Awaken

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry about the heat. We’re working on it.”

“Working on it?” the guy in the tropical shorts echoed. “We’ve been waiting here for hours. How about some answers instead of water?”

“I know,” I said to Tropical Shorts. “Sorry. The boat’s on its way, I swear. We’re trying to accommodate as many of you as we can as quickly as we can, but we’re a little backed up at the mo —”

“Why should we believe you?” Tropical Shorts interrupted. “I want to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

I felt a spurt of red-hot anger shoot through me, but I fought to remain calm.

“What makes you so sure I’m not in charge?” I challenged him.

He burst out laughing. “Look at you,” he said.

I couldn’t help it. I looked down at myself. Whereas most of the people in line were dressed in light casual clothing, like Mr. Tropical Shorts — some of them were in hospital gowns or even pajamas, whatever they’d been wearing when death overtook them — I had on a cap-sleeved gown, the hem of which swept my feet. Even though the material was the lightest cotton, it nevertheless clung damply to my skin, and not just because the waves from the lake had grown more violent than usual and were splashing bits of foam and spray up against the side of the dock. Curls of my long dark hair had slipped from the knot into which I’d tried to tie it, sticking to the back and sides of my neck. I’d have given my cell phone or possibly even my bra for some air-conditioning or a fan.

But it turned out Tropical Shorts wasn’t referring to my wardrobe.

“What are you,” he demanded, “fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Seventeen,” I said, from between teeth I’d gritted in an effort not to throw the entire tray of water glasses at him. “How old are you? Legally you have to be at least eighteen to rent a Jet Ski in the state of Florida.”

I knew this because my mother complained all the time that kids on personal watercrafts were always racing one another through the mangroves where she was studying her beloved roseate spoonbills. The Jet Skis hit dolphins and manatees (and sometimes even human snorkelers and scuba divers) just under the surface and killed them without the drivers even being aware of it.

Except for this one. Whatever Tropical Shorts had hit had hit back, hard enough to kill him.

“I’m nineteen,” he said, looking a little stunned. “How did you know it was a —”

“It’s my job to know,” I interrupted. “You’re welcome to speak to the person in charge … my boyfriend. That’s him over there on the horse.”

I pointed across the beach to the dock opposite the one on which we stood. There, John, on his black horse, Alastor, along with two tall, muscular men clad in black leather, was struggling to hold back a much rowdier crowd. If the line I was managing was discontented, theirs was already actively rioting. No one was being offered glasses of water over there — if they had, the glasses would have been broken over someone’s head, and the shards used as weapons.

“Uh, no, thanks,” Tropical Shorts said, glancing uneasily away from John as he yanked on the shirt collar of one man in an attempt to pull him from the throat of another. “I’m good. I’ll just wait here.”

“Yeah,” I said. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help smiling to myself a little. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

Just try to keep them calm, John had said as we’d made our way down to the beach from the castle. One stone can cause a lot of ripples. A riot is the last thing we need right now.

Got it, I’d said.

And no need to get physical with them yourself, John had said. Any sign of trouble, and I’ll be there.

How will you know? I’d asked.

If there’s trouble and you’re involved, I’ll know, he’d said, and given me a smile I’d thought might turn my legs to butter then and there.

I’d managed to avert the riot Tropical Shorts had attempted to cause with his stone, but that didn’t mean everything was smooth sailing … especially between John and me. We were still searching for ways to smooth the ripples in our relationship. Some were appearing a little rougher to navigate than others. John hadn’t wanted me to help down here at the beach. He’d wanted me to stay back at the castle with Mr. Graves, tending to my cousin Alex and my best friend, Kayla, who were still recovering from the shock of having been whisked from the land of the living to the realm of the dead for their own safety — never an easy adjustment, as I well knew.

But one glance at the sheer number of souls who had shown up on the beach while we’d been in Isla Huesos told me I’d be more useful there than at Alex’s and Kayla’s bedsides. Eventually even John had to agree.

Still, just because we were able to agree on that didn’t mean there weren’t going to be more stones in our path. Being in a relationship, I was learning, was hard. It was probably hard even if your boyfriend wasn’t a death deity.

If he was, though, talk about issues.

The He Is First girl reached out to grasp my bare arm, jostling me from my thoughts.

“Excuse me,” she said. “What’s your name?”

Don’t get on a first-name basis with them. This was another piece of advice John had given during my hasty emergency orientation to soul guidance. You’re here to do a job, not make friends.

“Pierce,” I said to her. I’d appreciated John’s warnings, but what was I supposed to do, lie? “Look, I’m sorry, but I really have to go.” I motioned towards the end of the line, which was snaking down the dock and then out onto the beach, past the dunes. “I’ve still got a lot of people to help —”

“Oh, right,” the girl said, nodding sympathetically. “I know, that storm? I should have listened to the weather alerts and never tried to leave my dad’s place. I didn’t see that tree falling.” She giggled as if to say, What a klutz I am for letting that tree smack into my car and kill me! “Anyway, I’m Chloe. I just want you to know, Pierce, He puts you first in His heart, too.”

At first I didn’t know who she was talking about. Then I remembered.

“Uh,” I said. “Great. Thanks. I have to —”

“No, really,” Chloe said, eager for me to believe. “It’s true; He does.”

Was it? No one had put me first in his heart the day my grandmother had murdered me. Or my ex–best friend, Hannah, when she killed herself. Or my guidance counselor, Jade, the night she was killed. Or what about last night? Who’d put my cousin Alex first at any time during any part of his short, miserable life?

It turned out I wasn’t the only one with doubts.

“Do you even know where you are?” Tropical Shorts asked Chloe incredulously.

“Um,” she said, looking around the dock. “Yes. We’re waiting for a boat. Right? That’s what she —” Chloe pointed at me.

“Hell,” Tropical Shorts interrupted her. “We’re in hell. Why else d’you think it’s so hot? And crowded?”

The girl glanced back at me, her blue eyes wide with alarm. “That’s not true, is it? Are we in … ?” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“Of course not,” I said, shooting Tropical Shorts a dirty look. I raised my voice so that anyone else nearby who might have overheard his outburst would not miss my announcement. “There’s a boat arriving to take you to your final destination any minute now. I’m sorry it’s so crowded, we’re a little backed up, and the weather’s not usually this hot, eith —”

I was interrupted by a thunderous rumble, loud enough to make everyone, even Tropical Shorts, cry out in surprise, then turn towards the source of the noise: a wall of fog towering nearly fifty feet high and rolling slowly but inexorably across the water in our direction.

It looked like something out of one of those mummy movies where the sandstorm spreads across the desert and swallows the brave army … only there was no mummy, and this was fog, not sand. And sadly, this wasn’t a movie.

“What’s that?” Tropical Shorts asked, pointing.