Underworld

by Meg Cabot

  Check yourself before you wreck yourself. That’s the phrase that had been tattooed on my guidance counselor Jade’s wrist. I tried always to remember it, not just because she was dead now, and that was partly my fault, but because sometimes when I got angry, bad things happened. People got hurt.

  In the past, it had always been John who’d inflicted that pain.

  This time when I got angry, it was John who got hurt.

  Which was probably why, by the time he left, I was the one sobbing on the very same couch where he’d claimed to have spent the night. I wasn’t crying because I hated him. I was crying because I hated myself.

  “You knew,” I’d accused him, when I’d finally found my voice after he’d made his revelation. “And you didn’t tell me. The whole time I was sitting there eating all those waffles, you didn’t tell me. You … you tricked me!”

  “I didn’t trick you,” he’d insisted. “I thought you knew!”

  I was quickly discovering that the expensive private school education for which my father had insisted on paying was worthless. All of the information I’d been taught at the Westport Academy for Girls back in Connecticut was either erroneous or useless to me in my current life as the consort of a death deity.

  “You eat,” I’d said to him accusatorily. “I saw you eat. And you leave here all the time. I’ve seen you in Connecticut, in Isla Huesos …”

  “Did I say you can never leave?” he’d demanded.

  “No. But —”

  “But every time you do, you’ll see your friends and family moving on with their lives, while you’ll never age, and always have to come back here … to me.” His tone became embittered. “I can see how thrilled you are by that prospect.”

  Tears had sprung into my eyes — not at the idea of spending eternity with him, but of watching my mother grow old and die before my eyes. I felt weepy every time I thought of it.

  Seeing the tears, he’d softened, adding imploringly, “Pierce, you were hungry. You had to eat. If I had said something about it, what would you have done … gone without food?”

  “Yes,” I’d said, without thinking. “Of course.”

  All the softness left him then. Even his shoulders tensed. “You realize you just said you’d rather starve to death than be with me?”

  He was right. I’d been so caught up in my own emotions, I hadn’t noticed how insensitive I was being to his. I reached for his hand.

  “John, I’m sorry. That didn’t come out the right way,” I said. “What I meant was —”

  “I think your meaning was clear,” he’d said. Overhead, thunder boomed again, though not as loudly as before. It sounded resigned … kind of like his demeanor. “Maybe you’re right, and I did trick you. In any case, now you have the answer to your question, don’t you … why I was the person chosen for this position.”

  It was hard not to admit that his dark side seemed a little darker than I’d previously suspected.

  Still, that didn’t change the fact that he’d saved my life when it would have been easier for him not to. Why go to all these lengths to keep me from feeling the pain of death again when he could simply have let me be murdered and be at his side as a spirit? I couldn’t believe he was bad … not as bad as he seemed to want me to think he was.

  “John, I’m sorry for what I said before,” I’d said, meaning it. “But you’ve got to admit it — there isn’t anyone … any rational person — who’d want to live in this place forever if there was the slightest chance they didn’t have to.”

  “That’s the difference between you and me, then,” he said. I could see that he was trying to act as if he didn’t care, but there was a hurt in his eyes that no amount of sardonic posturing could hide. “I would want to live in this place forever, if it meant living here with you. And though I suppose that means one of us isn’t particularly rational, it looks as if I’m getting my wish. So I recommend you get used to the idea, Pierce, and learn to live with it. And me.”

  A second later, he’d jerked his hand from my fingers, and then — exactly like in my dream — he was gone.

  That’s when I flung myself onto the couch.

  I knew crying was stupid. I hated doing it, and it never solved anything.

  I couldn’t help it, though. Never mind that thanks to some mysterious beings called the Furies, I was apparently powerless to keep completely innocent people like Jade from being hurt at the hands of monsters like my grandmother. Never mind that thanks to another mysterious force called the Fates, I was apparently going to have to live in the Underworld for all of eternity, just because I’d eaten some waffles.

  The thing that hurt the most was that I’d injured John. The weight of that knowledge made me cry hardest of all …

  … until I realized a small amount of that weight was literal. And it was sitting on my head.

  “Oh, my God,” I cried, sitting up.

  The bird gave an indignant flutter of her wings, then flew over to the dining table, where she started pecking at crumbs I had left behind. Which was preferable to her trying to make a nest in my hair, I supposed, but not by much.

  “Better knock that off,” I said, drying my eyes. “Or you’ll never be able to leave here, either.”

  The bird lifted her head to look at me inquisitively, as if determining my moral worth, then turned back to her meal.

  That stung. Even though she was right.

  I remembered the hopeful expression that had been in John’s eyes when he’d given her to me. It had been almost exactly like the one he’d worn when he’d given me the necklace, nearly two years earlier.

  She’s for you, he’d said. To keep you company when I’m away. I know how you love birds.

  I knew that by giving this bird to me to care for, he’d been hoping to replace the ache in my heart I felt for everyone I was missing back home. Perhaps he’d hoped to do something else, as well: remind me that this was my home now, and that there were those in it who needed caring for even more, perhaps, than the people I’d left behind.

