DOA Recording Studios was a black marble building on a busy street in West Hollywood. It had tinted glass doors and gold letters over the entrance, and a line of people outside it who didn't seem to notice that none of them cast a shadow on the sidewalk.
"They're dead," Grover whispered. He was pressed so close to Percy's side that his horns were poking Percy in the arm. "They're all dead. Percy, they're all dead."
"I know, G-man."
"They're just standing there. In line."
"It's L.A.," Ezra muttered. "Everybody stands in line."
Nobody laughed. But Grover stopped shaking quite so hard.
Percy looked at the building through the thick fog in his head. It was bad this morning. Worse than it had ever been. The Severe Thread-Worn sat on his thoughts like a heavy wet blanket, and every idea had to push its way out from under it. Twice on the walk over he'd forgotten what street they were looking for. Once he'd forgotten Annabeth's name for a full three seconds, and covered it with a cough.
[THREAD-WORN (Severe): INT and WIS reduced by 30%. Remaining: 44 hours.]
It's fine, he told himself. I've been here before. I know the way. I don't have to think. I just have to remember.
They pushed through the glass doors.
The lobby was all black marble and soft muzak and dying potted plants. Behind a long front desk sat a tall, thin man in a beautiful Italian silk suit, reading a magazine. His skin was so dark it was almost blue-black. His hair was bleached white and cropped close. He wore tinted sunglasses indoors. He didn't look up.
"Charon," Percy said.
The man turned a page of his magazine. "We're closed for new arrivals," he said, in a smooth, faintly accented voice. "Come back when you're dead."
"We need to cross," Percy said. "Four of us."
Now Charon looked up. He took off his sunglasses. Where his eyes should have been were two empty sockets, and in each one, far back in the dark, a tiny light burned like a candle at the bottom of a well.
"Living," he said. "Four living children. Want to cross the Styx. To see my lord." His lip curled. "Do you know what the penalty is for wasting my time, little mortals?"
"We can pay," Percy said.
"Can you." Charon's skeletal fingers drummed on the desk. "The fare is a drachma. Each. In gold. And for the living, to break the rules..." He smiled thinly. "Much more."
Percy didn't have any drachmas. He'd given his last one to Hermes on a rooftop in Vegas.
But he had something else.
He reached into his inventory, and pulled out a flat green-and-gold card with a flower on it, and laid it on the black marble desk.
"How long has it been," he said, "since Hades gave you a raise?"
Charon stared at the card. He went very still.
"That," he said slowly, "is a LotusCash card."
"No limit," Percy said. "Never runs out. Works anywhere the Mist touches." He pushed it across the desk with one finger. "Buy all the silk suits you want. Italian. Custom. A new one every day for the next three thousand years."
The ferryman of the dead picked up the card. He turned it over in his long fingers. He held it up to the light. And slowly, very slowly, an expression spread across his face that Percy had never seen on it in his first life.
Pure, uncomplicated joy.
"Armani," Charon whispered. "Zegna. Brioni." He looked up at Percy with his burning candle eyes. "Do you know they make a suit in vicuña wool? Do you know how long I have wanted one?"
"I'm guessing a while," Percy said.
Charon tucked the card into his breast pocket and patted it, very gently. Then he stood up, and buttoned his jacket, and picked up a ring of black iron keys from the desk.
"Come along, children," he said, in an entirely different voice. "Mind the step. Keep your hands inside the boat. And if anyone asks, you snuck aboard. I never saw you." He glanced at Percy as he passed, and the candle-flames in his eyes flickered with something almost like warmth. "And you, young man. If you ever need a ride again... you just ask for me."
[Ally gained: Charon, Ferryman of the Dead.]
[Note: Passage across the Styx is now available to the Host and his companions, once, without fare.]
The elevator went down a very long way.
