Underworld

by Meg Cabot

  “I forgive you,” I said gravely. “This time. But I can’t believe you did something so awful. You’d better never do it again. Honestly, I expected better behavior from a lord of the dead. Especially when I’ve told you so many times that it’s you I want, no matter where you are.”

  His expression of a dog that had been beaten too many times by its owner began to fade. Now a hopeful look dawned upon his face.

  “John,” I said, reaching out to caress his cheek. “I don’t need some silly rule to make me stay and try to work things out with you. I’ll always do that, because I love you.”

  It was sad that this was something that seemed to be news to him.

  “Do you mean it?” he asked, reaching up to grasp my hand, an eager light glowing in his eyes.

  “Of course I do,” I said, smiling.

  “Good.” He held up A History of the Isle of Bones. “So did you read this?”

  I lowered my hand from his face. We may have just shared an important moment in our relationship, but I apparently wasn’t going to be let off the hook about that stupid book.

  “Parts of it,” I confessed. “The parts about the Liberty.”

  He flinched as if I’d struck him. The light in his eyes died.

  “So,” he said. “You know the truth about the man I killed. He was my father.”

  The color in his cheeks had fled once again, leaving them pale. There were shadows under his eyes I hadn’t noticed before, and his lips were pressed together tightly.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling as if the word were being wrung out of me.

  “I guess you know now why I didn’t want to talk about it,” he said, lowering his gaze. “It’s a shameful thing. Have you known all along?”

  I shrugged. “That he was your father? Just since last night. But I always knew you must have had your reasons. You said he was a monster. That’s what you said about your family.” I kept my gaze on the front cover of the book. “All except your mother.”

  “I hated the way he treated her,” John said. “The only times I ever remember her being happy was when he was away at sea, and that was when I was very young. After I got older, he ruined that, too, by forcing me to go with him on his voyages, so I barely saw her. She was his second wife. He drove his first to an early grave with his” — he glanced at me, and said, looking embarrassed — “philandering and drunkenness.”

  I think he’d have chosen less polite words if he’d been speaking to a man.

  “Oh,” I said, in a small voice. I knew my family wasn’t perfect, but I was realizing how lucky I was to have them … Grandma notwithstanding.

  “The sons he had by his first wife,” John went on, “they were no better than he was. I was the only son employed at Hayden and Sons, though I had three older brothers. My father never forced any of them to work at the family business. They were too brilliant at spending all its profits — on women and cards, as it turns out. I realized someone had to support my mother, or she’d end up in the poorhouse. They don’t have those now, but they were terrible places they sent people, primarily women and children, who couldn’t support themselves. The Liberty was the only ship my father hadn’t managed to lose to my brothers’ creditors. Can you understand any of this, Pierce?”

  I nodded, swallowing hard against the lump forming in my throat. He looked so ashamed.

  “I didn’t even realize we were carrying the Persephone Diamond” — he ran a finger along it, and I shivered as his skin touched mine — “until my father showed it to me when we were already on our way to Havana. One of my brothers had won it in a card game, and found a buyer for it in Isla Huesos. Very convenient, since we could drop it off on our way back to England. I didn’t like the plan, but there was nothing I could do about it once we were out to sea. I knew the necklace was probably stolen, but I had no idea from where, or what it was worth. I certainly didn’t know it was …” He paused.

  “Cursed?” I offered, my voice croaky because of my unshed tears.

  “It isn’t cursed,” John said deliberately, rearranging the chain around my neck, “if you’re wearing it. It’s blessed. It wasn’t until we were halfway from Havana to Isla Huesos that I found out my father had hatched his own little scheme, with William Rector —”

  I raised my eyebrows at the name.

  “Yes,” John said grimly. “Of the famed Rector family. My father had contacted Rector, and agreed purposefully to wreck the Liberty on the reef —”

  This I didn’t understand. “Wreck his own boat? Why?”

