A DemiWitch At Camp Half-Blood (Completed)

Water bed to die for

It was Annabeth's idea.

She loaded them 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 all 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.

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. "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 ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert.

On the road, Percy, Annabeth, Grover and Erin had plenty of time to talk. Percy told Annabeth, Erin and Grover about his latest dream, but the details got sketch-ier the more he tried to remember them. "The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."

"Maybe ..." Percy said, though neither sounded quite right.

"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," she said. "But if he stole Zeus's sym-bol 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."

"But if we had already retrieved the bolt," Erin said, "why would we be traveling to the Underworld?"

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

Percy whistled. "You have evil thoughts for a goat."

"Why, thank you."

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

Grover shook his head, clearly mystified.

Annabeth was looking at Erin as if she knew her next question, and was silently willing her not to ask it.

"You have an idea what might be in that pit, don't you?" Erin asked her. "I mean, if it isn't Hades?"

"Erin ... let's not talk about it. Because if it isn't Hades ... No. It has to be Hades."