by Meg Cabot
Seth’s image disappeared as John turned off the tablet and placed it on my bedside table.
“It appears,” John said, “that he’s going to be fine, if a little uncomfortable.”
“Any word from Mr. Graves on how he and the others are doing?”
“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances,” John said. “At least they were when I saw them a little while ago.”
I stared at him. “You saw them? When?”
“On my way back to life,” he said. “I had to stop and pick up a few things, you know, such as my body, before I could rip you away from the arms of Thanatos.”
“So that’s how you got this,” I said, leaning forward to pluck at his shirt. “And the boots. I wondered. I wish I could have been there to see everyone’s faces when you went from being stone-cold dead to sitting up and talking.”
“There were some screams,” John said. “Particularly from one old woman —”
“Mrs. Engle,” I said. “She’s a school nurse. She was very attentive to you when you were dead. You know, I think she and Mr. Graves may have a little thing going on.”
John looked at me in astonishment. “A thing? What exactly happened while I was gone? Conditions were not as I left them. I told you to go back to the castle, not take everyone on the beach back with you.”
I slipped off my shoes and tucked my feet beneath me, not easy when wearing such a long skirt. “I had to make some tough executive decisions,” I said. “Running that place is not easy. I don’t know how you’ve done it all these years. We had problems with kamikaze ravens as well. I thought that with Thanatos gone, maybe the Fates would come back, but I guess not if Mrs. Engle is still around.” Then something occurred to me, and I gasped. “Oh, John!”
He looked at me in alarm. “What is it?”
“I’ve killed Thanatos. How is anyone’s spirit going to be escorted to the Underworld? Isn’t that what Thanatos does? Mr. Smith said the word once. A psycho … psychopomp. One who escorts the souls of the newly dead.”
I could tell from John’s expression that this was the first time the thought had occurred to him, too.
“Is the soul of everyone who dies from now on going to be trapped between this world and the Underworld, like you were?” I asked. “Have I made things worse? Oh, no. I’ve got to call Mr. Smith and ask him —”
John’s fingers wrapped around mine before they could reach the phone.
“No,” he said. “Don’t. You haven’t made things worse.” His gray-eyed gaze was imploring. “How could you? Pierce, what you did — I know I wasn’t happy about the way you did it, but what you did … when I was … where I was … it was the worst place I’ve ever been in my life. I thought the Underworld was the worst place I’ve ever been when I first got there, and I was all alone, but where he kept me — I can’t even put into words how horrible it was.”
The fingers around mine were like ice. In the dim light from the electric candle, I could see that his forehead was dewy with sweat, even though the house was still cool with air-conditioning. The power hadn’t been out for that long.
“It was like a cellar,” he said, “dark and cold, and I didn’t know when or even if I’d ever be let out. I could see a crack of daylight streaming through, but the door to get to it was just beyond my reach, no matter how hard I strained against the ropes that were keeping me bound. What was worse was that I knew the light wasn’t light at all … it was you. I could see you, hear you, smell you, even. But I couldn’t reach you.”
“Oh, John,” I said, my heart welling for him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you?”
In the flickering light from the fake candle, I could see a muscle leaping in his jaw. He was hunched forward on the side of my bed, his elbows on his knees. I had never seen him look more miserable, except maybe for when he was telling me about his father. I laid a hand on his back. It felt hard as a boulder.
“The closer you came to finding me,” he whispered, “the wider the shaft of light became. I could see more and more of what you were doing. But I still couldn’t reach you, and I couldn’t get you to understand that I was there, to see me or hear me, the whole time. It nearly drove me mad.”
“I did know that you were there,” I said, lifting my hand to stroke some of his tangled hair. “At least I began to suspect you were once you sent that tree crashing down on Mr. Mueller. That was quite subtle, not at all your usual style.”
John chuckled grimly at my sarcasm. He captured my hand in one of his own.
“You’ve always been able to make me laugh,” he said. “Even when things are at their worst. How do you do that?”
“According to Mr. Smith, it’s because I’m the sunshine,” I said, unable to keep a note of self-deprecation from creeping into my voice, “and you’re the storm.”
“That sounds like something he would say.” Grinning, he pressed my fingertips to his lips. “I think he’s probably right.”
“Oh, John, no!” His lips felt as icy to the touch as his hands. “Why are you so cold?” I slipped my free hand around his shoulders while I tried to think what a responsible adult, like my mom or Mrs. Engle, would do in this situation. “Do you want me to make you some soup? I could go downstairs and make you some soup — it’s a gas stove, so it should still be working — and bring it back up —”
“I don’t need soup,” he said. “All I need is you.”
He dropped my hand to snake his arm around my waist, burying his face in the curve between my neck and my shoulder — a favorite place of his — then sending me sinking slowly back against the voluminous pile of soft “accent” pillows my mom’s decorator had insisted on stacking against my headboard.
You don’t sleep on them, the decorator had explained to me. They’re called throw pillows because you “throw” them off the bed right before you go to sleep.
