Underworld

by Meg Cabot

  Nothing happened. No one appeared through the curtains.

  I could have sworn I saw another shadow.

  “John,” I said, my tone sounding more panicked. “If that’s you, could you come in here? Because there’s something we really need to talk about.”

  Of course there was no response. I was pretty sure it wasn’t because John was giving me the silent treatment.

  I’d always wondered why in scary movies the girl alone in the house felt like it was such a good idea to go outside to investigate the creepy noise. Why couldn’t she just stay inside where it was safe until the police got there?

  Now I understood a little better. I’m not particularly brave — except maybe when it comes to rescuing people or animals other than myself, and often by the time I get around to it, I’m too late. But I had to do something. I couldn’t call the police, because there weren’t any police in the Underworld. I had no idea how to get hold of John, since he hadn’t given me one of those tablet things, and I certainly didn’t know his number, if he even had one, to call him from my phone … which only seemed to play videos of my cousin trapped in a box, anyway. And I wasn’t going to wait for whatever it was that was out there to come in and get me.

  I grabbed a heavy gold candlestick from the mantel. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but if someone was going to hurt me first, I’d definitely act in self-defense.

  Holding the candlestick baseball-bat style, I stepped cautiously up to the arch where I’d seen the shadow. The material of the curtain was sheer enough that I could make out some tall shrubs and even the outline of the fountain through it.

  Any of those shapes could be a Fury waiting to pounce, I warned myself. Demons came in all sizes. The satyrs on the tapestries in John’s bedroom proved it.

  My heart in my throat, I reached out to pull back the curtain, ready to swing the candlestick at anything that moved….

  Nothing did, though. I saw only the courtyard, with its gloomy stone pathways and droopy-branched trees, along with the fountain, at the middle of which was a stone statue of a beautiful woman in a long dress, pouring water from an amphora that seemed never to empty.

  I couldn’t understand it. Something had been out there. I was sure of it. The bird — maybe even my diamond — had told me so.

  Lowering the candlestick, I stepped through the curtain and out onto the gravel path. The moist, chilly air clung to me as if we were long-lost friends, the burbling of the fountain eclipsing all other sound.

  Until a figure darted out from behind a shrub.

  I screamed and whirled around in time to see him duck through the closest arch. I followed him back inside only to encounter Hope, swooping from her perch to check on me. Her wings got tangled in the gauzy curtain, causing it to balloon out over my head. This made me cry out a second time, and throw my arms over my face to protect my eyes. When I finally untangled us both, I saw that he’d gotten away.

  I’d also seen that he wasn’t any kind of otherworldly creature like the ones depicted on the tapestries. He wasn’t a satyr or a walking skeleton or even a man. He was a child, a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old.

  He was also dressed in the strangest clothing I’d ever seen. And that was counting the dress I had on.

  When I caught up to him, he was racing down the hallway … or at least as fast as he could race, considering he was carrying a silver tray with some of the breakfast things from John’s room — or our room, I guess I should say.

  That didn’t seem to stop him, however, from speeding away as fast as a water bug.

  Once I got over my initial shock, it occurred to me that it was highly unlikely that a ten-year-old boy who was running away from me intended to do me harm. Especially since he was dressed in what must have been the height of fashion in the 1840s — black pants that cut off at the knee, white stockings, huge clumpy shoes with silver buckles; an oversized blue velvet jacket covered a shirt that might once have been white, but had seen better days.

  If he had shown up in that ensemble anywhere else — except possibly a Renaissance fair — he’d have gotten the snot kicked out of him. In the Underworld, he actually fit right in.

  “Wait,” I cried. For a child carrying about twenty pounds of silver, he seemed exceptionally mobile. He was already halfway down the hall. “Come back!”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t even slow down to look at me. “We’re not supposed to speak to you.”

  “What?” I had to break into a jog — and lift my long skirt — in order to catch up with him. “Who said you couldn’t speak to me? Who’s we?”