When the doors opened, the lobby was gone. They were standing on a dock of black stone at the edge of a wide, dark river. The air was cold and damp and smelled like old smoke. Mist drifted over the water. A long boat waited at the dock. And as Charon stepped onto it, his beautiful Italian suit flickered and faded, and for a moment he was something else: a tall, cloaked figure, all bones and darkness, with a long pole in his hand.
The River Styx was full of things.
Percy remembered this. He'd seen it before, in his first life, at twelve. But he'd forgotten how bad it was. The water was black and oily and cold, and floating in it were broken things. Dolls. Diplomas. Wilted flowers. Wedding rings. Report cards. Love letters, with the ink running. Everything that people had ever dreamed about and lost and thrown away, drifting in the dark water of the river.
Annabeth sat very straight in the bottom of the boat and stared at a floating graduation cap, and didn't say anything. Grover hid his face in his hands. Ezra watched the water go by with his jaw tight.
Percy didn't look at the water.
He was looking down. Past the river. Past the dark. Down to where the earth went on, and on, and on, into the black.
He could feel it.
It was far away, still. Miles down. But it was there, like a cold spot at the base of his spine. Like a sound just too low to hear.
Tartarus.
He'd spent years there, in his first life. After the trial, after the gods threw him in. Years of burning air and black rivers and monsters that never stopped coming. Years of it, until he'd stopped being angry, and stopped being afraid, and finally, somewhere in the dark, found a kind of peace.
He'd thought he was done with it.
His hands were shaking. He put them in his pockets.
"Percy?"
Ezra was looking at him. Watching him, with a strange expression.
"You okay, man? You look like you're gonna puke."
"I'm fine," Percy said.
Ezra looked at him for a long moment.
"You've been here before," he said quietly. "Haven't you. Not here. Somewhere... worse."
Percy didn't answer. That was answer enough.
Ezra didn't push it. He just shifted over in the bottom of the boat until his shoulder was touching Percy's. Not saying anything. Just there.
It was such a small thing. Percy didn't know why it made his eyes sting.
Cerberus was asleep when they got there.
That was lucky. Cerberus asleep was the size of a house. Three enormous black heads lay on enormous black paws, and each one snored with a sound like an avalanche. Its breath stirred the long lines of dead people shuffling past it toward the gates of the Underworld. None of them dared look at it.
"How do we get past that?" Ezra hissed.
Percy opened his jacket.
Lupe poked her head out. She'd been asleep since the motel. She yawned enormously, showing all her tiny white teeth, and blinked her gold eyes. Then she looked at the gigantic sleeping three-headed dog in front of her.
And she wagged her tail.
Before Percy could stop her, she'd wriggled out of his jacket, dropped to the black sand, and gone trotting straight toward Cerberus with her tail up like a flag.
"Percy!" Annabeth hissed.
"It's okay," Percy said, which he was mostly sure of.
Lupe trotted right up to the nearest of the three huge heads. She sniffed its nose, which was about four times her size. And then she yipped, once, a high, cheerful puppy yip, right in its face.
Cerberus opened one eye.
Then another. Then all six.
The whole cavern held its breath.
The three heads of the hound of hell looked down at the tiny gray wolf cub sitting in front of them, wagging her tail. One of the heads snuffled at her. Lupe licked its nose. The head jerked back, startled. The second head leaned in to sniff her too. Lupe licked that one too. The third head made a sound. It was deep and rumbling, and it took Percy a second to recognize it.
It was a whine. A happy one.
Then Cerberus rolled over on its back, all three heads lolling, enormous paws in the air. And Lupe climbed up onto its chest and started chewing on one of its ears.
Grover made a faint noise. "Is it... is it playing with her?"
"Cerberus is a puppy," Percy said. "Kind of. Nobody ever plays with him. Everybody's too scared." He watched the hound of hell gently batting a wolf cub around with one paw the size of a car. "He's just lonely."
Annabeth was staring at him again.
"How," she said, "do you know that?"
