Underworld (2 page)

I raised my eyebrows. “Okay. But first, maybe we should talk about —”

Boundaries.
That’s what I meant to say. But he distracted me again.

“I know you never liked school,” he went on, the corners of his mouth still irresistibly turned up, “or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself thrown out of your last one. I know, I know … that was mostly my fault.” He grinned down at me. I don’t know what he was finding so amusing. He certainly hadn’t been laughing about what had happened with my study hall teacher at the time. “But anyway, there’s no school here. You’ll like that. But there’s still plenty here with which to entertain yourself while I’m working. I can get you all the books you need to graduate from high school, since I know that’s what you said you wanted. In the meantime, there are all
my
books….”

I’d seen his books. Almost all of them had been written before his birth, which had been more than a century and a half before mine. Many of them were books of love poems. He’d tried to read to me from one of them the night before, in order to cheer me up.

It hadn’t worked.

I thought it more polite to say “Thank you, John,” than “Do you have any books that aren’t about love? And young couples expressing that love? Because I do not need encouragement in that direction right now.”

“And you have this whole castle to explore,” he said, an eager light in his eyes. “The gardens are beautiful….”

I glanced skeptically at the billowing white curtains. I’d already seen the gardens outside them. Deathly black lilies and poisonous-looking mushrooms
were
beautiful, in their own way, especially to people like my mother, an environmental biologist who had a fondness for exotic plants and trees.

But I’d always preferred ordinary flowers, like daisies — the kind that grew wild, not cultivated in a garden. What chance did a poor, wild daisy have against a sophisticated black lily?

The night before, when I’d still been determined to escape and had tried to climb the garden walls, I’d seen that John’s castle was on a little island, surrounded by water. There were no boats to cross it. Even if I could find one, the only place to go was the next island. That was the one where he worked, though. And there was no way to get from there to where I wanted to go, back to the land of the living.

“But you should know I’ve told my men that if they do see you anywhere you’re not supposed to be, they’re to bring you straight to me.” Had he read my thoughts? He must have noticed the owlish look I gave him, since he added, his voice growing hard, “Pierce, it’s for your own good. There are dangers here that you —”

“You told me there’s no one here who can hurt me,” I interrupted. “You said I’m safe here.”

“You’re
safer
, because I can protect you,” John said. “But you have a heartbeat, and you’re in the land of the dead —”

“
You
have a heartbeat,” I pointed out. I’d felt it beating, as strong and steady as my own, beneath my hand. He certainly seemed fit for someone who was supposed to have died so many years earlier, not to mention so violently in my dream.

“Yes,” he said. “But that’s different. I’m … Mr. Smith already told you what I am.”

I thought it strange that he didn’t want to say the words
death deity
out loud. It wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed he had gifts that were unlike a normal nineteen-year-old boy’s.

Then again, I was having communication difficulties of my own, so maybe we were even. I decided to drop it.

“So Furies can find me here, too?” I asked instead.

“They can,” he admitted, sounding more like himself again. “But it will be much harder for them to attack you in a fortified castle in the Underworld than in your high-school cafeteria. Still, even with me around,
and
a necklace that warns when Furies are coming,” he added, tugging on the chain I wore around my neck so that the large round diamond at the end of it slipped from the bodice of my gown, then tumbled into his palm, “that doesn’t mean you’re invincible, Pierce, whatever you might like to think.”

I sucked in my breath defensively. “But Mr. Smith said —”

“Mr. Smith is a fine cemetery sexton,” he said, holding the diamond up so that it caught the light filtering in from outside the stone arches. Whenever John was around, the stone glowed a deep silver gray, the same color as his eyes, but when people like my grandmother, who definitely did not have my best intentions at heart, were present, it turned a warning shade of black. “And I’ll admit he’s been better at his job than any of his predecessors. But if he’s got you under the impression that just because this necklace was forged by Hades to warn Persephone when Furies were present, it also has the power to defeat them, you’re wrong. Nothing can defeat them.
Nothing.
Believe me, I’ve tried everything.”

His scars were testament enough to that.

Imagining what he must have endured — and remembering what he had gone through in my dream — caused tears to gather under my eyelashes. One of them escaped and began to trickle down my cheek before I could wipe it away without him noticing.

“Pierce,” he said, looking alarmed. Nothing seemed to discomfit him more than the sight of my tears. “Don’t
cry
.”

“I’m not,” I lied. “I’ve seen what the Furies have done to you, and it’s so unfair. There’s got to be a way to stop them. There’s
got
to be. And in the meantime, can’t I at least go back to warn my mom about what’s going on? Even if it’s only for five minutes —”

His expression darkened. “Pierce,” he said. “We talked about this. Your mother is in no danger. But
you
are. It’s too risky right now.”

