Underworld (6 page)

My words were met first with incredulous silence … then laughter. Everyone was laughing at me, even Mr. Graves.

“What?” I glared at them. “I don’t understand why that’s so funny. Think about it. Why would someone have gone to all the trouble of making a necklace that alerts its owner to the presence of evil spirits if there wasn’t some way to get rid of those evil spirits? On TV people get rid of ghosts all the time just by waving some stinky burning stuff and saying an incantation. So I would think the Underworld would have an even better weapon.”

“Furies are not ghosts,” said Mr. Liu, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

“What’s TV?” asked Henry.

“If bad smells worked on Furies, we’d be rid of them all by now, thanks to Mr. Graves.” Frank nodded at the black pots bubbling on the fire behind Mr. Graves.

“Frank,” the blind man said, his laughter dying abruptly, and his voice growing testy, “as I’ve explained to you before, the fire-brewing of a world-class lager is an art, not a science. You’ll be thanking me once this mash is processed.”

Beer?
That’s
what the doctor was making? Well, I supposed it wasn’t like there was a 7-Eleven they could run to. Apparently the Fates didn’t serve ice-cold Buds.

“Look,” I said, trying to bring the conversation back on topic. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. But isn’t it possible you might be? John said the Furies would leave my family alone if he brought me here. But they haven’t.” I pulled my cell phone from my sleeve and turned it on. “Look.”

Frank was already shaking his head. “Don’t bother. Yours won’t work here.” He fished in his pocket and brought out a flat black device that looked very much like the one John had used earlier that morning. “Only ours do.”

“Hers does,” Henry said, coming to stand by my chair, drawn as much by the expression on my face as I watched my cousin’s struggles as by any ten-year-old boy’s fascination with gadgets. “I saw her playing with it. What’s it showing you, miss?”

“This,” I said, tilting the screen so he could see the dark, disturbing image. It probably wasn’t appropriate for a child his age … but then, he lived in the Underworld. “Can you tell what it is?”

“That’s impossible.” Frank, looking incredulous, glanced from me, to Mr. Graves, to Mr. Liu, and then back again. “It’s working. How can hers be working?”

Henry took the phone from me and squinted down at it. “It’s a man,” he said. “No … a boy. He’s in a box. A dark box. It doesn’t look as if he’s being attacked by Furies to me, though. He’s just trapped. Do you know that boy?”

I took the phone back from him. “I do,” I said, my heart rate beginning to speed up, as it had the last time I’d seen the video. “It’s my cousin Alex.”

“Does Captain Hayden know you have that?” Mr. Graves asked nervously. “I can’t imagine he’d be too pleased —”

Mr. Liu held out a hand the size of a slice of country ham. “May I see it?” It wasn’t a question so much as a command.

I passed him the phone, then glanced down at my necklace because of the sense of foreboding that had once again gripped me. As I’d expected, the stone had turned black.

Henry noticed it, too, and asked curiously, “Wasn’t your necklace silver before?”

Before I could answer, Mr. Liu looked up from the screen.

“This boy,” he said, solemnly, “isn’t in a box. He’s in a coffin.”

The word
coffin
slammed into me like a fist.

“Oh, God,” I said, the blood seeming to go cold in my veins. “Of course.” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it before. “It’s a coffin. Not a real coffin … it’s a tradition at Isla Huesos High School. Coffin Night.” I could see from their expressions that they didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I babbled on anyway, because I was so upset. “The senior class makes a coffin and hides it….”

I reached across the table to take my phone from Mr. Liu’s fingers. The screen remained fixed on the morbid image of Alex. Now that I knew what I was looking at, I could see plainly that it was, indeed, a coffin.

“I
knew
Alex was up to something,” I said, more to myself than any of them. I was so disturbed, I wasn’t thinking straight. “He was so pleased when I told him Seth Rector and those guys asked me to be part of the coffin committee. But he hates them … I don’t know why. I’m sure he found the coffin — Seth was storing it in my mom’s garage — and was going to do something awful with it, and they caught him, and nailed him into it as a prank. But this has gone way further than any prank should go. He looks as if he can’t even breathe! Please, you’ve got to tell me what I can do. I’ve got to go back. I’ve got to help him!”

Mr. Liu, a somber expression on his face, said in his deep, slow voice, “Often the images we see in this world of the world above are not what is occurring now, but what is to come.”

I glanced at the screen. “Wait … so this
isn’t
happening?”

“It may be happening now,” Mr. Liu said, soberly. “It may already have happened. Or it may happen in the future. There’s no way to tell.”

