by Meg Cabot
“John,” I said. “Why are you taking your shoes off?”
He’d neatly folded and draped his shirt across his boots, lined up side by side next to the closest post.
“I don’t want to get them wet,” John explained matter-of-factly, climbing to his feet. “Here, take care of this for me while I’m gone, will you?” He passed me his tablet. “I know you don’t need it — you have your own. But maybe your cousin could use it … or your friend Kayla. That way she won’t have to keep shouting across the beach at Frank ….”
I assumed he was joking. I remembered a time when he never joked, just brooded, and could only attribute the change — like the fact that refreshments and blankets were now being given out along the docks — to my influence.
But I was going to have to teach him that there was a time for jokes and a time to be serious, and now was a time for the latter. The sight of his clothing stacked into such a tidy pile made my pulse stagger. After my friend Hannah had died, I’d spent a lot of time online, researching suicide. I’d wanted to figure out how she could have done what she’d done, only realizing later that I wasn’t going to find the answer on a website.
One thing I did learn, though, was that people who take their own lives by leaping off bridges and cliffs often leave small stacks of belongings next to the place from which they jumped, things they feel they won’t need in the afterlife, such as their shoes, eyeglasses, and wallets. The police called them suicide piles.
The sight of John’s shirt and shoes piled up like that — not to mention the fact that he’d given me his precious tablet — instantly reminded me of those piles.
“Where are you going that you think you don’t need it?” I asked John, thrusting the tablet back at him. “And why do you think you’re not coming back?”
“Of course I’m coming back.” John tucked the tablet into the tight sash of my gown, next to my cell phone. His smile was reassuring. “I told you. I’m going to fix this.”
“How?” I demanded, my voice beginning to rise. “By sacrificing yourself for everyone else, exactly like in my dream?”
He stared down at me, confused, the smile wavering a little. “What dream?”
“Remember that morning I woke up in your arms, crying? It’s because I dreamed about how you died,” I said. “I was on the Liberty. There was nothing I could do to save you. I watched you drown.”
It was the first time I’d admitted to him that I’d known every detail of the stormy night he’d been thrown overboard from the deck of the Liberty: how he’d been left to be tossed about on the waves as punishment for the crimes he’d committed at sea: mutiny … and murder. Even though he’d committed those crimes for a very good cause — to save the lives of his fellow crewmates, Henry, Frank, Mr. Graves, and Mr. Liu — he’d still been found guilty in the eyes of the law … and apparently in the eyes of the Fates as well.
But knowing they hadn’t felt guilty enough to let him die — they’d granted him the gift of eternal life, after all — hadn’t made my dream any less horrifying … or the fact that during it, it had felt as if someone had carved out my heart and thrown it, still beating, into the waves after him.
Now it appeared that nightmare was about to be reenacted while I was awake.
“Pierce,” he said.
He attempted to raise his hands — to touch my face, I suppose — but I wouldn’t allow it. If he touched me, I’d shatter like glass.
“Admit it,” I said, my voice gruff with emotion. “I’m about to watch you drown all over again. You’re going to go out there and try to stop those boats from wrecking. Isn’t that how you got yourself killed the last time? It’s what you do.”
“No,” he said. He seemed to be having a hard time suppressing a smile. “Because I can’t die. I already did and came back, remember?”
“You can still be hurt,” I reminded him. Now I did touch him, but only to hold up one of his own hands to show him his knuckles, thick with scars.
“True,” he said. His eyes were glinting way too brightly. “But I heal very quickly, remember? And someone has to try to stop them.”
“You said there’s no way to slow them down at that speed.” Icy tendrils of dread began to squeeze my heart. “So what good is it going to do if you try?”
“I didn’t say slow them down.” I recognized the glint in his eyes. It was the same dangerous look John always got right before he was about to do something reckless. “I said I’m going to try to stop them.”
I sank my fingernails into his hand. “John. No.”
“Pierce, it’s the only way,” he said. The dangerous gleam grew into another one I recognized: stubbornness. He was going whether I liked it or not. “At least I can protect the docks.”
“But what about you?” Cold slivers of dread now arced out from my heart to travel down my spine. “Who’s going to protect you?” I nodded to my diamond. I didn’t dare release his hand to point at it, for fear he might disappear. “My necklace — you saw what it does to Furies. Take me with you. I can kill them.”
His fingers were already slipping away from mine, despite how tightly I’d held on to them.
“I know you can, my bloodthirsty little love,” he said, his grin wider than ever. “The problem is that the Furies know it now, too.” Instead of moving away from me, he wrapped his arm once more around my waist, drawing me close to his bare chest. “The last place you should be is out here in the open where they can find you. You’re our weapon of last resort. We can’t afford to lose you.”
I looked up at his lips, hovering just inches above mine. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed those lips until they were as close as they were now. I could feel the heat from his thighs through the thin material of my dress, the strong sinews in his arms beneath my hands.
“I’m the one who can’t afford to lose you,” I said.
