Underworld

by Meg Cabot

  “I’m Mr. Graves, ship’s surgeon to the Liberty,” the old man said, apparently not noticing his shipmate’s behavior. “And this is Mr. Liu, ship bosun.” The giant with the braid, who had a cup of tea in front of him, nodded at me unsmilingly.

  None of this made any more sense to me than what Henry had said earlier. The Liberty, again. Was Mr. Graves supposed to be some kind of doctor? Because he certainly didn’t look like one, in his old-fashioned black wool suit.

  If he was a doctor, maybe the foul-smelling substances in the pots he was tending over the fire were special medicines he was brewing to heal wounds inflicted by Furies. I hoped so, since it would be nice to think John had someone besides me to take care of him.

  On the other hand, if these four — Mr. Graves, the brutish Frank, the mysterious Mr. Liu, and rude little Henry — were the only company John had had for a hundred and sixty-odd years, it explained a lot about his brooding.

  Mr. Liu and Frank looked almost exactly like the guards I’d seen working with John that day I’d died back when I was fifteen. The day John had decided to keep me, instead of sending me on to my final destination.

  What was it Henry had said, back in the hallway? We all remember you from the last time you were here.

  No wonder they looked like those guards. They probably were those guards.

  And no wonder none of them liked me. I was the girl who’d thrown tea in their boss’s face, and run away.

  Now it seemed more likely that what was in the pots Mr. Graves kept stirring was poison … poison that was going to be used on me.

  “It’s very nice to meet you all,” I said, deciding it was best to be diplomatic, since it looked like I was going to be stuck with these people for a while. I rose on still unsteady legs to walk over and shake Mr. Graves’s hand.

  The doctor simply stared over my head, seeming to notice neither my hand, nor me standing there in front of him.

  This was explained when Frank said to me scornfully, a second later, “He can’t see you. He’s blind.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling mortified. I hadn’t noticed until that point that Mr. Graves’s eyes had a milky-white sheen to them, and that he’d never once looked directly at anyone who was speaking. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Mr. Graves said, managing to find my hand anyway and give it a squeeze. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Actually, it could have been,” Frank said. “It was a Fury that —”

  “Frank, the young lady said she’d like to see the captain. Why don’t you go fetch him?” Mr. Graves snapped. To me, he said, “Miss Oliviera, I do apologize. It’s been quite some time since these fellows have been in the company of a young lady.”

  “Speak for yourself, old man,” Frank said. He came to his feet with sudden alacrity. “Why don’t I just take her to the captain?”

  “I hardly think that’s a good idea,” Mr. Liu muttered, into his teacup.

  “His orders were if she showed up, we were to bring her straight to him,” Frank said.

  Mr. Graves’s face expressed the exact dismay I felt upon being reminded of this. “Just go and fetch the captain, Frank. Or young Henry can do it.”

  “What?” Henry cried, looking stricken. “I don’t want to go down there. All those dead people. And I’m the one who always gets stuck handing out the blankets —”

  “It’s not important,” I said quickly. Blankets? What blankets? What on earth was Henry talking about? “I’ll just wait until John comes back —”

  “See?” Henry looked triumphant. “I told you. She’s not the one.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Frank said, impatiently. “Either way, we’re stuck with her.”

  This wasn’t a very nice thing to hear about yourself — that people thought of you as someone they were stuck with. Not that I hadn’t been thinking the very same thing about them … and not that I didn’t share Henry’s fear that I wasn’t Queen-of-the-Underworld material.

  “Excuse me,” I said. I felt like I had to say something, especially if I’d been chosen as consort for the reason I suspected … that I’d always felt a certain obligation to help wild things. They certainly qualified — though I was willing to admit that my success rates hadn’t been very good thus far. “I get that some of you may not like me, which is fair, since I realize the last time I was here, I didn’t make the best impression.” That was an understatement. “But I do think we all have something in common.”

  Mr. Liu looked curious. “What would that be, Miss Oliviera?”

  “Well, we’d all like to —”

  — go home, was what I almost said. Then I remembered that for them, home no longer existed. Everyone they had known on earth, all of their families and loved ones, had died over a hundred years ago. They had no homes to go to. Maybe this was their family now, the Underworld their home.

  “Go to Isla Huesos,” I said lamely instead. Surely that was better than the Underworld, wasn’t it?

  When they sat and stared at me — except for Mr. Graves, who couldn’t see, and wore a troubled expression instead — I began to suspect I’d made an even worse mistake than saying home. “You’ve heard of Isla Huesos, haven’t you?” I asked worriedly.

  The blind man spoke first, in a slightly stiff tone. “Every man who’s ever sailed under the Union Jack knows Isla Huesos. It’s only one of the busiest — and wickedest — ports in the Americas.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.”

  This was not the answer I’d been expecting. I wasn’t quite sure how to break it to him that while Isla Huesos might have been one of the busiest ports in the Americas nearly two hundred years ago, now it was where about a half million tourists showed up every year, generally either by cruise ship, rental car, or commercial airline, to sunbathe, rent Jet Skis, and buy T-shirts that say My Grandma Went to Isla Huesos and All I Got Was This Crappy T-shirt. Hardly the wickedest place in the Americas …

  On the other hand, it was also a place that had gotten its name from the many thousands of human bones that had been found littering its shores back in the fifteen hundreds. Isla Huesos means “Island of Bones.” How those bones had gotten there had always been a source of some speculation.

  The fact that it turned out to have an underworld beneath it may have been a clue.

  “I’ve never been to Isla Huesos,” Henry said, a wistful expression on his face. “The Liberty was on her way there when —”

  Mr. Graves suffered a coughing fit, possibly from breathing in the fumes of whatever it was he was cooking.

  “Well, don’t let her fill your head with dreams, kid,” Frank warned Henry, his voice a rumbling growl. “Because you’re not going there now, either.”

  “I’m not trying to fill anyone’s head with anything,” I said, stung. I was only trying to do what I was pretty sure was my new job. “I’m just saying maybe we aren’t so different as you think. I know I behaved … badly towards your captain the last time I was here.” I could feel myself blushing, but I plunged on, keeping my gaze on Mr. Graves, who could not, of course, even see me. “But I feel differently now. I want to help. John gave me this.” I pulled the diamond by its chain out from the bodice of my gown to show them. “I was thinking that maybe, using it, and working together, we could figure out how to defeat the Furies someday —”

  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.<
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  “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.

  Was 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.