Awaken

12

I swooned away as if I had been dying,

And fell, even as a dead body falls.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto V

Kayla found four soggy parking tickets beneath her wipers.

“Isla Huesos cops really are evil,” she declared.

She’d unlocked the doors, and we were all inside her messy subcompact.

“You think they’d suspend alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations during a hurricane,” Alex said. “I can’t believe you didn’t get towed.”

“I can’t believe your automobile didn’t get stolen,” Frank said. “Is it normal to keep the keys in a little case in the wheel well?”

“It is for me. That way I can’t lose them.” Kayla stuffed the parking tickets into her glove compartment, where I couldn’t help noticing there appeared to be half a dozen other unpaid tickets. “Besides, no one ever looks there for them.”

“I’m shocked you ever have trouble finding anything,” Frank commented sarcastically, peeling away an Island Queen napkin that had become stuck to the bottom of his boot. “It’s so tidy in here. What’s this?”

Kayla snatched the ruby-colored bra he’d dug out from behind his back. “You should know, you’re the one who got it off me,” she said.

Alex, seated behind them, hooted. Now that he was safely out of the cemetery, he seemed to be in a better mood.

“Shut up, Cabrero,” Kayla said, chucking the bra at him. Alex laughingly deflected it as Kayla checked her reflection in the light-up compact mirror she’d fished from the side panel of her door. “Oh, great, my eyeliner is running. I look like a drowned hoochie mama.”

“You look fine,” I said. “Can we please go before someone sees us?”

“Who’s going to see us?” Kayla reached for a spare makeup bag she also kept in the side panel. “It’s pitch-black on this street.”

It was true. All up and down the narrow streets along the cemetery, the windows of every quaintly painted beach cottage were dark, even though, according to Alex’s watch, it was now only a little after eleven o’clock at night.

“For all we know,” Kayla went on as she carefully repainted the black lines around her eyes, “there isn’t a single soul left alive in this town except for us. Well, and the cops who gave me these tickets.”

“Thanks, Kayla.” It was Alex’s turn to sound sarcastic. “That’s a really pleasant thought. Some of us have family members we’re worried about, you know.”

“I’m sure your dad is fine, Alex,” I said as comfortingly as I could. “The power is out in this part of town, is all.”

“And you’re not the only one with family,” Kayla reminded him as she painted. “I’m worried about my mom. Well, not really, because she’s required to be on duty at the hospital for as long as this storm lasts, and the hospital was built to withstand category-five hurricane-force winds. But she’s probably freaked I haven’t called. Which reminds me, do you think if there’s any Furies around they’ll find us if I turn on the AC and charge my phone? Because my battery is dead and the windows are too fogged up for me to see out of to drive. Could you all breathe less?”

She switched on the engine, and a second later, a powerful blast of lukewarm air was blowing at Alex and me from the front seat. Kayla immediately pulled her phone from the bodice of her dress and plugged it into the charger on her console. “Okay, Pierce,” she asked, “where are we going?”

“Richard Smith’s house,” I said at the same time Alex said, “My house.”

Alex glared at me. “Who’s Richard Smith?”

“He’s the cemetery sexton. Remember, you met him at school the day we had that assembly about Coffin Night. He’s an old friend of Grandpa’s. I think he might be able to help us figure out where the Fates went, and if there really is a Thanatos —”

Alex’s expression, in the dim glow from Kayla’s dashboard, was twisted with outrage. “Pierce, my dad probably thinks I’m dead —”

“You are dead, mate,” Frank said. “To everyone who ever mattered to you, anyway. Get used to it.”

“But I’m not dead,” Alex said. “I’m an NDE, like Pierce. And the last thing I want to do right now is go visit some old friend of Grandpa’s —”

“Alex, Mr. Smith is the only person I can think of who might know of a way to help your dad and all those people we left behind in the Underworld —”

“Meaning your boyfriend,” Alex interrupted, with a scowl.

I prickled. “I didn’t say that.”

“But it’s obvious he’s your biggest priority,” Alex snapped. “Thanatos? That was practically the first word out of your mouth. And you never even mentioned going to see your mom. Ever since you met him, he’s all you care about. The rest of us were worried sick the whole time you were gone, but you didn’t care. Now he’s dead, but he and his world are still all you’re worried about.”

