Underworld (4 page)

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 from 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 some
thing
— 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?”

Nothing happened. No one appeared through the curtains.

I could have sworn I saw another shadow.

“John,” I said, my tone sounding more panicked. “If that’s you, could you come in here? Because there’s something we really need to talk about.”

Of course there was no response. I was pretty sure it wasn’t because John was giving me the silent treatment.

I’d always wondered why in scary movies the girl alone in the house felt like it was such a good idea to go outside to investigate the creepy noise. Why couldn’t she just stay inside where it was safe until the police got there?

Now I understood a little better. I’m not particularly brave — except maybe when it comes to rescuing people or animals other than myself, and often by the time I get around to it, I’m too late. But I had to do
something
. I couldn’t call the police, because there weren’t any police in the Underworld. I had no idea how to get hold of John, since he hadn’t given me one of those tablet things, and I certainly didn’t know his number, if he even had one, to call him from my phone … which only seemed to play videos of my cousin trapped in a box, anyway. And I wasn’t going to wait for whatever it was that was out there to come in and get
me
.

I grabbed a heavy gold candlestick from the mantel. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but if someone was going to hurt me first, I’d definitely act in self-defense.

Holding the candlestick baseball-bat style, I stepped cautiously up to the arch where I’d seen the shadow. The material of the curtain was sheer enough that I could make out some tall shrubs and even the outline of the fountain through it.

Any of those shapes could be a Fury waiting to pounce, I warned myself. Demons came in all sizes. The satyrs on the tapestries in John’s bedroom proved it.

My heart in my throat, I reached out to pull back the curtain, ready to swing the candlestick at anything that moved….

Nothing did, though. I saw only the courtyard, with its gloomy stone pathways and droopy-branched trees, along with the fountain, at the middle of which was a stone statue of a beautiful woman in a long dress, pouring water from an amphora that seemed never to empty.

I couldn’t understand it.
Something
had been out there. I was sure of it. The bird — maybe even my diamond — had told me so.

Lowering the candlestick, I stepped through the curtain and out onto the gravel path. The moist, chilly air clung to me as if we were long-lost friends, the burbling of the fountain eclipsing all other sound.

Until a figure darted out from behind a shrub.

I screamed and whirled around in time to see him duck through the closest arch. I followed him back inside only to encounter Hope, swooping from her perch to check on me. Her wings got tangled in the gauzy curtain, causing it to balloon out over my head. This made me cry out a second time, and throw my arms over my face to protect my eyes. When I finally untangled us both, I saw that he’d gotten away.

I’d also seen that he wasn’t any kind of otherworldly creature like the ones depicted on the tapestries. He wasn’t a satyr or a walking skeleton or even a man. He was a child, a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old.

He was also dressed in the strangest clothing I’d ever seen. And that was counting the dress I had on.

When I caught up to him, he was racing down the hallway … or at least as fast as he could race, considering he was carrying a silver tray with some of the breakfast things from John’s room — or our room, I guess I should say.

That didn’t seem to stop him, however, from speeding away as fast as a water bug.

Once I got over my initial shock, it occurred to me that it was highly unlikely that a ten-year-old boy who was running
away
from me intended to do me harm. Especially since he was dressed in what must have been the height of fashion in the 1840s — black pants that cut off at the knee, white stockings, huge clumpy shoes with silver buckles; an oversized blue velvet jacket covered a shirt that might once have been white, but had seen better days.

If he had shown up in that ensemble anywhere else — except possibly a Renaissance fair — he’d have gotten the snot kicked out of him. In the Underworld, he actually fit right in.

“Wait,” I cried. For a child carrying about twenty pounds of silver, he seemed exceptionally mobile. He was already halfway down the hall. “Come back!”

“Sorry.” He didn’t even slow down to look at me. “We’re not supposed to speak to you.”

“What?” I had to break into a jog — and lift my long skirt — in order to catch up with him. “Who said you couldn’t speak to me? Who’s
we
?”

My mind was spinning. John had said nothing about additional occupants of the castle. Furies, maybe, but not people. He’d said only that he’d told his “men” that if they saw me anywhere I wasn’t supposed to be, they were to bring me straight to him.

This was no man … and no Fury, either. When I looked down at the stone at the end of my necklace, I saw that it had gone gray again. The threat of danger had passed. Unless the only danger there’d ever been was the one threatening Alex….

