Underworld (3 page)

What I was starting to think I needed more than anything was my own bedroom.

“Well,” I said, trying to keep my tone light as I walked over to put my arms around his neck, though I had to stand on my toes to do so. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? You told me something about yourself that I didn’t know before — that you didn’t, er, care for your family, except for your mother. But that didn’t make me hate you … it made me love you a bit more, because now I know we have even more in common.”

He stared down at me, a wary look in his eyes. “If you knew the truth,” he said, “you wouldn’t be saying that. You’d be running.”

“Where would I go?” I asked, with a laugh I hoped didn’t sound as nervous to him as it did to me. “You bolted all the doors, remember? Now, since you shared something I didn’t know about you, may I share something you don’t know about me?”

Those dark eyebrows rose as he pulled me close. “I can’t even begin to imagine what this could be.”

“It’s just,” I said, “that I’m a little worried about rushing into this consort thing … especially the cohabitation part.”

“Cohabitation?” he echoed. He was clearly unfamiliar with the word.

“
Cohabitation
means living together,” I explained, feeling my cheeks heat up. “Like married people.”

“You said last night that these days no one your age thinks of getting married,” he said, holding me even closer and suddenly looking much more eager to stick around for the conversation, even though I heard the marina horn blow again. “And that your father would never approve it. But if you’ve changed your mind, I’m sure I could convince Mr. Smith to perform the ceremony —”

“No,” I said hastily. Of course Mr. Smith was somehow authorized to marry people in the state of Florida. Why not? I decided not to think about that right now, or how John had come across this piece of information. “That isn’t what I meant. My mom would kill me if I got married before I graduated from high school.”

Not, of course, that my mom was going to know about any of this. Which was probably just as well, since her head would explode at the idea of my moving in with a guy before I’d even applied to college, let alone at the fact that I most likely wasn’t
going
to college. Not that there was any school that would have accepted me with my grades, not to mention my disciplinary record.

“What I meant was that maybe we should take it more slowly,” I explained. “The past couple years, while all my friends were going out with boys, I was home, trying to figure out how this necklace you gave me worked. I wasn’t exactly dating.”

“Pierce,” he said. He wore a slightly quizzical expression on his face. “Is this the thing you think I didn’t know about you? Because for one thing, I do know it, and for another, I don’t understand why you think I’d have a problem with it.”

I’d forgotten he’d been born in the eighteen hundreds, when the only time proper ladies and gentlemen ever spent together before they were married was at heavily chaperoned balls … and that for most of the past two centuries, he’d been hanging out in a cemetery.

Did he even know that these days, a lot of people hooked up on first dates, or that the average age at which girls — and boys as well — lost their virginity in the United States was seventeen …
my age
?

Apparently not.

“What I’m trying to say,” I said, my cheeks burning brighter, “is that I’m not very experienced with men. So this morning when I woke up and found you in bed beside me, while it was really, super nice — don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it very much — it kind of freaked me out. Because I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of thing yet.” Or maybe the problem was that I wasn’t prepared for
how
ready I was….

“Ready for —?” He broke off, and then frowned as if it had all become clear. “Wait.” He dropped his arms from around my waist and took a step away from me. “You think I spent the night with you?”

“Didn’t you?” I blinked back at him. “There’s only the one bed. And … well, you were in it when I woke up.”

Thunder boomed overhead. It wasn’t as loud as the violent cracks that had occurred in my dream. Although the rumbles were long enough — and intense enough — that the silverware on the table began to make an eerie tinkling sound.

And my bird, who’d been calmly cleaning herself on the back of my chair, suddenly took off, seeking shelter on the highest bookshelf against the far wall.

I realized I’d just insulted my host, and no joke was going to get me out of it this time.

“For your information, Pierce,” John said, his tone almost disturbingly calm — but his eyes flashed the same shade as the stone around my neck, which had gone the color of the metal studs at his wrists — “I spent most of last night on the couch. Until one point early this morning, when I heard you call my name. You were crying in your sleep.”

The salt water I’d tasted on my lips. Not due to rain from a violent hurricane, but from the tears I’d shed, watching him die in front of me.

“Oh,” I said uncomfortably. “John, I’m so —”

It turned out he wasn’t finished.

“I put my arms around you to
try to comfort you
, because I know what this place can be like, at least at first. It’s not exactly hell, but it’s the next closest place to it. You wouldn’t let go of me. You held on to me like you were drowning, and I was your only lifeline.”

I swallowed, astonished at how close he’d come to describing my dream … except it had been the other way around. I’d been
his
lifeline; only he’d let go of me, sacrificing himself so that I could live.