  My mind was spinning. John had said nothing about additional occupants of the castle. Furies, maybe, but not people. He’d said only that he’d told his “men” that if they saw me anywhere I wasn’t supposed to be, they were to bring me straight to him.

  This was no man … and no Fury, either. When I looked down at the stone at the end of my necklace, I saw that it had gone gray again. The threat of danger had passed. Unless the only danger there’d ever been was the one threatening Alex….

  The boy, meanwhile, kept walk-running. The sconces up and down the hallway hardly cast enough light to see by, sending flickering shadows everywhere, including along the deep red velvet curtains that hung on either side of every door — all locked. I’d tried them earlier — that lined the corridor. I had no idea where he thought he was going.

  “What were you doing out there in the courtyard?” I demanded. “How long were you there?” I had a sudden, horrifying thought. “Were you spying on me?”

  That got to him. He paused long enough to turn a pair of huge blue eyes up at me. “No,” he declared, indignantly. “I was gathering your breakfast things to return them to the kitchen. But then you came back and wouldn’t stop playing with your magic mirror. So I had to hide because the captain said we weren’t to talk to you. I wasn’t spying.”

  “Oh,” I said, flummoxed by this response. He’d reeled off a string of unfamiliar names and objects — Who was the captain? What magic mirror? — so I hardly knew how to respond.

  “And the captain won’t like that you were messing about with his things,” he added darkly. “He’s very particular about them.”

  I looked down in the direction of his gaze and realized I still held the candlestick in my hand.

  “Oh,” I said, again, embarrassed that I’d been caught arming myself against someone who, back in my world, would have been a fifth-grader. I turned and set the candlestick on a small marble table nearby. Then I turned back to him and said, because he was so small, and the silver tray so large and heavy-looking, “Here, why don’t you let me help you with —”

  This was a mistake.

  “No,” he said, and took off again. “Captain Hayden told me to do it.”

  Captain Hayden?

  “Do you mean John?” I asked, following him.

  “Yes, of course,” the boy said scornfully, as if my ignorance made me the crazy one. “Who else?”

  Who was this little boy? And what was this “captain” business? John might be over a hundred and eighty years old in earth years, but physically he was only eighteen or nineteen. I didn’t know much about things that had to do with the sea, but I did know that rank, even in olden times, was a matter of seniority.

  “Can you take me to, er, Captain Hayden?” I asked the boy. “Because I need to see him, right away.” I had to ask him about what I’d seen on my cell phone … and now I needed to ask him who else lived in this castle besides us.

  “How can I take you to see him,” the boy demanded, with a scowl, “when he said I’m not even supposed to be talking to you? That would be disobeying a direct order, and I never disobey orders.”

  I’d never strangled a child before — I’d never spent much time with young children, actually — but I seriously considered it at that moment.

  “Yes,” I said, from between gritted teeth. “But this is an emergency, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He
gave me this necklace, see?” I pulled the diamond from the bodice of my dress. “It warns me whenever there’s a Fury around. And it just told me there was one around a minute ago.” This was a slight exaggeration of the truth, but I figured the kid didn’t have to know this.

  The boy glanced at the diamond, unimpressed. “I’ve seen that necklace before. I was ship’s boy on the Liberty.”

  The name rang a bell. Then I remembered why. I’d seen it before on the side of a bell. Liberty, 1845 had been written on the brass bell on one of John’s shelves.

  Only what was a ship’s boy? And what was the Liberty?

  I didn’t think exposing my ignorance to this child would be the smartest choice, however.

  “That’s very nice,” I said instead, smiling in what I hoped looked like a friendly, and not completely fake, manner. “I’m Pierce Oliviera. What’s your name?”

  “Henry Day,” he said. “And I know who you are. We all remember you from the last time you were here. It’s not like we could forget, could we? Nothing was ever the same again. You know that necklace is cursed?”

