by Meg Cabot
Daddy’s Little Princess pointed to the sky with the finger she’d been sucking. “Bad birdies,” she said. She was speaking to Alex and me conversationally, imparting information she seemed to think we needed to know. “Bad.”
“Yeah, kid,” Alex said. “I think we figured that part out already.”
Only Chief of Police Santos seemed unfazed at the sight of the silently wheeling ravens.
“Don’t tell me you’re taking orders from a bunch of damned birds, Shawn,” he growled. “I don’t have time for that kind of thing today.”
Officer Poling did not appear to care what his chief had time for.
“Either the girl comes out,” the young officer said, taking careful aim, “or I shoot her mother in the head.”
The bottom of my world dropped out as I saw Officer Poling swing the mouth of his gun directly at my mother.
Suddenly I remembered where I’d heard his name before. Officer Poling had been one of the two officers helping Jade to patrol the cemetery the night she died.
Helping Jade? Or helping to murder Jade in order to cover up for a crime some other Furies had committed?
What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion, although in reality it must have taken only a couple of seconds.
Uncle Chris stepped in front of my mother to shield her from Officer Poling’s bullets with his own body. Chief of Police Santos did the same thing, only he stepped in front of both Uncle Chris and my mom, attempting to push them back inside the house and to safety.
Meanwhile, every cop standing around Officer Poling struggled to draw his or her weapon in order to point it at their colleague, sensing their chief was under attack, shouting, “Stand down! Stand down!”
In a few seconds more, the wealthy community of Dolphin Key was going to become a shooting gallery.
“We’ve got to stop this!” Alex whirled around to shout at me. “They’ll kill each other.”
Daddy’s Little Princess had another opinion. “Run,” she said in the same matter-of-fact voice she’d used before about the bad birdies, shaking her head until her blond ringlets quivered. “Run away.”
Something struck me about the little girl’s eyes. I didn’t have time to analyze it, but I knew it reminded me of someone.
“Alex,” I said. “Grab her.”
He looked down at me uncomprehendingly. “What?”
“Grab the kid,” I said, pointing at Daddy’s Little Princess. “Figure out where she lives and take her inside so she doesn’t get hurt if anyone starts shooting. Then meet me at the cemetery.”
Alex did as I asked, grabbing the little girl by her elbows. She laughed, thinking we were playing a game. “What are you going to do?” Alex asked.
“This,” I said. Keeping one hand on my handlebars, I raised the other and began to wave. “Hey! Officer Poling?” I shouted. “Looking for me? I’m over here.”
Officer Poling’s face wasn’t the only one who swung in my direction. Every single officer who’d had a gun trained on him looked my way, too. So did my mom and Uncle Chris. So did Chief of Police Santos. So did Daddy’s Little Princess. So did Alex.
Besides my mom’s and Officer Poling’s, Alex’s expression might have been the one that was most shocked.
“Are you crazy?” Alex demanded. “He’s going to come after you now.”
“That’s the idea,” I said, and stepped hard on my pedal.
24
Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath,
With stones a young man slaying, clamorously
Still crying to each other, “Kill him! kill him!”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Purgatorio, Canto XV
THANK YOU FOR VISITING DOLPHIN KEY, A GATED LUXURY COMMUNITY IN ISLA HUESOS. PLEASE COME AGAIN!
That’s what the sign in the gatehouse read. Funny how I’d never really noticed it until I was sweeping past it as a psychopathic cop was trying to kill me.
I had a pretty strong feeling no one in Dolphin Key wanted me to come again, ever. Especially as I neared the gatehouse and saw the guard inside it waving madly at me … possibly because of what she saw directly behind me: a line of police cruisers, each with their lights and sirens blazing.
I was sure she was waving at me to stop. She certainly hadn’t raised the garishly colored swing-arm barricade that was supposed to keep the residents of Dolphin Key safe inside, and undesirable nonresidents out.
