𝗚𝗢𝗟𝗗𝗜𝗘! 𝙥. 𝙟𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙨𝙤𝙣 ¹

Lydia Does NOT Like L.A.

CHAPTER TWELVE: LYDIA

Annabeth stuffed them into the back of a Vegas taxi as if they actually had any money, 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."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card. He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," Annabeth invited.

He did.

His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.

Lydia's eyes bulged out of their sockets like she was on an episode of Tom and Jerry.

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. She clearly liked the "Your Highness" thing. Lydia realized she probably wouldn't be against it, either. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

The cab zipped through the desert at lightning speed, it put race cars to shame. Maybe Annabeth shouldn't have told him that. Lydia imagined what they could do with that card, all the possibilities...She'd have the Stolls running around in circles for her with that kind of money.

Lydia was snapped out of her daydream when Percy started telling them about his latest dream, but he was blanking the more he tried to remember the details. The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited their memories, because Lydia couldn't remember the last thing they did before the casino.

Percy looked constipated trying to recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like. He said 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, not sounding convinced.

"That throne room sounds like Hades'," 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. Lydia hated when that happened. She started to get a bad feeling. Her stomach fluttered from the nerves. The way Annabeth was reacting meant that they were in deep doo-doo.

"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—"

Lydia tried to feel reassured but clearly something was amiss and she cursed herself for not being smart enough to figure it out. It was becoming clear that confronting Hades wasn't the real answer. There was something else going on, something even more dangerous.