They let the animals go at dawn.
The truck stopped at a weigh station on the edge of Las Vegas, and the driver climbed down to argue with somebody about paperwork. Percy pushed the back doors open into the pale desert morning. The zebra went first, skittish and then suddenly joyful, kicking up red dust as it bolted for the scrub. The antelope went after it in a bounding, leaping river of brown and white. The lion went last. It paused at the edge of the truck bed and looked back at Grover for a long moment, gold eyes calm. Then it padded off into the desert like it owned it.
Grover watched them go with tears running down his face into his scraggly goatee.
"Thank you," he whispered. "Percy. Thank you."
"Thank Ezra," Percy said. "He's the one who kept the driver talking."
Ezra, who had absolutely not been told he was keeping the driver talking until about thirty seconds ago and had been forced to improvise a story about a lost dog named Captain Biscuits, gave Percy a flat look.
"You owe me," he said.
"I know."
"Like, a lot."
"I know."
[SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS]
[+3,000 EXP]
[FAITH: Grover Underwood's faith in the Host has deepened. +40 Faith.]
[Note: The wild remembers.]
They walked into Las Vegas as the sun came up over the mountains, four filthy kids and a wolf cub, with a god's shield wrapped in a moving blanket on Percy's back.
The Lotus Hotel and Casino sat right in the middle of the Strip, huge and gleaming, with a giant neon flower out front that opened and closed its petals in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Pink. Gold. Pink. Gold.
Percy stopped on the sidewalk across the street and stared at it.
[Mist-Sight active.]
[Warning: Location saturated with enchantment. Type: Lotos-derived. Effect: Temporal dislocation, euphoric compulsion, memory erosion.]
[Hecate's Blessing: The Host's mind is warded against enchantments of forgetting.]
[Great Sage will maintain an external clock for the duration of the Host's stay.]
Thanks, Percy thought.
[Current real time: 7:42 AM, June 18. Days until solstice deadline: 3.]
"We are not going in there," Annabeth said, reading his face. "Percy. We have three days. We need to get to Los Angeles."
"We need money for Charon," Percy said. "We need a ride to LA. We need showers, and food, and about twelve hours of sleep, because I'm going to fall over in the Underworld if I don't get some."
[THREAD-WORN (Compounded): Remaining: 21 hours.]
"And that place," he said, pointing, "will give us all of that for free."
"Nothing," Annabeth said, "is ever free."
"I know," Percy said. "That's why I'm going to cheat."
He turned to the three of them. Ezra, Annabeth, Grover. Tired and dirty and sunburnt and so, so young.
"Listen to me," he said. "That hotel is a trap. It's enchanted. They're going to offer you food. Flowers, little cookies shaped like flowers. Don't eat them. Don't drink anything that smells sweet. If you start to feel like you've only been there an hour and everything is perfect and there's no reason to ever leave, that's the magic. That's when you find me."
Grover's nose was twitching. "I can smell it from here," he whispered. "It smells like... like every good day I ever had."
"Yeah," Percy said. "That's the problem."
He knew it wouldn't be enough. In his first life, they'd been warned too, sort of, and it hadn't mattered. The Lotus wasn't something you could resist with willpower. It got in through the nose and the mouth and the skin, through the music and the lights. It didn't feel like being enchanted. It felt like being happy.
But he'd be there this time. And he'd be awake.
Great Sage. Three hours. Wake me up if I lose track. Whatever happens.
[Understood. Great Sage will remain here.]
The lobby was enormous.
It was the size of a stadium, all gold and crystal and soft carpet, and it was loud: bells ringing, slot machines singing, music thumping from somewhere, and over all of it the laughter of hundreds of people having the best time of their lives. There was a water slide that went around the whole second floor. There was a rock-climbing wall. There was a bungee jump that went from the ceiling to just above a pool full of glowing fish. There were video games, hundreds of them, all the newest ones and some Percy had never seen. They were the games from his first life's future, from years and years ahead, sitting there in neat rows like they'd always been there.