  “Yes,” I said, keeping the smile frozen on my face. What did he mean, We all remember you from the last time you were here? “It’s the Persephone Diamond. It’s supposed to bring misfortune to all who touch it … unless they happen to be the chosen consort of the lord of the Underworld. As you can see,” I assured him, forcing my smile to be even brighter, “I’m all right.”

  It felt odd to say the words chosen consort of the lord of the Underworld out loud. Odd and a bit pretentious. Especially since I still wasn’t convinced that’s who or what I actually was.

  Neither, obviously, was this boy, judging by his response.

  “Except you’re not all right, are you, miss?” Henry’s gaze never wavered from mine. “You’re here.”

  That wiped the smile clean off my face.

  “Can I go now, miss?” the boy asked. “This tray is heavy. And he said we weren’t supposed to talk to you.”

  “Of … of course,” I stammered. What had I been thinking? Had I really believed I could pull this off? Even this little boy didn’t believe I was anyone but Pierce Oliviera, recent high-school dropout and NDE: survivor of a near-death experience. I was no queen, of the Underworld or any world. “But I really do need to see your, er, captain. So if you’ll just tell me where I can find him —”

  “He’s down at the beach,” Henry said unhelpfully. Then he turned around and used his hip to open a door to his left … a door I’d found locked the night before. “He’s working. I wouldn’t bother him if I were you … not even for a Fury you think you saw. Besides, you’re not supposed to leave this part of the castle. It isn’t safe.”

  Then he disappeared into the passageway.

  I slipped my foot in the jamb before the door could sway all the way shut behind him. He didn’t seem to notice that the lock had failed to catch.

  There was a now-familiar flutter overhead. I looked up. Hope had alighted atop one of the carved stone figures affixed to the hallway wall. Like all birds in the pigeon family, she seemed to have an affinity for statues. The bird was bobbing up and down, as if bursting with a message.

  “Forget it,” I whispered to her. “You stay here.”

  I didn’t regret my decision. Except the part where I didn’t stay where it was safe, the way Henry had warned me to. And that I’d left my candlestick behind.

  The dog was on me before I’d gone two steps.

  It wasn’t the dog that the book on Greek mythology we’d studied in school had described, Cerberus, which had three heads and was supposed to stand guard at the gate to the Underworld.

  It was close, though.

  His massive front paws landed on my shoulders, drilling me back against the door I’d just slipped through, then forcefully pinning me there like a butterfly mounted to a museum display. Standing on his hind legs, his sharp white fangs hovered inches from my face as he growled down at me. His drool dripped in long white streams to the flagstone floor.

  I heard someone shout “Typhon!” from behind him in a harsh tone. The dog didn’t move, his red-eyed gaze on me, his stinking hot breath in my face. I was the stranger who had dared to violate his space, and so I was the one who had to face his wrath.

  A moment later, a rough hand wrapped around the dog’s studded collar and yanked the animal away from me. It yelped like a puppy, its long pink tongue lolling and its equally long black tail wagging, as it was shoved out a side door to what appeared to be a stable yard. There it sat and whined piteously, scratching to be let back in, apparently quite sad about not having been able to have me as a snack.

  It was only then that I felt safe enough to turn my head and take in my surroundings.

  I could see that I was in a kitchen that, like the rest of John’s castle, was made entirely of stone, with a high, arched ceiling. It had only two points of egress, the door to the hallway from which I’d just entered, and against which I’d been pinned — and now leaned against for support — and the other to the stable yard where a man dressed all in black leather had shoved John’s dog, and where I was assuming John kept his horse, Alastor, another creature from the Underworld who hated my guts.

  He was going to have to get in line, though. The boy who’d pulled Typhon off me was standing a few feet away, next to the wooden plank table that ran down the center of the room, staring at me with a look that suggested he disliked me even more than the dog had. It was difficult not to notice the size of his bare biceps — not as large as John’s, but still impressive — since he’d folded his arms across his chest, and this had caused the muscles to bulge. The fact that they were circled in vicious-looking rings of black tattooed thorns did even more to draw attention to them.

