Awaken

10

The infernal hurricane that never rests

Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;

Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto V

It will never work.”

I was at the dining table, filling my tote bag with things I thought I’d need for my journey, trying to ignore Mr. Graves.

“It won’t bring him back,” Mr. Graves continued in a low voice, so the others wouldn’t overhear. “And even if it would, the captain would never want you to risk your own life in order to save his.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing he isn’t around to watch,” I whispered. Raising my voice, I said to my cousin Alex, “Give me that book.”

“You think A History of the Isle of Bones is what’s caused the imbalance that’s making this place implode?” Alex read off the title in a sarcastic voice as he handed the book over. “Yeah, Pierce, I’m sure that’s probably it.”

“Things were fine around here before it showed up,” I said tersely as I put the book in my bag.

“In that case,” Alex said, “you better take me along, too.”

“The whole reason they brought you here is because everyone back in Isla Huesos was trying kill you,” Kayla pointed out. “Remember?”

“Actually,” Mr. Graves said, “they succeeded in killing him.” Lowering his voice again, he whispered to me, “Just as the Furies succeeded in killing the captain. Which was always their ultimate goal. Now that they’ve succeeded, I can’t imagine they’ll continue to attack us. So you see, Miss Oliviera, there’s no point in your embarking on this scheme of yours —”

“Really? What are we going to feed these people?” I asked. “How are we going to get them to their final destinations? Are we simply going to wait for the Fates to come back? Or are we going to make our own luck, like my father always said a truly successful person does?”

Mr. Graves shook his head. “I highly doubt your father would go along with this if he knew what you were up to.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing he doesn’t know.”

“Not everyone back in Isla Huesos was trying to kill me,” Alex declared. “Only Seth Rector and his cronies. Which goes to show that I was onto something. If I wasn’t close to finding evidence implicating them instead of my father in Jade’s murder, why would they have killed me?”

“Because you found their stash,” Kayla reminded him. “Drug dealers tend not to like that.”

“That’s why Pierce has got to take me with her,” Alex said. “I can explain that to the police.”

“I thought you said the police are all in Seth Rector’s father’s pocket.” Kayla was sitting on top of the dining room table, swinging her legs beneath the long skirt of her purple gown.

“Maybe not all of them.” I paused as I dropped my mobile phone into my tote bag, thinking back to the assembly they’d had my first day of school. “Police Chief Santos seemed really determined to keep Coffin Night from happening.”

“Maybe because he wants to keep people out of the cemetery, the hub of Seth Rector’s drug empire,” Alex said. “The chief is probably getting kickbacks.”

“Or maybe,” Kayla said, “you watch way too much television.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kayla,” Alex said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Did your dad spend most of your life in jail for a nonviolent crime he was probably tricked into committing by Seth Rector’s father, or was that my dad?”

“Jesus,” Reed said from the chair at the dining table where he’d been quietly sitting. “What kind of town do you people live in, anyway? Coffin Night? Drugs?” He looked at Chloe, huddled in a chair opposite his. “Did you know about any of this stuff?”

She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I’m homeschooled.”

“I agree with that young man,” Mr. Graves said, his head turned in the direction from which he’d heard Reed’s voice. “This has all gone too far. I understand that Miss Oliviera is anxious to get revenge for the captain’s tragic death —”

Or find Thanatos, I thought but didn’t add aloud. If he exists.

“— but the welfare of these people has to be our highest priority at the moment. And the sad truth of the matter is now that they’ve killed the captain, the Furies are no doubt gone for good —”

Thunder rumbled overhead. But it was only because of the growing storm outside, not John being witty, since when I glanced sharply towards the bed, I saw that John was still gone. As it had grown darker outside — not to mention colder and wetter — it had been thundering more often.

We’d also allowed more of the souls of the dead inside. I noticed a few of them start in alarm at the ominous sound.

My spirits lower than ever, I decided I didn’t want to argue anymore with Mr. Graves. I didn’t want to talk anymore. My eyes were hot and tired from all the crying I’d done, and my throat hurt, despite the amount of tea Mrs. Engle had foisted upon me to soothe the ache.

