Awaken

13

They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh

At which our food used to be brought to us …

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XXXIII

Pierce?” Mr. Smith said, looking from me to Frank to Alex to Kayla and then back again as we stood, bedraggled from the rain we’d dashed through in order to get to his front porch. “What on earth —?”

His voice was nearly drowned out by the loud rock music booming in the background. It was a song my parents used to listen to a lot back when they were happily married.

Mr. Smith didn’t live too far from the cemetery, but his house was in a new condo village (designed to look like old Victorian town houses) off a pretty popular road in Isla Huesos known for its bars and restaurants. While everywhere else we’d driven was in total darkness — and some places half underwater, deserted except for TV vans and news journalists standing in the water in hip waders, reporting earnestly on the “life-threatening conditions” wrought by Hurricane Cassandra (Cassandra apparently being the name given to the “monstrous” hurricane bearing down on South Florida) — Mr. Smith’s town house was brightly lit. He’d closed all his dark green storm shutters, but light still streamed out behind them, onto the porch.

“How come you have power?” Alex asked Mr. Smith. “And is that Queen playing on the stereo?”

“Oh,” Mr. Smith said, looking a little embarrassed. “Patrick and I have a generator. We usually ask the neighbors over for a little hurricane party whenever there’s a storm. That way they can watch the forecast and we get to enjoy the lobster from their freezers that would otherwise spoil.”

Kayla stared at him. “We just killed a man with my car,” she said.

Frank quickly put his arm around her. “Please excuse my girlfriend,” he said to Mr. Smith. “She’s had a bit of a shock. May we use your water closet?”

Mr. Smith’s eyes widened to their limits behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

“You mean my bathroom? Yes, of course, come in,” he said. “Where are my manners? I’m so sorry. Patrick?”

As he called for his partner, we filed, dripping, into Mr. Smith’s foyer, which was painted a tasteful pale blue with white trim. There was a wooden staircase, also trimmed in white, leading to a second floor, a doorway to a manly looking study walled with ceiling-to-floor bookcases, and, not surprisingly, an old-fashioned hat rack, covered with Mr. Smith’s many straw hats and fedoras. On the wall were framed vintage art posters of the Jazz Age burlesque dancer Josephine Baker.

This was not the kind of art I’d expected to see in Mr. Smith’s house.

“More refugees from the storm?” A man carrying a red drink cup and dressed in a white shirt and khaki shorts came strolling down the hallway along the side of the stairs. “The more, the merrier —”

He dropped the cup when he saw us. Red liquid spilled onto the expensive Persian hallway runner. Neither man seemed to notice.

“Patrick,” Mr. Smith said. “You remember Pierce, don’t you? You met her at Coffin Fest the other night.”

“Oh, my God, of course!” Patrick cried, rushing over to give me a big hug.

Patrick had been a self-proclaimed fan of mine since the media firestorm over my alleged kidnapping had catapulted the photo of John snatching me — and the reward my father had offered for my safe return — into the media. Patrick was a sucker for stories about thwarted young love. He thought my parents didn’t approve of John because he was older and lived out of town.

Patrick didn’t know how much older than me John was, and how far out of town John lived.

Correction: had lived.

“What are you doing here?” Patrick asked, his face wreathed in smiles. “Rich, why didn’t you tell me they were coming? It’s all right. There’s plenty of lobster tacos.”

I couldn’t bring myself to hug him back. I was in too much shock over everything that had happened, in addition to having heard Patrick call Mr. Smith Rich. I couldn’t think of Mr. Smith as anything but Mr. Smith.

“I didn’t know they were coming, Patrick,” Mr. Smith said in a voice that suggested he didn’t approve of his partner’s effusiveness. “Could you please get them some towels and maybe some warm drinks? As you can see, they ran into a bit of trouble on the way over.”

“Car trouble?” Patrick asked sympathetically, finally letting me go. “Did you have trouble finding a parking place? I know there aren’t many left; everyone from down island comes up here to park during storms so their engines won’t flood. There’s still room in the aboveground parking garage behind our building if you want to move your car. That’s where we keep ours —”

“Patrick,” Mr. Smith said, taking me by the arm. “The drinks and towels?”

“Oh, right,” Patrick said, laughing at himself. “Sorry. I just get so excited during storms! I love how everyone comes together to help everyone else out. I wish there could be that feeling of community every day. Anyway, drinks and towels — not to mention tacos — are back here in the kitchen. Follow me, everyone.” He seemed to notice what we were wearing for the first time and looked us up and down with delight. “Oh, my gosh, costumes! Is someone throwing a fancy-dress hurricane party? Why didn’t we think of that, Rich?” To me, he asked, with a grin, “Where’s that hot boyfriend of yours? Oh, my gosh, I love your belt.”