Percy shrugged. Because I gave him a red rubber ball, in another life, and he loved it more than anything.
They walked past the hound of hell while it played, and went through the gates of the Underworld. Behind them, Lupe's happy yips echoed off the cavern walls. Percy left her there. She'd find him. She always did.
They crossed the Fields of Asphodel in the gray half-light. Endless black grass, and endless crowds of shades drifting through it like smoke, murmuring, forgetting. They skirted the edge of the Fields of Punishment, where the screaming was. Grover kept his eyes shut and held onto the back of Percy's jacket. Far away across the fields they saw the green light of Elysium, glowing over its walls, and heard faint music, and laughter. Ezra stared at it with a strange, hungry look.
And then they came to the edge of the pit.
It wasn't on the path. Percy hadn't meant to come this way. But the ground under their feet had been sloping, slowly, for the last half hour. The others hadn't noticed. And now, suddenly, the black grass ended, and there was nothing in front of them but dark.
An enormous chasm, so wide Percy couldn't see the other side. So deep there was no bottom. Just black, going down forever. And from far below, so faint it might have been his imagination, came a sound like breathing.
The cold at the base of his spine became a blizzard.
[WARNING: PROXIMITY TO TARTARUS.]
[The Host's thread is resonating with the Pit.]
[Great Sage is shielding the Host's mind.]
"What is that?" Annabeth whispered. She'd gone white.
"Back up," Percy said. His voice came out strange. "Everybody. Back up. Slowly."
They backed up.
And something in the dark pulled.
It wasn't pulling at them. It was pulling at Percy's back. At the shield. The Shield of Ares, wrapped in its moving blanket and strapped across his shoulders, suddenly yanked backward toward the pit. It was like a giant hand had grabbed it. Percy staggered. His feet slid toward the edge.
"Percy!"
Ezra grabbed his arm. Annabeth grabbed the other. Grover grabbed his belt and dug his hooves into the black dirt and bleated with effort. And for a long, terrible second, the four of them hung there at the edge of the abyss, being dragged by the shield toward the dark.
And from the pit, a voice spoke.
It was cold and slow and old. Older than the gods. It came up out of the dark like frost creeping up a window, and it went straight into Percy's head. It sounded like it was smiling.
Little hero, it said. Bring it to me. Bring me what you carry.
Percy knew that voice. He'd heard it in his first life, from the mouth of a boy he'd called a friend. He'd heard it at the end of the world.
Kronos.
You carry my prize on your back, the Titan whispered. Did you not know? The war god's little gift. Bring it down to me, boy, and I will give you anything. Your mother. Your old life. Everything you lost. A pause, and the voice changed. It got curious. Slow and thoughtful and terribly interested. ...You smell strange, little hero. You smell of my pit. As if you have been here before. How can that be?
[Warning: A primordial-tier will is examining the Host's thread.]
[Great Sage is reinforcing the weave.]
Percy closed his eyes.
And he reached out, very carefully, with the part of him that had spent years in that dark. The part of him that had walked its burning rivers and stared down its monsters and come out the other side, quieter and older and unafraid.
I have, he told the voice in the pit. And I left. And I'm never coming back. And neither are you.
Then he called the sky.
[LIGHTNING CALL!]
He didn't throw it at the pit. He threw it down at his own feet. A blast of lightning into the black dirt that knocked all four of them backward, away from the edge, in a tangle of arms and legs. The pull on the shield snapped like a cut rope.
They lay sprawled in the black grass, gasping.
From the pit, very faintly, came laughter. Slow and cold and delighted.
Then silence.
Nobody said anything for a long time.
Then Annabeth sat up. She looked at the shield on Percy's back. And she said, very quietly, "What did it mean? The war god's little gift?"
Percy was already unbuckling the straps.