  “It was done,” John said, his tone bitter. “Not often, but there were rumors. Captains would wreck their own ships, pretend it was an accident, then split the salvage award — they could make thousands more in one night than they could in years at sea. They’d arrange the site of the so-called accident with a particular wrecker in advance. Most often, no one was wiser.”

  “Like an insurance scam,” I said.

  John nodded. “My father was in debt to his ears. The Liberty was a new ship, a good one. Her hull could take a good ramming, and recover. But most important, he could pocket the Persephone Diamond and claim it was lost at sea. No one would ever know the difference, including my brother … and the buyer.”

  “Steal from his own son? Oh, John.” My heart went out to him.

  He shook his head. “No, Pierce,” he said. “The necklace isn’t why we fought … or why he died. I didn’t care about any of that. My father could have taken that necklace and disappeared forever and I’d have wished him well. It was the fact that he was going to put the Liberty, and her crew, at risk, all for the sake of a few extra thousand dollars … that I couldn’t allow. Henry was on that ship, Pierce. Little Henry, and three dozen other men, including Frank, and Mr. Graves, and Mr. Liu. What if something happened to them? What if something went wrong? Ramming a ship purposefully into a rock isn’t ever the best idea, but it was October … October is never a good month in that strait. Those waters are churning, hot from the long summer. Storms can come sweeping in from nowhere.”

  I remembered my dream. A storm had come sweeping in … and John had been the one lost in it forever.

  “I begged my father not to go through with it. I knew Rector. One of the only obligations a wrecker has is to rescue the crew first, cargo second. But Rector would sooner have let a crew drown than risk losing a single bale of cotton, especially if they were selling high. Never mind what would happen if it was proven in court that Hayden and Sons had colluded to sink its own cargo. The business would be ruined forever. But I saw the gleam in my father’s eye.” John’s own eyes grew hard at the memory. “So we fought. Things got violent, as they often did with him, because he was a drinker. This time, for the first time, I fought back … and he lost. But it turned out most of the crew was as greedy as my father — which makes sense, since he hired them — and wanted to continue with the wrecking scheme. And you know the rest.”

  “But the Liberty wasn’t wrecked,” I said. “It made it into port.”

  “Because when that storm whipped up, there was only one man who was a good enough navigator to strand it without killing half the men on board.” His grin was rueful. “And they’d tossed him overboard. The men who were for the wrecking scheme decided not to go through with it.”

  “John, I’m so sorry,” I said. “No wonder you hate the Rectors so much.”

  “They’re bottom-feeders,” he said, the grin vanishing. “They’ve always preyed on the weak and helpless, taking advantage of those who can’t help themselves. My father and William Rector were hateful men who were blind to everyone else’s needs but their own —”

  He was interrupted by a muffled chime. It sounded, of all things, like the ring of a cell phone.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” John said, looking as bewildered as I was. The tone sounded again, just as urgently. “It sounds like it’s coming from …”

  He bent down, then found my book bag on the floor. He l
ifted it to the bed. The chime rang again, this time sounding much closer.

  “That’s my cell phone,” I said, finally recognizing the tone. I grabbed my bag and began rifling through it.

  “Pierce,” John said. “That’s not possi —”

  I pulled out the phone as it was ringing for a fourth time. “Yes,” I said to him, irritated. “It is possible, if you’re the queen of the Underworld. I get special privileges. Haven’t you noticed by now?” The screen said Unknown Caller. I pressed the green OK button. “Hello?”

  The caller was not unknown. At least not to me. It was my cousin Alex. I recognized his voice right away.

  “Pierce,” he said. “Pierce?”

  It made sense that the connection was terrible … so staticky and distant that I could barely hear him.

  What I could not figure out was why he sounded so out of breath.

  “Alex?” I put my finger in the ear to which I was not holding my phone so I could hear him. Hope chose that moment to come swooping into the room and land on the bed, where she proceeded to waddle across the comforter, then butt me in my bare foot with her head, cooing extremely loudly. I ignored her. “Alex, I can’t hear you very well. Can you speak up? Where are you?”