“Oh, my God, Alex,” I said. “That isn’t true. I worried about you and Uncle Chris and my mom and dad the entire time I was gone.”

Frank tilted the rearview mirror so he could see Alex.

“It’s true, mate,” he said. “First time I ever met her, you were all she talked about, how she had to go back and fetch you out of that coffin. Nearly drove the captain mad.”

I gave Frank a disapproving look in the mirror to show him that I didn’t need his help. When I looked back at Alex, I could see that his expression remained defiant, but his eyes had a sheen to them, reflecting the light … or maybe some unshed tears.

“I did worry a lot about you,” I said to Alex. “And your dad, too. But if we don’t fix what’s happening in the Underworld, your dad’s problems aren’t going to matter, nor is anyone else’s who lives in Isla Huesos, because Isla Huesos itself isn’t going to be around for much longer.”

Then it occurred to me. Alex’s eyes were reflecting the light.

What light? All the streetlamps were out, and the dashboard console was glowing green.

“Someone’s coming,” I said, glancing away from Alex and down at the diamond at the end of my necklace. Sure enough, it was no longer the comforting purple it always was in Kayla’s presence but a deep black.

“What’s that?” Kayla asked, pointing.

Through the streams of rain battering the windshield, I could see a single white arc of light swinging along the sidewalk.

“A lantern,” Frank said.

“No,” I said, my skin growing cold, and not because of my damp clothes or because Kayla had the AC set so high. “It’s a flashlight.”

“A flashlight?” Kayla echoed in disbelief. “Who’d be out in weather like this?”

“No one we want to run into,” I said. “Start driving.”

“Where?” Kayla asked, beginning to back out from her parking space.

“Anywhere,” I said, reaching into my bag, at the same time that Alex said, “Except my house.”

Whoever was holding the flashlight noticed the lights on Kayla’s car and began to approach at a more rapid clip. I heard a male voice shouting. It was impossible to distinguish exactly what he said with all the wind and rain. But his voice sounded disturbingly familiar.

“Faster, Kayla,” I said tensely.

“I’m trying,” Kayla said. “But I was never good at parallel parking.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Frank said. “You should have let me drive —”

“You weren’t even born in this century,” Kayla snapped.

“He’s crossing the street,” Alex said as the shadowy figure loomed closer.

Suddenly the man was in front of the car, seemingly half blown there by the wind. The headlights from Kayla’s car threw his features into strong definition. I couldn’t help giving a gasp.

“Do you know him?” Frank asked, glancing back at me.

“From a long time ago,” I said, my voice barely audible above the pounding of the rain on the roof of the car and the rhythmic tempo of the windshield wipers. “But … it can’t be him. There’s no way he’d be here. There’s no way he’d —”

Though he couldn’t possibly have been able to see me through the windshield — especially with me in the backseat and the glare of the high beams in his face — it seemed to me as if our gazes locked. I could have sworn a little smile of triumph played upon his face.

“Pierce.” Now there was no way to mistake what he was saying. He raised his flashlight and pointed the beam directly at me, through the windshield. “Come out of the car, and I won’t have to hurt the others.”

I didn’t feel afraid, exactly. It was more a sense of inevitability, like I’d always known this moment was going to come. I wasn’t at all surprised that it came outside the cemetery gates John had kicked open in frustration when we’d last discussed this particular individual.

“Shit,” Kayla said. “He’s in front of us, and I can’t back up. We’re trapped.”

“Who is he?” Alex demanded. “What does he want with you?”

“Mr. Mueller, my teacher from my old school,” I said calmly. “See how he keeps one hand in his pocket?”

Everyone looked. Mr. Mueller did, indeed, have one hand clutched tightly around his long, heavy metallic flashlight, while the other he kept hidden away in the pocket of his long black rain slicker.

“John crushed that hand to pieces,” I explained, “when Mr. Mueller touched me inappropriately with it.”

I didn’t figure they needed to know the part about how, at the time, I’d been trying to entrap Mr. Mueller to prove he’d caused the suicide of my best friend, with whom he’d been having an affair.

“Great,” Alex said. “That’s just great, Pierce. So what’s he want now, the rest of his hand back?”