He pulled the moving blanket off the Shield of Ares and laid it face-down on the black grass. The back of the shield was bronze, dark and battered, with leather straps and a padded grip. And in the center, behind the great domed boss, there was a seam. Percy had never noticed it. Nobody would. It was hidden under a faint red shimmer, like heat haze, that made his eyes slide off it every time he tried to look.
[Mist-Sight active.]
[Concealment detected. Type: Divine glamour (war-haze). Source: Ares.]
He put his fingers on the seam, and pushed.
The boss of the shield clicked, and swung open like a little door.
And inside, nestled in a hollow just big enough to hold it, was a cylinder of light.
It was about two feet long. It was made of something that wasn't metal and wasn't glass and wasn't anything, a solid core of crackling, blinding, blue-white energy, capped at both ends with celestial bronze. Even sitting still, it hummed. The air around it tasted like ozone and burnt sugar. Percy's hair stood straight up on his head. So did Annabeth's. Grover's fur bristled all over his legs.
The Master Bolt of Zeus.
It had been there the whole time. On his back. Since Denver.
"Oh," Percy said. "Oh, you jerk."
And despite everything, despite the pit and the fog and the voice in the dark, he started to laugh.
"Percy?" Grover said faintly. "Why are you laughing? Why is that funny?"
"Because he agreed so fast," Percy gasped. "Ares. When I told him I knew. When I said I'd keep my mouth shut if he let me keep the shield. He thought about it for like ten seconds and then he said fine, keep it, consider it a gift." He wiped his eyes. "Of course he did. He'd already hidden the bolt in it. He was always going to give us the shield. I blackmailed him into doing exactly what he already wanted."
Ezra stared at the bolt. "So if we'd walked into Hades's palace with that on your back..."
"Hades would've thought we stole it," Annabeth said slowly. Her face was pale. "And the Helm. And he'd have killed us. And then he'd have sent the bolt back to Zeus with our bodies, and Zeus would've thought Hades was behind it. And..."
"And everybody goes to war," Percy said. "Yeah. That was the plan. Ares's plan. And the thing in the pit's."
He stopped laughing.
He looked down at the Master Bolt, crackling softly in its hollow.
And somewhere deep in his inventory, something woke up.
[BLUEPRINT: LIGHTNING BOLT (Incomplete).]
[Final requirement: Touch and understand a true sky-weapon.]
[A true sky-weapon is within reach.]
Percy's hand moved before he'd really decided to move it.
He reached into the hollow of the shield, and closed his fingers around the Master Bolt of Zeus.
It was like grabbing the sun.
No. It was like grabbing the sky. The whole sky, all of it, every storm that had ever been and ever would be, every bolt of lightning that had ever split a tree or set a forest burning or lit up a dark night. It was all in there, compressed into two feet of blinding light. And when he touched it, it poured into him.
He didn't scream. He couldn't. There wasn't any air.
He saw things.
He saw the Cyclopes, deep under the earth in the dawn of the world, forging this weapon for a young god who'd just freed them from the pit. He saw the war against the Titans, the first one, the bolt flying like a falling star across a burning sky. He saw it strike Kronos and send him reeling. He saw Zeus, young and fierce and terrible, catch it out of the air, and laugh.
And under all of it, a pattern. A shape. The way the power folded in on itself, layer on layer, like a thread wound on a spool. The way it held. The way it was.
He understood it.
Not all of it. Not even most of it. He was a mortal kid with a fog in his head, and this was the weapon of the king of the gods. But he understood enough.
[REQUIREMENT MET: The Host has touched and understood a true sky-weapon.]
[BLUEPRINT COMPLETE: LIGHTNING BOLT.]
[Pattern recorded.]
[Forging requires a vessel capable of holding divine power.]
[Compatible vessel detected: PROTEUS, THE SHIFTING BLADE (Realm VI: Locked).]
[Fusion requires the vessel and the pattern to be joined under a surge of divine power.]
[Fusion pending.]
He let go.