  “Pierce,” Alex said, in that same ghostly voice, as if he were speaking from a grave. “I —” I heard only static. “— something so stupid. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”

  “Wait,” I said. I flung a panicked look in John’s direction. “Where are you? You sound awful. I thought Frank and Kayla took you home.”

  John was already pulling out the tablet he kept in his pocket. His fingertips flew over it. I had no idea what he was doing. I was fairly certain those tablets only worked for looking up the names of the dead, or in John’s case, checking up on my activities on earth. But maybe he was texting Frank.

  “There’s no air in here, Pierce,” Alex said. I could tell he was crying. “You’ve got to come, quick … can’t call the cops, because I think some of them are in on it, and if I call my dad, he’ll just get in …”

  I felt goose bumps break out all over my arms. “Alex,” I said. I was already scrambling off my bed and looking around for my shoes. “You’re breaking up. What’s happening? Did you go out again? Did you go look for the coffin? Because they haven’t even finished building it yet.”

  “Not that coffin,” Alex said. His voice was growing even fainter. His next words sounded like cries from the beyond … except I was the one in the beyond. “I figured it out … I know where they’re hiding it all.”

  Then there was nothing. The call died.

  “Hiding what? Alex?” I cried, pressing the phone so closely to my ear, it hurt. “Alex?”

  I turned towards John, panicked, holding out the phone. “He’s gone. He’s in trouble, and he’s gone.”

  Mutely, John held his tablet towards me. The screen showed the same picture I’d seen on my cell phone earlier: Alex, trapped inside what looked like a coffin.

  “Why are you seeing that?” I demanded, slipping on my shoes.

  “Pierce,” he said somberly. “You know why I’m seeing it. Think about who I am.”

  Cold horror gripped me. “Is he dead? He can’t be. I thought we saved him!”

  “I did, too,” John said, his frown so deep I felt my heart give a double flip. “But this says he’s at the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery?” I burst out. “What’s he doing at the cemetery? I thought Frank and Kayla took him home.”

  “They did,” John said, looking down at the screen. “He must have gone out again. Pierce —”

  “What?” My heart was thumping at twice its normal speed. “Come on, John, we’ve got to go. Where is he exactly?”

  John turned off the tablet and put it away, still not meeting my gaze. “He’s inside the Rector Mausoleum.”

  “Inside it?” None of this was making any sense to me. “That’s impossible. What would he be doing there?”

  “I don’t know,” John said. He finally lifted his gaze to me, and when he did, I saw the regret etched in his eyes. “But, Pierce, I’m afraid it’s too late. He’s already dead.”

  He can’t be dead.” That’s what I kept saying.

  “He can’t be. You’re wrong. Just because you’re the lord of the dead doesn’t mean you know everything. You were wrong about the Furies being indestructible. So you could be wrong about Alex.”

  “Fine,” John said, looking as if he were longing to punch something. “We’ll go down to the beach and find him, and then you’ll see that this, I’m right about —”

  “No.” Maybe I was being hysterical. I don’t know. It just didn’t seem possible. The last time I’d seen Alex, he’d been alive. Standing there stiff as a board because I’d been hugging him and saying I loved him, too proud — or damaged — to tell me that he loved me back.

  But he’d been alive. It didn’t make any sense. How could he be dead?

  What John kept saying — that we didn’t have to go back to earth to find Alex — made even less sense.

  John gave up insisting that if anyone was going to go back to Isla Huesos to look for Alex, it wasn’t going to be me. He gave up reminding me what had happened the last time I’d gone to Isla Huesos — that everywhere I went, there’d been a Fury waiting to harm me in some way. He had basically given up saying much of anything at all, except that Alex was dead.

  “He called me. Out of everyone, he called me, John. I’m going to help him.”

  “Pierce,” he said, compassion and sympathy in his voice, but hard reality in his eyes. “There isn’t any point. He’s dead.”

