by Meg Cabot
Fortunately John could not know what she was talking about. They didn’t have protection — at least the reliable kind my mom was referring to — back when he’d been alive.
“It’s all right, Dr. Cabrero,” he said soothingly. The doctor was a nice touch. It made up for all the ma’ams. Mom hated it when boys ma’amed her. “We’re going to be married, just as soon as your daughter will have me.”
Oh, my God.
“Zack!” my mother began to shout hoarsely. She turned and ran from the bedroom. “Zachary!”
Furious, I let the comforter drop and from the closet ripped the first dress I touched.
“Are you crazy?” I hissed at John, pulling the dress over my head, then searching for a pair of sandals. “Do you have a death wish or something?”
“They’re your parents,” John said. He’d found his shirt and was tugging it on. “They deserve to know the truth.”
“The truth? That I have to live eighteen hundred miles below the earth, with a bunch of dead people, for the rest of eternity? How well do you think that’s going to go over?”
“They love you,” he said, following me as I darted into the hallway and started down the stairs. “They’ll understand.”
“You don’t know my parents,” I said. “I’ve been trying to tell them the truth about you since the day I died and met you, and all it’s gotten me is a lot of appointments with a bunch of shrinks. They are not going to believe the truth about you, and they are not going to let me be with you.”
On the landing, John caught hold of my arm, then turned me around to face him.
“Pierce,” he said, looking down into my eyes and smiling as he smoothed a dark curl of hair from my forehead. “They can’t stop us from being together. And they will believe you. Because I’m here with you. You’re not alone anymore.”
Though my heart was hammering with fear — a worse kind of fear, in a way, than I’d felt when it was Mr. Mueller who’d stepped into Kayla’s car headlights, or when I’d realized Seth was Thanatos — I smiled tentatively back at him.
John was right. My parents couldn’t stop us from being together. So many people had tried — Furies included. But none of them had succeeded.
“Could someone please explain to me what in the hell is going on here?” I heard a familiar voice bellow from the bottom of the stairs.
I looked down and saw my father standing there wearing a short-sleeved undershirt, a pair of dress slacks, and no shoes.
A significant amount of my fear dissipated as I realized I wasn’t the only female member of the household who’d entertained an overnight guest.
“Wow,” I said, as I slipped my hand into John’s and began walking down the stairs with him. “Did you forget the rest of your suit when you came over for breakfast this morning, Dad? And your shoes? And your belt?”
My mom, who was standing next to my dad, began to blush, but her voice was strong as she said, “I wouldn’t crack jokes right now if I were you, young lady. You’re in very big trouble.”
John squeezed my hand, and when I glanced up at him, he frowned. He didn’t approve of my joke, either. I guess my kite strings were getting pulled.
“Sorry,” I said. When we reached the ground floor and stood before my parents, I said, in what I hoped was a suitably chastened tone, pointing to John, “Dad, this is John Hayden. I’m sure you remember him from various security tapes. John, this is my father, Zack Oliviera.”
“Hello, sir.” John extended his hand towards my dad. “I know you haven’t heard very good things about me, but I can assure you I’m very much in love with your daughter.”
Like Mom, Dad ignored John’s hand. He simply stood staring up at him, John being a few inches taller than he was (something I knew Dad wasn’t going to like, if he hadn’t disliked John enough already).
“I don’t care how much you claim to love my daughter,” Dad said evenly. “I have a nine-shot .22 Magnum upstairs in my briefcase. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t go get it and shoot out both your knees so you’ll never walk again.”
“Dad!” I cried, horrified, wrapping both my hands protectively around John’s arm.
“Oh, God,” my mother said, looking sick. “Zack, no — this isn’t what I wanted. I’m calling the police.” She moved towards the kitchen to pick up the portable phone.
“You call the police,” John said, never dropping his gaze from my dad’s, “and the Furies will know your daughter is here. They’re the ones who’ve been trying to kill her.”
My dad’s dark eyebrows lowered into an even deeper scowl. “Oh, sure,” he said scornfully. “The Furies. What are they, part of your druggie gang?”
Only then did John break my father’s stare to glance down at me. “Druggie?” he asked uncertainly.
“Dad,” I cried. Now, instead of clinging to John, I threw myself against my father. I thought my body weight would slow him down if he tried to go for the gun. “You have to listen to me. John didn’t kidnap me. He saved me, because Grandma was trying to kill me. You were right about Grandma all along. She’s a Fury.”
Mom laid down the phone in exasperation. “Now I’ve heard everything. You’re trying to say your grandmother is in a gang?”
“No,” I said desperately. “Well, yes. The Furies aren’t a gang … at least, not the kind you’re thinking of. John isn’t in a gang, either. And he’s not a drug dealer or a death metal goth head.” I sent my mother a narrow-eyed glance, but she appeared to have no memory of ever using that term to describe him. She, along with my father, was listening to me intently. “I’ve been trying to tell you guys for two years what he is, but you wouldn’t listen. Maybe that’s because I didn’t want to believe it myself, but I’m ready now. He’s a death deity. I met him when I died and went to his world … the Underworld.”