He fell backward on the black grass and lay there with his whole body twitching and smoking faintly, and his hair standing straight up. Lightning was crawling over his skin in tiny blue sparks, and every nerve in his body was singing.
Three faces appeared above him, staring down.
"Are you insane?" Annabeth shrieked. "That's the Master Bolt! You don't just grab the Master Bolt! You could've been vaporized!"
"Yeah," Percy croaked. "I know."
"Then why—"
"Needed to," he said. "Tell you later. Someday. Promise."
Annabeth made a sound of pure frustration and sat back on her heels.
Ezra was looking at the bolt. Then he looked at Percy, smoking on the grass. Then he looked back toward the dark path that led on across the Fields, toward a black palace on a distant hill.
"So what do we do now?" he said. "We've got the bolt. We've got the pearls. We could just... go. Right now. Crush the pearls and go home. Take the bolt straight to Olympus."
"And the Helm?" Annabeth said.
Ezra's face twisted. "Hades thinks I stole it. He sent the Furies after me. He sent a hellhound."
"Which is why," Percy said, sitting up slowly, "we have to go see him."
They all stared at him.
"If we leave now," Percy said, "Hades still thinks Ezra stole his Helm. And he still has armies. And on the solstice, when Zeus gets his bolt back, Hades is still going to be down here, furious, with no Helm and nobody to blame but the son of Poseidon." He shook his head. "We have to tell him the truth. To his face. Or this doesn't end. It just turns into a different war."
"He'll kill us," Grover whispered.
"Maybe." Percy got to his feet. He closed the hollow of the shield over the Master Bolt, and wrapped it back in its blanket, and slung it over his shoulders. "But I've got something to tell him. Something he's going to want to hear more than he wants to kill us."
"What?" said Annabeth.
Percy looked across the black Fields, at the palace on the hill.
"That his kids are alive," he said.
The palace of Hades was black.
Black walls, black towers, black gates of bronze and bone that swung open by themselves as the four of them climbed the long hill. The gardens were full of jewels instead of flowers: rubies and diamonds and emeralds growing on silver stalks, glittering in the gray light. Skeleton soldiers in the rotted uniforms of a hundred different armies lined the path, and turned their empty eyes to follow them as they passed.
Grover was holding onto the back of Percy's jacket again. Annabeth had her knife out. Ezra had Riptide in his hand, still capped, but his knuckles were white around it.
Percy had nothing in his hands at all. Just a bronze ring on his finger, and a shield on his back, and a fog in his head so thick he had to count his steps to keep from forgetting where he was going.
Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three.
The throne room was enormous and dark and cold. The ceiling was lost in shadow. The floor was black stone, polished like a mirror, and at the far end, on a throne made of fused human bones, sat the Lord of the Dead.
He was tall and pale, with long black hair and dark eyes that burned with the same faint fire as Charon's. He wore black silk robes, and on the robes, faces moved. Faces of the dead, swirling and pressing against the fabric, mouths open in silent screams. He didn't look like a monster. He looked like a tired, angry man who'd been sitting alone in the dark for a very long time.
Beside the throne, wings folded, her leathery face twisted into a sneer, crouched Alecto. The last of the Furies.
"Him," she hissed, the second they walked in, and pointed one long black claw at Ezra. "That's the boy, my lord. The son of the sea. The thief."
Hades's burning eyes moved over the four of them slowly, and stopped on Ezra.
"So," he said. His voice was soft and cold, and it filled the whole enormous room. "Poseidon's brat comes to my house. Of his own will." He leaned forward. "Have you come to beg, boy? Or to gloat?"
"I didn't take it," Ezra said. His voice cracked, but he held his ground. "I didn't take anything. I swear."
"Liar." The word cracked through the throne room like a whip. The skeleton guards lining the walls shifted, all at once, with a rattling of bones. "My Helm of Darkness was taken from me on the winter solstice. The same night my brother's bolt went missing. And the same week, the sea god's son is found, and claimed, and goes running across the country on a quest." Hades's lip curled. "You must think me a fool."
