Awaken (28 page)

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.”

A
nything can happen in the blink of an eye.

One. Two. Three.

Blink.

A girl meets a boy, full of sadness and longing. The boy takes that girl to another world, a dark world from which he tells the girl there is no escape.

You don’t have to worry about that girl, though, because she knows there
is
a way to escape, a way to break the curse, let sunlight into the world …

… or at least let the boy out for a vacation every now and then.

Mr. Graves had been right. There
was
a pestilence causing an imbalance in the Underworld. What he’d been wrong about was the cause. He’d suspected the pestilence was caused by John or one of the permanent inhabitants spending too much time away from the realm of the dead.

And while certainly the Underworld could not function smoothly without anyone to attend to the needs of the dead, leaving it for too long was not the cause of the imbalance.

The cause of the imbalance was Alex. None of us realized it — least of all Alex — until I released Thanatos from his prison inside Seth Rector’s body, and he found a new home inside Alex.

“He really seems to like me,” Alex informed us cheerfully, as we watched Kayla’s tearful reunion with Frank in front of Mr. Smith’s cottage. “Watch what I can do now.”

Alex picked up a coconut and kicked it. It disappeared, seemingly into the stratosphere. If Alex had any interest in continuing high school — which he did not — he would now have been extremely welcome on the Isla Huesos football team, instead of an object of ridicule to them.

“I can do that,” John said, unimpressed.

“Well,” Alex said. “I could kill you with a single touch. Should I do that, instead?”

“Please don’t,” I said, wrapping hands protectively around John’s arm.

“And how did you discover that you had this remarkable grasp over life and death?” Mr. Graves asked.

“Well,” Alex said. “After I got that little girl back to her mom — who thanked me profusely, by the way — and was following all the cops who were tailing Pierce on her bike, I saw them stop, because that crazy cop had pulled out his gun and was going to shoot this guy with a chain saw. And I felt this crazy urge come over me to go over and yank out the cop’s soul. I honestly can’t explain it any other way.” He took a swig from the water bottle he held. “So I did it.”

“You yanked a man’s soul from his body?” I asked slowly.

“Yeah,” Alex said with a shrug. “It was easy. That’s when I knew I had that death dude living inside me. And honestly, you guys, I’ve never felt better in my life.”

I think all of us were astonished except for Chloe, who said, “Well, it makes sense. After all, your name does mean protector of men. And who is a greater protector of men than someone who brings them the sweet relief of death?”

Frank and John and Mr. Liu and I all gave her sour looks, and Chloe hastily added, “Except of course someone who escorts their souls to their final resting place. That’s a really important job, too. And obviously anyone who dies before their time won’t consider you very protective, Alex.”

“Yeah,” Alex said with a nod. “I’m going to have to work on that. But I think it’s a handy skill to have, you know, in emergencies. I really can’t believe Thanatos spent so long in Seth’s body. I think even
he
thought Seth was a drag. But it was a Rector tradition to have Thanatos dwelling within the youngest male, so —”

My eyes widened. “So the Rectors knew?”

“They had to have,” Alex said with another shrug. “How else do you explain that hideous mausoleum and the statue of Hades and Persephone?”

“Extremely poor taste?” Kayla suggested.

“No,” I said, shaking my head as I thought of Seth’s shirts. “It was more than that. They knew
something
. They were proud of it. But they didn’t understand who Thanatos was, exactly. And they couldn’t control him. That’s what led to their downfall.”

“Exactly,” Alex said. “I think Thanatos really appreciated it when you released him, Pierce … you know,
later
, after he thought about it. Being a Rector wasn’t good for him. It put him in a bad mood. That’s why he chose me. I’m a lot more easygoing than Seth.”

“And more modest,” I pointed out wryly. “So where is Officer Poling’s soul now?”

“Oh,” Alex said with a shrug. “He’s down in the Underworld. He’s your responsibility now. I don’t want anything to do with him. That guy’s a real douche, even without the Fury in him. You know he killed Jade, right? He and that Mike guy mistook her for you, Pierce. I choked the truth out of him — his soul, I mean. I even got him to cough up where he hid the murder weapon. It’s a wrench, part of a set Mike owns.”

“You mean the cemetery owns,” Mr. Smith piped up. “Mike keeps his tools in the shed behind my office.”

“Poling said Mike threw the wrench into the harbor.”

“If I report it missing,” Mr. Smith said, “and suggest the police question Mike again, I’m sure it won’t be long before he strikes some kind of deal.”

Alex looked relieved. “That will clear my dad, then. Anyway, after I figured out I’m Thanatos, and then I dealt with your dad and the cops and stuff, and I heard Frank was dead, I just went over to the crypt and revived him. It seemed kind of natural, in a way, like I always knew how to do it … or was destined to do it, or something.”

I knew what he meant. It was the way I’d felt when I’d finally realized how the Persephone necklace and the whip Mr. Liu had given me fit together. As if I’d found my place in the world at last, and what I was destined to do, odd as it sounded.

Alex looked around. “Is there anything to eat? I’m
starving
.”

* * *

Mr. Smith was right. We do need storms sometimes, because they clear away the bracken so that the sun can shine on flowers that might never have otherwise had a chance to bloom.

Chief of Police Santos did eventually arrest Mike both for the murder of Jade Ortega and the attempted murder of Patrick Reynolds. After the missing wrench was dredged from the bottom of the harbor, Mike struck a plea bargain and took a sentence of life in prison in order to avoid the death penalty. All charges against Uncle Chris were dropped.