I don’t know why anyone would bother throwing those pillows off the bed when they made such a deep, comfortable nest for two people who’d been through as much as John and I had recently. I liked the way they towered around us, forming a safe cocoon against the world as John clung to me in the semidarkness, his heart pounding hard against mine, listening to the rain as it continued to pour down outside my shuttered windows.
At least, I thought, he was able to speak about what he’d been through. That had to be a good sign. On television, doctors were always saying how it was healing for soldiers and other victims of violent assault to talk about their traumatic experiences.
“What else?” I asked, as thunder rumbled off in the distance and his lips roamed sleepily along the curve of my collarbone.
“What do you mean, what else?”
“I mean, what else about when you were with Thanatos?”
He lifted his head to stare down at me as if I were a madwoman. “Why would I want to talk about Thanatos now?”
“Because,” I said, “talking about it might be therapeutic. Whether you admit it or not, you’ve had a lot of distressing experiences in your life.”
He leaned up on one of the accent pillows to look me in the eye. “So have you.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But my parents have also paid for me to have a lot of therapy, so the chances of my suffering from any long-term neurosis is minimal.”
“This is all the therapy I need,” he said, raising his hand from my waist to another part of my anatomy, nearer my heart.
I sucked in my breath. “I’m pretty sure in therapy, that would be called a diversionary tactic.”
“Then I need a lot more diversionary tactics,” John said, his fingers moving to tug on the string that kept the bodice of my dress closed in the front. “Also, there’s something you promised to tell me that you still haven’t said —”
I don’t know if it was the intoxicating mixture of his closeness; his kisses; the comforting cocoon of pillows; the romantic, constant drumming of the rain outside; or the fact that, after so long, we final
ly seemed to have found somewhere we could safely be together. But it wasn’t long before I found myself murmuring, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” exactly as I’d longed to the entire time he was gone.
He expressed his love for me, as well, as emphatically as ever …. so much so that I was relieved for the booming thunder outside, since I knew it would cover any sounds we might make that could wake up my mom — though at times I wasn’t certain whether the thunder was being generated by John or the storm itself.
Later, lying lazily in his arms beneath my white down comforter, I said, “We can’t fall asleep. There’s too much we still have to do.”
“I know.” His chest was rising and falling beneath my cheek in a slow, rhythmic movement as he breathed. “But I think it’s all right for now.” He held up my diamond, the only thing I was wearing. “It’s silver. There’s no danger. We deserve to rest for a few minutes.”
“No,” I said firmly. “If we fall asleep and my mom finds us in here, she’ll kill you all over again.”
“If you’d just marry me,” he said, “the way I asked you to, everything would be fine.”
“You don’t know my parents,” I said. “Believe me, everything wouldn’t be fine if we got married.”
“I would rather be open with them,” John said. “I can provide for you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s not really the issue. And besides, you live in an underground cave.”
“In a castle in an underground cave.”
“That is currently overrun with the souls of the dead.”
John thought about this. “With a bit of luck, that’s something we’ll soon resolve.”
“Luck,” I said, gazing sleepily at the still flickering LED candle. “That’s something neither of us has ever had much of.”
He stroked a lock of my hair. “We found each other, didn’t we?”
“That was my grandmother, not luck. She made sure we met so she could kill me later and break your heart because she hates your guts.”
His hand stilled on my hair. “Oh. That’s right.”
“Don’t let me fall asleep.”
“I won’t,” he said.
The last thing I remember was lightning as it made a bright white stripe against my wall when it flashed between the slats of the shutters. I never heard the thunder that followed, however.
And light I saw in fashion of a river
Fulvid with its effulgence, ’twixt two banks
Depicted with an admirable Spring.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Paradiso, Canto XXX
Sunlight streamed through the slats in the storm shutters, making cheerful patterns across my walls.
I heard birdsong outside, as well. I hadn’t heard birds singing while the hurricane was blowing. I could also hear the steady hum of the air conditioner. That meant the power was back on. My room was cold enough that I needed to pull the down comforter up over my bare shoulders and snuggle closer to John for warmth.
The storm was over. It was morning. And I was in my own room, in my own bed, next to John.
Then a coldness that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning gripped me.
The storm was over. It was morning. And I was in my room, next to John.
We’d fallen asleep. After I’d told him not to let me fall asleep, he’d not only let me fall asleep, he’d fallen asleep himself. He lay beside me in a chaotic scatter of throw pillows, the comforter half on, half off him — but mostly off — his bare chest rising and falling deeply, dead to the world.
Probably not the best choice of words.
But I had the feeling he was going to wish he was dead to the world when he woke up and saw who stood in the open doorway a few feet away, holding a steaming cup of coffee and staring at the two of us in complete and utter shock.
“Mom,” I said, sitting bolt upright in bed. “This is not what it looks like.”
“Isn’t it?” my mother asked in an icy cold voice. She was wearing the fluffy bathrobe I’d given her for Mother’s Day. “Because I have the feeling it’s exactly what it looks like.”
