“The driver’s ready when we are,” Rachel said.
The chauffeur was now talking to another guy in khakis and a polo shirt, probably his client who’d rented the car. The client was complaining, but I could hear the driver saying, “I’m sorry, sir. Emergency. I’ve ordered another car for you.”
“Come on,” Rachel said. She led us to the car and got in without even looking at the flustered guy who’d rented it. A minute later we were cruising down the road. The seats were leather. There was plenty of legroom. The backseat had flat-panel TVs built into the headrests and a mini-fridge stocked with bottled water, sodas, and snacks. We started pigging out.
“Where to, Miss Dare?” the driver asked.
“I’m not sure yet, Robert,” she said. “We just need to drive through town and, uh, look around.”
“Whatever you say, miss.”
I looked at Rachel. “Do you know this guy?”
“No.”
“But he dropped everything to help you. Why?”
“Just keep your eyes peeled,” she said. “Help me look.”
Which didn’t exactly answer my question.
We drove through Colorado Springs for about half an hour and saw nothing that Rachel considered a possible Labyrinth entrance. I was very aware of Rachel’s shoulder pressing against mine. I kept wondering who she was exactly, and how she could walk up to some random chauffeur and immediately get a ride.
After about an hour we decided to head north toward Denver, thinking that maybe a bigger city would be more likely to have a Labyrinth entrance, but we were all getting nervous. We were losing time.
Then right as we were leaving Colorado Springs, Rachel sat bolt upright. “Get off the highway!”
The driver glanced back. “Miss?”
“I saw something, I think. Get off here.”
The driver swerved across traffic and took the exit.
“What did you see?” I asked, because we were pretty much out of the city now. There wasn’t anything around except hills, grassland, and some scattered farm buildings. Rachel had the driver turn down this unpromising dirt road. We drove by a sign too fast for me to read it, but Rachel said, “Western Museum of Mining & Industry.”
For a museum, it didn’t look like much—a little house like an old-fashioned railroad station, some drills and pumps and old steam shovels on display outside.
“There.” Rachel pointed to a hole in the side of a nearby hill—a tunnel that was boarded up and chained. “An old mine entrance.”
“A door to the Labyrinth?” Annabeth asked. “How can you be sure?”
“Well, look at it!” Rachel said. “I mean…I can see it, okay?”
She thanked the driver and we all got out. He didn’t ask for money or anything. “Are you sure you’ll be all right, Miss Dare? I’d be happy to call your—”
“No!” Rachel said. “No, really. Thanks, Robert. But we’re fine.”
The museum seemed to be closed, so nobody bothered us as we climbed the hill to the mine shaft. When we got to the entrance, I saw the mark of Daedalus engraved on the padlock, though how Rachel had seen something so tiny all the way from the highway I had no idea. I touched the padlock and the chains fell away. We kicked down a few boards and walked inside. For better or worse, we were back in the Labyrinth.
***
The dirt tunnels turned to stone. They wound around and split off and basically tried to confuse us, but Rachel had no trouble guiding us. We told her we needed to get back to New York, and she hardly even paused when the tunnels offered a choice.
To my surprise, Rachel and Annabeth started up a conversation as we walked. Annabeth asked her more about her background, but Rachel was evasive, so they started talking about architecture. It turned out that Rachel knew something about it from studying art. They talked about different facades on buildings around New York—“Have you seen this one,” blah, blah, blah, so I hung back and walked next to Nico in uncomfortable silence.
“Thanks for coming after us,” I told him at last.
Nico’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t seem as angry as he used to—just suspicious, careful. “I owed you for the ranch, Percy. Plus…I wanted to see Daedalus for myself. Minos was right, in a way. Daedalus should die. Nobody should be able to avoid death that long. It’s not natural.”
“That’s what you were after all along,” I said. “Trading Daedalus’s soul for your sister’s.”
Nico walked for another fifty yards before answering. “It hasn’t been easy, you know. Having only the dead for company. Knowing that I’ll never be accepted by the living. Only the dead respect me, and they only do that out of fear.”
“You could be accepted,” I said. “You could have friends at camp.”
He stared at me. “Do you really believe that, Percy?”
I didn’t answer. The truth was, I didn’t know. Nico had always been a little different, but since Bianca’s death, he’d gotten almost…scary. He had his father’s eyes—that intense, manic fire that made you suspect he was either a genius or a madman. And the way he’d banished Minos, and called himself the king of ghosts—it was kind of impressive, but it made me uncomfortable too.
Before I could figure out what to tell him, I ran into Rachel, who’d stopped in front of me. We’d come to a crossroads. The tunnel continued straight ahead, but a side tunnel T’d off to the right—a circular shaft carved from volcanic rock.
“What is it?” I asked.
Rachel stared down the dark tunnel. In the dim flashlight beam, her face looked like one of Nico’s specters.