  It was hard to figure out if that was why he was so much more noticeable than anyone else in the room, or if it was because he was what my friend Kayla would have called smokin’ hot, despite a jagged scar that ran down one side of his forehead, through a dark brow, and halfway to the center of his left jaw. Whoever had wielded that knife had thankfully — for him — spared his dark eye.

  Not so thankfully for me, however, since he was able to use both eyes to give me a deathlike stare.

  “Um,” I said, finally feeling the blood flow returning to my limbs. “You might want to think about getting that dog neutered.”

  The boy with the thorn tattoos sneered. “I’m guessing she’ll be wanting to get us all neutered,” he said.

  “Frank!” cried an old man I hadn’t noticed before. He was standing beside an enormous fireplace that took up most of the length of the far wall. Over the fire hung numerous huge black pots. From them seemed to emanate the foul smell that filled the air. Either that, or it had been the dog. “Mind your manners, please. Henry, please pour the captain’s guest a cup of tea. I believe she needs it.”

  “She’s not the captain’s guest, Mr. Graves,” the boy with the thorn tattoos — Frank, the old man had called him — said. “Guests aren’t usually confined to quarters. Prisoners are, though. And don’t prisoners usually get punished for disobeying orders?”

  There was a gleam in his cold dark eyes as he said the word punished that suggested he enjoyed administering punishments.

  I clutched the back of the chair nearest me and sank down into it. I was pretty sure it looked natural, though, and not like my knees had given out, which of course they had.

  “Stop trying to frighten her, Frank,” said a mountain of a man sitting across the table from me. I hadn’t noticed him because he’d been so quiet. But he was even bigger than Frank, and like him, dressed in black leather and covered in tattoos. Unlike Frank, who looked to be about John’s age, and wore his black hair in a complicated pattern of short braids close to his head, this man was older, and had shaved his skull completely bald … except for one long single black braid growing from the back of his head. His tattoos were of colorful birds and flowers, not thorns. “As if that dog didn’t scare her half to
death already.”

  “Her being so easy to frighten just further proves my point,” Frank said, continuing a conversation I’d obviously interrupted … a conversation they’d been having about me. “She’s not the one. So why are we bothering with niceties?”

  “Only a fool is never afraid, Frank,” Mr. Graves, the old man by the fire, said. “Heroes are the people who carry on despite their fear, because they know the job’s got to get done —”

  “— and they’re the only ones left to do it.” Frank snorted. “Yes, yes, you’ve only mentioned it a thousand times. How did she even get in here, Henry? Did you forget to lock the door again?”

  “It’s not my fault.” Henry, having set the tray of breakfast things down on the table, looked indignant. “She followed me. She said I was spying on her. She says she wants to see the captain. She says she saw a Fury.”

  Frank let out a harsh bark of laughter.

  “Just now? That’d be quite a trick, considering none of us heard or saw anything. What kind of Fury was that, then, miss? The invisible kind?”

  I felt myself flush. I’d gotten used to being the outsider in school, the one other people laughed at or simply chose to ignore because my near-death experience had made me the oddball, the misfit, the girl who didn’t fit in.

  It was something else entirely to be standing in the place I’d always insisted existed, and find myself being treated in the exact same way.

  “Excuse me,” I said, a little hotly. “It wasn’t Henry’s fault. I did follow him, because I was looking for John. Or the captain, as you call him. Would one of you please tell me how I could find him?” I just hoped I wouldn’t have to encounter that dog again in doing so….

  “I apologize, my dear,” old Mr. Graves said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had visitors, and I’m afraid we’ve forgotten our manners. Please don’t allow anything Frank says to trouble you. He was always an able seaman, but never much of a gentleman.”

  I shot Frank a worried look, fearing he’d be insulted upon hearing this. He only folded both hands behind his head and put his boots up on the table, looking pleased to be referred to as never much of a gentleman.