“I know, but I’ve never been away from her for this long without her knowing where I am. She’s got to be freaking out. And what about my cousin Alex? You know he lives with my grandmother, and now that Uncle Chris is in jail, Alex will be with my grandmother
all alone
—”

“
No
, Pierce,” John said, so sharply I jumped.

Thunder crashed, seemingly directly overhead. Technically, where we were — hundreds of miles beneath the earth’s crust — there shouldn’t have been any meteorological phenomena. But it was one of John’s many special gifts that, when he felt something very deeply, he could make thunder — and lightning — appear … with his mind.

I blinked at him. He might have liked to believe otherwise, but it was clear the wild part of him was far from tamed. And as much as John might have wanted to pretend that this place was my home, it wasn’t.

The palace was a prison. He was the warden … even if he was a warden who was only holding me captive for the best of reasons, to keep me safe from my own relatives.

“You don’t need to shake the place down,” I said reprovingly. “A simple
no
will suffice.”

He looked a little sheepish. When he spoke again, it was in a much gentler tone.

“I’m sorry. Force of habit.” He gave me another one of his heart-stopping smiles, then extended his palms. “I know something that will make you feel better.”

If I hadn’t been looking down at that exact moment, I wouldn’t have believed my eyes. I’d have thought he’d made a sleight of hand, pulled it from his sleeve like a magician.

He wasn’t wearing any sleeves, though, and he was no magician. He’d almost killed two men in my presence using nothing but his fingertips. He traveled back and forth between two dimensions, his world and mine, far more easily than other people commuted to and from work, because he didn’t need to use public transportation, or even a car. He just blinked, and
poof
. It was done.

“There,” he said. “What do you think?”

I
… I don’t understand,” I said, looking down at the small white creature that nestled in his hands.

“She’s for you,” John explained, still smiling. “To keep you company when I’m away. I know how you love birds.”

He was right about that. I had a weakness for animals of any kind, especially the sick and injured. It was how John and I had met, in the Isla Huesos Cemetery, when he’d come across me weeping inconsolably over a wounded bird. I’d been all of seven years old, but he’d been exactly the same as he was now — the age at which he’d died and become the death deity of the Underworld beneath Isla Huesos.

In an effort to stop my childish tears, he’d taken the bird’s limp body from me. A second later, it had flown off, its life magically restored by him.

How could either of us have known then that it was my grandmother who had purposefully injured the creature, using it to lure me into meeting John not only that first time, but a second time, as well?

That second time, since I had been fifteen and not a child, a different kind of magic had occurred … the kind that can happen between any two people who find themselves attracted to each other.

The only problem was, that time it had been me, and not the bird, who’d died. And it was here, in the Underworld, that we’d encountered each other.

Back then, I’d been much too frightened of this place — and of him, and of my feelings for him — to think of staying.

Everything was different now, I realized. Now I only felt frightened of losing him the way I had in my terrible nightmare …

… and of how quickly he was able to banish that feeling with his kisses, the way he had when I’d woken in his arms. But that fear was a whole other issue.

I guess, considering our history, I could hardly blame him for believing that a pet bird would banish all my fears. The bird in his hands now looked very much like the one from the day we’d met … some kind of dove, but with black feathers beneath her wings and tail. My mother would have known exactly what type of bird she was, of course. It was from her that I’d inherited my love for animals.

“Is this the same bird…?” I let my voice trail off. Doves don’t live that long, do they? This one looked as bright-eyed and alert as the one that day in the cemetery. She was even cooing softly.

Unlike that day in the cemetery, however, when John uncupped his hands, this bird didn’t instantly unfold her wings and fly away. She stood and peered about, taking in her surroundings, including me. I couldn’t help letting out a soft “Ooh!” of delight.

John smiled, pleased that his gift was a success.

“No, that was a wild bird that returned to its mate after we released it. This one is tame, see?” He held out his finger, and the bird butted her face against it, smoothing her feathers. “But she does look a little like that bird, which is why I thought you’d like her. Why? Would you prefer a wild bird?” His eyebrows constricted. “I could find one for you. But then it would have to stay in a cage to keep it from flying away. I didn’t think you’d like that….”

“No,” I said hastily. I wouldn’t like that. Then there’d be two of us who were prisoners.

But I thought it better not to say this second part out loud.

“That’s good,” John said, holding the bird towards me. “You’ll have to think of a name for her.”