“Right,” I said. “Of course. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been, especially since my mother had always worried so much about my talking in my sleep. On the other hand, I
had
been upfront with him about my lack of experience when it came to men. “But this is good, see?” I reached out to take his hand. “I told you I could never hate you —”

He pulled his hand away, exactly like in my dream. Well, not exactly, because he wasn’t being sucked from my grasp by a giant ocean swell. Instead, he’d dropped my fingers because he was leaving to go sort the souls of the dead.

“You will,” he assured me, bitterly. “You’re already regretting your decision to — what was it you called it? Oh, right — cohabitate with me.”

“No,” I insisted. “I’m not. All I said was that I want to take things more slowly —”

That had nothing to do with him — it had to do with
me
and my fear of not being able to control myself when he was kissing me. It was too humiliating to admit that out loud, however.

“We can take
things
as slowly as you want, but you know it’s too late now to change your mind, Pierce,” he said, in a warning tone.

“Of course,” I said. I could see I had approached this all wrong. Where, when you actually needed one, was one of those annoying women’s magazines with advice on how to handle your man? Although that advice probably didn’t apply to death deities. “Because the Furies are after me. And I promised you that I wouldn’t try to escape. That isn’t what I was —”

“No,” he said, with an abrupt shake of his head. “The Furies have no part in this. It doesn’t matter anymore whether or not you try to escape.” He was pacing the length of the room. A muscle had begun to twitch wildly in the side of his jaw. “I thought you knew. I thought you understood. Haven’t you read Homer?”

Not again. Mr. Smith was obsessed with this Homer person, too.

“No, John,” I said, with forced patience. “I’m afraid we don’t have time to study the ancient Greek poets in school anymore because we have so much stuff to learn that happened since you died, such as the Civil War and the Holocaust and making files in Excel —”

“Well, considering what they had to say about the Fates,” John interrupted, impatiently, “Homer might possibly have been of more use to you.”

“The Fates?” The Fates were something I dimly remembered having been mentioned in the section we’d studied on Greek mythology. They were busybodies who presided over everyone’s destiny. “What did Homer have to say about them?”

John dragged a hand through his hair. For some reason, he wouldn’t meet my gaze. “The Fates decreed that anyone who ate or drank in the realm of the dead had to remain there for all eternity.”

I stared at him. “Right,” I said. “Only if they ate pomegranate seeds, like Persephone. The fruit of the dead.”

He stopped pacing suddenly and lifted his gaze to mine. His eyes seemed to burn through to my soul.

“Pomegranate seeds are what Persephone happened to eat while she was in the Underworld,” he said. “
That
’s why they call them the fruit of the dead. But the rule is
any
food or drink.”

A strange feeling of numbness had begun to spread across my body. My mouth became too dry for me to speak.

“However you feel about me, Pierce,” he went on, relentlessly, “you’re stuck here with me for the rest of eternity.”

I
didn’t hate him.

After the way the sight of him being carried away by that wave in my dream had gutted me, I knew I’d never be able to hate him.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
That’s the phrase that had been tattooed on my guidance counselor Jade’s wrist. I tried always to remember it, not just because she was dead now, and that was partly my fault, but because sometimes when I got angry, bad things happened. People got hurt.

In the past, it had always been John who’d inflicted that pain.

This time when I got angry, it was John who got hurt.

Which was probably why, by the time he left, I was the one sobbing on the very same couch where he’d claimed to have spent the night. I wasn’t crying because I hated him. I was crying because I hated myself.

“You knew,” I’d accused him, when I’d finally found my voice after he’d made his revelation. “And you didn’t tell me. The whole time I was sitting there eating all those waffles, you didn’t tell me. You … you tricked me!”

“I didn’t trick you,” he’d insisted. “I thought you knew!”

I was quickly discovering that the expensive private school education for which my father had insisted on paying was worthless. All of the information I’d been taught at the Westport Academy for Girls back in Connecticut was either erroneous or useless to me in my current life as the consort of a death deity.

“
You
eat,” I’d said to him accusatorily. “I saw you eat. And
you
leave here all the time. I’ve seen you in Connecticut, in Isla Huesos …”

“Did I say you can
never
leave?” he’d demanded.

“No. But —”

“But every time you do, you’ll see your friends and family moving on with their lives, while you’ll never age, and always have to come back here … to me.” His tone became embittered. “I can see how thrilled you are by that prospect.”

Tears
had
sprung into my eyes — not at the idea of spending eternity with him, but of watching my mother grow old and die before my eyes. I felt weepy every time I thought of it.

Seeing the tears, he’d softened, adding imploringly, “Pierce, you were hungry. You had to eat. If I
had
said something about it, what would you have done … gone without food?”

“Yes,”
I’d said, without thinking. “Of course.”

