CHAPTER ELEVEN
( crusty beds )

     IT WAS ANNABETH'S idea to load us into the back of a Vegas taxi as if we actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

     The 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," she 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."

     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, though we had to be quiet enough so the cab driver couldn't hear us.

     Percy saw this as an opportunity to tell us about his latest dream, though I could tell he was having a hard time remembering it. He couldn't recall what the one of the voices in his dream sounded like, though he was determined in the idea that it was someone he knew. He said the servant in his dream had called the voice in the pit something other than 'my lord'... some special name or title. As he kept retelling it, I couldn't help but think that the voice he described in the pit sounded similar to the one in my own dream days ago. I wasn't completely sure, though, so I didn't want to add more pressure just to say a stupid theory in my head.

     "The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."

     "Maybe. . ." Percy trailed off, not convinced.

     "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."

     "Ancient," I blurted out.

     "Yeah – how did you –?"

     I swallowed the lump in my throat. My head clicked the pieces of the puzzle, and the picture it gave me as a result wasn't good at all. Annabeth, who might've come to the same conclusion, widened her eyes in shock.

     "What?" Percy asked.

     "Oh. . .nothing," Annabeth brushed his question off. Her gray eyes fell on me, like she wanted to ask me something too. "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 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."

     She looked pale, and I didn't blame her.

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

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

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

     "Why, thank you."

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

     Grover shook his head, clearly mystified. I was praying to every god out there for Annabeth and I to be wrong in our theory, because it would make everything ten times worse if it wasn't. Annabeth was looking at Percy as if she knew what he was going to ask next, and was hoping he didn't say anything.

     "You have an idea what might be in that pit, don't you?" he 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: CALIFORNIA STATE LINE, 12 MILES.

     Percy looked like he wanted to keep searching for answers, but gave up when he knew we wouldn't answer them. My stomach churned at the thought of us being right, and that this quest was bigger than what we had in mind. There was something else going on, something even more dangerous. If we marched up to the Underworld and found out that we've been wrong all along, we'd have no time to correct our mistake. We were one day away from the summer solstice.

     "The answer is in the Underworld," Annabeth assured. "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 there were just too many unknown factors.

     The cab sped west. Every gust of wind through Death Valley sounded like a spirit of the dead. At sunset, the taxi dropped us off at the beach in Santa Monica. I couldn't grasp my head around the fact that I was just a 20 minute drive from my old house in Beverly Hills. The beach looked exactly the way I remembered it to be, but the smell was a lot 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.

     Percy, Grover, Annabeth and I walked down to the edge of the surf.

     "What now?" Annabeth asked.

     The Pacific was turning gold in the setting sun. I thought back to the Long Island Sound back at camp, where I sat on the opposite side of the country, looking out at a completely different sea. The salty breeze of the ocean brushed against my clothes and skin, and I took it all in with a large inhale. It was comforting, in some strange way. In my hardest days with my asthma, Mom brought me to this very beach and we spent the whole day out here.

     Before any of us could say anything else, Percy unexpectedly stepped into the surf.

     "Percy?" Annabeth called out. "What are you doing?"

     He kept walking, and the water was rising up to his waist, then his chest. I winced and yelled out, "Do you know how many people pee in that – "

     His head went under the water at that moment. I winced, but I reminded myself that he was the son of the one and only sea god, so it probably wouldn't be a problem for him. I can't tell you exactly how much time we spent by the beach for Percy to come back, but we found ourselves admiring the scenery. Clearly, none of us had come across this place in forever. Just when I was about to suggest the idea of us making a sandcastle while we waited, Percy came out of the water.

     When he reached the beach, he told us what had happened down there, from the small chat he had with a Nereid his dad personally sent to the pearls she'd given him as a gift.

     Annabeth grimaced. "No gift comes without a price."

     "They were free."

     "No." She shook her head. "'There is no such thing as a free lunch.' That's an ancient Greek saying that translated pretty well into American. There will be a price. You wait."

     On that thought, we turned our backs on the sea.

     WITH SOME SPARE change from Ares's backpack, we took the bus into West Hollywood. Percy showed the driver the Underworld address slip he had supposedly taken from Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium, but he'd never heard of DOA Recording Studios.

     "You remind me of somebody I saw on TV," the driver told him. "You a child actor or something?"

     "Uh. . .I'm a stunt double. . .for a lot of child actors."

     "Oh! That explains it."

     We thanked him for the ride and got off at the next stop. We wandered for miles on foot, looking for DOA. Nobody knew where it was and it didn't appear in the phone book. Twice, we had to duck into alleys to avoid cop cars. At this rate, we'd never find the Underworld in time. At some point, as we walked by an appliance store, Percy froze after he spared one glance at one of the many televisions. I didn't recognize the man on the screen, but based on the look in Percy's eyes, he was the terrible step-dad he had talked about. He was talking to Barbara Walters, as if he were some kind of huge celebrity.

     A fake tear glistened on his cheek. He was saying, "Honest, Ms Walters, if it wasn't for Sugar here, my grief counselor. I'd be a wreck. My stepson took everything I cared about. My wife. . .my Camaro. . . I – I'm sorry. I have trouble talking about it."