And the smell. Sweet and warm and golden, like cinnamon rolls and summer and the first day of vacation.
Grover's eyes went glassy almost immediately.
A bellhop came gliding toward them, a smiling young man in a white-and-gold uniform with eyes that never blinked quite often enough.
"Welcome to the Lotus Hotel and Casino," he said warmly. "We've been expecting you." He held out a little silver tray. On it were four plastic cards, green and gold, embossed with the outline of a flower. "Your keys. And your LotusCash cards. Everything in the hotel is complimentary, of course. Everything. Food, games, shopping. There's no limit on the cards. They never run out." His smile widened. "Please. Enjoy yourselves. Stay as long as you like."
Annabeth took hers like a girl in a dream. So did Grover. Ezra hesitated a second longer, frowning faintly, like something was bothering him and he couldn't remember what. Then he took his too.
Percy took his last. He looked at it. Then he looked past the bellhop, at the concierge desk, a long marble counter at the far end of the lobby. Behind it, a smiling woman was handing out cards just like it to a family of tourists with glazed eyes. Behind her was a drawer, half-open.
The drawer was full of them.
[ITEM IDENTIFIED: LOTUSCASH CARD]
[A credit instrument enchanted by the Lotus-eaters. Unlimited balance. Functions in the mortal world as a standard bank card. Accepted at any institution touched by the Mist.]
[Note: The card's enchantment is tied to the Lotus. Its compulsion effect does not travel with it.]
Unlimited, Percy thought.
He thought about Plum Island. About Gardiners Island. About a quest description burned into the back of his mind:
[LEGENDARY QUEST: CITY OF THE UNCLAIMED]
[Build a home for every forgotten child of Olympus. Duration: 5 years.]
And under it, newer, the one that had appeared the day the System showed him his friends' faces:
[LINKED QUEST: THOSE WHO STOOD BESIDE YOU]
[Rachel Elizabeth Dare, Nancy Bobofit, and Matt Sloan have chosen to follow you into the world of gods and monsters. Give them a path.]
Islands cost money. Lawyers cost money. Hiding a whole city from the Mist and the government and the gods cost money. More money than three fourteen-year-olds in Manhattan had any way of getting.
Unless.
He slipped his card into his pocket and smiled at the bellhop.
"Thanks," he said. "This is great. Where's the bathroom?"
It was the easiest thing he'd ever stolen.
That was what made him nervous about it, actually. The Lotus didn't guard its cards because nobody inside it ever wanted anything it didn't already give them for free. Nobody here ever thought about the outside world long enough to want to take something there. The concierge woman was smiling at a man who'd asked for directions to the pool three times in a row. When Percy leaned on the end of the counter and let a little of his shadow slip off the edge of the marble, down the side of the desk, and into the half-open drawer, she didn't even blink.
[Shadow Hand.]
The shadow came back up the desk with three cards in it. Then, after a moment of thought, two more.
Percy palmed them, tucked them into his jacket next to Lupe, and walked away whistling.
[Item acquired: LotusCash Card x5.]
[AGI +1.]
[Great Sage notes: The Host has now committed blackmail and theft within a 24-hour period.]
It's for a good cause.
[Great Sage did not say it wasn't.]
Percy grinned.
And then, because Great Sage was keeping the clock and he had three hours, he did something he hadn't done in a very, very long time.
He had fun.
He didn't mean to, exactly. He went to check on the others, and found Grover in the arcade playing a racing game, and Grover said Percy, Percy, play with me, with a big lotus-glazed grin. And Percy thought, Why not. Just one. And sat down.
