CHAPTER NINETEEN - I HAGGLE WITH A GHOUL

We stood in the shadows of Valencia Boulevard, looking up at gold letters etched in black marble: DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.

Underneath, stenciled on the glass doors: NO SOLICITORS. NO LOITERING. NO LIVING.

Grover narrowed his eyes at the sign, like it would make him see more clearly. "So, what exactly does DOA stand for?"

"Dead On Arrival," I said, without looking up from tying my shoelaces.

He let out a nervous laugh. "Oh."

Percy turned to the three of us as I stood up. "Okay. You remember the plan."

"The plan," Grover gulped. "Yeah. I love the plan."

Annabeth said, "What happens if the plan doesn't work?"

I winced, and suggested, "We wing it?"

Annabeth glared at me.

Percy shook his head. "Don't think negative."

"Right. We're entering the Land of the Dead and I shouldn't think negative."

"Exactly," I said. "Happy thoughts. This is going to work. I hope," I added under my breath, but no one seemed to hear me, thankfully.

I watched as Percy reached into his pocket and took out the four pearls. He stared at them with a weird expression, like he didn't believe that they were going to be much help to us.

Annabeth put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Percy. You're right, we'll make it. It'll be fine."

She nudged Grover, who chimed in with, "Oh, right! We got this far. We'll find the master bolt and your mom. No problem."

They looked at me, expectantly.

"Hey, when have I ever doubted you, Perce?" I asked my best friend, careful not to say anything about the quest and how colossally wrong they all were. "You can do this. We can do this, together."

Percy looked at each of us in turn, and gave us a smile. I could tell that he was doubting himself, especially since we were almost pulled apart, literally. But we had his back, all the way through to the end.

He slipped the pearls back into his pocket. "Let's whup some Underworld butt."

We walked inside the DOA lobby.

Muzak played softly throughout the building. The décor was seriously lacking in life, but, then again, I suppose that was appropriate. The carpet and walls were slate gray. Pencil cactuses grew in small pots around the lobby, reminding me of skeleton hands pushing through graves, like in old horror movies. The furniture was black leather, and every seat was taken. The entire lobby was taken, in fact. There were people sitting on couches, standing up, looking out the windows, or waiting for the elevator. It was eerily quiet, as nobody talked, or even moved. The more you focused on one individual, the less substance they appeared to have.

We walked up the security guard's podium and looked up at him. He was tall, with skin the color of cocoa beans, bleached-blonde hair in a floppy crop on his head. He wore a silk Italian suit and expensive-looking sunglasses, so he reminded me of a celebrity that was trying to go about their day without being hounded by fans, but secretly wanting the attention anyway.

Percy looked closely at the guard's nametag, and then shook his head in disbelief. "Your name is Chiron?" he asked him in bewilderment.

I elbowed Percy in the side. "Don't be silly," I hissed. "This is Charon, not Chiron." I looked back at the guard, and gave him a pleasant smile. "I'm so sorry about him, Mr. Charon, sir. He meant no disrespect."

The man grunted in satisfaction. "Well, that's very kind of you, young lady. I hate being confused with that old horse-man. And now, how may I help you little dead ones?"

He directed the question to Percy, who locked up almost instantly. He turned to Annabeth for support.

"We want to go to the Underworld," she said.

Charon's mouth twitched. "Well, that's refreshing."

"Is it?" I squeaked, trying (and failing) to sound nonchalant.

"Straightforward and honest. No screaming. No 'There must be a mistake, Mr. Charon.'" He looked us over. "How did you die, then?"

Percy glanced over at Grover, but I stomped on his hoof before he could say something stupid, effectively cutting him off.

"A car crash," I said, and shot a warning look to Grover. "We were on our way to school, and a truck hit the bus."

Charon scrutinized me for a minute, and I held my breath, hoping that he'd buy the story. Then he shrugged, and said, "Yeah, that happens all the time. Idiot drivers."

I let out a sigh in relief, and Grover subtly fist-bumped me.

"I don't suppose you have coins for passage," Charon continued. "Normally, with adults, you see, I could charge your American Express, or add the ferry price to your last cable bill. But with children...alas, you never die prepared. Suppose you'll have to take a seat for a few centuries."