“That’s why the captain ordered us long ago not to look up personal acquaintances on the magic mirrors,” Frank chimed in.

“Though he did a good job that time I saw my mum get her purse snatched, remember that?” Henry was beaming. “He showed up in time to give that man a great big —”

“So John went,” I said, my hopes suddenly soaring. “John went and helped your mother?”

“Henry,” Mr. Graves said, sounding uneasy. “Please don’t put ideas in Miss Oliviera’s head. That was an extraordinary circumstance, miss —”

“Did you not hear me? Did you not see this?” I stood up to show them my phone. Alex was still pounding on the sides of the coffin. I hoped someone had remembered to drill air holes through the top. But knowing Seth Rector and his friends, I doubted it. “
This
is an extraordinary circumstance. And what about this?” I lifted the diamond at the end of my necklace, which was inky black. “This means there are Furies around. If they aren’t here, like you keep assuring me, then they’re there, around Alex. So if there’s some way I can help him, I’ve got to go. You’ve got to tell me where I can find John so I can go —”

“Miss Oliviera, you haven’t been here long enough to realize that our work is of vital importance,” Mr. Graves said. “If the dead went unsorted because the captain was always running off to help the living, do you have any idea of the consequences, of the chaos? The souls of the dead would come spilling out onto the earth. They’d have nowhere to go, nothing to do but haunt the living. It would be a disaster. Your cousin’s difficulties are heartbreaking, yes. But so is pestilence, I can assure you.”

“Didn’t Captain Hayden bring you here because members of your own family are possessed by Furies and are trying to kill you?” Mr. Liu asked.

“Yes,” said a quiet voice from the stable yard door. “He did. Pierce, could I have a word with you, please?”

I don’t know how long he’d been standing there, or how much he’d overheard.

Judging from the expression on John’s face, the answer was
enough
.

W
as that really necessary?” I asked as soon as I was able to catch my breath. Whenever John hurtled me through space and time to some other location (or astral plane), I always felt a little nauseous afterwards, or as if I might have left a limb or vital organ behind.

When I looked down, I saw that not only did I seem to be in one piece, I was holding my cell phone in one hand … the one that wasn’t clutching John’s arm in a grip so tight, I was sure my fingers were going to leave a mark through his leather sleeve.

“It was,” he said. “We’re running behind schedule, and it’s clear you and I need to talk.” Then he must have noticed the expression on my face, since he looked concerned and asked, “Are you all right?”

“Just give me a second,” I said. It didn’t help that he hadn’t told me we were going to the beach. I could feel the heels of the delicate slippers I was wearing sinking in the sand.

“Take as much time as you need,” he said.

But his dark eyebrows were still lowered in disapproval, the way they’d been since the moment he’d appeared in the kitchen doorway. I hadn’t yet determined how much of our conversation he’d overheard. Mr. Liu saying they were stuck with me? Frank flirting (or that’s what he seemed to think he’d been doing) with me?

John hadn’t mentioned it. He’d simply crossed the kitchen to take my hand, I’d blinked in surprise to see him, and a moment later, it was all gone — the noisy confusion of everyone in his crew trying to make excuses at once, the smell from Mr. Graves’s mash, everything except Typhon’s noisy barking …

Because he was still doing that, only now it was beside me along the shore of the vast, cold lake on which I found myself. A large black horse stood chewing on the grassy dune nearby, pausing every so often to give me — and Typhon — the evil eye: Alastor, John’s horse, who’d once tried to kick me in the head.

There was no need to ask where we were. I knew even before I heard the long, sad blare of the marina horn from the dock.

“Sorry,” John said. He was apparently referring to the horn. “We’ve been behind schedule all day.” He picked up a piece of driftwood and gave it a powerful throw. Typhon dashed after it with a joyful bark.

“The people leaving on those boats are already dead,” I said. I raised my cell phone to show him the video of Alex. “My cousin Alex is not. But he will be soon if we don’t do something. Look at him.”

John glanced down at the screen.

“Pierce,” he said, his mouth tightening. “I’m sorrier than I can say. But —”

“That’s
your
coffin, you know,” I said. “The one the seniors at Isla Huesos High build for you on Coffin Night, because they think you’re dead and will keep haunting the cemetery until you get a rightful burial.”

“They don’t bury it,” he said, with a grim smile. “They burn it on the fifty-yard line.”

I gasped, my heart seeming to stop in my chest. “They wouldn’t! You don’t think —” I looked down at my phone. “Do you think they’d really burn him alive?”

“Pierce, no.” His smile turned sympathetic. “They’re not going to burn your cousin alive. I’m sure they’re only trying to scare him. Even so, what the men told you was right.” John’s gaze had gone deadly serious. “I can’t let you go back there. It’s too dangerous.”