  “Maybe,” I said to the bird, “I can start by taking care of you, and then move on to taking care of him. He’s always needed a bit of caring for, don’t you think? Though he’s never liked to admit it.”

  I knew things had gotten bad — really bad — if I was talking to a bird. What did it matter, though? There was no one to hear me.

  “It can’t hurt. And maybe something good will come of it. We can only hope, right?”

  On the word hope, the bird finally looked up at me, and started cooing.

  “Oh, God, no,” I said, mortified. “Please don’t tell me you want to be called Hope. That’s a total cliché for a bird that lives in the Underworld.”

  The bird lifted her wings and took off down the hall.

  I decided I’d better follow her, not because I thought there were any dangers lurking for her in the bathroom (where she was headed, and through which I already knew from experience there were no escape routes), but because I needed to pull myself together, anyway.

  I could see why the bird liked it in there. The massive sunken tub was fed by a naturally occurring hot spring — hot water came bubbling out from the bottom — and a steaming waterfall poured constantly from a crevice in the stone ceiling, through which moss and vines grew. Hope — though I refused to call her that, except in my head — fluttered around while I bathed, dipping her head in and out of the water, her coos echoing off the stones.

  Really, all I’d hoped to find was a toothbrush, some shampoo, and maybe something to wear other than the dress I’d slept in. Possibly because the Underworld was so uniformly grim, the Fates — or whoever it was that provided the food and other amenities — had decided it was better not to scrimp.

  John had said at breakfast that anything he ever wanted or needed badly enough usually appeared. Was that why all the things I needed were right there, smelling heavenly and feeling so soft to the skin? I wanted them, and so they were provided? John certainly didn’t strik
e me as the type to moisturize. And he only ever smelled like the wood that was burning in the fireplace, not orange blossoms and lavender.

  Or were those things there because John had wanted me, and so they came along with the package?

  Was that the explanation for what I found in the large walk-in closet adjoining the bathroom? On one side were John’s clothes, all hung with an orderliness that bordered on the obsessive (unlike the haphazard arrangement of his books).

  On the other were dozens of the long flowy white dresses that John liked seeing me in so much. Some were silk and some were cotton, some long-sleeved and some with no sleeves at all, but all of them were exactly my size.

  “Great,” I said through gritted teeth to the bird. I had nothing against dresses. What I did mind a little was being limited to a choice of nothing but dresses. I supposed the wardrobe selection was symptomatic of the time during which John had lived, so it wasn’t entirely his fault, since rights between men and women hadn’t been so equal back then.

  I chose what I thought was the most modern-looking of all the dresses hanging in the closet — there were shoes, too, of every kind. Each fit my foot as snugly as if I’d been measured for it — then found a full-length, gilt-framed mirror in the hallway just off the main room, where the bed and dining table stood. The bird was perched on the frame.

  It was no use.

  “I really do look like Snow White, don’t I?” I asked the bird when I saw my reflection.

  Well, just because I was dressed like a princess didn’t mean I had to act like one … or at least, not one who slept all the time. I could act like a brave princess. Maybe even like the ones who escaped from the castles in which they were imprisoned, like Rapunzel or Princess Leia.

  “Right?” I said to the bird.

  The bird cooed contentedly from her perch. She was probably as aware as I was that John had nailed shut all the doors back to my world.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t even tell me. I already know. Every single one of those princesses ended up marrying either one of their rescuers or their captor, like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and Persephone.”

  Except unlike Belle, Persephone wasn’t fictional. I had her necklace to prove it.

  If only she’d left behind some other useful tips on being the consort of the ruler of the Underworld.

  Which wasn’t why I started going through John’s shelves. I was looking for a book on birds so I could figure out what to feed Hope. Which wasn’t her name.

  His books — which numbered into the hundreds, maybe even thousands — were so poorly organized I figured I might as well start sorting them by category. I was taking his advice, and getting used to it. And him.

  If, while organizing his things, I happened to discover something that might be useful for navigating life in the Underworld, or that revealed a little something about John’s past, so what?

  “I’m new here,” I said to Hope. “I don’t know the rules.”

  I did find quite a lot of stuff inside all the boxes John kept scattered around, some of it beautiful — bolts of silk fabric, strands of pearls, numerous brass instruments, a few of which I could identify as nautical equipment, including a compass, a folding telescope, and what appeared to be a ship’s bell. It was inscribed Liberty, 1845.

  Mr. Smith had told me that the necklace John had given me had last been seen on the manifest of a ship that had disappeared in a hurricane in October of 1846 … the same hurricane that had caused the Isla Huesos Cemetery to flood, and every coffin in it to wash out to the sea, and in which, he’d hinted, John had died.

  But John wasn’t dead. So I wasn’t sure how accurate Mr. Smith’s information was.

  It wasn’t until I lifted the lid to a small crate behind which Hope had cowered the whole time John and I had been arguing that I saw anything I thought might be of value to me.

  It was a book bag. My book bag.