Mom pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. “Oh, Pierce,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
I didn’t think they were tears of happiness. In fact, I was sure she thought I was losing my mind.
“It’s true,” I said. “He sorts the souls of the recently deceased and sends them to their final destinations. Here, see, he gave me this necklace.” I pulled my diamond from the bodice of my sundress and showed it to my father. “Mom, you’ve seen it before, remember? You asked me where I got it right after I had my surgery. I said it was a gift. Well, it was a gift. John gave it to me when I met him in the Underworld. It protects me. The diamond turns colors when there’s a Fury around, and when I touch a Fury with it, it kills it. It was originally mined by Hades to give to Persephone —”
“That’s enough,” my dad said sharply. He swung around to glare at John, his expression angrier than I’d ever seen it … and Zack Oliviera was famous for his ill temper. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of this — money, celebrity, whatever — but you’ve been taking advantage of a mentally ill young woman. That may not be a prosecutable offense, but trust me, by the time I’m through with you, not only will you never walk again, you’ll also never work in this country, or any other —”
Thunder rumbled. It was soft at first, like the sound of an unmuffled motorcycle engine on a neighboring block. But as John’s impatience with my parents grew, so did the sound, until every bit of glassware in my mother’s house was tinkling from the vibration.
“What is that?” she cried. In a panic, she’d thrown her hands over her ears.
“Earthquake?” my dad asked. He tried to steer me from beneath the elaborate wrought iron and crystal chandelier Mom had hanging in the foyer, but I stepped from his reach.
“No,” I said. “It’s him.” I pointed at John. “John, stop it. You’ve made your point.”
My parents hadn’t seemed to have gotten it, however.
“That’s impossible,” my dad said.
“He’s ruler of the Underworld.” I shook my head. Why had I thought reasoning with them would work? “You think he can’t control the weather? John, stop it, please. It’s too much.”<
br />
The thunder ceased. But a bolt of bright white lightning cracked from the center of my mother’s living room ceiling to the floor, causing one of her expensive imported carpets to burst into flame.
“I love your daughter,” John said to my stunned parents. “And no one is going to keep us apart. I hope you understand now.”
“Now you’re just showing off,” I said dryly to John as I went to the garage to get the fire extinguisher.
“’Tis true that in the early centuries,
With innocence, to work out their salvation
Sufficient was the faith of parents only.”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Paradiso, Canto XXXII
My parents’ attitude towards John improved significantly after he set my mom’s living room carpet on fire with a lightning bolt.
Improved might be too strong a word. I think they were actually a little bit afraid of him.
Fear isn’t such a bad thing if it causes people to be more careful about the things they do and say. But it’s upsetting to see people you love acting fearful around someone else you love, even when it’s preferable to the way they were acting before. I had to help my mom into one of the chairs at the kitchen counter and make her another coffee with extra sugar before she could begin to process the whole thing. It seemed too much for her ultra-organized scientist’s brain to take.
“It’s not possible,” she kept repeating. “It’s simply not possible. An underworld? Beneath Isla Huesos? And that’s where you’ve been this whole time?”
“Yes, Mom,” I said, sliding a plate of waffles in front of her. “Here, eat these. You’ll feel better, I promise.”
Maybe because his brain was more entrepreneurial, my dad was able to take the whole thing more in stride.
“So do you think you could do that trick with the lightning on a larger scale?” he asked John. “Turn it up ten thousand or so megawatts — whatever they call them — and focus all that energy on a target about the size of, say, a military base?”
“Dad,” I said with a warning tone in my voice.
“I suppose I could.” John was eating bacon from a plate my dad had put in front of him. “But I won’t.”
“That’s fair,” Dad said. “That’s fair. I like a man with principles. Would it change the way you feel if I told you this military base had fired on American soldiers?”
“John, don’t listen to him. Dad, I told you, John already has a job.”
“Right, right, he sorts souls of the dead. How much does one earn in a job like that, if you don’t mind my asking? Ballpark figure, of course.”
“Dad!”
“I’m just saying, if the boy came to work for me, I could pay him double or triple what he’s earning now —”
“It’s not that kind of job, Dad. But I do think there might be a way you could help us.”
John scowled at me over the forkful of eggs he was scooping into his mouth. We’d foregone the waffles, the memory of our great waffle fight still being a little too fresh in our minds for comfort. Fortunately, there were also scrambled eggs.
I could understand how John might not be eager to accept help from a man who’d threatened to shoot him in the knees, but the truth was, my dad had access to considerable resources. And I figured if there was anything the two of us — not to mention the Underworld — could use right now, it was resources.
“My dad owns a really big company, John,” I explained.
Now John scowled into the cup of coffee he was drinking. “You might have mentioned it one or two hundred times since I met you.”
“It’s a company that makes things for the military.” I raised my eyebrows meaningfully.
John’s scowl deepened as he set down the coffee cup. “Weapons don’t work on Furies. You know that.”
“Not Furies again,” my mom said. “All this talk of Fates and Furies … none of it makes any sense.”
“Grandma being possessed by a murderous demon from hell makes perfect sense to me,” Dad said. “It’s about the only thing I’ve heard this morning that does.”
