Underworld Read online

  “Oh,” Mr. Smith was saying. He didn’t seem to notice my unease, or the fact that Mike completely knew who I was. “This is … my niece, Jennifer. Jennifer, this is Mike, our new groundskeeper here at Isla Huesos Cemetery.”

  Mike began to wipe the dirt from his fingers with a rag from his wheelbarrow, obviously in anticipation of shaking my hand. So I felt like I had no choice but to start walking over to him, my own hand extended.

  I don’t know what made me glance down at my necklace, tucked beneath the front zipper of my dress. Instinct, maybe. Or the fact that Hope had begun bobbing up and down on her branch, her feathers puffed to make herself look twice her normal size.

  The diamond John had given me had turned as dark as the feathers beneath Hope’s wings … as black as the storm clouds that had begun to tower in the sky.

  With a burst of clarity, I knew it wasn’t a reward Mike wanted from me. It was my life.

  When I glanced back at him, I saw that he’d thrown down the rag, and reached for one of the shovels in his wheelbarrow, his gaze dead-eyed and locked on mine.

  I inhaled. What came out was not the wordless scream of terror I was expecting, but a name. “John!”

  Mike had already swung the shovel high above his head.

  I turned and raced towards the steps. Mike was blocking the gate, the only other way out of the yard.

  I knew I would never make it inside Mr. Smith’s cottage before that shovelhead came crashing down onto my skull. A part of me could already feel the sharp metal slicing all the way down to my vertebrae. Even if I made it up the steps, it wouldn’t matter. Mr. Smith was blocking the path to the doorway. He looked confused.

  “Mike, what are you doing?” he asked.

  The cemetery sexton was in too much shock simply to open the glassed-in door and go inside, where we both could have been relatively safe, if Mike didn’t use the shovel to break the glass.

  Richard Smith didn’t understand that the Mike he knew was gone. He was completely and totally possessed by the Fury inside him.

  Both of us, I realized, were going to die.

  It’s amazing what a person will do, though, in an effort to survive. As I turned to sprint for those steps, fully aware I was never going to make it without some kind of miracle, I spent my last few precious seconds of life looking around for a weapon I could use in self-defense. My gaze fell on the fractured angel statues and piles of broken headstones that lay scattered about the yard, and the vases and potted plants — the kind people left on the gravesites of their loved ones — that had been removed because they were damaged, the flowers and plants inside them spindly and dead.

  I leaned down to grab a terra-cotta one, just as Mike swung that shovel …

  … at the exact same moment that John burst through the door, shoving Mr. Smith aside, then came surging down the steps, moving so quickly that I had only the vaguest sense of a wood smoke–scented breeze as he passed by me. His body was a blur.

  He caught the shovel in one hand, twisting it from Mike’s grip just before the metal scoop sank into my skull. Then with his other hand, John shoved Mike away from me, so hard that the other man flew backwards and landed against the wooden fence.

  His body hit the boards with such force it almost shook them from their pilings, before Mike bounced off the fence to land into the soft mud beneath.

  “Go inside before you get hurt,” John said to me, never taking his gaze from the man who was already staggering to his feet.

  I recognized the dangerous, almost wild glint in John’s eyes, and the way his chest was rising up and down as if he’d just run a marathon, not from the front of a small house to the back.

  It was exactly like the last time I’d seen him try to kill a man. The only reason he hadn’t was because I’d stopped him.

  “John,” I said. I felt frozen where I stood, still holding the terra-cotta planter. “Don’t.”

  He wouldn’t even look at me. His gaze was locked on the groundskeeper’s.

  “It’s all right,” John said. “Go inside.”

  Mike didn’t look ready to give up, either. His lips curled back in a sneer as he stared down at the blood that had come away on the wrist he’d used to wipe his mouth.

  “It’s no use,” he said to John with a smirk. “One of us is going to get to her eventually. If not her, then someone close to her. You’re protector of the dead, not the living. How do you think you’re going to stop us?”