The boy, meanwhile, kept walk-running. The sconces up and down the hallway hardly cast enough light to see by, sending flickering shadows everywhere, including along the deep red velvet curtains that hung on either side of every door — all locked. I’d tried them earlier — that lined the corridor. I had no idea where he thought he was going.

“What were you doing out there in the courtyard?” I demanded. “How long were you there?” I had a sudden, horrifying thought. “Were you
spying
on me?”

That got to him. He paused long enough to turn a pair of huge blue eyes up at me. “No,” he declared, indignantly. “I was gathering your breakfast things to return them to the kitchen. But then you came back and wouldn’t stop playing with your magic mirror. So I had to hide because the captain said we weren’t to talk to you. I
wasn’t
spying.”

“Oh,” I said, flummoxed by this response. He’d reeled off a string of unfamiliar names and objects — Who was the captain? What magic mirror? — so I hardly knew how to respond.

“And the captain won’t like that you were messing about with his things,” he added darkly. “He’s very particular about them.”

I looked down in the direction of his gaze and realized I still held the candlestick in my hand.

“Oh,” I said, again, embarrassed that I’d been caught arming myself against someone who, back in my world, would have been a fifth-grader. I turned and set the candlestick on a small marble table nearby. Then I turned back to him and said, because he was so small, and the silver tray so large and heavy-looking, “Here, why don’t you let me help you with —”

This was a mistake.

“No,”
he said, and took off again. “Captain Hayden told
me
to do it.”

Captain
Hayden
?

“Do you mean John?” I asked, following him.

“Yes, of course,” the boy said scornfully, as if my ignorance made
me
the crazy one. “Who else?”

Who
was
this little boy? And what was this “captain” business? John might be over a hundred and eighty years old in earth years, but physically he was only eighteen or nineteen. I didn’t know much about things that had to do with the sea, but I did know that rank, even in olden times, was a matter of seniority.

“Can you take me to, er, Captain Hayden?” I asked the boy. “Because I need to see him, right away.” I had to ask him about what I’d seen on my cell phone … and now I needed to ask him who else lived in this castle besides us.

“How can I take you to see him,” the boy demanded, with a scowl, “when he said I’m not even supposed to be talking to you? That would be disobeying a direct order, and I never disobey orders.”

I’d never strangled a child before — I’d never spent much time with young children, actually — but I seriously considered it at that moment.

“Yes,” I said, from between gritted teeth. “But this is an emergency, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He gave me this necklace, see?” I pulled the diamond from the bodice of my dress. “It warns me whenever there’s a Fury around. And it just told me there was one around a minute ago.” This was a slight exaggeration of the truth, but I figured the kid didn’t have to know this.

The boy glanced at the diamond, unimpressed. “I’ve seen that necklace before. I was ship’s boy on the
Liberty
.”

The name rang a bell. Then I remembered why. I’d seen it before on the
side
of a bell.
Liberty, 1845
had been written on the brass bell on one of John’s shelves.

Only what was a ship’s boy? And what was the
Liberty
?

I didn’t think exposing my ignorance to this child would be the smartest choice, however.

“That’s very nice,” I said instead, smiling in what I hoped looked like a friendly, and not completely fake, manner. “I’m Pierce Oliviera. What’s your name?”

“Henry Day,” he said. “And I know who you are. We all remember you from the last time you were here. It’s not like we could forget, could we? Nothing was ever the same again. You know that necklace is cursed?”

“Yes,” I said, keeping the smile frozen on my face. What did he mean,
We all remember you from the last time you were here?
“It’s the Persephone Diamond. It’s supposed to bring misfortune to all who touch it … unless they happen to be the chosen consort of the lord of the Underworld. As you can see,” I assured him, forcing my smile to be even brighter, “I’m all right.”

It felt odd to say the words
chosen consort of the lord of the Underworld
out loud. Odd and a bit pretentious. Especially since I still wasn’t convinced that’s who or what I actually was.

Neither, obviously, was this boy, judging by his response.

“Except you’re not all right, are you, miss?” Henry’s gaze never wavered from mine. “You’re here.”

That wiped the smile clean off my face.

“Can I go now, miss?” the boy asked. “This tray is heavy. And he said we weren’t supposed to talk to you.”

“Of … of course,” I stammered. What had I been thinking? Had I really believed I could pull this off? Even this little boy didn’t believe I was anyone but Pierce Oliviera, recent high-school dropout and NDE: survivor of a near-death experience. I was no queen, of the Underworld or any world. “But I really do need to see your, er, captain. So if you’ll just tell me where I can find him —”