My mother dropped her head down onto her folded arms. “You told Christopher it was drugs,” she said to the kitchen counter. “Why couldn’t it be drugs?”
I stared at her. “You’d rather this whole thing was about drugs?”
Mom lifted her head. “Than demons? Yes, Pierce, I would. Drugs I can understand. Drugs make sense. With drugs you can go to rehab or call the police and have someone arrested. What are we supposed to do about a demon possessing my mother?”
Dad lifted his coffee. “You’re entitled to your own opinion, of course, but if she really did try to kill Pierce —”
Mom dropped her head into her arms and groaned.
“— well, then I say John here should just hit her with one of his lightning bolts.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Dad,” I said.
“I need an aspirin,” pleaded my mom.
“And I’m not talking about weapons,” I said to John. “I’m talking about boats. Really big boats.”
My dad glanced from me to John and then back again. “A division of my company does make boats. What kind of boat are you talking about? Tanker? Frac? Lift?”
“Passenger,” I said quickly. “I was thinking of a passenger ship. Something along the lines of a ferry.”
“Pierce,” John said warily.
“We make ships specializing in oil services,” Dad said, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. “But I know a guy who … well, let’s just say I know a guy.”
“We’d need two,” I said. “And we’d need them right away.”
“For how long?” Dad scrolled through his contact list.
“Forever.”
My father’s finger froze on the screen of his phone as he glanced at me in surprise. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Pierce.” John pushed away from the kitchen counter and stood up. “May I have a word with you outside?”
I knew how much he hated asking my father for help, but I couldn’t see any alternative.
“John, it’s all right. After everything we’ve been through, I think we can talk in front of my parents.” I crossed the room to take one of his hands. He was so tense, he was holding them both clenched in fists. I had to pry his fingers open in order to slip mine through his. “If you’ve thought of some other way to get the ships, tell me what it is.”
Even with me standing right there beside him holding his hand, John looked extremely uncomfortable. He wore an expression similar to the one he’d had on when my uncle Chris had confronted him (in this very same room) about kidnapping me. His dark eyebrows were furrowed deeply, his silver eyes glowing defiantly, his free hand clenching and unclenching at his side as if he was going to punch the world.
“The ships will be provided, as they always have,” he said in a low voice, “by the Fates.”
“John, the Fates are gone. They left before you died. And I don’t see any sign of their speedy return. You’re here, the storm’s over, the sun is shining, but Hope’s not back.” Saying it aloud made my throat feel sore. But I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t true. “She knows where I live. She’s been here before. But she isn’t here.”
“Hope will be back,” John assured me. “And so will the Fates. I know they will.”
Before I had a chance to point out that Mr. Smith had never believed the Fates were distinct entities — he believed they were the spirits of human kindness, which made it sort of understandable how they’d be few and far between on Isla Huesos — my father began shaking his head.
“Son,” he said to John, “maybe it’s time you realized that these Fates of yours don’t exist.”
“Dad,” I said, my throat tighter than ever. “You’re not helping.”
“Most of us have been making our own fates for a long time,” Dad went on, ignoring me. “Some of us didn’t grow up getting everything we wanted handed to us on gold platters by invisible fairies —”
“Neither did I,�
�� John interrupted, his eyes flashing dangerously.
“Where I grew up,” my father went on, as if John hadn’t spoken, “there was no such thing as fate, or luck, or wishing on a lucky star. There was only hard work and being ready to seize whatever opportunity presented itself. Now, I’m not criticizing you. I appreciate what you did, looking out for my daughter when things weren’t going so well for her. I wish I’d been a better listener when she came to me with her problems. I’m glad you were there for her. To me, that’s fate … being there to give other people a hand when they need it, not being a stubborn ass —”
“Zachary,” my mother said in a warning voice, her eyes wide.
“No,” Dad said. “It’s all right, Debbie. He knows what I’m talking about. He’s not going to set the carpet on fire again. Are you, son?”
John regarded my father with a narrow-eyed stare from the center of the room. I did not share Dad’s faith that John wasn’t about to do something reckless. His breathing was shallow, and his fingers holding mine were clenched so tightly, I half expected that the next time I blinked, I’d open my eyes to find myself back in the Underworld.
It was difficult for John to trust strangers when he’d lived for so long in one place amongst a handful of people he knew so well. It had to be especially difficult for him to trust a man who was in so many ways like Seth’s wrecker great-great-great grandfather.
But my father hadn’t meant for anyone to be hurt in the oil spill that caused so much damage to the shoreline. My father had been trying to help. William Rector, in contrast, hadn’t been trying to help. He hadn’t cared how many lives he ruined in the wrecks he caused.
I squeezed John’s hand. I love you, I love you, I love you, I thought, gazing up at him.
I don’t know if he heard me, but something in either my father’s words or my grip seemed to get through to him, since he said, his voice carefully controlled, “Please call me John, not son. I won’t be your son until your daughter agrees to marry me, which she says she won’t do for now because her mother would want her to graduate from high school first. Pierce says no one our age gets married anymore.”