All the softness left him then. Even his shoulders tensed. “You realize you just said you’d rather starve to death than be with me?”

He was right. I’d been so caught up in my own emotions, I hadn’t noticed how insensitive I was being to his. I reached for his hand.

“John, I’m sorry. That didn’t come out the right way,” I said. “What I meant was —”

“I think your meaning was clear,” he’d said. Overhead, thunder boomed again, though not as loudly as before. It sounded resigned … kind of like his demeanor. “Maybe you’re right, and I did trick you. In any case, now you have the answer to your question, don’t you … why I was the person chosen for this position.”

It was hard not to admit that his dark side seemed a little darker than I’d previously suspected.

Still, that didn’t change the fact that he’d saved my life when it would have been easier for him not to. Why go to all these lengths to keep me from feeling the pain of death again when he could simply have let me be murdered and be at his side as a spirit? I couldn’t believe he was bad … not as bad as he seemed to want me to think he was.

“John, I’m sorry for what I said before,” I’d said, meaning it. “But you’ve got to admit it — there isn’t anyone … any
rational
person — who’d want to live in this place forever if there was the slightest chance they didn’t have to.”

“That’s the difference between you and me, then,” he said. I could see that he was trying to act as if he didn’t care, but there was a hurt in his eyes that no amount of sardonic posturing could hide. “I
would
want to live in this place forever, if it meant living here with you. And though I suppose that means one of us isn’t particularly
rational
, it looks as if I’m getting my wish. So I recommend you get used to the idea, Pierce, and learn to live with it. And me.”

A second later, he’d jerked his hand from my fingers, and then — exactly like in my dream — he was gone.

That’s when I flung myself onto the couch.

I knew crying was stupid. I hated doing it, and it never solved anything.

I couldn’t help it, though. Never mind that thanks to some mysterious beings called the Furies, I was apparently powerless to keep completely innocent people like Jade from being hurt at the hands of monsters like my grandmother. Never mind that thanks to another mysterious force called the Fates, I was apparently going to have to live in the Underworld for all of eternity, just because I’d eaten some waffles.

The thing that hurt the most was that I’d injured John. The weight of
that
knowledge made me cry hardest of all …

… until I realized a small amount of that weight was literal. And it was sitting on my head.

“Oh, my God,”
I cried, sitting up.

The bird gave an indignant flutter of her wings, then flew over to the dining table, where she started pecking at crumbs I had left behind. Which was preferable to her trying to make a nest in my hair, I supposed, but not by much.

“Better knock that off,” I said, drying my eyes. “Or you’ll never be able to leave here, either.”

The bird lifted her head to look at me inquisitively, as if determining my moral worth, then turned back to her meal.

That stung. Even though she was right.

I remembered the hopeful expression that had been in John’s eyes when he’d given her to me. It had been almost exactly like the one he’d worn when he’d given me the necklace, nearly two years earlier.

She’s for you
, he’d said.
To keep you company when I’m away. I know how you love birds.

I knew that by giving this bird to me to care for, he’d been hoping to replace the ache in my heart I felt for everyone I was missing back home. Perhaps he’d hoped to do something else, as well: remind me that
this
was my home now, and that there were those in it who needed caring for even more, perhaps, than the people I’d left behind.

“Maybe,” I said to the bird, “I can start by taking care of you, and then move on to taking care of him. He’s always needed a bit of caring for, don’t you think? Though he’s never liked to admit it.”

I knew things had gotten bad —
really
bad — if I was talking to a bird. What did it matter, though? There was no one to hear me.

“It can’t hurt. And maybe something good will come of it. We can only hope, right?”

On the word
hope
, the bird finally looked up at me, and started cooing.

“Oh, God, no,” I said, mortified. “Please don’t tell me you want to be called Hope. That’s a total cliché for a bird that lives in the Underworld.”

The bird lifted her wings and took off down the hall.

I decided I’d better follow her, not because I thought there were any dangers lurking for her in the bathroom (where she was headed, and through which I already knew from experience there were no escape routes), but because I needed to pull myself together, anyway.

I could see why the bird liked it in there. The massive sunken tub was fed by a naturally occurring hot spring — hot water came bubbling out from the bottom — and a steaming waterfall poured constantly from a crevice in the stone ceiling, through which moss and vines grew. Hope — though I refused to call her that, except in my head — fluttered around while I bathed, dipping her head in and out of the water, her coos echoing off the stones.

Really, all I’d hoped to find was a toothbrush, some shampoo, and maybe something to wear other than the dress I’d slept in. Possibly because the Underworld was so uniformly grim, the Fates — or whoever it was that provided the food and other amenities — had decided it was better not to scrimp.