"Oh, but we have coins," Percy said, and reached into my drachma pouch that I had given to him before we came in. He set three coins on the counter, in front of the guard.

"Well, now..." Charon stared at the gold, hungrily. "Real drachmas. Real golden drachmas. I haven't seen these in..."

His fingers hovered greedily over the coins.

We all subconsciously leaned forward in anticipation.

Then Charon looked at Percy. "Here, now," he said. "You couldn't read my name correctly. Are you dyslexic, lad?"

"No," Percy quipped. "I'm dead."

I groaned quietly and lowered my head in defeat, knowing that we'd been caught. Charon leaned over his desk and sniffed us. "You're not dead. I should've known. You're godlings."

"We have to get to the Underworld," Percy insisted.

Charon made a growling sound in the back of his throat, like an angry Doberman. As if turned on by a switch, all the people in the lobby started to move, getting agitated by the noise.

"Leave while you can," Charon told us. "I'll just take these and forget I saw you."

Before he could even make a move, I reached up and snatched back the drachmas.

"No service, no tip," I sassed, and crossed my arms defiantly.

Charon growled again, and the ghosts started pounding on the elevator doors.

It's a shame, too," Percy sighed. "We had more to offer."

He held up my coin purse, and shook it a little, letting the gold jingle. He took out a fistful of drachmas and then let them tumble through his fingers.

Charon's growl softened. "Do you think I can be bought, godling? Eh...just out of curiosity, how much have you got there?"

Percy smirked, like he knew that we were winning. He had a familiar gleam in his eye, something that I hadn't seen since Yancy Academy, when we filled Mr. Nicoll's briefcase with shaving cream.

"A lot," he said. "I bet Hades doesn't pay you well enough for such hard work."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it," Charon complained. "How would you like to babysit these spirits all day? Always 'Please don't let me be dead' or 'Please let me across for free.' I haven't had a pay raise in three thousand years. Do you imagine suits like this come cheap?"

"You deserve better," Percy agreed.

"A little appreciation. Respect. Good pay," I added. With each word I said, Percy stacked another drachma on the desk. Annabeth and Grover exchanged looks, amazed at how well Percy and I worked together.

Charon glanced down at his suit, like he could imagine himself in something even better. "I must say, kids, you're making some sense now. Just a little."

Percy stacked another few coins. "We could mention a pay raise while we're talking to Hades."

The guard sighed. "The boat's almost full, anyway. I might as well add you four and be off."

"Excellent," I said, giving him another wide smile.

He stood, scooped up our money, and said, "Come along."

As we pushed through the crowd, Annabeth came up next to me and whispered, "Nice work. Very devious."

I gave her an impish grin. "Percy corrupted me back at school. I talked us out of detention more times than I could count."

Charon escorted us into the elevator, which was already crowded with souls of the dead, each one holding a green boarding pass. He grabbed two spirits trying to sneak their way into the car and pushed them back into the lobby.

"Right. Now, no one get any ideas while I'm gone," he announced to the waiting room. "And if anyone moves the dial off of my easy-listening station again, I'll make sure you're here for another thousand years. Understand?"

He shut the doors, and we started to descend.

"What happens to the spirits waiting in the lobby?" Annabeth asked.

"Nothing," Charon said.

"For how long?"

"Forever, or until I'm feeling generous."

"Oh," she gulped. "That's...fair."

Charon raised an eyebrow. "Whoever said death was fair, young miss? Wait until it's your turn. You'll die soon enough, where you're going."

"We'll get out alive," Percy said confidently.

"Ha."

The elevator shuddered, and started to drift forward. The air turned misty, and so did the spirits. Their modern clothes flickered, turning into gray robes. The floor of the car began to rock back and forth, like a boat.

I watched as Charon's suit shimmered into a floor-length black robe. His sunglasses disappeared. Instead of eyes, he had empty sockets, full of darkness and despair.

Charon looked over at Percy, who was also staring. "Well?" he asked.

"Nothing," Percy stammered.