Then I saw that the guard was pointing at the end of the barricade, where there was just enough room for a single bicyclist to pass by, whether the arm was lifted or not.
I couldn’t understand it. Was she trying to help me? She worked for law enforcement. I was clearly a wayward degenerate.
Yet she was urgently waving me through, while keeping the barricade firmly locked down to thwart the authorities following me.
Of course I didn’t have time to ask her intentions as I swept by. I could only glance over my shoulder …
… then wish I hadn’t as I glimpsed Officer Poling’s face through the windshield of the car a few dozen yards behind me and felt my throat constrict with fear as I saw it contort with hatred and rage.
I don’t know why he hadn’t shot me instead of leaping into the nearest police cruiser and giving chase. Maybe the ravens — or whoever was controlling the Furies — told him not to.
I suppose it was better for me that he hadn’t. I wasn’t dead, and neither was he, as he surely would have been had he pulled the trigger … his fellow officers would have put him down like the mad dog he now resembled, and would probably have inadvertently taken the lives of a few innocent bystanders along with him.
But now he was hot on my trail, with Chief of Police Santos and his fellow officers hot on Officer Poling’s trail. I was leading a parade of cop cars down the narrow streets of Isla Huesos.
Worse, it turned out Officer Poling found lowered gatehouse barricade arms no impediment to his pursuit of me. He simply rammed his vehicle through them, sending splinters of wood flying everywhere and causing the gatehouse guard to fling her arms over her face protectively, then reach for her radio to report him.
I told myself I had the advantage, since I was speeding along the same path I’d taken dozens — maybe hundreds — of times since my mother and I had moved to Isla Huesos … including the night she’d thrown her Welcome to Isla Huesos, Pierce party, which I’d fled in a similar fashion … only then a demon-possessed cop hadn’t been pursuing me.
My feet were pedaling just as fast as they had that night, though, towards the cemetery … and to John. I was on a bike on well-known territory, able to traverse terrain automobiles couldn’t, such as sidewalks and lawns.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
I could only hope Alex was following along behind the trail of squad cars somewhere. I had yet to see him. I couldn’t risk glancing over my shoulder again, since the sight of Officer Poling’s twisted face behind the wheel frightened me so much, I almost lost my footing on the bike. I had to concentrate on the road in front of me. Every crack in the pavement was as recognizable to me as the veins on my own hands, but the storm had left a ton of detritus in the road in the form of fallen branches, overturned garbage cans, and the odd lawn chair. If I looked away for a second, I was afraid I’d lose my balance, then fall prey to a madman with revenge on his mind.
I told myself the feel of the wind in my hair as I sailed down the hill to the cemetery was exhilarating, not terrifying. The sirens’ screaming in my ears was exciting, not earsplitting. My heart was slamming hard against my ribs not with fear, but with anticipation of seeing John. He was going to be waiting for me at his crypt, exactly where he’d said he’d be. He’d take me in his arms and assure me he’d gotten the ships delivered safely to the Underworld.
Oh, God, I didn’t sound convincing even to myself. I could barely see where I was going thanks to the tears streaming down my face. Now Officer Poling was using the loudspeaker on his squad car: “Pierce Oliviera. Stop. You are under arr
est for the murder of Mark Mueller. Stop, or I’ll shoot.”
People were coming out onto their front porches in order to see the person they thought was a real-life murderer whizzing past them on a bike. It was a good thing I lived underneath this town and not in it, because my reputation was ruined.
But what about Kayla? I regretted my decision to ever let her leave the safety of the Underworld. Certainly she was going to have to go back to her old life someday. She wasn’t bound by death (like Alex) or eternal love (like me) to stay forever in the Underworld.
Why had I allowed her tough talk to sway me into believing she’d be fine? Fine against Furies carrying guns?
I prayed Kayla would be waiting safely at the cemetery (where Alex had said she and Frank would meet us), and that John and I wouldn’t be too late to keep this whole thing from turning into the disaster Mr. Graves had warned me about.