Seth Rector, who’d successfully murdered Alex, was a little more fortunate. There was no proof he’d murdered Alex, since there was no body …. Alex was still alive. So Seth couldn’t be prosecuted for
that
crime.

Oddly enough, however, Chief of Police Santos happened to find more than a dozen gold doubloons dating back to the seventeen hundreds (and worth more than ten thousand dollars each) in a black velvet bag in Seth’s locker during a random locker sweep at Isla Huesos High School one afternoon.

Seth, completely shocked, claimed he’d never seen the coins before and had no idea where they’d come from. As he was led down the breezeway in handcuffs, he saw John Hayden leaning casually against one of the outdoor cafeteria tables, his arms folded across his chest. As Seth passed by, John narrowed his eyes at him, then wagged a single index finger.
Shame on you.

Seth began to shout that he’d been “set up by Pierce Oliviera and that freak boyfriend of hers.”

Chief Santos advised Seth to save it for his father’s lawyers.

Mr. Rector’s lawyers, however, were quite busy, as Nate Rector was facing prosecution for numerous felonies, including willful and wanton destruction of a known indigenous burial site, improper disposal of human remains, desecration of a cemetery, disturbance of a historically significant archeological discovery, and willfully misleading the Reef Key Luxury Resort investors through purposeful obfuscation, lack of disclosure, and lack of fiduciary responsibility.

Which meant that not only were the Rectors broke, but Reef Key was also very likely going to be reverted back to the roseate spoonbill sanctuary and mangrove habitat my mother had always remembered so fondly.

Since Mr. Rector had misled not simply his investors, but also his business partner, Farah’s father, Mr. Endicott was spared the many charges against the Reef Key developers. This was good, since I’d grown fond of Farah. After Kayla returned to school, she reported that Farah continued to be friendly, no longer hanging out with Serena and Nicole and the Rector Wreckers (which more or less fell apart as a group after Seth went to jail for felony theft, anyway). Farah ate lunch every day with Kayla — who was determined to graduate a semester early and get her cosmetology degree, in order to open Save Yourselves — and had decided the local community college might not be so bad after all. It turned out Bryce was going to go there, and Bryce’s father owned most of the bars downtown, as well as a private plane.

“I can go to Miami whenever I want to go shopping,” Farah said. “Bryce has his own platinum American Express card. Seth didn’t even have that.”

I was pleased to hear that things were turning out so well. Maybe Mr. Smith was right … not just about storms sometimes being a good thing, but about Fates really being small acts of kindness by random people. Certainly that seemed to have improved the quality of life in the Underworld.

Being John’s consort — and cousin to the personification of death — had its challenges. People can be resistant to change, even positive change. I could understand that when you’ve spent more than a century and a half living in an underground castle sorting dead people onto boats all day, spending a few months or weeks or even days aboveground with live people could be a scary concept.

When you’re a flower that’s suddenly had all its protective bracken swept away, facing the sunshine for the first time could be frightening.

Maybe that’s why — after things had settled down and it became clear that, while we’d never be
entirely
free of the threat of a Fury attack, we might not be in
imminent
danger of one — when I suggested the idea of going on a vacation to John, he completely freaked out.

I explained to John about work sharing and how vital it can be to a successful and happy place of employment, and how much healthier everyone would be — and how much better they would get along — if we took a day off from the Underworld
every once in a while
. Frank was always asking for time off to meet Kayla for dinner — and sometimes even entire weekends — in Isla Huesos, and John was happy to allow it. Why couldn’t we do the same?

“It’s different,” John said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because of your grandmother.”

I was ready for this argument.

“You know my dad won’t allow her in the house because of what she did,” I said, “even though she doesn’t remember it. And Mom won’t have anything to do with her, either. It turns out Grandma’s personality without a Fury possessing her isn’t that great. All she wants to do is go to church and criticize people. I have no idea why my grandfather married her,” I added with a sigh, “except that she must have been pretty, once.”

“She’s weak-minded and negative,” John said. “That’s why it was so easy for a Fury to possess her. And also why there’s no reason a Fury wouldn’t be able to take possession of her again. And your uncle, who doesn’t know about any of this, still lives with her.”

“Not for long,” I said defensively. “Uncle Chris is moving out.”

“He is?”

“Yes, he is, remember, I told you? My dad bought him that boat, and he started a fishing charter business, and now he’s saved up all that money and he’s getting his own place, since he can’t stand Grandma, either. Also because Alex went to boarding school —”

The excuse Alex gave to his father for why he wasn’t living at home anymore was that he’d gotten a scholarship to a very prestigious boarding school … the same boarding school in Switzerland, in fact, that my dad had always been threatening to ship me off to.

Alex now saw his father only when he came home from “boarding school” during holidays and breaks. But when he did, they spent almost the entire time working together on Uncle Chris’s boat. I’d never seen the two of them happier.

My father was only too pleased to facilitate Alex’s lie. He’d found the entire adventure with John — teleporting to get the boats, visiting the Underworld, even discovering that his daughter had a boyfriend with supernatural powers — extremely exciting.

The only problem was, now every time he saw John, Dad wanted to be teleported somewhere, such as Paris, even just for a few seconds, as a joke. He didn’t understand why John wouldn’t participate with him in a joint-teleporting — or corpse-reviving — venture.

“Even if you only revived people’s dead pets,” he’d insist, “we could make billions.”

This might perhaps have been another reason John wasn’t particularly eager to leave the Underworld often, especially to visit my parents, though he was too polite to tell me so to my face. He cited fear of lingering Furies as the main reason, and the fact that we had so many responsibilities in our roles as lord and queen of the Underworld to simply dash off whenever we wanted to.