He lost. Then he won. Then he lost again, and Grover laughed so hard he fell off his seat, and Percy laughed too. It was real laughter, the kind that came up from his stomach and surprised him. Not because of the Lotus. The Lotus slid off him like rain off glass. Hecate's blessing hummed in his head like a cool hand on a fever. He was laughing because his best friend was laughing. Because he'd been carrying the weight of two lives and a dying world for weeks, and for one minute it was just a video game and a satyr and a really stupid crash on turn four.
He went down the water slide. Twice. He did the bungee jump and screamed the whole way down, and Lupe, zipped into his jacket, howled along with him like it was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
He found Annabeth in the gift shop, of all places, looking at an enormous book of architecture with Lotus-glossed eyes, turning the pages slowly, and he sat down next to her and looked at it with her. She showed him the Parthenon, and the Pantheon, and a building in Spain that looked like it was melting.
"I'm going to build things like this someday," she said dreamily. "Better than this. Things that last."
"I know you are," Percy said. "You're going to rebuild Olympus."
She looked at him with her head tilted, smiling in the Lotus way, soft and vague. "That's silly."
"Yeah," Percy said. "Probably."
He found Ezra at the blackjack table, which shouldn't have been allowed for kids, but the Lotus didn't care. Ezra was winning, actually winning, stacks of gold chips piled in front of him. When Percy sat down next to him, Ezra looked over with a big, easy, glazed smile.
"Hey, man," he said. "Isn't this awesome? I've been here, like, an hour. Best hour of my life."
[Real time elapsed: 2 hours, 14 minutes.]
"Yeah," Percy said. "It's pretty awesome."
And he meant it. That was the strange part. He sat next to Ezra and played three hands of blackjack and lost all three. Ezra laughed at him and slid him some of his chips, because the Lotus made people generous. For one minute Percy forgot about the bolt, and Ares, and the voice in the Pit, and the Fates, and the tower humming quietly at the back of his mind. He was just a kid in a casino, losing at cards next to a boy who was slowly becoming his friend.
This is what they were supposed to have, he thought. All of them. Not the Lotus. But this. Somewhere safe. Somewhere they could just be kids for a while.
That's what the city's for.
He pushed back from the table.
"I'll be right back," he told Ezra.
Ezra waved vaguely without looking up. "Sure, man."
There was a little business center on the third floor, tucked between a sushi bar and a laser tag arena. Nobody ever used it. It had a fax machine and three ancient computers and a rack of hotel stationery: thick cream paper with a gold lotus at the top.
Percy sat down at the desk with four of the stolen cards laid out in front of him and a hotel pen in his hand, and stared at the blank paper for a long time.
He'd never been good at letters. He'd never been good at any kind of writing. The words swam on the page and switched places, and his hand cramped, and his thoughts came faster than the pen could go. And right now his brain was still stuffed with Thread-Worn cotton.
Great Sage. Can you help?
[Great Sage cannot write on the Host's behalf. Great Sage can hold the Host's thoughts in order while he writes.]
It was enough. He started.
Rachel,
If you're reading this, a guy in a delivery uniform with winged sneakers just handed you an envelope. Don't freak out. He's a god. Be polite to him and don't sign anything else he gives you.
I'm in Vegas. I'm okay. Kind of. The quest is going fine. Kind of. I'll tell you everything when I'm home, I promise.
There's a card in this envelope. It's a credit card. It doesn't have a limit. It never runs out. I'm serious. I took it from a magic casino and I'm not sorry.
Remember Gardiners Island? Your dad's been trying to buy it for years. I need you to help him do it. Not for him. For us. And there's another one, Plum Island, out past Orient Point. The government owns it. There's a lab on it. That one's going to be harder.
I need you and Nancy and Matt to start a company. A real one. With lawyers and an office and papers and everything. Your dad will know how. Tell him you want to learn the business. Tell him it's a school project. Tell him whatever you have to. He'll help you if you ask him. He always does, he just doesn't know how to say it.
You see things, Rach. You always did. You know what this is for. A place for kids like me. Kids nobody claimed. Kids with nowhere to go.
Don't let him take over. It has to be ours.