Tears filled my eyes, but not because his question had reminded me that John was gone. It was because, in the background, the song had ended, and I could hear the laughter of Mr. Smith’s neighbors as they shared their food and his lovely home. I realized we’d entered a true shelter from the storm, filled with life and love. There was no sign of the death and pestilence we’d been dealing with for so many hours.

The tears were because I felt horrible for spoiling this little oasis, for bringing that death and pestilence along with us. That’s what I was now, I supposed: a harbinger of doom, queen of the Underworld.

I saw Frank closing Mr. Smith’s front door and locking it, after first having peered outside to make sure we hadn’t been followed. I knew both from his relieved expression and the pale gray my diamond pendant had turned that we’d brought with us no Furies. We were safe … for the moment.

I managed to control my tears and didn’t think anyone had noticed them until I felt an arm around my shoulders. Startled, I looked up and saw my cousin standing beside me.

“John’s gonna meet up with us later,” Alex said to Patrick. “He’s got some stuff to do now. I’m Alex, by the way, Pierce’s cousin.”

“Oh,” Patrick said, shaking the hand Alex had extended. “Nice to meet you. I’ve got a shirt that would probably fit you if you want to change out of that wet one.” He eyed Frank, who stood a head and a half taller than everyone else in the room. “You, we probably can’t accommodate. What are you supposed to be, anyway, a Hell’s Angel?”

Frank shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Yes,” he said simply.

As Patrick led the others down the hall towards the laughter and music, Mr. Smith steered me by the arm into the book-filled library, closing the white-paneled French doors behind him.

“What in heaven’s name is going on?” he asked, thrusting a fluffy blue-and-white towel at me from a basket that sat on the floor by another set of French doors. I supposed they led out to a pool area, which would explain the towels, but since they were covered by storm shutters, it was impossible for me to tell. “What was that girl talking about? Did you really kill a man? And where is John?”

I sank down into a brown leather armchair and pressed the towel against my damp hair.

“Yes, we did kill someone,” I said, the words coming almost robotically from my lips. It was surprising — but then again, not surprising at all — how little I cared about having killed Mr. Mueller. Maybe emotion would come later. Or maybe not. “He tried to kill us first, though.”

“Good God,” Mr. Smith said. He sank into the mate of the leather chair in which I sat, his brown skin suddenly looking almost as gray as his short-cropped hair. “Who was he?”

“A teacher from my old school in Connecticut.”

“What on earth was he doing here?” Mr. Smith asked, slipping off his spectacles in order to polish them, something he often did in times of great distress.

“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me. Did we awaken the ancients, or create an imbalance, or some mumbo jumbo like that? That’s what Mr. Graves thinks.”

Mr. Smith shook his head before slipping his glasses back on. “I don’t know who Mr. Graves is, nor did I understand a single word you just said. Go back to where your teacher tried to kill you.”

“He was pretty specific that if I didn’t get out of the car, he’d kill everyone else inside it to get at me,” I said. “So we ran him over. Then lightning hit a tree, and it fell on him.”

Mr. Smith stared at me.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “John still hasn’t learned to control his temper, I see.”

I stared back, confused. “Why would you say that?”

He blinked at me through his spectacles. “Didn’t you tell me that when John gets angry, he causes it to thunder and lightning?”

“Yes,” I said. “He does. I mean, he did. But John wasn’t there.”

“He wasn’t?” Mr. Smith knit his gray eyebrows with concern. “Where is he?”

Tears filled my eyes once again, only this time, it wasn’t because of how touched I was by the shelter Mr. Smith was providing us — and others — from the storm.

“John’s dead,” I said, my voice breaking.

This time, I didn’t try to stop my tears, not even when I saw the look of incredulous shock — and sorrow — that spread across Mr. Smith’s face. My tears came spilling out of me as quickly and as hotly as my story. I found myself telling him everything that had happened, from our having brought Alex back to life that horrible morning in the cemetery, to the awful moment I’d seen John’s lifeless body in the waves. I left out nothing ….

Well, almost nothing. I saw no reason to let Mr. Smith know that my relationship with John had reached a more intimate level. Some things are private, after all. And I didn’t think that could have anything to do with all the unfortunate events that had been going on in the Underworld.

I did tell him other things, though, even things that might have seemed inconsequential, like Hope’s being lost. I don’t know why, except that the words Mr. Liu had spoken to me right before I’d left the Underworld kept running through my head: I really was a kite fueled by anger, with no one to hold my strings now that John was gone. I had killed a man and felt no remorse whatsoever about it.