John had said at breakfast that anything he ever wanted or needed badly enough usually appeared. Was that why all the things I needed were right there, smelling heavenly and feeling so soft to the skin? I wanted them, and so they were provided? John certainly didn’t strike me as the type to moisturize. And he only ever smelled like the wood that was burning in the fireplace, not orange blossoms and lavender.

Or were those things there because John had wanted me, and so they came along with the package?

Was that the explanation for what I found in the large walk-in closet adjoining the bathroom? On one side were John’s clothes, all hung with an orderliness that bordered on the obsessive (unlike the haphazard arrangement of his books).

On the other were dozens of the long flowy white dresses that John liked seeing me in so much. Some were silk and some were cotton, some long-sleeved and some with no sleeves at all, but all of them were exactly my size.

“Great,” I said through gritted teeth to the bird. I had nothing against dresses. What I did mind a little was being limited to a choice of nothing
but
dresses. I supposed the wardrobe selection was symptomatic of the time during which John had lived, so it wasn’t entirely his fault, since rights between men and women hadn’t been so equal back then.

I chose what I thought was the most modern-looking of all the dresses hanging in the closet — there were shoes, too, of every kind. Each fit my foot as snugly as if I’d been measured for it — then found a full-length, gilt-framed mirror in the hallway just off the main room, where the bed and dining table stood. The bird was perched on the frame.

It was no use.

“I really
do
look like Snow White, don’t I?” I asked the bird when I saw my reflection.

Well, just because I was dressed like a princess didn’t mean I had to act like one … or at least, not one who slept all the time. I could act like a brave princess. Maybe even like the ones who escaped from the castles in which they were imprisoned, like Rapunzel or Princess Leia.

“Right?” I said to the bird.

The bird cooed contentedly from her perch. She was probably as aware as I was that John had nailed shut all the doors back to my world.

“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t even tell me. I already know. Every single one of those princesses ended up marrying either one of their rescuers or their captor, like Belle from
Beauty and the Beast
, and Persephone.”

Except unlike Belle, Persephone wasn’t fictional. I had her necklace to prove it.

If only she’d left behind some other useful tips on being the consort of the ruler of the Underworld.

Which wasn’t why I started going through John’s shelves. I was looking for a book on birds so I could figure out what to feed Hope. Which wasn’t her name.

His books — which numbered into the hundreds, maybe even thousands — were so poorly organized I figured I might as well start sorting them by category. I was taking his advice, and getting used to it. And him.

If, while organizing his things, I happened to discover something that might be useful for navigating life in the Underworld, or that revealed a little something about John’s past, so what?

“I’m new here,” I said to Hope. “I don’t know the rules.”

I did find quite a lot of stuff inside all the boxes John kept scattered around, some of it beautiful — bolts of silk fabric, strands of pearls, numerous brass instruments, a few of which I could identify as nautical equipment, including a compass, a folding telescope, and what appeared to be a ship’s bell. It was inscribed
Liberty, 1845
.

Mr. Smith had told me that the necklace John had given me had last been seen on the manifest of a ship that had disappeared in a hurricane in October of 1846 … the same hurricane that had caused the Isla Huesos Cemetery to flood, and every coffin in it to wash out to the sea, and in which, he’d hinted, John had died.

But John
wasn’t
dead. So I wasn’t sure how accurate Mr. Smith’s information was.

It wasn’t until I lifted the lid to a small crate behind which Hope had cowered the whole time John and I had been arguing that I saw anything I thought might be of value to me.

It was a book bag.
My
book bag.

Inside were all of the things I remembered stuffing casually into it the morning before my life changed so dramatically, before John hurled me into the realm of the dead in order to save my life. My wallet. My econ book. My jean jacket for when I got cold during school from the incredibly strong institutional air-conditioning. My notebooks, pens, house keys, makeup bag, pill case, hairbrush, sugarless gum.

I was so happy to see these familiar things, tears filled my eyes. Only … what possible use was I ever going to have for my debit card in a place where there was no ATM? My wallet, I realized, was useless here. So was my econ book. Even my cell phone, still in the special pocket where I stored it. It was beyond sweet that John had kept it all so safely tucked away, but …

“My cell phone,” I said breathlessly to Hope, who blinked back at me.

I don’t know what made me switch it on. It wasn’t as if I expected to see anything but the message I got: No service.

On the other hand, as I stood there holding it, thinking of my family and how upset they must be over my disappearance — all except my grandmother, of course, who was probably telling them horrible lies about where I’d gone and with whom — it occurred to me that just once, it might be nice if the Fates did something for
me
. It had been nice to find my book bag, but
they
hadn’t saved it. John had.

And I hadn’t found it with their help. It had been thanks to Hope.