"He's telling the truth."
Percy stepped forward.
The Lord of the Dead turned his burning gaze on him. It was like having a freezer door opened in your face.
[Divine presence detected: HADES, Lord of the Dead, King of the Underworld.]
[Threat assessment: Incalculable.]
[Great Sage advises extreme caution.]
Hades looked at him for a long moment. Then his eyes narrowed.
"You," he breathed. "I know what you are. Zeus's adopted mongrel. The mortal boy my brother claimed out of nowhere, a month ago, in a thunderstorm." He sat back slowly on his throne of bones. "How very interesting. Zeus's son and Poseidon's son, walking into my house together. I wonder which of my brothers sent you to mock me."
"Neither," Percy said. "Nobody sent us. We came to tell you the truth."
He unslung the shield from his back. He pulled the blanket off. He knelt down on the black stone floor, turned the Shield of Ares face-down, and opened the hidden hollow behind the boss.
Blue-white light flooded the throne room.
The Master Bolt lay in its hollow, crackling softly, throwing sharp shadows up the black walls. Every skeleton in the room took a step back. Alecto shrieked and covered her eyes.
And Hades rose from his throne.
He didn't stand. He rose. He grew, his shadow stretching up the walls and across the ceiling, his dark robes billowing with the screaming faces of the dead. The temperature in the room dropped so fast that frost spread across the floor in a wave, and Percy's breath came out in white clouds. When the Lord of the Dead spoke again, his voice wasn't soft anymore. It was the sound of the earth splitting open.
"You bring my brother's weapon," said Hades, "into MY HOUSE?"
"We didn't know it was there!" Annabeth shouted. She'd stepped up next to Percy, white-faced, her knife raised. "Ares hid it! He gave us the shield in Denver! He hid the bolt inside it so we'd carry it right to you!"
"ARES?"
"He's being used," Percy said. He was still on his knees by the shield. He made himself look up into the towering darkness, into the burning eyes. "Somebody stole your Helm and the bolt at the same time, on the solstice. A demigod. A thief. They gave them both to Ares. Ares hid the bolt in his shield so we'd bring it here, and you'd think we stole it. And you'd kill us, and Zeus would think you were behind the whole thing. And you'd go to war. All three of you."
The darkness paused.
"And who," Hades said, "would benefit from that?"
Percy looked down. Down at the floor of the throne room. Down past it. Down through miles of black earth, to the edge of a pit where a cold voice had laughed at them an hour ago.
"Your father," he said quietly.
The Lord of the Dead went still.
The frost on the floor stopped spreading. The screaming faces on his robes went quiet, all at once. And slowly, very slowly, the towering shadow drew back down into the shape of a pale, tired man standing in front of his throne.
"You are lying," Hades said. But his voice had changed.
"We passed the pit on the way here," Percy said. "It tried to pull the bolt down. It talked to me. You can ask the shades in the Fields, if you don't believe me. They had to have heard it." He swallowed. "He's waking up, Lord Hades. He's not strong yet. But he's waking up. And he's getting the gods to fight each other so he doesn't have to."
Hades stared at him. Something moved in his burning eyes. Something old, and wary, and deeply afraid.
"Even if that were true," he said at last, slowly, "why should I believe the son of Zeus? My brother has never once in all of eternity told me the truth. Why would his child be any different?"
Percy closed the hollow in the shield. The blue-white light vanished. The throne room went dark again.
He stayed on his knees.
"Because I've got something else to tell you," he said. "And after I tell you, you can decide whether I'm lying."
Hades said nothing.
Percy took a deep breath.
"I met your kids," he said.
The silence that followed was the worst silence Percy had ever heard.
It went on and on. Nobody in the throne room moved. Alecto's mouth hung open. The skeleton guards stood frozen. Behind him, Percy could hear Grover breathing in short, terrified gasps.
