Awaken

29

And, he to me: “Thou’lt mark, when they shall be

Nearer to us; and then do thou implore them

By love which leadeth them, and they will come.”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto V

Patrick Reynolds,” Chief of Police Santos said, looking at the notepad he’d drawn from his belt. “Says here he’s in stable condition after surgery for blunt-force trauma to the head. Neighbor found him and called an ambulance.”

Mr. Smith buried his face in his hands. “Oh, thank God.”

I laid a hand on Mr. Smith’s back. We were all gathered on the front porch of the cemetery sexton’s office. Even though the roof of the back of the cottage had been smashed in by the Spanish lime tree, the front of the house seemed sturdy enough, and the porch offered a rare bit of shade. Though it was late afternoon, the sun was still beating down like it was … well, an island in the subtropics.

“It was Mike,” Kayla said, her voice as cold as the bottle of water we’d each been handed by one of the emergency medical services technicians who’d shown up shortly after Chief Santos and his officers. “Mike did it.”

Chief Santos didn’t have to check his notepad. “I got that, young lady,” he said. “The last five times you said it.”

“I just want to make sure.”

Kayla hadn’t said anything about Mike having killed Frank, because John had assured her that he was going to “fix” Frank. Mr. Liu had hidden Frank’s body in John’s crypt so the police wouldn’t find it. We’d all agreed privately that it was better not to admit to Kayla that John had no idea how he was going to “fix” Frank.

The thought of Frank lying dead in that cold, dank crypt made me shudder. I could only imagine how it made Kayla feel.

“His prints are all over Mr. Smith’s house,” Chief Santos said. “We have them on file from a B and E he committed a few years back. Mike actually has quite an extensive record.”

“I thought he was doing better,” Mr. Smith said mournfully.

Chief Santos made a sarcastic sound, like a hard-bitten cop who didn’t have much faith left in humanity. Of course, he didn’t know the island he worked on had literally been overrun by demons from hell, though he might have wondered about the odd migratory patterns of the birds here.

“You might want to see if his DNA matches up to any found at the scene of Jade Ortega’s murder,” I said. “Also Officer Poling’s.”

Chief Santos sent me a sharp look. “What do you know about Officer Poling?”

“My daughter’s not going to offer up any more information,” my dad said casually, from the porch railing against which he was leaning, “without a lawyer present.”

“A lawyer shouldn’t be necessary,” Chief Santos said with practiced ease, turning a page in his notepad. “She isn’t being charged with anything. I’m just curious. Officer Poling is dead.”

My eyes widened. “He is? What happened?”

“He drew his weapon on a civilian,” Chief Santos said. He kept his gaze on his own handwriting. “We were forced to fire.”

Now I knew why it had taken the police so long to get to the cemetery. It hadn’t just been the tree that had been blocking the road.

“Was the civilian the man with the chain saw?” I asked worriedly, though I was fairly certain I knew the answer. “Was he hurt?”

“Yes, he did have a saw, and no, he was unharmed,” the chief said, looking up at me. “Why? Did you know him?”

I shook my head. John, seeing my discomfort, put his arm around me, and Hope, still sitting perched on my shoulder, trilled a few notes. Her mate, perched in the rafters of the porch, trilled back.

Why had the man with the chain saw, I wondered yet again, risked his life to save me, a total stranger? None of it made any sense.

“What kind of dog did you say that was again?” Chief Santos said, pointing at Typhon, who lay in the dirt at the bottom of the porch steps, panting heavily, though he’d been offered a large bowl of water by the EMTs.

“He’s a bullmastiff,” Mrs. Engle said cheerfully, as Chloe gave the dog a pat on the head, which he showed his appreciation for by licking her on the leg.

Chief Santos eyed the dog skeptically. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve seen those kinds of dogs before, and they didn’t look like that. I’ve seen you before, too,” he added, jabbing his pen in Chloe’s direction. “You look a lot like that girl that’s been all over the news, the homeschooled, Christian one from Homestead, who they say gut shot her father because he was physically abusing her mom.”