Maybe it already had. Maybe the pestilence was leaking from the Underworld. It certainly seemed so. The storm was over, but so far the new life Mr. Smith had promised the sun would reveal in its wake wasn’t good at all. The sun seemed to be revealing horrible, creepy things, things like Officer Poling, things that would have been better off left in the dark ….
I slammed on the brakes. An enormous sapodilla tree lay in the middle of the road in front of me.
It was the one John had struck with lightning and sent crashing down on Mr. Mueller’s body after we’d hit him with Kayla’s car.
There was a single maintenance worker wearing a fluorescent-yellow vest standing in front of the tree, smoking a cigarette. He looked surprised to see a girl wearing a whip on a belt pull up on a bike … or maybe it was all the cop cars screaming behind me that surprised him.
“Well,” Yellow Vest said. “Hello there.”
The city hadn’t had time yet to put up orange CAUTION signs. There must have been too many other downed trees — and worse — across the island.
Mr. Mueller was gone. They had been able to remove his body by cutting away the section of the tree that had trapped it. The maintenance worker held a chain saw. The rest of the sapodilla still lay sprawled across the road. The maintenance worker appeared to have been getting ready to cut the trunk into pieces and throw the pieces into a large wood chipper sitting nearby before he’d stopped for his smoking break.
“Please,” I said, panting. “I need to get to the cemetery.”
“This road,” Yellow Vest said, “is closed.”
Too late, I remembered Uncle Chris had mentioned that it would be … to vehicular traffic, anyway.
“I know,” I said. I didn’t look behind me. There was no need to. I could hear the brakes of Officer Poling’s squad car squealing to a halt a few yards away. “But I really, really, really need to get to the cemetery.”
The maintenance worker took a long puff on his cigarette. Then he took one step to the left, revealing the space in the tree where Mr. Mueller’s body had lain. It was the same size as the space between the guardhouse and the swing-arm barricade at Dolphin Key, perfect for a single bicyclist.
“So go on already,” the maintenance worker said.
“Oh,” I said gratefully. “Thank you very much.”
“Stop,” I heard Officer Poling shout. “That girl is under arrest!”
I hesitated.
“What are you waiting for?” Yellow Vest asked me.
“I … ” I glanced back at Officer Poling, who was getting out of the car. “He’s not right in the head.”
Yellow Vest grinned. “Don’t you worry about me,” he said, and raised his chain saw. “I can take care of myself. You scoot now.”
He pulled the chain saw’s cord. The motor roared to life, the sharp, tiny blades beginning to spin madly.
I didn’t wait a second longer. I hurried through the space between the sapodilla’s enormous trunk. Only when I was through, and putting my feet back on my pedals, did I look back. The worker had returned to where he’d been standing, in front of the empty space, but he must have decided his break was over, since he’d stamped out the cigarette and was staring in Officer Poling’s direction.
“Well, hey there,” he said, as pleasantly as he’d spoken to me, albeit a bit more loudly in order to be heard above the noise of the chain saw.
I didn’t hear the rest of their conversation because I didn’t stick around. I saw that Chief of Police Santos’s cruiser had pulled up just behind Officer Poling’s. Yellow Vest was right. He could take care of himself.
I couldn’t understand it. Why hadn’t the maintenance worker tried to stop me, when the police were clearly in pursuit of me? I was obviously a criminal.
I didn’t have time to ponder it. I could only pedal, so close to the cemetery now that I could see the black wrought iron fence looming in front of me. Even if he got past the guy with the chain saw and Chief Santos — which seemed extremely unlikely — there’d be no way Shawn Poling could follow me into the cemetery, because the gate would be closed and locked. Mr. Smith had assured all of us that day in the school assembly that the gate would be locked all through Coffin Week.
And Officer Poling wouldn’t be agile enough to climb that high, spiked fence. He’d never catch up to me now. Or by the time he did, I’d be safely back in the Underworld, where John and I would try to return everything to normal … or as close to normal as things could get in the Underworld.
