Underworld (5 page)

“He’s down at the beach,” Henry said unhelpfully. Then he turned around and used his hip to open a door to his left … a door I’d found locked the night before. “He’s working. I wouldn’t bother him if I were you … not even for a Fury you think you saw. Besides, you’re not supposed to leave this part of the castle. It isn’t safe.”

Then he disappeared into the passageway.

I slipped my foot in the jamb before the door could sway all the way shut behind him. He didn’t seem to notice that the lock had failed to catch.

There was a now-familiar flutter overhead. I looked up. Hope had alighted atop one of the carved stone figures affixed to the hallway wall. Like all birds in the pigeon family, she seemed to have an affinity for statues. The bird was bobbing up and down, as if bursting with a message.

“Forget it,” I whispered to her. “You stay here.”

I didn’t regret my decision. Except the part where I didn’t stay where it was safe, the way Henry had warned me to. And that I’d left my candlestick behind.

T
he dog was on me before I’d gone two steps.

It wasn’t the dog that the book on Greek mythology we’d studied in school had described, Cerberus, which had three heads and was supposed to stand guard at the gate to the Underworld.

It was close, though.

His massive front paws landed on my shoulders, drilling me back against the door I’d just slipped through, then forcefully pinning me there like a butterfly mounted to a museum display. Standing on his hind legs, his sharp white fangs hovered inches from my face as he growled down at me. His drool dripped in long white streams to the flagstone floor.

I heard someone shout “Typhon!” from behind him in a harsh tone. The dog didn’t move, his red-eyed gaze on me, his stinking hot breath in my face. I was the stranger who had dared to violate his space, and so I was the one who had to face his wrath.

A moment later, a rough hand wrapped around the dog’s studded collar and yanked the animal away from me. It yelped like a puppy, its long pink tongue lolling and its equally long black tail wagging, as it was shoved out a side door to what appeared to be a stable yard. There it sat and whined piteously, scratching to be let back in, apparently quite sad about not having been able to have me as a snack.

It was only then that I felt safe enough to turn my head and take in my surroundings.

I could see that I was in a kitchen that, like the rest of John’s castle, was made entirely of stone, with a high, arched ceiling. It had only two points of egress, the door to the hallway from which I’d just entered, and against which I’d been pinned — and now leaned against for support — and the other to the stable yard where a man dressed all in black leather had shoved John’s dog, and where I was assuming John kept his horse, Alastor, another creature from the Underworld who hated my guts.

He was going to have to get in line, though. The boy who’d pulled Typhon off me was standing a few feet away, next to the wooden plank table that ran down the center of the room, staring at me with a look that suggested he disliked me even more than the dog had. It was difficult not to notice the size of his bare biceps — not as large as John’s, but still impressive — since he’d folded his arms across his chest, and this had caused the muscles to bulge. The fact that they were circled in vicious-looking rings of black tattooed thorns did even more to draw attention to them.

It was hard to figure out if that was why he was so much more noticeable than anyone else in the room, or if it was because he was what my friend Kayla would have called smokin’ hot, despite a jagged scar that ran down one side of his forehead, through a dark brow, and halfway to the center of his left jaw. Whoever had wielded that knife had thankfully — for him — spared his dark eye.

Not so thankfully for me, however, since he was able to use both eyes to give me a deathlike stare.

“Um,” I said, finally feeling the blood flow returning to my limbs. “You might want to think about getting that dog neutered.”

The boy with the thorn tattoos sneered. “I’m guessing she’ll be wanting to get us
all
neutered,” he said.

“Frank!” cried an old man I hadn’t noticed before. He was standing beside an enormous fireplace that took up most of the length of the far wall. Over the fire hung numerous huge black pots. From them seemed to emanate the foul smell that filled the air. Either that, or it had been the dog. “Mind your manners, please. Henry, please pour the captain’s guest a cup of tea. I believe she needs it.”

“She’s not the captain’s guest, Mr. Graves,” the boy with the thorn tattoos — Frank, the old man had called him — said. “Guests aren’t usually confined to quarters. Prisoners are, though. And don’t prisoners usually get punished for disobeying orders?”

There was a gleam in his cold dark eyes as he said the word
punished
that suggested he enjoyed administering punishments.

I clutched the back of the chair nearest me and sank down into it. I was pretty sure it looked natural, though, and not like my knees had given out, which of course they had.