I feared nothing would ever soothe the ache, however. Especially since I’d come to the slow realization that, with John gone, so was the bond between us. Why was I even doing any of this? I was free to go back to my old life, before I’d ever known anything about magic diamond pendants, death deities, and the realm of the dead.

So there was nothing to keep me from picking up my bag, stepping back into my own world, and leaving all these people and their problems and complaints behind.

Yet for some reason, here I was still standing in the Underworld, arguing with old Mr. Graves like someone who still had a stake in this game.

“Look,” I said to the ship surgeon. “Remember what you said? Our responsibility must always be to do what’s best for the living. Right? Which means we need to get the dead to their final destinations before they start piling up down here. Otherwise, next thing we know, they’ll be overflowing into the streets of Isla Huesos, and we’ll have —”

Mr. Graves looked pained. “Pestilence.” He almost spat the word.

“Exactly. But if I can find a couple of boats and figure out a way to get them here, and maybe find this Thanatos guy, too — if he exists — and get him to let go of John … and while I’m at it, prove who killed Alex, and my counselor, Jade … well, you said it yourself: I’ve got to try. It’s my responsibility.”

“And how,” Mr. Graves asked, his sightless eyes wide, “do you plan on doing any one of those things?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said flatly. “I’ll just have to figure it out as I go along.”

“That,” Mr. Graves said, “is hardly reassuring.”

Even if I did flee to my mother’s house, the next time I saw my grandmother, I’d remember what she’d done. She’d never be punished for it.

I couldn’t live with that. Not that it would make any difference. Without John, my life would be as bleak and meaningless as one of those boring black-and-white movies they were always showing at the cinema art house back in Connecticut.

But innocent people, like my counselor, Jade, would still have been murdered, and someone needed to pay for that. And the people here in the Underworld still needed my help. I couldn’t abandon them, no matter how hopeless I felt. They were my responsibility now, the way they used to be John’s. They were the choice I’d made that night in his bed when he’d asked if I understood the consequences of what we were doing. I’d thought he’d meant the consequence of possibly creating a demon baby.

What he’d meant was this.

You couldn’t go back to your mom’s house and hide under the covers when you had a baby, pretending you couldn’t hear its cries. That big, fat, demanding baby was your responsibility now. You had to take care of it, for as long as it needed you, even when it wasn’t being cute and giggly, but when it was crying and hungry.

I should never have worried about having a demon baby as a result of making love with John in the Underworld: The Underworld itself is a demon baby.

I should have known there was a catch. In Greek myths, there was always a catch.

“Ready, Pierce?” Frank had come over, a heavy-looking sack hanging off one shoulder. Whatever was in the sack jingled faintly as he walked.

“Why does he get to go with you, and not me?” Kayla glared.

“Because I’m the … what’s it called? Oh, right. The muscle.” Frank had cleaned up the cut on his forehead, but he still resembled, with his long facial scar, black leather trousers, and multiple tattoos, a cross between a pirate and a biker from a motorcycle gang. In my opinion, Frank had been born in the wrong century.

Kayla whipped her head around to glare at me. “If you guys are going to kill Farah Endicott, I want to be there.”

“Why would anyone want to kill Farah Endicott?” Alex asked. “What’d she ever do to you? Seth Rector’s the one who murdered me. If anyone’s going to get popped, it’s him. And I should be the one who gets to do it.”

“You guys,” I said, dropping John’s tablet into the tote bag. I couldn’t keep carrying things around in my sash. Not only did it look unwieldy, it was uncomfortable.

And now that the Fates were gone, I couldn’t wish for a new gown with pockets. I couldn’t even bring myself to change into the only modern-day dress in my closet. That’s because it was the one John had asked me to wear on our first date … the one that had ended up being what I’d worn the night we’d … well, never mind. I’d never be able to wear that dress again.

“No one is getting popped,” I said firmly.

Mr. Graves agreed.