I threw the comforter over John, as if, were he hidden from view, he would no longer exist. Perhaps he’d get the clue, wake up, and blink himself somewhere else. It would be the best thing that could happen.
Unfortunately, the lumps beneath the comforter stayed exactly where they were, except that they began to move slightly.
“Actually,” I said, “it’s kind of a funny story.”
“Is it?” Mom asked. “Your letter to me was far from humorous.”
John threw the comforter from his head and chest and stood up. Thankfully, he was wearing his jeans, although I didn’t know how or when he’d pulled them back on.
“I’m very sorry we had to meet under these circumstances, ma’am,” he said, extending his right hand. “My name is John Hayden. I’m very much in love with your daughter.”
I don’t know why John didn’t simply grab my hand and blink us somewhere else, the way he had the last time we’d encountered my mother. I supposed it had something to do with what he’d said the night before, about wanting to be open with my parents, and also probably something to do with the fact that no one was actually trying to kill us.
He didn’t know my mom very well.
Her dark eyes widened to their limits. She did not shake John’s hand.
“Pierce, I’d like you and your friend,” she said, stressing the word friend as if it tasted unpleasant in her mouth, “to get fully dressed and then come downstairs so your father and I can discuss a few things with him.”
Now it was my turn to widen my eyes. “Dad? He’s here?”
“He’s in the kitchen,” my mother said, “making waffles. Or at least he was. Right now he’s on the phone with his lawyers, since I just received a somewhat disturbing phone call from Seth Rector’s father, complaining that you and — John, is it?” She gave John a skeptical look, as if she doubted that was his real name. “That you and John assaulted his son last night at some party. What you were even doing at a party in the middle of a Category Three hurricane, I don’t care to know, let alone why you assaulted him. But Mr. Rector fully intends to press charges.” She sighed. “Another name to add to the long list of people you’ve struck in the face, including your own grandmother.”
My jaw dropped.
“You’ve got to believe me, Mom,” I said. “Those are all lies. Everything Seth is saying is a lie, and everything Grandma said is a lie, too. Like I said in the letter I left you, I wasn’t kidnapped. Grandma tried to kill me. Twice. John is the one who saved me —”
My mother had already started shaking her head.
“Pierce,” she said. “Please. I’m so tired of all this. I don’t know what your father and I ever did to make you so unhappy. Maybe we weren’t the best role models, and Lord knows we went through a rough patch. But it isn’t fair of you to take it out on innocent people like Seth and your grandmother —”
“Innocent?” I burst out. “You’ve got it all wrong, Mom. John saved me from them. He saved me from Mr. Mueller, too. I can prove it. Remember the shadow on the security tape from my school in Westport? That was him. That was John. He saved me from Mr. Mueller again last night.”
Mom’s expression changed. Her mouth, which had tightened into a thin, disapproving line — she usually wore lipstick but obviously wasn’t wearing any this early in the morning — fell open. I saw the hand she’d kept wrapped around the coffee mug tremble slightly, and she reached out to clutch the doorknob to my room, as if to steady herself.
“Mr. Mueller?” she echoed faintly, her gaze flicking from me to John. “They just said something on the news about how there was only a single fatality in the area from last night’s storm … a Mark Mueller of Connecticut who was struck by a falling tree. But surely … that couldn’t be the same Mark Mueller as —”
“It was, ma’am,” John said gravely. “You can ask Mr. Richard Smith. He’ll tell you that it’s true. I believe h
e’s an acquaintance of your father’s —”
“That crazy old cemetery sexton who was so rude to me that first day of school?” My mom looked at me like I was the one she thought was crazy. “What’s he got to do with any of this?”
“You can just ask Alex, Mom,” I said. “He was there, too.”
“Alex?” My mother’s hand shook some more. “You know where Alex is? He hasn’t been answering his cell. His father’s frantic —”
“I do know where he is.” John stepped forward and neatly rescued the drooping mug from her hand, before she’d spilled a single drop. “Not to worry, Alex has been with us.” John didn’t add the part about Alex’s having been murdered, then revived. “Why don’t we go downstairs so we can talk about this with your husband —”
“Ex-husband,” Mom said like someone in a daze, as John took her by the elbow. “Pierce’s father and I are divorced. But we’re reconciling —”
“What?” I’d shuffled from the bed, wrapped in my comforter, to rifle through my closet in search of something to wear. Hearing the bombshell Mom had just dropped, however, I nearly dropped the comforter.
“We still have a lot of things to work through. Obviously.” Mom shot me another disapproving look, no doubt because she’d seen what I had on beneath the comforter, which wasn’t much. “And the last thing we need right now is to become grandparents, so I hope the two of you are at least using protection.”
I blanched. I’d forgotten all about that particular detail during the storm, what with all the love talk, and the thunder, and the nearly having gotten killed a few hours earlier. What had I been thinking? Or, more accurately, not thinking? Mr. Smith had said he’d never heard of a death deity capable of siring children … but what if that was only because the Underworld was so inhospitable to new life? He’d said nothing of what might happen outside the Underworld.