  Inside were all of the things I remembered stuffing casually into it the morning before my life changed so dramatically, before John hurled me into the realm of the dead in order to save my life. My wallet. My econ book. My jean jacket for when I got cold during school from the incredibly strong institutional air-conditioning. My notebooks, pens, house keys, makeup bag, pill case, hairbrush, sugarless gum.

  I was so happy to see these familiar things, tears filled my eyes. Only … what possible use was I ever going to have for my debit card in a place where there was no ATM? My wallet, I realized, was useless here. So was my econ book. Even my cell phone, still in the special pocket where I stored it. It was beyond sweet that John had kept it all so safely tucked away, but …

  “My cell phone,” I said breathlessly to Hope, who blinked back at me.

  I don’t know what made me switch it on. It wasn’t as if I expected to see anything but the message I got: No service.

  On the other hand, as I stood there holding it, thinking of my family and how upset they must be over my disappearance — all except my grandmother, of course, who was probably telling them horrible lies about where I’d gone and with whom — it occurred to me that just once, it might be nice if the Fates did something for me. It had been nice to find my book bag, but they hadn’t saved it. John had.

  And I hadn’t found it with their help. It had been thanks to Hope.

  Obviously I was on my own in the Underworld, at least where the Fates were concerned.

  I was about to switch off my cell phone — thinking I’d save the battery so at least I could look at pictures of my mom and dad and uncle Chris and cousin Alex when I was feeling sad — that I looked down and noticed a film was playing on the screen.

  Only I hadn’t pressed anything on the keypad.

  I’d downloaded a few films onto my phone, but this wasn’t one I recognized. It was a video of my cousin Alex.

  I’d only moved to Isla Huesos a short time before, and had just been getting to know my mom’s side of the family, with whom my dad had never gotten along. I’d never made a video of Alex, and to my knowledge, he’d never sent me one.

  Even if he had, I doubted this was the type of film he’d make. In it, Alex was struggling to get out of some kind of box, beating on the sides of it as if he were trapped.

  There was no sound. No matter how much I messed with the volume, I could hear nothing, though Alex’s lips were moving.

  A terrible suspicion began to creep over me. Alex didn’t have theater as one of his extracurriculars, and he’d never expressed an interest in film to me.

  The suspicion turned to fear.

  The lighting was excessively dim, but Alex’s face appeared dirt-smeared. Through the smears ran pale tracks of what I realized were tears.

  That’s when I knew: Alex wasn’t acting.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, dumbly watching Alex struggle inside the box. I couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing, much less how I was able to see it, or why.

  All I knew was that someone I cared about was in serious trouble. This wasn’t something I was about to ignore — especially given what had happened to Jade, and before that, my best friend Hannah, back in Westport. Both of them had died … maybe not directly because of me, but I could have done more to prevent their deaths, especially as Jade’s had been directly Fury-related.

  A single glance down at the diamond at the end of my necklace told me that what was happening to Alex could be Fury-related, too. Instead of its usual dove gray, the stone had turned black….

  No wonder I was feeling so frightened.

  I had to find John, and right away. I had to tell him. Something terrible was going on back in Isla Huesos. Something so horrible, the Persephone Diamond could pick up the Fury-vibes via cell-phone video.

  “This is proof,” I turned to say to Hope, “that bringing me to the Underworld hasn’t made the problem go away.”

  Only Hope was no longer on the back of the chair where she’d been perched for her busy feather-grooming ritual. She was huddled on the high shelf f
rom which I’d dragged the crate containing my book bag, her head tucked under her wing.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked her, proving I was completely losing it. Like she was going to answer me.

  Then I heard it: the crunch of a footfall on gravel.

  There was no mistaking the sound … especially because the bird heard it, too. She lifted her head from her wing, and looked towards the stone arches, the ones that led out to the courtyard.

  Only then did I notice the breakfast things were gone. Someone — or something — had come and taken them away, most likely while I’d been bathing. Surely I hadn’t been so absorbed in watching the screen of my cell phone that he — or she. Or it — had done the work in front of me.

  I followed the gaze of the bird. She was peering at the long white curtains, softly billowing in the breeze. That’s how I happened to see, out of the corner of my eye, the same thing she had … a dark shadow moving beyond one of the stone arches.

  I was not alone.

  “Who’s there?” I cried, leaping up from the couch onto which I’d sunk and desperately holding up my phone like it was a weapon.

  There was no response from the courtyard.

  The silence was hardly comforting. My diamond had turned black — maybe not even because my cousin was in danger, like I’d thought, but because I was.

  You’re safer, because I can protect you. John’s words of warning came flooding back. But you have a heartbeat, Pierce, and you’re in the land of the dead.

  It occurred to me that the person in the courtyard could be John. Except that my necklace had never before turned black in his presence. It had always stayed the color of his eyes, a silver-gray.

  And while we hadn’t parted on the best of terms, wouldn’t he have called out a greeting?

  To be on the safe side, I switched off my phone and — keeping a careful eye on the curtains — slipped it up one of the tight sleeves of my dress.

  “John?” I called. My voice came out sounding strangely high and girly. So I cleared it and said, again, “John?” That was better. I sounded more authoritative. “Is that you?”