“Stop trying to frighten her, Frank,” said a mountain of a man sitting across the table from me. I hadn’t noticed
him
because he’d been so quiet. But he was even bigger than Frank, and like him, dressed in black leather and covered in tattoos. Unlike Frank, who looked to be about John’s age, and wore his black hair in a complicated pattern of short braids close to his head, this man was older, and had shaved his skull completely bald … except for one long single black braid growing from the back of his head. His tattoos were of colorful birds and flowers, not thorns. “As if that dog didn’t scare her half to death already.”

“Her being so easy to frighten just further proves my point,” Frank said, continuing a conversation I’d obviously interrupted … a conversation they’d been having about me. “She’s not the one. So why are we bothering with niceties?”

“Only a fool is never afraid, Frank,” Mr. Graves, the old man by the fire, said. “Heroes are the people who carry on despite their fear, because they know the job’s got to get done —”

“— and they’re the only ones left to do it.” Frank snorted. “Yes, yes, you’ve only mentioned it a thousand times. How did she even get in here, Henry? Did you forget to lock the door again?”

“It’s not my fault.” Henry, having set the tray of breakfast things down on the table, looked indignant. “She followed me. She said I was spying on her. She says she wants to see the captain. She says she saw a Fury.”

Frank let out a harsh bark of laughter.

“Just now? That’d be quite a trick, considering none of us heard or saw anything. What kind of Fury was that, then, miss? The invisible kind?”

I felt myself flush. I’d gotten used to being the outsider in school, the one other people laughed at or simply chose to ignore because my near-death experience had made me the oddball, the misfit, the girl who didn’t fit in.

It was something else entirely to be standing in the place I’d always insisted existed, and find myself being treated in the exact same way.

“Excuse me,” I said, a little hotly. “It wasn’t Henry’s fault. I did follow him, because I was looking for John. Or the captain, as you call him. Would one of you please tell me how I could find him?” I just hoped I wouldn’t have to encounter that dog again in doing so….

“I apologize, my dear,” old Mr. Graves said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had visitors, and I’m afraid we’ve forgotten our manners. Please don’t allow anything Frank says to trouble you. He was always an able seaman, but never much of a gentleman.”

I shot Frank a worried look, fearing he’d be insulted upon hearing this. He only folded both hands behind his head and put his boots up on the table, looking pleased to be referred to as
never much of a gentleman
.

“I’m Mr. Graves, ship’s surgeon to the
Liberty
,” the old man said, apparently not noticing his shipmate’s behavior. “And this is Mr. Liu, ship bosun.” The giant with the braid, who had a cup of tea in front of him, nodded at me unsmilingly.

None of this made any more sense to me than what Henry had said earlier. The
Liberty
, again. Was Mr. Graves supposed to be some kind of doctor? Because he certainly didn’t look like one, in his old-fashioned black wool suit.

If he was a doctor, maybe the foul-smelling substances in the pots he was tending over the fire were special medicines he was brewing to heal wounds inflicted by Furies. I hoped so, since it would be nice to think John had someone besides me to take care of him.

On the other hand, if these four — Mr. Graves, the brutish Frank, the mysterious Mr. Liu, and rude little Henry — were the only company John had had for a hundred and sixty-odd years, it explained a lot about his brooding.

Mr. Liu and Frank looked almost exactly like the guards I’d seen working with John that day I’d died back when I was fifteen. The day John had decided to keep me, instead of sending me on to my final destination.

What was it Henry had said, back in the hallway?
We all remember you from the last time you were here.

No wonder they looked like those guards. They probably
were
those guards.

And no wonder none of them liked me. I was the girl who’d thrown tea in their boss’s face, and run away.

Now it seemed more likely that what was in the pots Mr. Graves kept stirring was poison … poison that was going to be used on me.

“It’s very nice to meet you all,” I said, deciding it was best to be diplomatic, since it looked like I was going to be stuck with these people for a while. I rose on still unsteady legs to walk over and shake Mr. Graves’s hand.

The doctor simply stared over my head, seeming to notice neither my hand, nor me standing there in front of him.

This was explained when Frank said to me scornfully, a second later, “He can’t see you. He’s
blind
.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling mortified. I hadn’t noticed until that point that Mr. Graves’s eyes had a milky-white sheen to them, and that he’d never once looked directly at anyone who was speaking. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Mr. Graves said, managing to find my hand anyway and give it a squeeze. “It’s not your fault.”