     "There you have it, America." Barbara Walters turned to the camera. "A man torn apart. An adolescent boy with serious issues. Let me show you, again, the last known photo of this troubled young fugitive, taken a week ago in Denver."

     The screen cut to a grainy shot of the four of us standing outside the Colorado diner, talking to Ares.

     "Who are the other children in this photo?" Barbara Walters asked dramatically. "Who is the man with them? Is Percy Jackson a delinquent, a terrorist, or perhaps the brainwashed victim of a frightening new cult? When we come back, we chat with a leading child psychologist. Stay tuned, America."

     "Don't listen to them," was all I could offer in comfort.

     It got dark pretty quickly, and I knew how L.A. could be at night. Hungry-looking characters started coming out on the streets to play. L.A. was spread out, chaotic, and difficult to move around. It wasn't enough for L.A. to be big; it had to prove it was big by being loud and strange and hard to navigate, too. If we didn't find the Underworld soon, our next problem would be to find some place to sleep and keep us safe from the dangers this city had to offer. We walked past gangbangers, bums and street hawkers, who looked at us like they were trying to figure if we were worth the trouble of mugging.

     As we hurried past the entrance of an alley, a voice from the darkness said, "Hey, you."

     I knew this wouldn't be good, at all, but my friends stopped. Before I could push us out of the alley, we were surrounded. A gang of kids had circled us. Six of them in all – white kids with expensive clothes and mean faces. I swallowed, nervous and trying to come up with a way to leave unharmed, but Percy instinctively uncapped his sword.

     When the sword appeared out of nowhere, the kids backed off. Their leader was either stupid or brave, because he kept coming at Percy with a switchblade. Then, he made the mistake of swinging.

     The kid yelped. But he was one-hundred percent mortal, because the blade passed harmlessly right through his chest. He looked down. "What the. . ."

     We had about three seconds before his shock turned to anger.

     "Run!" Percy screamed.

     We pushed two kids out of the way and raced down the street, every building being a lot less recognizable in my eyes as we kept running. We turned a sharp corner.

     "There!" Annabeth shouted. Only one store on the block looked open, its windows glaring with neon. The sign above the door said something like: CRSTUY'S WATREBDE ALPACE.

     "Crusty's Waterbed Palace?" Grover translated.

     That wouldn't be the first option in my head, but we had no choice. We burst through the doors, ran behind a waterbed, and ducked. A few seconds later, the gang kids ran past outside.

     "I think we lost them," Grover panted.

     A voice behind us boomed, "Lost who?"

     We all jumped in surprise.

     Standing behind us was a guy who looked like a raptor in a leisure suit. He was approximately two meters tall, with absolutely no hair. He had gray leathery skin, thick-lidded eyes, and a cold reptilian smile. He moved towards us slowly, but he looked like he could gain a lot more speed if he wanted to. His suit belonged back in the seventies, if I'm honest. The shirt was silk paisley, unbuttoned halfway down his chest. The lapels on his velvet jacket were as wide as landing strips. There were so many silver chains on his neck that I lost count.

     "I'm Crusty," he said, with a tartar-yellow smile.

     Sure, you are, I thought.

     "Sorry to barge in," Percy told him. "We were just, um, browsing."

     "You mean hiding from those no-good kids," he grumbled. "They hang around every night. I get a lot of people in here, thanks to them. Say, you want to look at a waterbed?"

     Each of us looked ready to protest and excuse ourselves, but he grabbed a hold of Percy's shoulder and dragged him further into the showroom. We had no choice but to trail after them. There was every kind of waterbed you could imagine: different kinds of wood, different patterns of sheets; queen-size, king-size, emperor-of-the-universe-size.

     "This is my most popular model." Crusty spread his hands proudly over a bed covered with black satin sheets, with built-in Lava Lamps on the headboard. The mattress vibrated, so it looked like oil-flavored jelly.

     "Million-hand massage," Crusty told us. "Go on, try it out. Shoot, take a nap. I don't care. No business today, anyway."

     "Um," Percy hesitated, "I don't think. . ."

     "Million-hand massage!" Grover cried, and dived in. "Oh, you guys! This is cool."

     "Hmm," Crusty said, stroking his leathery chin. "Almost, almost."

     "Almost what?"

     Crusty's attention was on Annabeth now. "Do me a favor and try this one over here, honey. Might fit."

     Annabeth said, "But what – "

     He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and led her over to the Safari Deluxe model with teakwood lions carved into the frame and a leopard-patterned bedspread. When Annabeth didn't want to lie down, Crusty pushed her. She let out a sound of protest.

     "Say, how tall are you?" his creepy eyes fell on me.

     "Uh, I – "

     "No worry. This one would do."

     With his unoccupied hand, he pushed me to the nearest bed he could find, which was a Princess-themed bed with pink and purple bed sheets and a crown shaped headboard. I tried to get up, but my strength was nothing compared to his.

     Crusty snapped his fingers. "Ergo!"

     Ropes sprang from the sides of the bed, lashing around Annabeth and I. I flinched as the ropes wrapped around my whole body, holding me down to the mattress. Grover tried to get up, but ropes sprang from his black-satin bed too, and lashed him down.