“Can’t you tell him we don’t have it?” Kayla asked with mounting hysteria.

“Don’t worry,” Frank said. “The captain took care of one hand. I’ll take care of the other.” He started to get out of the car.

“Frank,” I cried. Now I wasn’t feeling so calm. “Don’t —”

Mr. Mueller didn’t like Frank getting out of the car instead of me. He raised the flashlight high in the air, then brought the end of it down so hard on the windshield, it left a perfect imprint in the shape of the instrument. Crystalline lines spread out from the indentation, all the way towards Kayla, who screamed.

“No one gets out but the girl,” Mr. Mueller rasped, right before his mouth turned into a yawning chasm of blood and razor-sharp teeth, hundreds of them in multiple rows, like a shark.

Now it wasn’t only Kayla screaming in terror. Frank swiftly shut the door and locked it, even as the entity into which Mr. Mueller had turned scrambled for the handle.

“Drive,” I said, my heart slamming against the back of my ribs.

“There’s nowhere I can go,” Kayla said.

“Go forward,” I said as Mr. Mueller darted around the front of the car, clearly intending to reach her door.

“But we’ll hit him,” she cried.

“Exactly,” I said.

“I can’t kill someone!”

“You hit your brother in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

“But that was family! And I didn’t kill him.”

When she still didn’t move, frozen in terror behind the wheel, I dove between her seat and Frank’s to hit the gas pedal at her feet with my hands.

I couldn’t see where the car went. My gaze was on the gas pedal and Kayla’s purple silken slippers. But I felt the lurch as the small compact rocketed forward. The top of my head slammed into the dashboard as the car impacted something large and heavy, something that let out an unearthly scream before landing hard against the hood. Kayla, shrieking, steered wildly, seemingly to shake off the assailant, stepping on my fingers as she tried to brake, crying, “Pierce, Pierce, what are you doing? We hit him, oh, my God, Pierce, we hit him, it’s over, let go!”

Finally Frank wrapped strong hands around my arms and thrust me back into my seat, saying, “It’s all right. He’s gone.”

When I pushed my hair from my eyes and looked behind us, my heart still thumping like a drum, I saw that Frank was only partially correct. In the red glow of Kayla’s taillights lay a large misshapen lump of Mueller, rain pouring all around him.

Not too far from where he stretched across the middle of the road lay the heavy flashlight, its beam pointing haphazardly at his feet. That’s how I happened to notice his shoes.

“Tassels,” I said in disgust.

Alex, too, was turned in his seat.

“You guys,” he said. “He’s still moving.”

Disappointed, I said, “Kayla, back up over him.”

Kayla cried, “No! We should call an ambulance.”

“He was going to kill us.”

“He’s a Fury,” Frank said. “Let’s go. He’ll be all right.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, striking a massive sapodilla tree in the yard of a nearby home. The ensuing fireball caused us all to duck and shield our eyes.

When we turned to look back, most of the sapodilla was gone. What was left of its trunk lay twisted and in flames in the middle of the road on top of Mr. Mueller’s remains, which steamed gently in the rain.

“Well,” Frank said, after a moment’s stunned silence. “He probably won’t be all right now.”

“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Kayla cried, gripping the steering wheel. “I just murdered someone! Someone not even related to me. A teacher!”

“You didn’t murder a teacher,” I said calmly. “I did. And I should have done it a long time ago. He was a perv who caused my best friend to kill herself. For all we know, he could be Thanatos.”

“The lightning is what actually killed him,” Frank pointed out. “Not us.”

“Still,” Kayla said as she gazed tearfully at her windshield. “Look what he did to my car. No way will my insurance cover this.”

“Do you want to save the Underworld,” I asked her. “Or not?”

Kayla shook her head, her aurora of bouncy curls restored, thanks to the AC.

“I just want to go home,” she said.

“Well, you won’t have a home anymore if these guys have their way. So how about you drive us to Mr. Smith’s house instead, and we find out what’s going on around here?” I glanced at Alex. “Is that okay?”

He was looking back at the massive branch covering Mr. Mueller’s corpse.

“What?” he asked. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking … maybe you did do a few things back at your old school in Connecticut other than sit around and make doilies.”

“Thanks for finally noticing,” I said.