“Yes,” he said. “Please cease this talk of, er, popping people immediately. This is exactly why I said from the start of this that the captain wouldn’t approve of any of —”

“Mr. Graves,” I said to him. “I’ve got this.” I pulled my diamond from the bodice of my dress and showed it to Kayla. “Look. This kills Furies when I touch it to someone who’s possessed by one. It doesn’t kill people. And as far as I know, Farah Endicott is not possessed by a Fury.” Farah’s boyfriend, Seth, I wasn’t so sure about, so I didn’t mention him, since I didn’t want to rile up Alex any more than he already was.

Kayla looked down at the stone in my fingers. “It’s the exact same color as my streaks,” she said, pulling on one of the violet strands in her voluminous curls. “And my dress.”

“It is right now,” I said, tucking the diamond away again. “It only turns this color when you’re close by. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what it does.”

Kayla looked pleased. “It means you should take me with you. Amethyst’s my birthstone. I was born in February. I’m an Aquarius. Aquarians are highly adaptable. They get along with everyone.”

Alex made a sound in his throat that suggested he didn’t agree with this statement.

“Everyone,” Kayla corrected herself, “except fake bitches like Farah Endicott. And my brother, of course.”

Frank let the sack he’d been shouldering fall to the floor. The jingling sound it made as it hit was loud enough to draw the attention of a number of people in the room. “No. She’s not going. They saw her. Or they will have by now, on the film from those cameras at that bloody tomb. It’s too dangerous.”

“They saw all of us,” I reminded him.

“Oh, sweetie,” Kayla purred, wrapping her hands around one of Frank’s heavily tattooed biceps. “It’s so sexy when you get brutish and protective. Even though it won’t do any good, because I’m going. We may be in the Underworld, but I’m pretty sure this is still a free country. Or under one, anyway. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Mr. Graves’s face had gone almost as purple as my stone. “Frank. What is in that bag?”

Frank shrugged his arm from Kayla’s grip in order to reach defensively for his sack. “Just a few weapons we might need if we run into trouble, and some gold coins for bribes, of course —”

The surgeon threw an aggrieved look in my direction, as if to say, This is the team you’ve chosen to save us?

I didn’t entirely disagree with his opinion on the matter. Taking Frank instead of Mr. Liu — who was adding wood to the fire he’d started in the hearth, hoping it would help warm the shivering dead — had been a tough decision.

But what other choice could I have made? The worsening storm outside had forced us to give shelter to hundreds of discontented, hungry people, resulting in a growing storm inside. I needed to leave someone strong behind with this rabble, someone who could manage them but who also wasn’t a hothead, someone who would keep them safe while also showing them compassion. Already we’d had to banish the man in khaki pants who’d kept insisting to me that he was on the wrong dock, because he’d sidled up to Chloe and done or said something that had caused her to scream, startling Mrs. Engle so badly, she’d dropped a tea tray.

She’s my daughter, Khaki Pants had insisted. I can’t believe she’s here. I just wanted to say hello.

Chloe, her eyes wide and frightened, insisted she’d never seen Khaki Pants before.

I understood more than ever why the two sets of passengers had to be kept separate, and also why strong individuals of a certain temperament were needed to ensure that they stayed that way.

I was also finally able to understand how, after nearly two hundred years of dealing with this, John had lost his grip on his humanity, and why, by the time I’d met him, he’d so often behaved like a brute.

It seemed wiser to take Frank and leave Mr. Liu. Kayla, however, was another matter.

Until she said, as I was shouldering my bag and turning to leave, “You know, I left my car parked at the cemetery after I followed you guys there. If the storm’s gotten as bad as everyone says, you’re going to need a ride.”

I didn’t want to endanger anyone’s life except my own. But considering all the warnings I’d received on my phone — and the fact that John wasn’t around to teleport me anywhere — the offer of free transportation that would keep me dry was too good to pass up.

“Fine,” I said to her. “But you’re staying in the car. You’re the driver, that’s it.”

Alex cried out in dismay, even as Kayla let out a happy squeal and began to leap around. Mr. Graves shook his head in disapproval. Reed, still shirtless over at the dining table, raised his hand.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I can drive. Why does she get to be your wheelman and I don’t?”