The floor kept swaying, causing me to lose my balance slightly, and stumble into Percy. He steadied me before I could cause a domino effect and topple the rest of us to the floor.

Grover said, "I think I'm getting seasick."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, the elevator had vanished, and we were standing in a wooden barge, reminding me vaguely of Venice gondolas.

Charon was poling us through a black river, the oily water swirling with bones, dead fish, and other, stranger things—plastic dolls, crushed corsages, and soggy diplomas.

"The River Styx," Annabeth murmured. "It's so..."

"Polluted," Charon supplied. "For thousands of years, you humans have been throwing in everything as you come across—hopes, dreams, wishes that never came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me."

Mist curled off of the water. Once or twice, I spotted a beaded necklace like Annabeth's—a memory too painful for a demigod, I guess. One of them only had a single bead, another had three. Part of me wanted to reach out for them and see what beads they had, but I decided that I really didn't want to know.

My throat tightened up in panic. The ceiling loomed above us, so high up that I couldn't even see it, and yet I felt as though everything was closing in around me.

Grover took ahold of my hand, rubbing his thumb across it, trying to soothe my nerves. I hadn't realized that my breathing had become shallow. I took Percy's hand with my free one, and saw that he and Annabeth already had the same idea. We were linked together, like a human chain, each seeking comfort that someone else was alive on this boat.

The shoreline of the Underworld came into view. Black volcanic sand stretched inland to a large stone wall, which stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see, before getting swallowed up by mist. The air had a faint greenish hue to it, and the smell was acrid. A sound came from inside the wall, bouncing around the stones—the howl of an angry animal.

"Old Three-Face is hungry," Charon said. His smile turned skeletal in the poison-colored light. "Bad luck for you, godlings."

The bottom of the barge scraped against the black sand, cueing our time to disembark. One by one, the spirits of the dead began to step off the boat. A woman holding a little girl's hand. An old couple shuffling forward together, arm in arm. A boy no older than us, drifting silently along in his gray robe. I couldn't help but wonder who they were, and how they died.

Charon said to us, "I'd wish you luck, but there isn't any down here. Mind you, don't forget to mention my pay raise."

He double-checked the drachmas we gave him, and then took up his pole, and pushed off of the shore. We turned in sync, and looked up at the high wall. "No turning back now," I whispered, afraid to let my voice get any louder.

The four of us followed the spirits up a well-worn path.

*

When we reached the entrance to the Underworld, the only thing I could think to say was, "It's an LAX terminal."

The gates looked exactly like the airport in Los Angeles. There were three separate entrances under one huge archway that said YOU ARE NOW ENTERING EREBUS. Each entrance has a pass-through metal detector with security cameras mounted on top. Beyond this were tollbooth manned by black-robed ghouls.

The howling was getting louder, but I couldn't see Hades's pet, Cerberus, anywhere.

The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked ATTENDANT ON DUTY and the other marked EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving along at a steady pace, while the other two were crawling.

"What do you figure?" Percy asked Annabeth.

"The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields," she guessed. "No contest. They don't want to risk judgement from the court, because it might go against them."

"There's a court for dead people?"

"Oh, sure," I said, causing he and Annabeth to look at me. "There are three judges that sit on the panel at one time. They switch around every once in a while. King Minos, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare—people like that. Sometimes they look at a life and decide that person did exceptional, heroic things, so they give that person the chance to go to Elysium. Other times, they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived. Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Fields of Asphodel."

"And do what?"

Grover replied, "Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas. Forever."

Percy didn't seem to have an answer to that. He could only stare at the EZ DEATH line.

I looked around the tollbooths, and spotted a vaguely familiar man. "Percy, Grover, look at that," I muttered.

A couple of black-robed ghouls were frisking a spirit at the security desk. Percy and Grover narrowed their eyes, recognition slowly dawning on their faces.

"It's the preacher who made the news," Grover said.

"Oh, yeah," Percy exclaimed.

We'd seen him on TV a few times back at Yancy. He was this televangelist who's raised millions of dollars for orphanages, and then spent the money on himself, buy things like gold-plaited toilet seats and an indoor golf course. He'd died when his "Lamborghini for the Lord" went off a cliff during a police chase. We had watched it live during English class one day.