And Hades, Lord of the Dead, stood in front of his throne of bones and stared down at him. And his face was absolutely, perfectly empty.
"What," he said. It was barely a whisper. "Did you. Say."
"Bianca and Nico," Percy said. "Di Angelo. At the Lotus Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas. Yesterday." He kept his voice steady. "I know you hid them there. I know why. Zeus killed their mother, and he would've killed them too, if he'd found them. You put them somewhere he'd never look. Somewhere time doesn't move." He paused. "It was smart. It kept them safe."
Hades's hand had closed into a fist at his side. The shadows in the room were moving again, slowly, coiling across the floor toward Percy like snakes.
"The son of Zeus," Hades said, in a dead, flat voice, "knows where my children are."
"Yes."
"The son of the god who murdered their mother. Who would murder them, if he knew they lived. That boy knows where they are hidden."
"Yes, sir."
The shadows reached him. They wrapped around his ankles, his wrists, ice-cold. They climbed up his arms toward his throat.
"Then give me," said Hades, very softly, "one reason I should not unmake you where you kneel."
Percy looked up at him.
"I swore on the Styx," he said.
The shadows stopped.
"Yesterday," Percy said. "In the Lotus. Nico asked me if I'd come back for them, and I swore on the River Styx that I would. That I'd bring them home. Both of them. I'm building a place for them, Lord Hades. A real one. With walls, and houses, and a school. Somewhere kids like them don't have to hide. It's going to take a few years. But when it's done, I'm going to go back to that hotel and get them out, and nobody is going to hurt them. Not Zeus. Not anybody." He held the god's burning gaze. "Not while I'm alive."
Hades stared at him.
And then his eyes went distant. Like he was listening to something very far away. Something deep, and dark, and cold, running under all the Underworld like a vein.
The river.
"...The Styx remembers," Hades whispered. "It is bound to you. I can feel it. The oath." His voice was strange. "You... you actually swore it."
"I did," Percy said. "And there's more."
He told him.
He told the Lord of the Dead about a little boy in a green cap who'd explained, very seriously, that Hades wasn't the bad guy. That he was misunderstood, and that everybody was mean to him just because he had the dead people, and somebody had to have the dead people. He told him about a girl in a velvet hat who'd held her brother's hand and told him I'm right here, it's okay. He told him about a staff of gray bone-wood with a black stone that had flickered in Nico's hands, and how Nico had gasped and said I can hear them. About a silver ring with a blue stone shaped like a forget-me-not.
"It lets her send one dream a year," Percy said. "To someone she loves. Anyone. Anywhere in the world." He hesitated. "I told her to send it to me. So I'd know they were okay. But she doesn't have to." He looked up at Hades. "She could send it to you."
The Lord of the Dead didn't say anything.
He sat down slowly on his throne of bones, like an old man. He put one pale hand over his eyes. And he sat there, in his dark palace at the bottom of the world, and didn't move.
For a long time, the only sound in the throne room was the faint, distant screaming of the faces on his robes. And then, one by one, even those went quiet.
"He said that?" Hades said finally. His voice was very low, and hoarse, and it didn't sound like a god at all. "Nico. He said... somebody has to have the dead people?"
"Yes, sir," Percy said gently. "He was really mad about it. He thought everybody was being unfair to you."
The Lord of the Dead made a sound behind his hand. It might have been a laugh. It might have been something else.
The shadows let go of Percy's arms. They slid back across the frosty floor and pooled quietly around the base of the throne, like dogs lying down at their master's feet.
[DIVINE FAVOR: Hades regards the Host with something he has not felt in a very long time. Great Sage believes it is hope.]
It was a long time before Hades spoke again.
When he did, he'd lowered his hand from his eyes. His face was composed again, pale and cold and proud. But something in the burning eyes had changed. It was softer, maybe. Or just more tired.
"Why?" he asked. "Why would a child of Zeus do this? For mine?"