Except there was no possibility of “normal” anymore. Though the day was turning out to be one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen on Isla Huesos — the sky was a pure, cloudless blue, the temperature perfectly warm, the wind a little too strong for boating — what I saw in front of me as I grew closer to the cemetery filled me with horror.
25
Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour,
Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled,
Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XIII
The ravens that had been circling my mother’s house were now swooping low in the sky above the graveyard. And the storm that had raged past Isla Huesos the night before hadn’t spared one inch of Isla Huesos’s burial ground.
Branches torn from trees lay thrown across the top of tombs like drunken sailors on shore leave, and nearly every decorative stone angel or cherub was missing a wing. Coconuts had been fired like missiles by the gale-force winds through any mausoleum containing a stained-glass window, shattering it, and the formerly neat pathways through the crypts were carpeted with fallen palm fronds.
The place looked like a battle zone.
There was no need for me to climb the fence, since the thick black gates that Mr. Smith had assured us all would be so securely bolted now swayed obscenely ajar, looking as if something — or someone — had battered them from the outside until they’d simply given way.
The cemetery sexton’s office hadn’t escaped unscathed, either. The windows of the small cottage where Mr. Smith kept his office had been safely shuttered in preparation for the storm, but that hadn’t spared the house’s roof from being crushed in half beneath the weight of the large Spanish lime tree that had fallen on top of it … the Spanish lime tree that used to litter its fruit all over the cottage’s backyard, and in the branches of which Hope had once huddled in fear of Mike, the cemetery’s (now former) handyman, when he’d tried to kill me.
Worse, everywhere I looked, I saw people … people who’d wandered into the cemetery through the wide-open gates, carrying rakes and hoes and other pieces of gardening equipment, probably to clean up their loved ones’ graves.
“Oh, no,” I couldn’t help murmuring with a groan. “No, no, no … ”
A sickening sense of foreboding grew in the pit of my stomach. If winds could twist solid metal the way they had the cemetery gates, and blow over a tree as thick and sturdy as that Spanish lime, how could a structure as old as John’s tomb escape without damage? It was so old — the red bricks that made up its walls so decrepit
— would it even be standing? And what about our tree — the poinciana under which we’d met and kissed, its blossoms forming a scarlet umbrella above our heads?
I pedaled more quickly, my heart booming so loudly in my chest I could no longer hear the sound of the chain saw, or even the sirens. I couldn’t even hear the crunching of sea grass and palm fronds beneath my bicycle’s wheels as they passed over them. My only thought was that I had to see how badly John’s crypt had been affected by the storm, if the poinciana tree was even still there …
… And then I rounded the corner and saw that it was.
Well, most of it was.
Every single blossom was gone from the tree. They lay upon the ground like an undulating carpet of scarlet silk.
The tree had also lost a large limb. It had fallen across the roof of the crypt, causing part of it to cave in.
I was relieved to see that was the only damage. The redbrick structure still stood, the word Hayden bold as ever in block lettering above the entrance to the vault.
Standing in the middle of the carpet of red poinciana blossoms was a man. His back was to me. The sun was so high in the air and shining so brightly that, since I wasn’t wearing sunglasses, it was difficult for me to determine his identity.
For a second my heart lifted, because I was certain it was John, returned from his journey to fetch the boats my father had found for him. Even now, the passengers in the Underworld were probably being boarded, order was being returned to the realm of the dead, and my father was back at my mom’s house.
Of course John was waiting for me on a carpet of red poinciana blossoms. It only made sense that this would be where I’d find him. Later we’d have to deal with my grandmother, and the fact that I’d killed Thanatos, not to mention Mark Mueller. But for now, John and I would reunite in the place where, so long ago, we’d first met.
Then, as I got closer, I realized the man standing on the carpet of poinciana blossoms wasn’t John after all. He was too small and too thin to be John, and was wearing a hat. John would never wear a hat.