“A name?” I stretched out a finger, as John had done, to see if the bird would rub her head against it. “I’ve never named an animal before. I wasn’t allowed to have any pets growing up. My father always said he was allergic.”

Now John’s eyebrows lifted. “Allergic? Even to birds?”

“Well,” I said, thinking of the oil spill my dad’s company was responsible for, and had recently had to clean up. “Allergies are sometimes an excuse he uses for anything messy he doesn’t want to have to deal with.”

Instead of rubbing my finger with her head, the bird stretched out her wings, fluttered them a few times, then flew away. I let out a cry of dismay, thinking that she wasn’t as tame as John had thought, and that she was going to escape.

She flew only as far as the other end of the room, however, landing on the back of one of the thronelike chairs positioned on either side of the long dining table.

“She’s hungry,” John said, with a grin. “You must be, too. Breakfast is waiting. I’m sorry I don’t have time to eat with you before I go, but I think you’ll find everything here you need….”

For the first time since waking, I noticed that something in the room where I’d fallen asleep was different, besides the fact that there was a boy on the bed with me. The table was covered in silver platters laden with fruit of every variety; plates of perfectly crisp toast dripping with butter; golden brown muffins arrayed in ivory baskets; soft-boiled eggs sitting in jeweled cups; icy pitchers of juice; and pots of aromatic tea and coffee. They had all appeared as magically as if brought by an invisible waitstaff.

“John,” I murmured, rising from the bed and going to stand by the table, staring down in astonishment at the gold-rimmed china plates and intricately embroidered napkins in sapphire rings. “How did all of this get here?”

“Oh,” he said casually. “It just does. Coffee?” He lifted a gleaming silver pot. “Or do I seem to remember you being more partial to tea?” His grin was wicked.

I gave him a sarcastic look — it was a cup of tea I’d thrown into his face to escape from the Underworld the last time — then sank down into the chair where the bird was perched. I realized I was starving. I’d had nothing to eat since lunch the day before. And even then, I hadn’t eaten very much due to having gotten some bad news: Furies had murdered my guidance counselor, Jade.

Though I looked for them, I didn’t see any pomegranates amongst the ripe pieces of fruit piled high in silver bowls at the center of the table. Gleaming strawberries, glowing peaches, and glistening grapes. But not a single piece of the fruit Persephone ate that — at least according to the version of the myth we’d been taught back at the Westport Academy for Girls — supposedly doomed her to an eternity in the realm of the dead …

Even before meeting John, I’d often wondered if Persephone had eaten those six pomegranate seeds on purpose, knowing that for six months of every year for the rest of her life, she would have to return to the Underworld — and to Hades, her new husband, of whom her mother Demeter most definitely did not approve.

Pomegranates were considered by the Greeks to be the “fruit of the dead.” As a native of Greece, Persephone would have known that.

Maybe life with Hades — even in the Underworld — had been preferable to life with her overprotective mom and those nymphs. Could Persephone simply not have wanted to hurt her mom’s feelings by saying so out loud?

It had to be safe to eat all the food on John’s table. He wouldn’t have offered it if it wasn’t.

“Thanks,” I said, gratefully accepting the cup of tea. “So you’re telling me that a spread like this appears here
every
morning?”

“Yes,” he said. “It does. Also one at lunch, and again at dinner.”

“But who cooks it?” I asked, imagining an underground kitchen staffed by tiny, invisible chefs. “Who serves it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, with a disinterested shrug.

I couldn’t help laughing. “John, food magically appears here three times a day, and you don’t know where it comes from? You’ve been here for almost two hundred years. Haven’t you ever tried to find out?”

He shot me a sarcastic look of his own. “Of course. I have theories. I think it’s part of the compensation for the job I do, since there isn’t any pay. But there’s room and board. Anything I’ve ever wanted or needed badly enough usually appears, eventually. For instance” — he sent one of those of those knee-melting smiles in my direction — “you.”

I swallowed. The smile made it astonishingly hard to follow the conversation, even though I was the one who’d started it. “Compensation from whom?”

He shrugged again. It was clear this was something he didn’t care to discuss. “I have passengers waiting. For now, here.” He lifted the lid of a platter. “I highly recommend these.”

I don’t know what I expected to see when I looked down … a big platter of pomegranates? Of course that wasn’t it at all.

“Waffles?” I stared at the fluffy perfection of the stack before me. “None of this makes any sense.”

He looked surprised. “Is there something you want that isn’t here? Simply name it.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just … you
eat
.”

He hadn’t joined me at the table since the horn from the marina had sounded again, and he’d sunk down onto the couch instead to put on his boots. But he’d grabbed a piece of toast, downing it as he did up his laces. “Of course I eat,” he said, around the toast. “Why wouldn’t I eat?”