Percy thought about the answer he'd given Percival. About the Siege Perilous. About forty kids sleeping on the floor of Cabin Eleven.
"Because nobody did it for them last time," he said.
Hades looked at him strangely. Last time? his eyes said. But he didn't ask.
Instead, he turned to Ezra.
Ezra flinched. He'd been standing frozen behind Percy this whole time, Riptide clutched in his hand.
"Son of Poseidon," said Hades. "I accused you wrongly. I sent the Furies after you, and the hound. I would have killed you for a crime you did not commit." His jaw tightened, like the words tasted bad. "I... withdraw the accusation."
Alecto made a sound like a strangled cat. Hades silenced her with one look.
Ezra just stood there, gaping.
"But my Helm is still missing," Hades went on, turning back to Percy. "If what you say is true, the war god has it. And if it is not on my throne by the time the sun sets on the solstice, I will have no choice. My brothers will have their war, and I will have mine." His eyes burned. "Bring it back to me, son of Zeus."
"I will," Percy said. "I promise."
Hades almost smiled. "Not on the Styx, I hope. You are collecting too many of those."
"No, sir. Just a regular promise."
"Those," said Hades, "are the ones I trust least." But he didn't sound angry.
He lifted one hand. Something dropped into it out of the shadows. It was a coin, black and heavy, made of dark iron, with a skull on one side and a cypress tree on the other.
He tossed it to Percy, who caught it.
[ITEM ACQUIRED: OBOL OF HADES (Divine)]
[Show this coin to any servant of the Underworld, and they will know you are under the protection of its Lord.]
"For your journey out," Hades said. "And for later. When you go to fetch my children." His voice caught, very slightly, on the last two words. "In case anything in my kingdom tries to stop you."
Then he looked at the four of them, and at the green pearls in Ezra's fist.
"Three pearls," he observed. "Four of you." A thin, dry smile. "My brother of the sea has a cruel sense of humor."
"I'll figure it out," Percy said.
"No need." Hades stood. "Crush your pearls, children. Go up to the light." He looked at Percy. "You, I will send myself."
The shadows around his throne rose up and wrapped around Percy like a cloak. They were cold, but not unkindly. Like the shadow of a tree on a hot day.
"Wait," Percy said. "Where are you sending me?"
Hades's burning eyes glittered.
"Where the others are going," he said. "The beach where they came down. Where someone is already waiting for you." A pause. "I think you know who."
Percy did.
Ezra crushed his pearl. So did Annabeth. So did Grover. There was a burst of green light, and a smell of salt, and they were gone.
And the shadows closed over Percy's head.
He came out of the dark onto wet sand.
The sun was going down over the Pacific, huge and red, painting the waves gold and crimson. The beach was empty. All the tourists were gone. It was just the long curve of sand, and the hiss of the surf, and the Santa Monica Pier glittering with lights in the distance.
Annabeth and Ezra and Grover were sprawled in the shallows a few yards away, dripping and coughing up seawater, where the pearls had dropped them.
And standing at the top of the beach, leaning against an enormous black motorcycle with his arms crossed and his sunglasses glowing red, was the god of war.
He was clapping. Slowly.
"Well, well, well," said Ares. "Look who made it out alive."
He pushed off the motorcycle and started walking down the sand toward them. With every step, the air around him got hotter, and redder, and heavier. The sunset seemed to darken. The waves seemed to hush.
And as he came, he reached behind his back and drew a sword. It was huge and wicked and double-edged, and it gleamed red in the dying light.
"You know, little brother," Ares said pleasantly, "I was really hoping Uncle Hades would kill you. It would have been so much neater." He smiled. It was the most dangerous smile Percy had ever seen. "But that's okay. I like doing things myself."
Percy got to his feet in the wet sand. He felt the fog in his head, and the ache in his bones, and the Master Bolt humming on his back.
He felt the ring on his finger.
Okay, he thought. Here we go.