I released his arm. Typhon had returned, holding the driftwood in his huge, slobbery jaw, his massive tail wagging behind him. In John’s presence, the dog somehow seemed more mischievous than terrifying, maybe because of the obvious adoration for his master that gleamed in his eyes.

Tears stung my own eyes … not only because I was so disappointed, but because of the cold. A biting wind blew in from the surface of the lake, whipping my hair around my face and flattening my skirt to my legs.

“Pierce,” John said, after taking the driftwood from Typhon’s mouth and tossing it away again for the dog to chase. He put out a long arm to catch me by the waist, then pull me to him. “I know you’re worried about your family, and you want to go back to Isla Huesos to help them. But Mr. Liu was right. What you’re seeing on that screen may not have happened yet. It may
never
happen. It’s more like a glimpse, a … shadow of something that could happen in your cousin’s life. What we have to be concerned with are the facts. We know for a
fact
that someone in your family has tried to murder you … twice. Did it ever occur to you that what you’re seeing might be a trick by the Furies to lure you from here so they can try to kill you again? It’s
you
who needs protecting, Pierce, not your cousin.”

“I’m already as close to dead as I can get, living here,” I pointed out. “What does it matter if they kill me?”

“They can still hurt you,” he reminded me, in a voice that was every bit as cold as the wind from which his body shielded me. “In ways you can’t imagine, and that I’d rather you never find out.”

He didn’t have to say more. The scars left over from similar attacks — not just on him, but on his shipmates, too — were testament enough.

“Oh, John,” I said, with a groan, dropping my head to rest it against his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said this morning. Not the way it came out, anyway. I was upset.”

I felt his lips brush my hair. “I know,” he said.

His voice wasn’t cold anymore, but when I looked up at him, I saw that he wasn’t smiling, either. Nor did he smile when Typhon, struggling to return with the driftwood, tripped over it instead, then fell into the waves.

It was going to take more than an apology, I suspected, to make him smile again.

“Is this why you hid my phone from me?” I asked. “So I wouldn’t be able to see what the Furies were doing to my family? Did you know something like this was going to happen? Did you know all along?”

“No,” John said, his arms tightening around me. “I didn’t even know you had a phone, to be honest. You dropped your bag when you crossed over yesterday, and Henry must have put it away. He was trained to wait on ship’s officers. He’s a little fuzzy on any aspects of the job outside those duties.”

I remembered the orderliness with which John’s clothes had been organized, as opposed to his books.

“Oh,” I said, reaching up to wipe my streaming eyes. All I could hear was the wind and, more distantly, the sound of waves splashing against the hull of a tall boat that was pulling away from a nearby dock. Though the boat stood higher than a three-story house, and held many hundreds of people, none of them waved the way passengers on cruise ships so often do when departing from an exotic port. This wasn’t that kind of boat, and they weren’t leaving on that kind of trip.

I saw two large figures in black moving busily around the crowded dock. One had a long dark braid, the other a scar across his face. Mr. Liu and Frank.

“I’ve never seen one of those work here,” John mused as he looked down at my cell phone. “And certainly not in that way. Henry started calling the tablets we found when we arrived here ‘magic mirrors’ because they work like the ones in the fairy tales. Ask them a question and they tell you the answer … generally only to which boat the departed soul in front of you is assigned, but to him, that seemed magical enough….”

I probably should have taken the fact that the Fates — or whoever — had granted my smartphone the same power as the “magic mirrors” John and his crew had as evidence of my burgeoning consort powers, or something.

But I was still too upset about Alex to think of anything else.

“Henry said sometimes your tablets tell you more.” I looked up into his eyes. “Henry said he saw his mother get her purse snatched once, and you went and rescued her.”

John looked skyward. Only in this case, the sky was the ceiling of the vast subterranean cavern in which the Underworld was sealed. It glowed, as always, a depressing shade of grayish pink.

“That was different,” he said. “Henry’s mother was being attacked by a local street thug back in his native village. It wasn’t a trick of the Furies, as this very likely is. Here, put this on. I can tell you’re freezing.”

He didn’t lend me the leather coat he was wearing in order to keep me warm, the way he had the last time I’d been in this same place. Instead, he pulled something from a polished wooden rack. Similar racks, I noticed, appeared at random intervals all along the twin docks.

After he unfolded it, I saw that it was a blanket, kind of like the ones they give out on long airplane flights. Only this one was much thicker, made to withstand the chilly dampness of the beach.