Mr. Smith, though, was one of the most grounded, compassionate people I’d ever met … despite his somewhat morbid interest in death deities. If anyone could help figure out a way to save us — to save John, and perhaps, through saving John, save me — it was him.

He listened intently as I spoke, ignoring the muted sound of the laughter and music coming from down the hall, his expression troubled, tears glittering in his own eyes, as dark brown as the leather on which we sat. When I was finished, he lowered his hands, which he’d kept pressed to his cheeks from the time I’d said John was dead until I finished with, “And … well, then we got here. That’s it, I guess.”

To my surprise, he said none of the things an ordinary person might say, like, Oh, Pierce, I’m so sorry for your loss, or You have my deepest sympathies.

Instead, he said, his dark eyes still glittering compassionately behind the lenses of his glasses, “My dear. You’re wrong. So, so wrong.”

I stared at him. For the first time all evening, I actually felt something. What I felt was probably what Mr. Mueller must have felt when I’d rammed Kayla’s car into him.

“Wrong?” I echoed. “About what? There’s no such person as Thanatos?”

“Oh, no,” he said dismissively. “Not about that. About hope. Hope is not lost.”

I took a deep, disappointed breath.

“I told you,” I said. Why had I thought coming here was such a good idea? Alex was right. We ought to have gone straight to Uncle Chris — although, of course, Uncle Chris lived with my grandmother, so this would have been risky, considering she was possessed by a Fury. But Mr. Smith was usually so on top of things. Not anymore, I guess. “Hope is gone. I haven’t seen her since all of the ravens fell to the ground after the boats collided —”

Mr. Smith was using one of his old-school handkerchiefs to scrub at his moist eyes.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean your bird,” he said. “Although I don’t believe she’s lost, either, at least, not forever. She’ll come back, as pets often do after the storm, when the worst is over and the sun has come out again. She knows her way home.”

I sat and stared at him. What was he talking about?

“What I meant,” he went on, after tucking the handkerchief away, “was hope. You said you feel as if all hope is lost, and that the Fates have deserted us. But I don’t believe that’s true, not for a second, any more than I believe John is dead.”

Suddenly the pleasant white walls of his library became pink-tinged. Uh-oh.

“Mr. Smith, I’m sorry, I know this is difficult for you,” I said, keeping my voice controlled with an effort. There were a number of knickknacks on his shelves, little glass ornaments shaped like boats and shells. I didn’t want to snatch up any of them and throw them. But the part of me fueled by anger felt like doing so. “Believe me, it’s difficult for me to accept, too. But I listened to John’s chest myself. There’s no heartbeat. I performed mouth-to-mouth on him. He never started breathing again. I even pressed my necklace against him, the way we did with Alex. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. Trust me, he’s dead. There wasn’t anything anyone could do —”

Mr. Smith waved his hand in front of his face, as if my words were a bothersome gnat. This didn’t help alleviate the red glow in my eyes. If anything, it intensified.

“Oh, I know. I believe his body is dead right now. But John’s spirit isn’t. Why else do you think that bolt of lightning came out of the blue and struck that tree, causing it to fall on that teacher of yours? That was pure, vintage John. He was trying to help you, in that overly dramatic way of his.”

The minute he mentioned the lightning, the red pulled back from my vision the way an ocean wave receded from a shoreline. What he was suggesting was crazy …

… crazy enough to be true.

The lightning had been an odd coincidence, considering the fact that my boyfriend had always been able to control the weather with his mind and the way he’d always showed up whenever someone was threatening me.

Except that John was dead.

“Thunder and lightning were a signature trick of John’s,” I heard myself murmur, despite the fact that I refused to allow myself to hope.

“So you told me,” Mr. Smith said, rising from his chair and going to his bookshelves. “It makes sense that he’d try to protect you in the afterlife as he did in life … whatever afterlife he’s experiencing right now, that is.”

“But,” I said. No. I wasn’t going to hope. “That’s impossible. Unless … ”

“It’s no more impossible, I should think, than anything else you’ve experienced so far, such as finding yourself in an underworld that exists beneath our world, and discovering that you, a fairly below-average student, are the co-regent of it. Now, where did I put that book?”

“You mean … ” I was starting to feel something other than anger. It felt, dangerously, like optimism. “ … you think John is around somewhere? Like in spirit form?”

“More than in spirit form,” Mr. Smith said. “I think your friend Mr. Graves is right about there being an imbalance in the Underworld. I have my suspicions about what caused it, but more important, I do believe it caused an opportunity for the death god, Thanatos, to capture John’s soul. The question is, how are we going to save him?”