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CHAPTER ELEVEN ( crusty beds )
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IT WAS ANNABETH'S idea to load us into the back of a Vegas taxi as if we actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."
The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized us 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," she 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 us, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles. . . uh, Your Highness?"
"The Santa Monica pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. I could tell she liked the 'Your Highness' thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."
She shouldn't have told him that. The cab's speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert. On the road, we had plenty of time to talk, though we had to be quiet enough so the cab driver couldn't hear us.
Percy saw this as an opportunity to tell us about his latest dream, though I could tell he was having a hard time remembering it. He couldn't recall what the one of the voices in his dream sounded like, though he was determined in the idea that it was someone he knew. He said the servant in his dream had called the voice in the pit something other than 'my lord'... some special name or title. As he kept retelling it, I couldn't help but think that the voice he described in the pit sounded similar to the one in my own dream days ago. I wasn't completely sure, though, so I didn't want to add more pressure just to say a stupid theory in my head.
"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."