Tell my mom I'm eating vegetables.
Percy
Nancy,
You're in charge.
Rachel has the vision and Matt has the money stuff and I'm stuck in the middle of the country with a goat and a shield. Somebody has to make sure everybody actually does what they said they'd do. That's you. It's always been you.
There's a card in here. Don't buy a jet ski. I know you want to buy a jet ski.
Okay, buy one jet ski. ONE.
Rachel's going to start a company with her dad's help. I need you to keep the books. Every dollar. Where it goes, what it buys, who we paid. Write it all down. If anybody ever asks where the money came from, we need to have answers that sound normal. You're the only one of us who's good at sounding normal when you're lying. I mean that as a compliment.
And keep an eye on your mom. Tell her I said she's doing great. She is.
I'll be home soon. Save me a seat on the couch.
Percy
Matt,
Your dad has a guy. You told me once. The lawyer who does the real estate stuff, the one who wears the bow ties, the one your dad says could buy the moon if NASA would sell it.
I need the bow tie guy.
There's a card in this envelope. Use it to hire him. Use it to hire anyone Rachel's dad says we need. Lawyers, accountants, surveyors, people who know how the government sells land. Plum Island is going to take years. That's okay. We have five.
You were always the smartest one of us about this stuff, even when you were being a jerk about it. You're not a jerk anymore. I want you to know I noticed.
Study the islands. Both of them. Every map, every survey, every rule about who can build what. When I get home I want to know more about them than anybody alive.
Thanks for picking me.
Percy
He read them over three times. Then he folded each one around a LotusCash card, sealed them in three thick cream envelopes, and wrote the names on the front in his worst, most careful handwriting.
That left one card in front of him. His own, plus the fifth he'd stolen. He sat and looked at those for a while. Then he put both in his inventory.
[Stored: LotusCash Card x2.]
Now he just needed a mailman.
You couldn't exactly drop an envelope full of magic credit cards in a mailbox.
So Percy went up to the roof.
There was a little rooftop garden up there, full of pink lotus flowers in stone planters, with the whole Strip spread out underneath it shimmering in the desert heat. He found a corner out of sight of the staff, knelt down, and took out the only offering he could think of. It was a single golden drachma, the last one from Chiron's quest money. He set it on the edge of a planter.
"Lord Hermes," he said quietly. "God of travelers. God of messengers. God of..." He coughed. "Thieves. I have three letters. They need to get to Manhattan. Today, if you can. I don't have much to pay you with. But I'd be really grateful."
Nothing happened.
He waited.
Still nothing.
Then, from behind him, somebody said, "You know, most people pray for me to come. They don't usually pray for me to deliver."
Percy turned around.
There was a man standing in the middle of the rooftop garden who hadn't been there five seconds ago. He was wearing a blue delivery uniform and a cap, and he was holding a clipboard. He had a salt-and-pepper beard and a friendly, tired face and the quick, clever eyes of a man who'd spent a few thousand years noticing things. His sneakers had tiny white wings fluttering at the ankles.
And in his other hand, wrapped around his clipboard pen, was a staff. Short, silver, with two live snakes twined around it, arguing quietly with each other.
"Is that him?" hissed one snake. "He's shorter than I thought."
"Everybody's shorter than you thought, George."
"Do you think he brought a rat?"
"Quiet, both of you," said Hermes.
Percy stood up slowly.
"Lord Hermes," he said.
"Percy Jackson." The god looked him up and down. "Son of Zeus. Kind of. It's complicated." He smiled faintly at Percy's expression. "Oh, I hear everything. Messages are my business. Do you have any idea how many people have been talking about you on Olympus this week? Swamp gods. Furies. A Gorgon walked away from her own garden." He tapped his clipboard thoughtfully. "And the god of war came back from Denver in a very strange mood."
Percy didn't say anything.
