I didn’t have time to ask questions because the driver swerved to avoid an oncoming delivery truck, ran over the curb with a jaw-rattlingthump, and flew into the next block.
“Wasp!” the third lady said to the driver. “Give me the girl’s coin! I want to bite it.”
“You bit it last time, Anger!” said the driver, whose name must’ve been Wasp. “It’s my turn!”
“Is not!” yelled the one called Anger.
The middle one, Tempest, screamed, “Red light!”
“Brake!” yelled Anger.
Instead, Wasp floored the accelerator and rode up on the curb, screeching around another corner, and knocking over a newspaper box. She left my stomach somewhere back on Broome Street.
“Excuse me,” I said. “But…can you see?”
“No!” screamed Wasp from behind the wheel.
“No!” screamed Tempest from the middle.
“Of course!” screamed Anger by the shotgun window.
I looked at Annabeth. “They’re blind?”
“Not completely,” Annabeth said. “They have an eye.”
“One eye?”
“Yeah.”
“Each?”
“No. One eye total.”
Next to me, Tyson groaned and grabbed the seat. “Not feeling so good.”
“Oh, man,” I said, because I’d seen Tyson get carsick on school field trips and it wasnotsomething you wanted to be within fifty feet of. “Hang in there, big guy. Anybody got a garbage bag or something?”
The three gray ladies were too busy squabbling to pay me any attention. I looked over at Annabeth, who was hanging on for dear life, and I gave her awhy-did-you-do-this-to-melook.
“Hey,” she said, “Gray Sisters Taxi is the fastest way to camp.”
“Then why didn’t you take it from Virginia?”
“That’s outside their service area,” she said, like that should be obvious. “They only serve Greater New York and surrounding communities.”
“We’ve had famous people in this cab!” Anger exclaimed. “Jason! You remember him?”
“Don’t remind me!” Wasp wailed. “And we didn’t have a cab back then, you old bat. That was three thousand years ago!”
“Give me the tooth!” Anger tried to grab at Wasp’s mouth, but Wasp swatted her hand away.
“Only if Tempest gives me the eye!”
“No!” Tempest screeched. “You had it yesterday!”
“But I’m driving, you old hag!”
“Excuses! Turn! That was your turn!”