by Meg Cabot
“Mr. Smith, what are you doing here? I’m glad to see you, but still, there’s a Fury after me. They know I killed Mr. Mueller — or that John and I did, anyway. John’s alive, by the way. I saved him. Anyway, it’s complicated, and Chief Santos is trying to stop the guy who’s after me, but you should really get out of here if you don’t want to get shot or have to stick around answering questions forever, or whatever.”
The cemetery sexton turned around. He’d been standing with his back to me. I guess he hadn’t heard me coming.
Funny, this had always been a bit of a bone of contention between us (until he got to know me better, of course). Mr. Smith had never liked the way I’d used “his cemetery” as a public thoroughfare, whipping around it on my bike, “endangering” mourners, and showing “no respect for the dead.”
That’s what he’d used to say until he found out the real reason I’d always been hanging out in “his cemetery” … John.
“Pierce,” Mr. Smith said, looking down at me. The brim of his straw fedora shaded his face a bit, but I could see I’d startled him. “Where did you come —” Then he noticed my bike lying on the ground. “Oh, I see. What were you saying about Chief Santos?”
“He’s right behind me. They’re going to have trouble getting through, though, because of this guy with a chain saw … oh, whatever, it’s a long story. It’s really weird, all day total strangers have been going out of their way to —”
I broke off, realizing with a start why the eyes of the young girl in the Daddy’s Little Princess shirt had looked familiar to me. She had eyes like Mr. Smith’s … even though hers had been blue, and Mr. Smith’s eyes were brown. Still, they both had a strange sort of knowingness to them and were filled with kindness.
Now that I thought of it, the guard’s eyes at the gatehouse at Dolphin Key had looked the same way. So had the eyes of Yellow Vest, back at the dead sapodilla.
“Mr. Smith,” I said, squinting in the sun. “Something weird is going on. Do you have any idea why a bunch of total strangers would risk their lives or jobs to help another total stranger?”
The cemetery sexton’s kind eyes narrowed beneath his hat brim. I saw him glance towards the ravens whirling around above our heads. He whispered something.
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly, but I almost thought he said the word fates.
He glanced back down at me. “Nothing. Only that there might be hope after all,” he said.
“Hope?” I shaded my eyes to look up at the sky, excited, thinking he meant my bird. “Where?”
“Not that kind of hope,” he said, with a tiny smile. “Only that all might not yet be lost.”
I lowered my head to look back at him. “Mr. Smith,” I said. “I think maybe you should sit down and have some water. You’ve been standing out in the heat for too long.”
He nodded. “Maybe I have. I see you’re not wearing a bicycle helmet.” But he pointed at my chest, not my head. “As usual.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe you didn’t hear me before, but I had more important things to worry about, such as running from the cops and not being shot. Mr. Smith, why are you sweeping all these poinciana blossoms from the front of John’s tomb? He likes them. And don’t you have more important things to do? A tree crashed through the roof of your office, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed,” he said. “I’m extremely observant, unlike some people I might mention.”
“Nice,” I said. “Nice way to talk to me considering everything I’ve been through, saving John’s life and this island and all of that. No need to thank me, even though it turned out Thanatos was Seth Rector, and I killed him. Not that that matters to you, evidently. But whatever.”
Mr. Smith looked slightly paler under his brown skin. “You killed him?”
“Thanatos,” I assured him. “Not Seth. He’s still alive and well and pressing charges against me — and John — for assault. Why? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Mr. Smith said. “Only … it explains a lot.”
“A lot about what? Was I not supposed to kill him? I wondered about that, but I couldn’t help it, he was such a jerk.”
“Thanatos takes on the personality traits of the person he possesses,” Mr. Smith said. There was something a bit mournful in his tone. “If he was possessing Seth Rector he would, I suppose, seem like a jerk.”
I couldn’t help noticing that Mr. Smith’s gaze was all over the place, on me one second, the ravens the next, the poinciana blossoms beneath his feet the next. What was he looking for? That reminded me of something.
