested, her eyebrows knitted together. "Or the Rich One? Both are nicknames for Hades."

        "Maybe ..." Percy agreed, however, he didn't sound sure of what she was suggesting.

        "That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover spoke up, looking away from the taxi's window and back to the others. "That's the way it's usually described."

        The son of Poseidon shook his head. "Something's wrong," he insisted, making Josephine frown. Back at Camp, he had been so sure that Hades was the god who had orchestrated the thievery; now, he was taking that all back. "The throne room wasn't the main part of the dream. And that voice from the pit ... I dunno. 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 — unfortunately, 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 angry and threatening someone's life. 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 along with it).