It was Annabeth's idea.
She loaded us into the back of a Vegas taxi as if we
actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."
T h e 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," 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 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."
[266]
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, we had plenty of time to talk. I told Annabeth and Grover about my latest dream, but the details got sketch- ier the more I tried to remember them. The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited my memory. I couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like, though I was sure it was somebody I knew. T h e 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 ..." I said, though neither sounded quite right.
"That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said. "That's the way it's usually described."
I shook my 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?" I 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
[267]
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? T h e guy failed. T h a t would explain what the Furies were searching for when they came after us on the bus. Maybe they thought we had retrieved the bolt."
I wasn't sure what was wrong with her. She looked pale.
"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt," I said, "why would I be traveling to the Underworld?"
"To threaten Hades," Grover suggested. "To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back."
I whistled. "You have evil thoughts for a goat."
"Why, thank you."
"But the thing in the pit said it was waiting for two
items," I said. "If the master bolt is one, what's the other?" Grover shook his head, clearly mystified.
Annabeth was looking at me as if she knew my next
question, and was silently willing me not to ask it.
"You have an idea what might be in that pit, don't you?"
I asked her. "I mean, if it isn't Hades?"
"Percy . . . let's not talk about it. Because if it isn't
Hades . . . No. It has to be Hades."
Wasteland rolled by. We passed a sign that said CALI-
FORNIA STATE LINE, 12 MILES.
I got the feeling I was missing one simple, critical piece
of information. It was like when I stared at a common word I should know, but I couldn't make sense of it because one or two letters were floating around. The more I thought about my quest, the more I was sure that confronting Hades
[268]
wasn't the real answer. There was something else going on, something even more dangerous.
The problem was: we were hurtling toward the Underworld at ninety-five miles an hour, betting that Hades had the master bolt. If we got there and found out we were wrong, we wouldn't have time to correct ourselves. T h e sol- stice deadline would pass and war would begin.
"The answer is in the Underworld," Annabeth assured me. "You saw spirits of the dead, Percy. There's only one place that could be. We're doing the right thing."
She tried to boost our morale by suggesting clever strategies for getting into the Land of the Dead, but my heart wasn't in it. There were just too many unknown fac- tors. It was like cramming for a test without knowing the subject. And believe me, I'd done that enough times.
The cab sped west. Every gust of wind through Death Valley sounded like a spirit of the dead. Every time the brakes hissed on an eighteen-wheeler, it reminded me of Echidna's reptilian voice.
At sunset, the taxi dropped us at the beach in Santa Monica. It looked exactly the way L.A. beaches do in the movies, only it smelled worse. There were carnival rides lining the Pier, palm trees lining the sidewalks, homeless guys sleeping in the sand dunes, and surfer dudes waiting for the perfect wave.
Grover, Annabeth, and I walked down to the edge of the surf.
"What now?" Annabeth asked.
[269]