“Have you seen Frank and Kayla?” I asked, glancing around, but still seeing only family members carrying gardening tools with which to tidy up their loved ones’ vaults. “They were supposed to be stopping by your place to drop the car off, then meet us here.”
“Yes,” Mr. Smith said shortly. “I’ve seen them.”
“You have?” I glanced back at him, surprised. “Where are they?”
There was definitely something off about Mr. Smith, besides the weird things he was saying. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, precisely. He looked as well put together as ever, in a pressed white shirt, sporty green bow tie, and trim khakis, his gold-rimmed spectacles sparkling in the sun.
But I saw that he was clutching the broom handle much more tightly than necessary.
“Oh,” he said. “They’ll be here soon.”
“Mr. Smith,” I said, beginning to feel less relieved at seeing him and more disturbed. It was hard to explain, but in the stillness of the cemetery — the police sirens had been cut off, and all I could hear was the occasional distant cackle of a raven — I’d begun to feel almost as if someone was watching us … someone besides the birds overhead. “What is it? Did something happen to Kayla? To John?” My pulse sped up a little. “Has John been here? Because I’m supposed to meet up with him here, too. Did he say something to you? Did something go wrong with the —”
“No,” Mr. Smith cut me off, a little rudely, I thought. He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket and pulled out one of his ubiquitous handkerchiefs. “No, no, John hasn’t been here. Everything’s wonderful. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Everything was not wonderful.
I knew that because not only would Mr. Smith never use a word like wonderful — I was pretty certain he’d consider wonderful the equivalent of awesome, a word he’d once said was overused by my generation — but he lifted the handkerchief to mop some sweat from his forehead.
No matter what the weather, I’d never seen Mr. Smith sweat … not unless he was extremely uncomfortable, like if I was asking him about the possibility of getting pregnant in the Underworld.
But if he was so uncomfortable, why wasn’t the cemetery sexton telling me what the matter was?
I saw his gaze dart again to my chest, the way it had when he’d mentioned my helmet.
Only then did I know what was wrong, and I didn’t have to follow his gaze to see what it was.
My diamond was black. There was a Fury around … maybe more than one. Mr. Smith knew it, but hadn’t said anything to warn me.
There could be only one explanation as to why. I saw it in the way his hand trembled as he put the handkerchief back into his pocket. The truth hit me like a slap in the face.
Mr. Smith was afraid. And for Mr. Smith to be afraid, something had to be seriously wrong. Both the cemetery sexton and myself were NDEs. We knew what it was like to die, so death didn’t frighten either of us terribly much. I wouldn’t say Mr. Smith had enjoyed dying, but I knew for certain he longed to go to the Underworld again, because he didn’t remember his journey there. He’d always been a little jealous of the fact that I did, even though I hadn’t liked it.
No, Richard Smith didn’t fear death … not for himself.
But he was definitely afraid of death — or possibly something worse — now. What was it?
Without changing my tone or looking around, I slowly began to u
nhook the whip that still sat on my belt.
“So you know what John and I did last night after I rescued him?” I asked him conversationally.
“I cannot even begin to imagine,” the cemetery sexton said, looking extremely uncomfortable.
“We went back to my mom’s house,” I said, “snuck into my room, and made sweet love all night.”
“That’s simply wonderful,” Mr. Smith said. His head looked like it was about to explode not only from the effort he was making not to chastise me for my irresponsible behavior, but because of his fear. Trickles of perspiration were flowing down the sides of his face, and there was a smile frozen on his lips. “Simply wonderful.”
Bingo. I’d been right. Something was definitely going on. There was no way the cemetery sexton would ever say that John and I sneaking up to my room to “make sweet love all night” was “wonderful” — not unless he’d been given a complete lobotomy.
The Mr. Smith I knew would have given me a lecture about how I should have used protection because when making love outside the Underworld, death deities were notorious for their ability to make little death deities … or something along those lines.