Percy asked, "What're they doing to him?"

"Special punishment from Hades," Grover suggested. "The really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The Fur—the Kindly Ones will set up an eternal torture for him."

I felt the blood drain from my face when Grover mentioned the Furies. I glanced over at Percy and saw that he was feeling the same way. We were sitting ducks for Mrs. Dodds and her sisters.

"But if he's a preacher," Percy said, getting back on the subject at hand, "and he believes in a different hell..."

"Maybe he's seeing this place differently than we are," I said. "Everyone has their own idea of what the afterlife will look like. We see what we want to see."

We walked closer to the gates. The growling was getting louder, but the three-headed dog was still nowhere in sight.

Then, about fifty feet in front of us, the air shimmered. Standing above the path, right in front of us, was a massive hound the size of a woolly mammoth. And its three pairs of eyes were staring directly at us.

Percy's mouth dropped open. He stared at the hound for a minute or two, and then said, "He's a Rottweiler."

The dead walked right up to him—no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him, while the EZ DEATH line went right underneath his enormous belly. The spirits didn't even have to crouch.

"I'm starting to see him better," Percy muttered. "Why is that?"

"It's because we're getting closer to death," I squeaked out.

Cerberus's middle head craned towards, and started to sniff the air.

"It can smell the living," Percy said.

"But that's okay," Grover stammered. "Because we have a plan."

"Right," Annabeth said. Her voice was so small, I could barely hear her. "A plan."

We moved towards the monster. He didn't like that, much. The middle head snarled at us, and then barked, the sound like cannon fire.

"Can you understand him?" I asked Grover, meekly.

"Oh yeah," he said. "I can understand it."

"What's it saying?" Percy asked.

"I don't think humans have a four-letter word that translates, exactly."

Percy reached into my backpack and pulled out a stick—a bedpost from one of Crusty's models. He held it up for Cerberus to see, and tried to smile.

"Hey, Big Fella," he called. "I bet they don't play with you much."

Percy was answered with another loud bark.

"Good boy," he said weakly.

He waved the stick back and forth. The middle head followed his every move, while the other two had their eyes trained on my friend, completely ignoring the spirits.

"Fetch!" Percy yelled, and threw the stick as hard as he could. Which maybe was a little too hard. I heard the distinctive ker-sploosh as it landed in the River Styx.

Cerberus glared at him, unimpressed. He was growling again, a deep rumbling sound, like a freight train moving past the dorms.

"Um," Grover said. "Percy?"

"Yeah?"

"I just thought you'd want to know."

"Yeah?"

"Cerberus? He's saying we've got ten seconds to pray to the god of our choice. After that...well...he's hungry."

"Wait!" Annabeth said. She started rifling through her backpack. Instinctively, I gripped my shoulder strap of my purse, seeking comfort in knowing that I still had my bow with me. Great, I thought. At least I'll die with my weapon.

"Five seconds," Grover said. "Do we run now?"

Annabeth pulled out a red rubber ball the size of a large grapefruit from her pack. It was labeled WATERLAND, DENVER, CO. Before any of us could stop her, she marched right up to Cerberus and thrusted the ball into his middle face.

She shouted, "See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!"

Cerberus cocked his three heads in confusion, but his six nostrils dilated, his eyes trained on the ball.

"Sit!" Annabeth called again.

The massive dog licked his lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, crushing a dozen spirits who were passing underneath him. They made muffled hissing sounds as they dissipated, like the air let out of tires. Even though we were in a pretty dire situation, the ADHD part of me wondered where they went. Were their souls crushed, or did their apparitions just disappear?

Annabeth said, "Good boy!" and tossed Cerberus the ball.

He caught it in his middle mouth, and the other heads immediately started to snap at the middle, fighting to get the new toy.

"Drop it!" Annabeth ordered.

Cerberus's heads stopped fighting and looked at her. The ball was barely big enough to chew, and was wedged between two fangs like a piece of gum. He let out a loud whimper and dropped the ball, covered in slobber and nearly bitten in half.