Hermes's eyes dropped to the envelopes in his hands. Then, very deliberately, to Percy's jacket pocket, where the other stolen cards had been.
"You robbed the Lotus," he said.
"...Yes, sir."
"With a shadow."
"Yes, sir."
"In broad daylight. In front of the concierge."
"She wasn't really looking."
Hermes stared at him. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face. It was a real one, sudden and delighted, the grin of a craftsman watching someone else do his trade well.
"Do you know," he said, "how long I've been waiting for somebody to do that? Three thousand years those lotus-eaters have been sitting on that hoard, and nobody's ever had the nerve." He held out his hand. "Give me those."
Percy handed over the envelopes.
Hermes flipped through them. Read the names. Paused on Rachel's for a second, with a faint, odd expression. He tucked them all into a bag at his hip that hadn't been there a moment ago.
"Manhattan," he said. "Today. Signed for in person. I'll take them myself."
"Thank you," Percy said, and meant it. "What do I owe you?"
Hermes looked at the golden drachma on the planter. Then he looked at Percy, and the grin faded into something quieter. Something sadder, almost.
"You've got a camper in my cabin," he said. "Luke."
Percy went very still.
"He doesn't talk to me," Hermes said. "He hasn't for a long time. He's angry. He has every right to be." He was looking out over the Strip now, not at Percy. "But I hear things. Messages are my business. And I've been hearing that the son of Zeus sat down on a bench at camp and talked to him. More than once. And that Luke listened."
"He's..." Percy swallowed. "He's a good guy, Lord Hermes. He's just hurting."
"I know." Hermes was quiet for a moment. "That's my fee. Keep talking to him. Whatever happens. Even if he stops listening." He looked back at Percy. "Especially then."
Percy nodded slowly.
"I will," he said. "I promise."
[DIVINE PACT: HERMES, GOD OF MESSENGERS AND THIEVES]
[Terms: The Host will not abandon Luke Castellan. In exchange: Hermes Express delivery is available to the Host at will. Summon: Leave a drachma and speak a name.]
[DIVINE FAVOR: Hermes regards the Host with interest.]
"Good." Hermes tipped his cap. "Oh, and Percy?"
"Yeah?"
"Rachel Elizabeth Dare." The god's quick eyes were thoughtful. "Strange girl. Interesting girl. Her father's been trying to buy that island off the Gardiners for eleven years." He smiled faintly. "I'd tell her to start with the third cousin in Connecticut. The one who hates the other two."
And before Percy could say anything, there was a flash of light and a gust of wind and the smell of road dust, and the rooftop was empty.
On the edge of the planter, the golden drachma was gone. In its place was a single small white feather.
Percy picked it up and put it in his pocket. And for a while he just stood there on the roof of the Lotus Hotel, looking out at the city, with the wind tugging his static-charged hair and a wolf cub warm against his chest.
It's started, he thought. The city. It's really started.
[LINKED QUEST UPDATED: THOSE WHO STOOD BESIDE YOU]
[Stage 1: A Path Given. ✓]
[LEGENDARY QUEST UPDATED: CITY OF THE UNCLAIMED]
[Stage 1: Foundations (0/2 islands acquired). In progress.]
[Real time elapsed: 2 hours, 51 minutes.]
[Great Sage reminds the Host: There were three hours.]
I know. I'm going.
He went back down the stairs, into the gold and the noise and the sweet, endless smell of forgetting, to round up his friends.
He was halfway across the second-floor walkway, scanning the arcade for Grover's cap, when he heard it.
A voice. A boy's voice, young and bright and excited, coming from a table in the corner where a cluster of kids were playing some kind of card game. Percy knew that voice. He would have known it anywhere, in any life, in any world.
"No, no, no, you can't attack with that one. Hades has five thousand defense points. Bianca. You never read the rules."
Percy stopped walking.
The Lotus-light shimmered around him, gold and pink, and somewhere a slot machine paid out in a waterfall of bells.
He turned around.