Whatever it was that was going on, Mr. Smith was deathly afraid. So afraid, he was ignoring his basic principles in order to warn me about it. But what could it be? What could possibly be so awful to two people who’d already experienced the worst possible thing there was — death — and lived to tell of it?
“Yeah,” I said, careful not to look around, since I didn’t want whoever it was that was threatening Mr. Smith to know that I was onto them. “I wonder what we’ll call the baby, if there is one. Maybe, if it’s a boy, we’ll name him Richard, after you, Mr. Smith —”
“That is enough.”
The sharp-toned voice came from behind me, but I knew exactly who it belonged to. I’d have recognized it anywhere.
It was the voice of the woman who’d killed me.
And lo! at one who was upon our side
There darted forth a serpent, which transfixed him
There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XXIV
Really? It was my grandmother Mr. Smith was so afraid of?
I wanted to laugh.
I didn’t, of course. It would have been rude. But honestly, my grandmother wasn’t that frightening. True, she’d killed me once — and tried to kill me a few other times. And when she got her Fury face on, she was ugly as sin, which I could understand for Mr. Smith — who wasn’t as experienced with Furies as I was — was probably quite frightening.
But she was still only my grandmother.
Granted, she’d bested me once or twice — okay, three times — before.
This time, however, things were going to be different. This time, I wasn’t some scared, lonely high school girl. This time, I was armed with John’s father’s whip, which I knew how to use. This time, I was on my own turf, the Isla Huesos Cemetery, which I’d tromped through so many times, I knew it like the back of my hand. This time, I had friends — not to mention the police — who were about to show up any minute to support me.
This time, I had the power. This time, I was queen of the Underworld.
Most important, this time, I was ready for her.
What I wasn’t ready for, I realized the second I spun around to face her, was the fact that my grandmother had an arm around my best friend, Kayla Rivera’s waist and was holding a knife to her throat.
“Hey, Gran —” The words died on my lips.
“You’ve always thought you were so amusing.” My grandmother’s voice was scornful. “There goes Pierce, with another one of her little jokes. But you aren’t amusing. You know what you are? An abomination, just like him.”
My pulse stuttered, then quit altogether.
Now I knew exactly why Mr. Smith had been so frightened and had kept repeating the word wonderful. It’s hard to think of anything witty to say when there’s an innocent girl with a knife stuck to her carotid artery, a girl who’d been dragged into a battle between good and evil simply because I happened to sit next to her at school one day during an assembly.
All ability to think rationally fled my brain. Not Kayla. Those were the only words my mind could summon up. Not Kayla.
Then, No wonder my diamond had always turned purple around her. Not because it was her birthstone. It was a warning … a warning that I needed to save her from dying at the hands of a Fury.
At the hands of my grandmother.
“If you hurt one hair on her head, I swear … ” My fingers tightened on the handle of my whip.
My grandmother only laughed. It sounded like the cackle from one of the ravens.
“Or what?” she asked. “You’ll hit me with that dirty old rope? That’s exactly what an abomination like you would do, strike her own grandmother.”
I wasn’t surprised Grandma didn’t recognize a whip when she saw one. She wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer … not like the knife she was holding to Kayla’s neck. It was a knife I recognized, a knife from a very expensive gourmet knife set. I knew that for a fact, because it was a knife from my mother’s own kitchen. I’d used it many, many times to slice apples and sandwiches.
Now it appeared my grandmother had stolen it and intended to use it to slice open my best friend’s throat.
“Pierce,” Kayla said.
The word slipped out of her without her seeming to have meant it to. As soon as it did, she bit her plump lower lip as if to remind herself to keep still, or the razor-sharp knife that had already, I saw, caused a ruby-red drop of blood to slide down the side of the silver blade would cut even more deeply. All of the dark lipstick Kayla normally wore had been chewed off due to the effort she was making to keep still, and her eye makeup was smudged from the tears she’d shed, though I could tell she’d been trying to hold them back.