“But I can’t die,” he reminded me. “I only know what it’s like to feel dead inside. That’s how I felt until the moment you appeared on this beach … remember? You marched up to me and started telling me how unfairly you thought I was treating everyone. That’s when I started feeling alive again for the first time in … well, a long time. That’s why it hurt so much when you left —”
“Why do you have to keep bringing that up?” I asked. His close proximity was making me feel a little breathless. “I’ve apologized a million times for throwing that tea in your face —”
“Because that was my fault. I didn’t handle that situation, or others involving you, in the” — he searched for the word he wanted — “gentlemanly fashion I should have. But I swore if I got a second chance, I’d make it up to you. It hasn’t been easy. Sometimes it’s seemed as if I’d lost you. That made me feel dead again inside.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips. “So then why are you in such a good mood?”
“Because,” he said. He was holding me so close, I could feel his own heart beating against mine, strong and steady. “I think I have the answer to my question.”
“What question?”
“Whether or not you’ve forgiven me. You must have, or you wouldn’t be so concerned for my health.” He was openly grinning now, his teeth flashing even and white against skin that was almost as dark as mine due to the amount of time he spent wandering around the Isla Huesos Cemetery. “Tell me you love me.”
“No,” I said. It was difficult to keep my voice from shaking, but I was determined not to fall apart in front of him. I figured that was what a consort would do, stay strong.
The smile faded, his face awash in sudden uncertainty. “No? No, you don’t love me? Or no, you won’t tell me?”
“I mean, no, I’m not telling you that. See, this way you won’t be able to do anything stupid like sacrifice yourself for the rest of us. You’ll have to come back to find out how I really feel about —”
He didn’t let me finish. He lowered his lips to mine, kissing me so deeply that the cold shards in my spine turned to warm tingles
, rippling from the soles of my feet all the way up to the base of my neck. Even my frozen heart began to thaw. Every inch of me melted at his touch, became soft in response to his hardness, alive in a way it hadn’t been the second before his mouth met mine.
It wasn’t only because he had the ability to raise the dead and heal wounds (and I had a lot of wounds to heal — my scars simply didn’t show on the outside, though, so no one could see them), or even because he was so incredibly attractive.
It was because of what I hadn’t told him: that I loved him. I don’t know how he couldn’t tell from the very first second our lips touched. Every beat of my heart seemed to shout it: I love you. I love you. I love you.
But I knew I was right. I didn’t dare say it out loud.
Then, just as abruptly as he’d started kissing me, he thrust me away, as if I were something he’d suddenly remembered he needed to resist. Which I was, at least for now. He was something I needed to resist, as well, because like he’d said, the Furies weren’t only on those boats. They were everywhere.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
“Don’t worry,” he said. The smile had returned, but it wasn’t quite as cocky as it had been before. “I’ll be back.”
Then he leaped over the dock railing and dove towards the dark, churning waves, vanishing from sight right before he struck the water.
If only I’d realized then that I’ll be back were the last words I was ever going to hear him say.
“Mars draws a vapour up from Val di Magra,
Which is with turbid clouds enveloped round,
And with impetuous and bitter tempest … ”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XXIV
Kayla appeared a moment after John vanished, keeping a wary distance from Alastor’s enormous jaws.
“Did I see what I think I just saw?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I’d ducked my head in the hope that what she thought she saw weren’t my eyes filled with tears. “What do you think you just saw?”
“Your boyfriend dive into, like, three feet of water. He didn’t come up, either. He’s probably drowned or turned into a merman. Honestly, I don’t know which would be worse —”
“Did you see a splash?” I interrupted.
Kayla looked surprised. “Now that you mention it … no, no splash.”
“Yeah. He’s not in the water.” All the warmth that John had injected into my body with his kiss had disappeared. I felt cold again, and not only because fingers of fog had begun to creep ashore and were tingeing the formerly hot wind with ice.
“Well, where is he, then?” Kayla asked.
I exhaled. “I can only assume he’s off fighting invisible forces of evil. They’re called Furies. Did Frank mention those to you? John’s job is to fight the Furies and to make sure this place runs smoothly and that the souls of the dead get to their afterlives. And Frank’s job is to help him.”
Kayla shook her head with enough energy to send her springy dark curls bouncing on her bare shoulders. “The way Frank described it, it’s his job to run this place. Your boy, John, is more like his sidekick. Frank said they get paid in pure solid gold. He said he’s going to give me some.”
“Right,” I said, reaching for Alastor’s bridle and then gritting my teeth in annoyance as he swung his head away from me. “You should totally believe everything boys tell you, especially Frank. Help me grab this horse, will you?”
“Uh, no thanks,” Kayla said. “Frank better not have been lying about the gold. I was planning to use it to pay for my surgery.” She pointed to her chest. One of the first things she’d told me the day we’d met was that she was having breast reduction surgery as soon as she turned eighteen.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, if we don’t get out of here, you’ll be able to use those as flotation devices.”