I stared at Chloe in horror, remembering the man in khaki pants with the huge bloodstain on the front of his shirt, the one who’d kept insisting he was in the wrong line — the one to hell — and that he knew Chloe.

He had known Chloe. She was the one who’d put him in that line.

“Oh,” Chloe said to Chief Santos, a dazzling smile on her face. “That couldn’t be me. That girl died in the storm in a horrible car accident.”

“Yeah,” Chief Santos said, lowering his pen. “I heard that.”

I noticed the shards of glass were gone from Chloe’s hair, and she’d washed away the blood, too.

“Oh, the poor dear,” Mrs. Engle said, laying a hand on Mr. Graves’s shoulder. “How perfectly awful for that girl.”

“Sounds like a bad situation all around,” Mr. Graves agreed.

“But I’m happy that her mom is finally free,” Chloe said.

“I’m happy for that girl’s mom, too,” Reed said, reaching out to take Chloe’s hand.

On my shoulder, Hope cooed happily, but I was thinking of a different girl, the one from my mom’s neighborhood who’d worn the Daddy’s Little Princess T-shirt. I wondered what had happened to her. I looked around for Alex in order to ask him. He had been with my father and the chief of police earlier, but now he seemed to have disappeared.

“What are you two supposed to be?” Chief Santos demanded, his gaze falling on Mr. Liu and Henry, Mr. Liu in his leather and tattoos, and Henry in his silver-buckled shoes and long, nineteenth-century jacket.

On cue, Henry flung his arms around Mr. Liu and began to weep crocodile tears. “Daddy,” he cried. “Don’t let the policeman take me away!”

Mr. Liu laid a massive hand upon Henry’s head and patted his not-particularly clean hair. “He’s adopted,” he said to Chief Santos in his usual laconic fashion.

“I see,” Chief of Police Santos said, not falling for the act for a second. “Okay. Here’s the situation. I got a problem with all of this. And all of you, too.” He made a circle in the air with his pen that seemed to incorporate the whole of the cemetery and everyone sitting on the porch, as well.

All except for Alex, I noticed, who was still gone. I hoped he wasn’t off sulking somewhere over Reed and Chloe clearly being together now.

“My people and I come in here because we hear screaming and we understand from you, Mr. Oliviera, that your daughter is in danger, and what do we find?” Chief Santos went on. “We find your daughter on a horse with the boy who just yesterday you were insisting had kidnapped her, but now we discover you’re dropping that charge —”

“It was all a misunderstanding,” Dad said with a smile and a wave of his hand. “Love the boy like a son.”

John and my father exchanged smiles that wouldn’t have persuaded even the newest rookie on the force that they cared for each other. I knew they were only making a go of it for my sake. Chief Santos looked completely unconvinced but continued.

“And we find folks on the ground all over the place with superficial wounds — some way more serious than that — and no memory whatsoever what they were doing in the cemetery in the first place.”

“Well, I can tell you that,” Mr. Smith said. “They were here cleaning up after the storm, doing a lovely and much-needed job of keeping our cemetery looking well tended, when the sun became too much for them, and they simply succumbed to heatstroke.”

“That,” Chief Santos said, looking the cemetery sexton dead in the eye, “is a load of bull, and you know it. Heatstroke? Fifty to sixty people? All in the course of a few hours? Some of those people have concussions. Some of them are suffering from blunt-force head trauma. Some of them have dog bites. Two of them have horse bites. A couple of them were bitten by humans. All of them have small, oddly shaped burn wounds that are reminiscent of one that a female officer of mine received a few nights ago at Coffin Fest. Now, I want the truth. None of these people is what I would call an upstanding citizen — begging your pardon, Mr. Oliviera, since I know one of them is your mother-in-law. But with the exception of that scumbag, Mike, none of them is a murder suspect, either. So I want you to be straight with me. What happened here?”