“I’ve seen the crypt where your bones are buried on Isla Huesos,” I pointed out. “It says ‘Hayden’ — your last name — right above the door.”

He looked very much as if he was willing a change in the topic of conversation.

“What of it?” he asked tersely.

“Why do you need to eat if you’re dead?” I asked, the questions bursting from me as I ate. “How can you have a heartbeat, for that matter? Why is there a Coffin Night for you back on Isla Huesos when you not only have a crypt, but you seem very much alive to me? What did you do to end up in this job, anyway?”

“Pierce,” he said in a weary voice. He’d pulled a black tablet from his pocket and was typing swiftly into it. I recognized it as the same device he’d used the day I’d shown up at the lake, to look up my name and find out which boat I was supposed to be on … a boat he’d then made sure I’d missed. “I know I said I’d answer your questions, but I was hoping to make it to the end of the day without you hating me.”

“John,” I said. I got up and went to sit next to him on the couch. “You could never do anything to make me hate you. What is that?” I nodded at the device in his hands. “Can I have one?”

“Definitely not,” he said flatly, putting it back in his pocket. “And I remember a time when you most definitely did hate me.” He stood up. He’d been intimidatingly tall in his bare feet, but in his work boots, he towered above me. “That’s why I’m not discussing my past … at least for now. Maybe later, when you …” He broke off whatever he’d been about to say, and finished instead with, “Maybe later.”

I felt my heart sink, then chided myself for it. What had I thought, that John was some type of angel who’d gotten the job as a reward for good behavior? He’d certainly never displayed angelic-like behavior around me … except when he’d been saving my life.

What did someone have to do to become a death deity, anyway? Something bad, obviously. But not
so
bad that they got sent straight to wherever it was truly evil people, like child murderers, ended up. From what I knew about John, being a death deity seemed to require a strong character, swift fists, a willingness to adhere to a certain set of principles, and a basic sense of telling right from wrong….

But could it also require something I hadn’t considered? Something
not
so desirable?

“You can’t have any worse skeletons in your closet than I do,” I said, with a forced note of cheeriness in my voice, watching him pull a fresh black shirt from a wicker hamper. “After all, you’ve met my grandmother.”

He pulled the shirt over his head, so I couldn’t see his naked chest anymore, which was both a good and bad thing. But I also couldn’t see his expression as he replied, in a hard voice, “Be thankful everyone in my family is dead, so you’ll never have to meet them.”

“Oh. I … I’m sorry,” I said. I’d forgotten the terrible price he’d had to pay for immortality … like watching everyone he’d ever loved grow old and die. “That … that must have been awful for you.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said, simply. His shirt on, he turned to look at me, and I was startled by the bleakness of his expression. “In a way, you’re lucky, Pierce. At least your grandmother is possessed by a Fury, so you know why she’s so hateful. There’s no explanation for why the people in my family were such monsters.”

I was so shocked, I didn’t know how to respond. People aren’t supposed to say those kinds of things about their families.

The important thing was to forgive, my father had once told me. Only then could we move forward….

“Except my mother,” John added. From the same hamper he’d drawn the shirt, he pulled out a leather wristband, covered in some lethal-looking metal studs, and began to fasten it … a safety precaution of his profession, I supposed. Some departed souls needed more encouraging than others to move on. “She was the only one I … well, it doesn’t matter now. But she was the only one who ever cared. And so she was the only one I ever missed.”

Oh,
God
. My mother. I hadn’t thought about it before, but suddenly the reality of my situation sank in: I was going to have to watch my
mother
get old and die.

Although, even people who weren’t trapped in the Underworld had to face that burden … watching their parents age and inevitably die. The difference was, those people aged along
with
their parents. Together they enjoyed the holidays, went on vacations, helped one another through the hard times and celebrated the good.

Was I ever going to get to do any of those things? Could lords of the Underworld and their consorts even
have
children? I was pretty sure I’d read that Hades and Persephone had never reproduced. How could they? Life couldn’t grow in a place of death. Even the plants in John’s garden, exotic as they were, were a bit gloomy looking … not from lack of care, but because mushrooms and black flowers were the only flora that seemed to thrive in a place constantly shaded from the light of the sun.

Still, if John was going to continue to rain down spine-shattering kisses on my neck and roam around without a shirt, I needed to make sure that was really true about Hades and Persephone. I didn’t know how much longer my resistance to his charms was going to hold out, especially after that dream. The last thing I needed was an accidental pregnancy resulting in a demon Underworld baby. My life had already gotten complicated enough.