Kayla laughed. “You really are crazy, chickie,” she said. “You know that? I couldn’t understand what you were doing in all my classes at first. I was like, ‘Poor little white girl.’ But now I know. No wonder they put you in D-Wing.”
“They put you in D-Wing, too,” I said defensively. “So what does that say about you?”
“Everyone knows I’m crazy,” she said. “But you go around looking like the pretty little rich girl on the outside, not a care in the world.”
Her words chilled me to the bone, more than any wind ever could. Did people really think of me that way? I wondered. Pretty little rich girl? Was that what I got for keeping my scars so well hidden, buried so deep?
“Well, everyone’s wrong,” I said. “I’m not just a pretty little rich girl without a care in the world. I’m the queen of the Underworld. So people better stay out of my way.”
Kayla laughed. “You better take your hand off that whip handle when you say that. You look more like the queen of something else.”
“Sorry,” I said, dropping my hand from my waist. “I need to get rid of this thing.”
Behind Kayla, everyone had started crowding around the area where John had disappeared.
“I’m telling you, he went in,” Reed was saying, peering down into the dark, agitated water.
“I didn’t see a splash,” Chloe said. “He disappeared right before he went in.”
“Right,” Reed scoffed. “A guy disappeared into thin air. That’s impossible.”
“It’s impossible for there to be flocks of Corvus corax inside a cave,” the old man in the hospital gown said. “But you’re not going to deny they’re flying above our heads, are you?”
Reed eyed him. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“There he is!” Henry had his spyglass to one eye. “I see him!”
Everyone looked in the direction Henry was pointing, including me. There, in the wheelhouse of the ship — the one careening towards the dock on which Frank and Mr. Liu were toiling — was a lone figure, barely discernible across such a far distance and with the fog closing in.
“That can’t be him,” Alex said. “No one can swim that fast.”
“It is him,” Henry said. “Look.” He passed my cousin the spyglass. “And he didn’t swim. He can blink himself wherever he wants to be, and a second later, there he is.”
Alex snorted, peering through the telescope. “Right, Shorty.”
“How do you think you got here?” Henry asked, sounding offended. “He brought you by blinking, that’s how. And my name isn’t Shorty. It’s Henry.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Shorty,” Alex said. “No one can blink anyone anywhere.” Then his voice changed as he saw something through the telescope. “That is him.”
Though it was impossible to make out John’s face from such a distance without the help of a magnifying lens, it wasn’t hard to see that the ship on which he was standing was changing course. It had begun to turn, slowly but inexorably, towards the one headed our way.
“What’s he … That is so weird,” Alex said. “There’s no one else in the wheelhouse. There’s no one steering those ships. No one but —”
Alex abruptly lowered the spyglass, staring across the water at the two boats as if he’d just realized something. The realization was evidently not a good one, since the next word out of his mouth was of the four-letter variety.
“Alexander!” Chloe cried, shocked. Her gaze went to Henry. “There are children present.”
Henry hurried to reassure her. “Oh, I’m used to it, miss.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Chloe said, with a pretty scowl.
Alex was ignoring them both. “That’s why he went out there. There’s no one steering them, and they’re coming in too fast,” he said. He swung an accusing look at me. “Was that what the two of you were whispering about?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s going to try to stop them.”
Everyone had turned to stare at me, I suppose because I was sitting on top of Alastor’s back, where I’d climbed before any of them, including Kayla, had noticed. I’d felt the horse stiffen with
indignation beneath my legs, but I already had a firm grasp of the reins in my left hand and John’s father’s whip coiled in my right, just in case Alastor tried anything foolish. Of course I’d never hit him with the lash (which was too long to be of any use as a riding crop), but I might flick him with the coil if he tried to throw me.
But he must have noticed the whip, because though he tossed his head a few times, he didn’t rear or kick. He merely snorted, as if to express his extreme displeasure with the situation.
From the volunteer work I’d done in animal shelters in my past life — before I’d died the first time — I knew that half the battle when it came to untamed creatures like Alastor (and his master) was psychological. You had to make them think that you weren’t afraid of them, and that you were the boss. You weren’t going to put up with any of their nonsense.
Of course, it was a bit different when you were dealing with a nine-pound feral cat as opposed to a death lord’s three-thousand-pound stallion.
Alex shook his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t know which one of you is crazier,” he said, looking back towards John. “You or him.”
“Yes.” Chloe sounded politely timid. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a helmet or something, Pierce? That horse is awfully big. What if you fall?”
“Under normal circumstances,” I said, “yes, I should be wearing a helmet. But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? Look, I need all of you to listen to me … ”
My voice trailed off as I realized no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to me. All of them were staring at the water and the spectacle of the enormous ship John was steering … directly into the path of the other.
Alex was right. Even with the fog swirling so densely around the two boats, I could see clearly what John was planning on doing. The gaping hole in my chest where my heart had once been — before John had ripped it out and taken it with him — seemed to widen another inch, allowing more of the suddenly chilly air to come seeping in.