“Actually, it could have been,” Frank said. “It was a Fury that —”

“Frank, the young lady said she’d like to see the captain. Why don’t you go fetch him?” Mr. Graves snapped. To me, he said, “Miss Oliviera, I do apologize. It’s been quite some time since these fellows have been in the company of a young lady.”

“Speak for yourself, old man,” Frank said. He came to his feet with sudden alacrity. “Why don’t I just take her to the captain?”

“I hardly think
that’s
a good idea,” Mr. Liu muttered, into his teacup.

“His orders were if she showed up, we were to bring her straight to him,” Frank said.

Mr. Graves’s face expressed the exact dismay I felt upon being reminded of this. “Just go and fetch the captain, Frank. Or young Henry can do it.”

“What?”
Henry cried, looking stricken. “I don’t want to go down there. All those dead people. And I’m the one who always gets stuck handing out the blankets —”

“It’s not important,” I said quickly. Blankets? What blankets? What on earth was Henry talking about? “I’ll just wait until John comes back —”

“See?” Henry looked triumphant. “I told you. She’s not the one.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Frank said, impatiently. “Either way, we’re stuck with her.”

This wasn’t a very nice thing to hear about yourself — that people thought of you as someone they were stuck with. Not that I hadn’t been thinking the very same thing about them … and not that I didn’t share Henry’s fear that I wasn’t Queen-of-the-Underworld material.

“Excuse me,” I said. I felt like I had to say something, especially if I’d been chosen as consort for the reason I suspected … that I’d always felt a certain obligation to help wild things. They certainly qualified — though I was willing to admit that my success rates hadn’t been very good thus far. “I get that some of you may not like me, which is fair, since I realize the last time I was here, I didn’t make the best impression.” That was an understatement. “But I do think we all have something in common.”

Mr. Liu looked curious. “What would that be, Miss Oliviera?”

“Well, we’d all like to —”

—
go home
, was what I almost said. Then I remembered that for them, home no longer existed. Everyone they had known on earth, all of their families and loved ones, had died over a hundred years ago. They had no homes to go to. Maybe
this
was their family now, the Underworld their home.

“Go to Isla Huesos,” I said lamely instead. Surely that was better than the Underworld, wasn’t it?

When they sat and stared at me — except for Mr. Graves, who couldn’t see, and wore a troubled expression instead — I began to suspect I’d made an even worse mistake than saying
home
. “You’ve heard of Isla Huesos, haven’t you?” I asked worriedly.

The blind man spoke first, in a slightly stiff tone. “Every man who’s ever sailed under the Union Jack knows Isla Huesos. It’s only one of the busiest — and wickedest — ports in the Americas.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

This was not the answer I’d been expecting. I wasn’t quite sure how to break it to him that while Isla Huesos might have been one of the busiest ports in the Americas nearly two hundred years ago, now it was where about a half million tourists showed up every year, generally either by cruise ship, rental car, or commercial airline, to sunbathe, rent Jet Skis, and buy T-shirts that say
My Grandma Went to Isla Huesos and All I Got Was This Crappy T-shirt
. Hardly the wickedest place in the Americas …

On the other hand, it was also a place that had gotten its name from the many thousands of human bones that had been found littering its shores back in the fifteen hundreds.
Isla Huesos
means “Island of Bones.” How those bones had gotten there had always been a source of some speculation.

The fact that it turned out to have an underworld beneath it may have been a clue.

“I’ve never been to Isla Huesos,” Henry said, a wistful expression on his face. “The
Liberty
was on her way there when —”

Mr. Graves suffered a coughing fit, possibly from breathing in the fumes of whatever it was he was cooking.

“Well, don’t let her fill your head with dreams, kid,” Frank warned Henry, his voice a rumbling growl. “Because you’re not going there now, either.”

“I’m not trying to fill anyone’s head with anything,” I said, stung. I was only trying to do what I was pretty sure was my new job. “I’m just saying maybe we aren’t so different as you think. I know I behaved … badly towards your captain the last time I was here.” I could feel myself blushing, but I plunged on, keeping my gaze on Mr. Graves, who could not, of course, even see me. “But I feel differently now. I want to help. John gave me this.” I pulled the diamond by its chain out from the bodice of my gown to show them. “I was thinking that maybe, using it, and working together, we could figure out how to defeat the Furies someday —”