  I whirled on him fiercely. “So was I. But my mom pulled me out of that pool and gave me mouth-to-mouth, and the EMTs gave me CPR, and I came back to life. Remember? So stop arguing and take me to him while there’s still time.”

  That’s when John stopped arguing, took my arm, and one … two … three … blink.

  We were in his crypt. But we weren’t there alone.

  In the dim light of dawn, I could barely make out the shapes of two men wearing what appeared to be pirate costumes lying crumpled on the floor. They were semiconscious, their hands and feet tied with strips of what looked like their own clothing. Frank was sitting with his legs crossed at the ankles beside them, his back up against the wall, an empty bottle of Captain Rob’s Rum in his hands.

  “Oh, hello,” he said with a wave when he saw us. “Welcome to the party.”

  “What happened?” John demanded. He did not sound pleased.

  “Got here to meet you, as we planned, and found them waiting.” Frank gave the bottle a toss, catching it expertly by the neck, then tossed it again. “Looks like they were planning to ambush you and Pierce when you showed up. As hired muscle goes, they don’t seem to have been the best choice. It’s usually not the brightest idea to drink on the job … but I suppose they got started at the festival and didn’t see any reason to stop. I simply hurried things along. Didn’t I, my fine fellows?” Frank gave one of the unconscious men a little shove with the toe of his boot.

  “Go ’way,” the man murmured, before rolling over on his comfortable bed of poinciana blossoms and red drink cups. “We’re waiting for someone.”

  “Find your own tomb,” the other said. “We’ve got dibs on this one. Nice ’n’ dry.”

  “In my experience, challenging a total stranger to a drinking contest never works out well,” Frank went on, with a wink at me, “especially when the drink in question is the one his former employer used to force his entire crew to drink on a daily basis. Remember, Captain? Ah, memories.”

  Frank held up the bottle. For the first time, I noticed that Captain Rob’s Rum had a picture of a ship captain on the label. He bore a slight resemblance to John … if John had been much older, with a long mustache, side whiskers, and a repulsive smirk on his face.

  It was only then that it hit me: Captain Rob of Captain Rob’s Rum was Captain Robert Hayden. I wondered which o
f John’s ancestors had turned the tragedy of his father’s alcoholism into such a lucrative business. It obviously hadn’t been John.

  I saw him grimace with distaste.

  “Probably acquaintances of our old friend Mike,” he said, looking down at the two drunk men. “I doubt they scaled the cemetery fence in their condition.”

  Frank nodded. “Not with those spikes on it. Someone had to have let them in through a gate.”

  “The way he did the night of Jade’s murder,” John said, thoughtfully. “Mike, probably.”

  Frank brightened. “I didn’t think of that. We could torture them a bit to find out.”

  John threw me an uneasy glance. “I think we’d better leave them here and move on for now….”

  I wasn’t really listening. On top of the fact that I was so tortured with worry about Alex, it didn’t smell so good inside John’s crypt — one or both of the two men had apparently been sick on himself.

  “Right,” Frank said, eyeing me. “They’re trussed up nice and tight. Not like they’re going anywhere …”

  I was relieved to see that the chains around the gate to John’s crypt remained broken. This was evidently how the two Furies had gotten inside it. Not waiting for John to do it for me this time, I pushed open the gate and stepped onto the cemetery path outside his crypt, relieved to smell the fresh morning air.

  It had stopped raining. The rising sun was putting in a valiant effort to burn off the fast-moving clouds, streaking the sky in the east with brilliant stripes of orange, red, and lavender. This was good, since it meant we had light to see by — the city had started turning out all the streetlights in and around the graveyard in an effort to combat what the newspaper said the police department was calling acts of “teen vandalism.”

  Some of us knew vandals had nothing to do with it, and turning out the lights wasn’t going to do anything to improve the situation.

  “— all the way to the door,” I could hear Frank saying behind me as I moved quickly along the gravel path. “I gave him his phone and his keys, just like you told me, then we waited until he went inside. We watched him.”