“I know you,” he added, helping to arrange the blanket over my shoulders. “You won’t drop the subject until I agree to check on your cousin, so I’ll do it. But only under one condition.”

“John,”
I said, whirling around to clutch his arm again.

“Don’t get too excited,” he warned. “You haven’t heard the condition.”

“Oh,” I said, eagerly. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.
Thank you.
Alex has never had a very good life — his mother ran away when he was a baby, and his dad spent most of his life in jail…. But, John, what
is
all this?” I swept my free hand out to indicate the people remaining on the dock, waiting for the boat John had said was arriving soon. I’d noticed some of them had blankets like the one he’d wrapped around me. “A new customer service initiative?”

John looked surprised at my change of topic … then uncomfortable. He stooped to reach for the driftwood Typhon had dashed up to drop at his feet. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, stiffly.

“You’re giving blankets away to keep them warm while they wait. When did this start happening?”

“You mentioned some things when you were here the last time….” He avoided meeting my gaze by tossing the stick for his dog. “They stayed with me.”

My eyes widened. “Things
I
said?”

“About how I should treat the people who end up here.” He paused at the approach of a wave — though it was yards off — and made quite a production of moving me, and my delicate slippers, out of its path. “So I decided to make a few changes.”

It felt as if one of the kind of flowers
I
liked — a wild daisy, perhaps — had suddenly blossomed inside my heart.

“Oh,
John
,” I said, and rose onto my toes to kiss his cheek.

He looked more than a little surprised by the kiss. I thought I might actually have seen some color come into his cheeks.

“What was
that
for?” he asked.

“Henry said nothing was the same after I left. I assumed he meant everything was much worse. I couldn’t imagine it was the opposite, that things were
better
.”

John’s discomfort at having been caught doing something kind — instead of reckless or violent — was sweet.

“Henry talks too much,” he muttered. “But I’m glad you like it. Not that it hasn’t been a lot of added work. I’ll admit it’s cut down on the complaints, though, and even the fighting amongst our rowdier passengers. So you were right. Your suggestions helped.”

I beamed up at him.

Keeper of the dead.
That’s how Mr. Smith, the cemetery sexton, had referred to John once, and that’s what he was. Although the title “protector of the dead” seemed more applicable.

It was totally silly how much hope I was filled with by the fact that he’d remembered something I’d said so long ago — like maybe this whole consort thing might work out after all.

I gasped a moment later when there was a sudden rush of white feathers, and the bird he’d given me emerged from the grizzly gray fog seeming to engulf the whole beach, plopping down onto the sand beside us with a disgruntled little
humph
.

“Oh, Hope,” I said, dashing tears of laughter from my eyes. Apparently I had only to feel the emotion, and she showed up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you behind. It was his fault, you know.” I pointed at John.

The bird ignored us both, poking around in the flotsam washed ashore by the waves, looking, as always, for something to eat.

“Her name is Hope?” John asked, the corners of his mouth beginning to tug upwards.

“No.” I bristled, thinking he was making fun of me. Then I realized I’d been caught. “Well, all right … so what if it is? I’m not going to name her after some depressing aspect of the Underworld like you do all your pets. I looked up the name
Alastor
. That was the name of one of the death horses that drew Hades’s chariot. And
Typhon
?” I glanced at the dog, cavorting in and out of the waves, seemingly oblivious of the cold. “I can only imagine, but I’m sure it means something equally unpleasant.”

“Typhon was the father of all monsters,” John said. He’d given up trying to suppress his grin. “The deadliest of all the creatures in Greek mythology.”

“Nice,” I said sarcastically. “Well, I prefer to name my pets something that reminds me there’s —”

“Hope?” His grin broadened.

“Very funny.” True, I’d admitted to him that I was inexperienced. But I didn’t have to prove it by acting like I was twelve. “But you must think there’s hope, too, or you wouldn’t be taking me to help Alex.”

The smile vanished. “I never said I was taking you to help your cousin Alex. I said I was going myself, and only under one condition — that you stay here, where it’s safe.”

My heart fell. I couldn’t hide my disappointment, so I didn’t bother trying.

“John, how are you going to help Alex if I don’t go with you?” I asked. “You don’t even know where the coffin is hidden. I do. And supposing Alex hasn’t gotten himself locked into it yet … how are you going to talk him out of doing whatever boneheaded thing it is he’s planning on doing that’s going to get him locked into it? You can’t. He’ll never listen to you, because he doesn’t know who you are. Which is why I
have
to go with you.”

“Did you not listen to a word I said?” John looked down at me like the awards for most naïve girl in the world had already been handed out, and I’d won first prize. “This whole thing could be a trap.”