  “I have an idea,” John said. He struck the shovel against a white marble statue of an angel, brought in for maintenance because she’d somehow come to be missing a head. The shovel splintered and broke in half, leaving John with one end that was lethally sharp. This was the end he kept. “Why don’t I just kill you?”

  Mike grinned. “Go ahead and try.”

  “John,” I cried, more loudly this time. “Don’t!”

  But John ignored me as he stalked towards Mike with his spear. Mike, meanwhile, picked up the scoop end of the shovel and held it in a defensive stance, still grinning. He was enjoying himself.

  “Boys,” Mr. Smith said, finally getting over his shock and coming to life. “Stop this nonsense, the two of you. I’m going inside to call the police right now….” This time when he reached for the door handle, he actually managed to make contact.

  My pulse, which was already staggering, skipped a beat, because I realized Mr. Smith was still clinging to his life before — as he’d put it — the disruption of my arrival to Isla Huesos, back when his knowledge of Furies had been only theoretical and his talks with John had been pleasant tête-à-têtes when they happened to bump into each other during John’s lonely rambles in the cemetery, not fights about his kidnapping girls. Mr. Smith truly did not understand what was happening. The police couldn’t stop it. I was the only person who could stop it.

  But how?

  I figured it out a split second later when John lunged at Mike, and, in spinning to avoid the blow, Mike happened to lurch towards me. I didn’t think, I just acted. I hurled the flowerpot I was still holding at Mike’s head. The sound as the planter made contact with Mike’s skull was sickening.

  I’ve never knocked anyone into unconsciousness before. When I hit my grandma, I was angry. When I hit Mike, I was simply scared. It felt horrible, even if Mike completely deserved it. My heart was slamming in my chest, and I felt a little nauseous as I watched him go down. He didn’t go neatly, either, the way people do in movies when they’re knocked over the head. He staggered around a bit first, like he was drunk and his legs couldn’t quite hold up the weight of his body.

  Finally, he did sink into the mud, then lay still … fortunately still breathing.

  Neither John nor Mr. Smith was too happy with me.

  “I — I’m sure he’s got a concussion. I’d better go call an ambulance,” Mr. Smith stammered, before rushing inside to do so.

  I wanted to point out that Mike could have had a lot worse than a concussion if I’d let John do what he wanted to him, but I was shaking too much to speak. And the iciness I felt had nothing to do with the sudden burst of cool air that came from the cemetery sexton’s office after he flung open the door.

  John was upset for different reasons than Mr. Smith.

  “Why did you do that? Why didn’t you let me handle it?” he demanded, taking me by the wrist and pulling me away from where the unconscious man lay at the bottom of the steps amidst the pieces of shattered terra-cotta and Hope’s birdseed.

  John was still breathing hard, his long dark hair falling in his face, his silver eyes glowing. I could see how fast his heart was drumming through the tight material of his shirt. He was almost as worked up as Hope, only he wasn’t puffed to twice his size … but he might as well have been. Between the two of them, I didn’t know who to soothe first. I chose John because I didn’t think Hope was capable of still stabbing the unconscious man through the heart with a broken shovel handle.

  “Mr. Smith was going to call the police,” I said.
“Is that what you want, to get arrested?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched, despite his agitation. “Pierce, I’m flattered, but do you really think there’s a jail strong enough to hold me?” Then he remembered he was mad at me, and frowned. “You should have let me handle it.”

  Frustrated, I shoved some of my long hair from my face. “I know how you handle situations,” I reminded him. “Remember Mr. Mueller? You tried to kill him, too. You said I was right to have stopped you. You told me yourself killing Furies doesn’t do any good. They just move on to the next willing host … the next body.”

  I saw the frantic beat of his heart begin to slow down, even as my own was growing more steady. He was still scowling, but at least he was listening.

  “And anyway,” I said, “when the police do get here — after we’re gone — it would be good for him to be alive, so they can take him in for questioning.”

  “What for?” John asked, his dark brows puckering. “So he can collect the reward money for giving them information on how to find you?”

  “Not questioning about me,” I chided him. “Think about it, John. He’s a Fury, and he works as a groundskeeper in the cemetery.”