Kayla was no longer wearing her flowy lavender Underworld-issued gown — I could imagine her hanging it back up in her closet, thinking, I’m going to save this to wear later, maybe for Prom — but a black belted shirtdress covered in kicking zebras, with black platform wedges.
Obviously, when she’d chosen this outfit, it had never occurred to her she’d be wearing it in a hostage situation.
“It’s all right, Kayla,” I said, though she and I both knew this was a lie. “Where’s Frank?”
This was the wrong thing to ask.
“Dead,” my grandmother said with delight. Her cackle was echoed eerily by the ravens. “Dead for good, this time, the way all of you walking abominations should be.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, though the tear tracks on Kayla’s face seemed like explanation enough.
My grandmother sneered. “Look for yourself,” she said, and nodded towards a nearby crypt.
Made of white marble, very old and weathered, the crypt bore an epitaph dedicated to MY BELOVED WIFE, MARTHA SIMONTON, 1820–1846.
At first I saw nothing but a fat green iguana lounging in the sun on top of the tomb. Then I noticed a pair of familiar-looking black leather boots. They were attached to a pair of legs sticking out from behind the vault. Flung into the weeds not far from the boots lay a heavily tattooed, muscular arm.
I recognized the tattoos. They were rings of thorns, the same tattoos I’d seen around Frank’s biceps the first time I’d met him in Mr. Graves’s kitchen.
“They were waiting for us at Mr. Smith’s house,” Kayla said. Her voice was a barely audible whisper. I had only seen her looking as frightened and sad once before, and that had been in this very same cemetery, the night we’d whisked her to the Underworld, assuring her she’d be safe there. How wrong we’d been. “We tried to fight them, Pierce, we did. But there were too many of them.” Tears streamed freely down her face. “I think they killed Patrick, too.”
I swung my head to stare at Mr. Smith.
“No,” I said, feeling as if I’d been punched in the chest.
He was staring up at the sky again, scanning it, I guess for that glimpse of hope — or Hope — he’d mentioned before. He didn’t meet my gaze.
“Yes,” my grandmother said with a smile, still holding the knife to Kayla’s throat. “Did you think you could go around flouting the laws of nature and never have to pay? Did you think you could kill one of ours, and there’d be no repercussions? Now we’re even.”
Now we’re even. Her words echoed again and again in my head, like the cries of the ravens. Now we’re even.
Even? She thought we were even for what she’d done to Frank, to Patrick, to Kayla, to Jade, to me, to my family, to my friends, and to John?
The red blanket of poinciana blossoms beneath Mr. Smith’s feet seemed to spread and grow before my eyes until it covered the ground not only beneath my own feet but my grandmother’s as well. The soil beneath Frank’s prone body turned as red as the drop of blood slowly trickling down the knife blade my grandmother was holding to Kayla’s neck. The path that curved through the cemetery went scarlet, looking like a twisted play on the children’s song “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” Only now it was the Murder Brick Road.
Had the poinciana blossoms really moved, blown by one of those strong winds left over from the hurricane, or was my vision playing tricks on me again, because I couldn’t control the red-hot wind that Mr. Liu had said fuels my anger?
I didn’t know. I didn’t care. For once, I had no interest in controlling my anger. I let it sweep over me the way the poinciana blossoms swept across my feet.
I slipped the whip Mr. Liu had given me from my belt. It was the string he’d told me to hold on to when I felt the wind might blow me too far away.
But it was also a string I knew from experience could steer the direction of that wind.
“We’re not even,” I said to my grandmother. “Because this isn’t a game. This is war. And I’m going to win.”
Despite the red swimming before my gaze, my aim was unerring, just as it had been in my mother’s kitchen that morning. This situation wasn’t so different, really, than when Alex had taunted me with the butter knife. All I had to do was remove the blade my grandmother was holding, the same way I’d removed the blade from Alex’s hand.