𝙎𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙨 𝘿𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙈𝙚𝙚𝙩 𝙗𝙮 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 - 𝙋. 𝙅𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙨𝙤𝙣

do NOT go waterbed shopping

"I like shiny things but
I'd marry you with paper rings"

Annabeth loaded the three 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 them up. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Novalie asked.

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

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

"Swipe it," Novalie 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 them, his eyes wide.

"Where to in Los Angeles... uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica pier." Novalie sat up a little straighter.

Percy could tell she liked the 'Your Highness' thing.

"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.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

On the road, they had plenty of time to talk. Percy told Annabeth, Novalie, and Grover about his latest dream, but Percy seemeed to have forgotten some parts.

"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."

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.

"What?" Percy 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?"

"I – I don't know," Annabeth 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."

Annabeth looked pale, almost as pale as Novalie, which worried her.

"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt," Percy said, "why would I be traveling to the Underworld?"

"To threaten Hades," Grover suggested. "To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back."

Novalie turned to Grover "You have evil thoughts for a goat."

"Why, thank you."

"But the thing in the pit said it was waiting for two items," Percy said. "If the master bolt is one, what's the other?"