Mr. Smith folded his hands in a position I recognized. He was about to give a lecture.

“I’ll tell you what happened, Chief Santos,” the cemetery sexton said. “What happened today was a victory of the Fates over the Furies.”

“What?” Chief Santos said.

I wasn’t sure I understood, either.

“It’s very simple,” Mr. Smith said. “In everyday life, we’re given a choice. Do the right thing, do nothing, or do the wrong thing. All too often, people choose to do nothing. And that’s all right. It’s easier. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what’s right and what’s wrong. But every so often, a few people choose to go out of their way to do the right thing … like your gentleman with the chain saw, Pierce.”

I felt as if a burden had been lifted from my heart. Suddenly, I understood.

“He was a Fate,” I said. “All those people trying to help me today … the man with the chain saw, the woman at the gate — even the little girl. They were Fates.”

“Yes,” Mr. Smith said. “Exactly. Fates are anyone who chooses to be on the side of good. If enough people go out of their way to help someone else, the spirit of kindness eventually breaks through the darkness, the way sunshine breaks through clouds after a storm and allows even more kind acts to follow. My hope has always been that some day kindness will prevail, and there won’t be any Furies for us to fight.”

John stared at Mr. Smith in disbelief, looking, in his own way, as jaded as Chief Santos. These two had more in common than either of them probably knew, each having seen his fair share of hardship; John having lived it, and Chief Santos having arrested it.

“I hope that, too,” I said, because I wanted to believe in Mr. Smith’s version of the Fates, whether or not it was true.

Chloe sighed happily, dropping her head to Reed’s shoulder. “Me, too. That story reminds me of angels. I wish he’d tell it again.”

“Do not tell it again,” Chief Santos said testily. “Something went on today in this cemetery. Something goes on in this cemetery all the time, doesn’t it? Not only during Coffin Week, but all the time. It doesn’t matter if we keep the gates locked; something’s always going on in here. Something no one ever talks about. Something’s wrong with this island, and no one will tell me what it is. Well, I’m going to tell you people, whatever it is” — he jabbed his finger at the ground for emphasis — “it stops right here.”

“Chief Santos.” My father rose from the porch railing, his cell phone in his hand. “I’ve got my wife on the line. She wants to speak to you.”

I’m sure I was the only one who noticed he said wife and not ex-wife, and the only one whose heart gave a happy flip over it.

Chief Santos looked at my father as if he were crazy. “What?”

“My wife,” Dad said, holding his phone towards the police chief. “She has something she wants to tell you. It’s about what’s wrong with this island. It has to do with Nate Rector and the luxury homes he’s building out at Reef Key. Something to do with some bones.”

I sucked in my breath and looked around for Alex. But Alex was still nowhere to be seen.

“Bones?” Chief Santos was beginning to look like he was developing an ulcer. “Could you please tell your wife I’ll call her back? I don’t have time to talk about bones right now.”

“Actually, Chief,” my father said in a voice as cold as ice, “I think you do. My wife is an expert. She has a PhD” — if he said wife again, I was pretty sure my heart was going to fly out of my chest and flutter up to sit next to Hope’s husband — “and knows some pretty important people. They’re flying down from the Smithsonian up in Washington, DC, to look at these bones. I guess they’re pretty old, and Nate Rector’s built his houses right on top of them, and the people in Washington are pretty ticked off —”

Chief Santos took the phone from my dad, holding it as if he expected it to give him an electric shock.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be happy to take the call.” His expression said he’d be anything but.

He began following my dad from the porch as they walked to Chief Santos’s car. The last thing Chief Santos said, before raising the phone to his ear, was to John.

“You.” He pointed from John to Alastor, whose reins had been tied to the porch railing. “It’s a violation to keep or ride a horse within city limits, unless of course you’re an officer with the mounted police unit.” He glared at John. “Which you ain’t, kid.”