     "Not cool!" he yelled, his voice vibrating from the million-hand massage. "Not cool at all!"

     The giant looked at us, then turned towards Percy and grinned. "Almost, darn it."

     Percy tried to step away, but Crusty's hand shot out and clamped around the back of his neck. "Whoa, kid. Don't worry. We'll find you one in a sec."

     "Let my friends go."

     "Oh, sure I will. But I got to make them fit, first."

     "What do you mean?"

     "All the beds are exactly six feet, see? Your friends are too short. Got to make them fit."

     I struggled against the ropes, just like Annabeth and Grover were doing.

     "Can't stand imperfect measurements," Crusty muttered. "Ergo!"

     A new set of ropes leaped out from the top and bottom of the beds, wrapping around my ankles and my armpits. The ropes started tightening, pulling on both ends of the bed. It was a strange, painful sensation, and it was even worse when you had the person responsible for it talking so casually of what he was doing.

     "Don't worry," Crusty told Percy. "These are stretching jobs. Maybe eight extra centimeters on their spines. They might even live. Now why don't we find a bed you like, huh?"

     "Percy!" Grover yelled.

     "Your real name's not Crusty, is it?" Percy asked.

     "Legally, it's Procrustes," he admitted.

     "The Stretcher."

     I racked my brain to remember the story – the giant who'd tried to kill Theseus with over-hospitality on his way to Athens.

     "Yeah," the salesman said. "But who can pronounce "Procrustes"? Bad for business. Now "Crusty", anybody can say that."

     "You're right. It's got a good ring to it."

     His eyes lit up. "You think so?"

     "Oh, absolutely," Percy nodded. "And the workmanship on these beds? Fabulous!"

     He grinned hugely, as if this was the first time hearing a compliment. "I tell my customers that. Every time. Nobody bothers to look at the workmanship. How many built-in Lava Lamp headboards have you seen?"

     "Not too many."

     "That's right!"

     "Percy!" Annabeth yelled. "What are you doing?"

     "Don't mind her," he told Procrustes. "She's impossible."

     The giant laughed. "All my customers are. Never six feet exactly. So inconsiderate. And then they complain about the fitting."

     "What do you do if they're longer than six feet?"

     "Oh, that happens all the time. It's a simple fix."

     He let go of Percy's neck and reached behind a nearby sales desk, pulling out a huge double-bladed brass ax. He said, "I just center the subject as best I can and lop off whatever hangs over on either end."

     I swallowed the lump in my throat at his words. I hoped Percy had something in mind to free us out of these traps, since the pain was increasing with each minute that passed. I didn't want to end up like those old stretchable toys.

     "Ah," Percy replied. "Sensible."

     "I'm so glad to come across an intelligent customer!"

     The ropes were pulling even harder on my ankles and arms now. I turned back to see my friends; Annabeth was turning pale and Grover made gurgling sounds like a strangled goose.

     "So, Crusty. . ." Percy trailed off. I saw how he glanced at the Honeymoon Special. "Does this one really have dynamic stabilizers to stop wave motion?"

     "Absolutely. Try it out."

     "Yeah, maybe I will. But would it work even for a big guy like you? No waves at all?"

     "Guaranteed."

     "No way."

     "Way."

     "Show me."

     He sat down eagerly on the bed, patted the mattress. "No waves. See?"

     Percy snapped his fingers. "Ergo."

     Ropes lashed around Crusty just like the ones around my body and flattened him against the mattress. I suppressed a smile, since I knew Percy was going to find a way to get us out.

     "Hey!" he yelled.

     "Center him just right," Percy said.

     The ropes readjusted themselves at his command. Crusty's whole head stuck out the top. His feet stuck out the bottom.

     "No!" Procrustes yelled. "Wait! This is just a demo."

     Percy uncapped his sword. "A few simple adjustments. . ."

     "You drive a hard bargain," he begged. "I'll give you thirty percent off on selected floor models!"

     "I think I'll start with the top." Percy raised the sword.

     "No money down! No interest for six months!"

     With just a simple swing, Procrustes stopped making more offers.

     Percy proceeded to cut the ropes of the other beds, and I silently thanked him as he freed me from the bed. Annabeth, Grover and I got to our feet, and a groan left my lips, feeling like a grandma getting out of bed with pain all over her body. I stared down at my feet to check if there was any change in my body, but couldn't see anything from this angle.

     "You look taller," Percy suddenly said.

     "Very funny," Annabeth gave him a glare. "Be faster next time."

     Behind Crusty's sales desk, there was an old bulletin board. In it, there was an advertisement for Hermes Delivery Service, and another for the All-New Compendium of L.A. Area Monsters – 'The only Monstrous Yellow Pages you'll ever need!' Under that, a bright orange flier for DOA Recording Studios, offering commissions for heroes' souls. 'We are always looking for new talent!' DOA's address was right underneath with a map.

     "Come on," Percy called after us.

     "Give us a minute," Grover complained. "We were almost stretched to death!"

     "Then you're ready for the Underworld," he said. "It's only a block from here."