  Behind the Spanish lime tree, where the clouds were darkening like a bruise, lightning scissored through the sky. Then thunder rumbled. But the thunder was from the approaching hurricane, growing closer. It had nothing to do with John. He was thinking over what I’d said.

  “Jade told me she was attacked by three men the night she was killed here,” he said. His breathing was almost back to normal now. He’d even let go of my wrist.

  “The fence isn’t that hard to scale,” I said, speaking from experience, “but there were police cars patrolling the streets around the cemetery that night, so they would have seen anyone trying to get in that way. Someone with a key to the gate might have let the other two in. Someone like a groundskeeper.”

  “Does he have a key to the gate?” John raised his voice to ask Mr. Smith, as the cemetery sexton came back outside, looking a bit more composed. He’d put his jacket back on and straightened his tie. He was also carrying my book bag, which I’d left back in his office.

  I noticed John didn’t say Mike’s name. He said he and nodded disdainfully at Mike’s sprawled body.

  “Mike?” Mr. Smith said. “Yes, of course, he does. Not the main gate, but the one on the side. He’s the head groundskeeper. How else would he get in and out to park his truck and admit the maintenance vehicles, the tree-trimming company, and pest control? I can’t do everything myself.” He sounded testy. Who could blame him, really?

  “Was Mike questioned by the police after Jade was killed?” I asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Mr. Smith said, looking troubled … and not simply because there was a death deity, a missing girl, and an unconscious man in his storage yard. “No one even asked me if anyone else had a key. But why would they? The police have their suspect.”

  My uncle Chris. None of us said it, but we were all thinking it. At least, I was.

  Mr. Smith shook his head, looking down at the groundskeeper. “Mike’s been such an excellent worker. He does come in late sometimes, I’ll admit. I’ve suspected the occasional hangover. But he’s young, and this is Isla Huesos, it’s a party town. It’s hard to find good help these days … especially to work here.” His gaze slid towards John, then just as quickly darted away again.

  “Whoever it was that killed Jade struck her so hard from behind that the murder weapon — whatever it was — pierced her bicycle helmet,” John said grimly, looking down at the shovel scoop.

  I gave an involuntary shiver, remembering how close that same piece of metal had come to piercing my own skull. John noticed my reaction and reached out to pull me close. I could tell I was forgiven for having deprived him of his chance to collect another soul.

  “I thought of that,” Mr. Smith said worriedly. “That’s why when I asked for the ambulance — it’s on its way, incidentally — I also mentioned they might want to send the police. I told them there was an accident, that a groundskeeper had fallen down the steps and hit his head. We’ll have to see which version of the story Mike will stick to when he wakes up, the slip-and-fall, which will earn him a nice workman’s comp settlement from the city, or the one about seeing you, Miss Oliviera, which could eventually earn him one million dollars. I won’t, of course, corroborate that one.”

  I swallowed. The groundskeeper’s words echoed in my head. One of us is going to get to her eventually. If not her, then someone close to her. Did he mean Alex?

  I had to make sure my cousin was safe. I couldn’t go back to the Underworld until I had.

  But with my dad’s issuing the bounty on my head, and our encountering Mike, John was going to have something to say about that….

  I could hear a siren in the distance.

  “We’d better go. Because what about that?” I pointed at the broken shovel. “Won’t the police find John’s fingerprints on it, and think he’s the murderer? And they’ll know Mike’s story is true if he says we were here. Our footprints are all over the yard.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Mr. Smith said. He was picking his way delicately through the mud — he didn’t want to lose the shine on his loafers — to hand me my book bag. Then he went to unwrap a hose that was coiled against the side of the cottage. He turned the water on, aiming the nozzle everywhere we had stepped.

  The footprints in the yard began to vanish. Soon all that would be left was soft mud, rotting Spanish limes, dead leaves, and Mike … who looked dead, but wasn’t. I could see his chest rising and falling, and he’d begun to moan softly.