John nodded. “I know, sir. It will never happen again.”

“It better not,” he said. Then he lifted the phone to his ear. “Dr. Cabrero? Hello, yes, it’s me, Chief Santos. Yes, I was just with your daughter. She’s fine. Your mother? Well, ma’am, she was taken to the hospital for observation, along with a few dozen other people. No, no, she’s going to be fine, superficial injuries to her throat, broken arm, burn mark, seemed a bit disoriented. Well, best I can figure out, ma’am, it’s all from” — he turned as he approached the cemetery gates to shoot Mr. Smith a murderous look — “heatstroke. Now what’s this your husband is telling me about some bones? Is that so? I’ll be very interested to speak to Mr. Rector about that. Tell you what, we’ll swing by his house and pick him up right now.”

As soon as he was out of earshot, Chloe exploded with laughter.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “I was sure I was caught that time!”

“You murdered your dad?” Kayla said. She’d been silent almost the entire time on the porch … understandably. The Fates may have won this round, but it was hard to call it winning when we’d lost Frank, though none of us as yet had had the courage to admit this to Kayla. Perhaps, in a way, she was beginning to sense it.

Chloe’s laughter quickly died. “I know it’s a sin,” she said. “The Bible says he who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death. But I did die because of what I did. So maybe someday the Lord will forgive me.”

Kayla and I exchanged glances. I supposed this logic made a certain sense to Chloe, although I didn’t think it was fair for her to have died for defending her mother.

“I thought you’d been waiting your whole life to go to heaven,” I said to her gently.

“How are you so sure this isn’t heaven?” Chloe said, looking very serious.

“Because innocent people like Frank get killed here,” Kayla said. “I highly doubt that happens in heaven.”

I nodded. “Seriously,” I said. I didn’t want to cause Chloe to second-guess her decision, especially since there was nothing she could do about it now, but I wanted her to understand the consequences … which made me feel a bit like John. “The Underworld is not heaven.”

“I know that,” Chloe said. “But maybe I feel the way that old man said … like I want to do things to help people. I don’t think you get to do that in heaven.”

“Old man?” Mr. Smith was on his phone, presumably with the hospital, checking on Patrick, but he paused his call to cast a scandalized glance at Chloe. “Did that young woman just call me an old man?”

“Oh, no. She was talking about Mr. Graves,” I lied to him.

He nodded and returned to his phone call, though I wasn’t certain he believed me.

“In the Underworld, I’ll get to help people, and to me, that seems like heaven,” Chloe was going on, oblivious.

Kayla stared at her. “You know,” she said. “I kind of get what she’s saying. Only I want to help people have better hair.”

“Well,” I said to Chloe. “Great. Because the Underworld is where you’re going to have to live now. It’s where we all live now, at least seventy percent of the time.”

“One hundred percent of the time,” John said.

“There are so many of us now,” I said. “I was thinking we could probably time-share all the soul-sorting down there.”

“I don’t know what time-share means,” John said.

“A time-share in the Isla Huesos Underworld,” Reed said. “That sounds like heaven to me. ‘The parched ground shall become a pool,’” Reed quoted, “‘and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of jackals, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.’”

Mrs. Engle, impressed, began to applaud. “Oh, lovely,” she said. “And very apt. Isaiah?”

“Exactly,” Reed said, and winked. Chloe sighed again and clung to his arm. To me, he mouthed over her head, “My dad’s a pastor.”

I rolled my eyes, realizing Alex had never stood a chance with Chloe.

Funny how, as I was thinking this, I heard Alex call my name and turned to see him walking up to the porch.

“Where’s Kayla?” he asked.

“She’s right here,” I said. Kayla, who’d been sitting beside me, stood up. “Where have you been all this time?”

“Busy,” Alex said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Got a package for her.”

Frank was walking behind Alex, looking unhappy as he brushed the dust from his trousers.

“Does anyone have a drink?” he asked. “Dying’s thirsty business.”