“Because Miss Rivera isn’t dead,” Mr. Graves snapped. “And you are. If you were to leave the Underworld now for any reason other than to reenter your corpse — which I have no doubt is in a mortuary somewhere, either filled with embalming fluid or cremated to ashes — you’ll lose any chance whatsoever at moving on to what awaits you in the afterlife. That is your choice, of course, but you asked earlier what a revenant is. A revenant is what you’ll be if you choose to walk out that door … doomed forevermore to abide here with us in the Underworld. Is that really what you want, young man?”

Reed put his arm down. “Uh, no. I withdraw the question.”

I was zipping up my tote bag, ready to go, when Henry approached me.

“Miss,” he said, tugging on my skirt.

“Forget it, Henry,” I said. “You’re not coming. We need you here, and not just to bring people tea. You’re the only one who knows where anything is, now that John is … away.”

“No,” he said. “Not that. I have something for you.”

I turned and held out my hand, hoping he wasn’t going to present me with a kiss. If he did, I knew I would completely break down. I could not — would not — fail these people.

And yet I had no idea how to save them.

Instead of rising onto his tiptoes to press his lips to my cheek, as I’d feared he might, he pressed a well-worn, smooth piece of wood into my palm.

“What’s this?” I asked, surprised.

“It’s my slingshot,” he said matter-of-factly. “I modified it for you.”

I saw that he had, indeed, tied one of my hair bands between the two wooden prongs.

“Vulcanized rubber is best,” he explained, pulling on it. “I figured since you were a girl, and your fingers aren’t very strong, you’d need something quite a bit stretchier than the rope I normally use. This thing from your hair works like a peach. What you do is, you put your diamond in the pocket here, see” — he demonstrated using a small stone — “stretch it back, and then let go. If you run into anyone who’s possessed by a Fury, just shoot your diamond at ’em. That way you don’t have to get so near them, see? And they can’t hurt you.”

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked quickly in order to dash them away before he could notice.

“Henry,” I said. “It’s the most ingenious thing I’ve ever seen.”

I didn’t mention that if I went around shooting my diamond necklace at Furies, I would also have to run around trying to find where it had landed after hitting them. This apparently hadn’t occurred to the boy. While he’d lived in the Underworld for more than a century, he was still mentally only ten or eleven or so.

“I thought you’d like it,” he said, looking pleased.

I tucked the slingshot into my bag, then reached down to ruffle his hair and kiss him on the forehead.

“Thank you,” I said.

Henry’s round cheeks turned pink.

“It was nothing,” he said, and started to turn away, then seemed to have second thoughts and flung his arms around my waist, which was approximately as high as he stood.

“Don’t die,” he said into my stomach.

“I won’t,” I said, hugging him back. It was more difficult than ever to hold back my tears. “You don’t, either.”

“I can’t,” he said, releasing me as abruptly as he’d flung his arms around me. He reached up to scrub angrily at his eyelids, then glanced nervously in the direction of the bed on which John’s body lay. “At least, it’s not likely.”

I didn’t follow his gaze. I still couldn’t glance towards the bed without feeling the way I had when I’d fallen into that swimming pool the day I’d died … like icy cold water was filling my lungs.

“Keep it that way,” I said to Henry, and turned towards the bottom of the double staircase, where Frank and Kayla already stood, waiting for me.

“Pierce,” Frank said. “Tell her she isn’t coming.”

“She’s coming,” I said. “We need her car and her driving skills. I don’t have a license. I’m not a very good driver.”

“I can drive the bloody car,” Frank said.

“No, you can’t,” Kayla said. “You died before cars were invented.”

“If I can navigate a two-hundred-foot clipper ship through the Florida Straits during a hurricane, I’m fairly certain I can drive an automobile.”

“I am the only one who drives my car,” Kayla said.

Mr. Liu stood alone on the opposite staircase. I could tell from his expression that he wanted to speak to me privately. I crossed the flagstone floor until I reached him. He looked down at me, his expression somber.

“When you first came here,” he said quietly, “you were like a kite flying high in the wind, with no one holding its strings. Only the wind that fueled you was your anger.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t angry. I was frightened.”