  “You mentioned earlier that if I wanted to help, Miss Oliviera, I should save the lectures, and help,” Mr. Smith said as he sprayed. “Perhaps that’s exactly what Fates do.”

  I shook my head, bewildered. “I’m sorry?”

  “Perhaps Fates are people like us … ordinary souls who’ve found themselves caught up in the battle between good and evil, and have chosen to take a stand and help do what’s right.” Mr. Smith was lecturing again, but this time the speech seemed to be directed at John, too. His tone was kindly, however. “Maybe that’s why John’s fingerprints aren’t in the Isla Huesos Police Department database, and why no one will find his footsteps here. Small things that take just a moment to do, yes, but that could add up, in the end, to make an enormous difference to someone. What do you say to that, Miss Oliviera?”

  “I … I don’t know,” I said. I was confused. I supposed he was right, though. This could certainly explain how John was able to drift like a ghost in and out of the Isla Huesos Cemetery — and my various schools — leaving behind no trace, except rumors and the faintest images on video, and broken padlocks and chains.

  I didn’t see how such tiny facts were going to help win the war against the Furies, though.

  When I glanced up at John to see what he thought about all this, I found him staring at the old man with his dark eyebrows lowered, a clear sign the cemetery sexton had said something John hadn’t liked. But what?

  “We have to go,” John said tersely. The ambulance sounded as if it were right around the corner.

  “You do indeed,” Mr. Smith said, hitting the steps to the back door with the spray from the hose. He needed to reinforce his story that Mike had slipped.

  John took me by the arm. I knew what was going to happen next: John was taking me back to his world.

  There was no use arguing, not now that I’d almost gotten killed … and John had almost killed someone. This muddy yard, full of broken angels and headstones, was the last I’d see of Isla Huesos, and of earth.

  I looked up at the tree limb where Hope had been sitting, and was dismayed to see that she had already flown off, probably back to the Underworld. Not that it mattered. I’d see her there in a few seconds anyway.

  The sight of her empty branch made me sad. Though the thought of leaving Alex alone and helpless made me even s
adder.

  “John,” I said, turning to him in desperation. “What if we —”

  “Pierce,” he said, urgently. The siren had cut off. I heard the door of a vehicle being slammed outside the fence, then men’s voices. “It’s too late.”

  He was right. I turned back to Mr. Smith, my heart heavy.

  “Please,” I said, “will you check on Alex? And if you see my mother, will you tell her … will you tell her —”

  I broke off. What words could you possibly choose as the last ones ever to say to your mother?

  Mr. Smith was turning off the water.

  “You can tell her yourself,” he said, with a kind smile.

  The next thing I knew, I was standing in my own backyard.

  I spun around to stare at John in astonishment. “What are we doing here?”

  John held a finger to his lips, then pointed to the French doors leading from the back porch into the living room of my mom’s house.

  I was so shocked at finding myself in the last spot I’d ever expected to be — which was incidentally the first place he and I ever had kissed — that for once I didn’t check to see if I had arrived with all my fingers, or pay attention to my queasy stomach. Instead I just stood and looked around in wonder.

  Everything in my mom’s yard looked exactly as I’d last seen it. Uncle Chris had put away all the patio and porch furniture in preparation of the coming storm, but the waterfall in the pool was still going. The sound of its gentle cascade was as soothing as the fragrance of the flowers from the ylang-ylang tree that stretched from a jungle-like tangle of plants beside the path on which we stood.

  “But I thought for sure we’d be going back to the Underworld,” I whispered as John drew me deeper into the shadows of the tropical brush. “After everything that has happened —”

  “Say you want to go back now, and I’ll take you there in a heartbeat,” John said, gripping me by the shoulders. “Please say it. Nothing would make me happier.”

  “But what about Alex?” I couldn’t help casting a yearning glance towards my mom’s French doors. She was so close … right behind them, probably, talking on the phone, or maybe sitting and crying on the horrible white couch her decorator had advised her to buy, which stained easily and wasn’t very comfortable, either. “You heard what Mike said. If they can’t get to me, they’re going to get someone close to me —”