“Maybe a little,” he said. “But mostly you were angry, like the captain. That isn’t a bad thing. That’s why he chose you. You’re very alike. You both feel angry — at what was done to you, and at what you see being done to others. You both need someone holding on to your strings, to keep your anger from taking you so high into the sky, you’re lost forever.”

Tears filled my eyes. This time, I couldn’t stop them. All I could do was hope that if I didn’t speak, they might go away on their own.

“Now that the captain is gone,” Mr. Liu said, “there’s no one to hold on to your strings. You’re going to go wherever the wind — your anger — blows you. You might even blow away from us altogether. The thought has crossed your mind.”

“No.” The word burst from me unbidden, along with a sob. I choked both back. “No,” I said in a calmer voice. “That isn’t true.”

How had he read my mind? And what was this nonsense about my being a kite?

“It is true,” he said. “Until you get control of your own strings, you can help no one. Not the captain. Not us. Not even yourself.”

I reached up to swipe at my tears.

“Mr. Liu,” I said. “Thank you for that. Now I really need to get going —”

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not the first to say it to you. Someone else has said it to you before, I think, only in a different way.”

“Mr. Liu,” I said, laughing in disbelief through my tears. “I can guarantee that no one else has ever accused me of being a kite fueled by anger with no one to hold on to my strings.”

“No. But a person who needs to discover herself?”

Children who fail to do well in school can often still be successful in life — my school counselor’s assurance to my parents, back in Connecticut, suddenly popped into my head — if they discover something else in which to engage.

Mr. Liu must have read the dawning recognition in my face, since he held out his massive hand. “Here,” he said.

I looked down. “Oh, no,” I said, instantly recognizing what he was giving me. “I can’t take that. John said —”

“You must take it.” Mr. Liu’s voice was unyielding. “It is the string for you to hold on to.”

It was the whip, neatly coiled and attached to one of Mr. Liu’s wide leather belts, through which Mr. Liu had poked a few extra holes so it would accommodate my slimmer waist.

I took the belt from him, shaking my head even as I reached up to put my arms around his burly neck to hug him. “Thank you,” I whispered in his ear, which had multiple silver hoops pierced through it.

He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Remember,” he said. “Don’t let go of your strings.”

My eyes so filled with tears I could hardly see, I nodded, then wrapped the belt around my waist. The last hole fit, but barely. The end of the belt trailed down almost to my knees, so I tucked it back through. I suspected the effect wasn’t going to win me any teen magazine fashion awards.

Then Mr. Graves was back, saying how there was absolutely no reason for us to go to Isla Huesos, as he was fairly certain he had enough yeast left over from his attempts at beer brewing to bake some bread, and if we could only wait —

Thunder clapped again, loudly enough to cause even the thick castle walls to tremble.

“No more waiting.” Mr. Liu took me by the arm and began to sweep me up the stairs, saying, in a low voice, “Go now. We’ll hold them off as long as we can —”

“Hold who off?” Kayla asked, alarmed, lifting her long skirts as she hurried up the stairs after us. “The Furies? I thought all they wanted was to kill Pierce’s boyfriend.”

Thunder boomed so long, the metal sconces on the walls rattled.

“Clearly that isn’t all they want,” Mr. Liu said. At the top of the stairs, he gave Frank a stern look. “Don’t be late getting back. For your sake, as well as ours.”

Frank adjusted his bag, which tinkled suggestively. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I very much doubt that,” said Mr. Liu.

We reached the open doorway. Standing in front of it was my cousin.

“What if I’m the one causing the pestilence?” Alex asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if I came with you? It might draw the Furies away from here.”

“Alex,” I said hotly. “As you once pointed out to me, the whole world doesn’t revolve around you. And I’m pretty sure that’s true of the Underworld, too. But if it’s so important to you to come with us, please, be my guest.”

Mr. Liu might not have been so far off base about me being fueled by anger after all. Because as I said the words be my guest, I shoved Alex into the doorway, then followed him through it, figuring whatever happened next, he’d thoroughly deserve.