Awaken

completely break down. I could not — would not — fail these people.

And yet I had no idea how to save them.

Instead of rising onto his tiptoes to press his lips to my cheek, as I’d feared he might, he pressed a well- worn, smooth piece of wood into my palm.

“What’s this?” I asked, surprised.

“It’s my slingshot,” he said matter-of-factly. “I modified it for you.”

I saw that he had, indeed, tied one of my hair bands between the two wooden prongs.

“Vulcanized rubber is best,” he explained, pulling on it. “I figured since you were a girl, and your fingers aren’t very strong, you’d need something quite a bit stretchier than the rope I normally use. This thing from your hair works like a peach. What you do is, you put your diamond in the pocket here, see” — he demonstrated using a small stone — “stretch it back, and then let go. If you run into anyone who’s possessed by a Fury, just shoot your diamond at ’em. That way you don’t have to get so near them, see? And they can’t hurt you.”

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked quickly in order to dash them away before he could notice.

“Henry,” I said. “It’s the most ingenious thing I’ve ever seen.”

I didn’t mention that if I went around shooting my diamond necklace at Furies, I would also have to run around trying to find where it had landed after hitting them. This apparently hadn’t occurred to the boy. While he’d lived in the Underworld for more than a century, he was still mentally only ten or eleven or so.

“I thought you’d like it,” he said, looking pleased.

I tucked the slingshot into my bag, then reached down to ruffle his hair and kiss him on the forehead.

“Thank you,” I said.

Henry’s round cheeks turned pink.

“It was nothing,” he said, and started to turn away, then seemed to have second thoughts and flung his arms around my waist, which was approximately as high as he stood.

“Don’t die,” he said into my stomach.

“I won’t,” I said, hugging him back. It was more difficult than ever to hold back my tears. “You don’t, either.”

“I can’t,” he said, releasing me as abruptly as he’d flung his arms around me. He reached up to scrub angrily at his eyelids, then glanced nervously in the direction of the bed on which John’s body lay. “At least, it’s not likely.”

I didn’t follow his gaze. I still couldn’t glance towards the bed without feeling the way I had when I’d fallen into that swimming pool the day I’d died … like icy cold water was filling my lungs.

“Keep it that way,” I said to Henry, and turned towards the bottom of the double staircase, where Frank and Kayla already stood, waiting for me.

“Pierce,” Frank said. “Tell her she isn’t coming.”

“She’s coming,” I said. “We need her car and her driving skills. I don’t have a license. I’m not a very good driver.”

“I can drive the bloody car,” Frank said.

“No, you can’t,” Kayla said. “You died before cars were invented.”

“If I can navigate a two-hundred-foot clipper ship through the Florida Straits during a hurricane, I’m fairly certain I can drive an automobile.”

“I am the only one who drives my car,” Kayla said.

Mr. Liu stood alone on the opposite staircase. I could tell from his expression that he wanted to speak to me privately. I crossed the flagstone floor until I reached him. He looked down at me, his expression somber.

“When you first came here,” he said quietly, “you were like a kite flying high in the wind, with no one holding its strings. Only the wind that fueled you was your anger.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t angry. I was frightened.”

“Maybe a little,” he said. “But mostly you were angry, like the captain. That isn’t a bad thing. That’s why he chose you. You’re very alike. You both feel angry — at what was done to you, and at what you see being done to others. You both need someone holding on to your strings, to keep your anger from taking you so high into the sky, you’re lost forever.”

Tears filled my eyes. This time, I couldn’t stop them. All I could do was hope that if I didn’t speak, they might go away on their own.

“Now that the captain is gone,” Mr. Liu said, “there’s no one to hold on to your strings. You’re going to go wherever the wind — your anger — blows you. You might even blow away from us altogether. The thought has crossed your mind.”

“No.” The word burst from me unbidden, along with a sob. I choked both back. “No,” I said in a calmer voice. “That isn’t true.”

How had he read my mind? And what was this nonsense about my being a kite?

“It is true,” he said. “Until you get control of your own strings, you can help no one. Not the captain. Not us. Not even yourself.”

I reached up to swipe at my tears.

“Mr. Liu,” I said. “Thank you for that. Now I really need to get going —”

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not the first to say it to you. Someone else has said it to you before, I think, only in a different way.”

“Mr. Liu,” I said, laughing in disbelief through my tears. “I can guarantee that no one else has ever accused me of being a kite fueled by anger with no one to hold on to my strings.”

“No. But a person who needs to discover herself?”

Children who fail to do well in school can often still be successful in life — my school counselor’s assurance to my parents, back in Connecticut, suddenly popped into my head — if they discover something else in which to engage.

Mr. Liu must have read the dawning recognition in my face, since he held out his massive hand. “Here,” he said.

I looked down. “Oh, no,” I said, instantly recognizing what he was giving me. “I can’t take that. John said —”

“You must take it.” Mr. Liu’s voice was unyielding. “It is the string for you to hold on to.”

It was the whip, neatly coiled and attached to one of Mr. Liu’s wide leather belts, through which Mr. Liu had poked a few extra holes so it would accommodate my slimmer waist.

I took the belt from him, shaking my head even as I reached up to put my arms around his burly neck to hug him. “Thank you,” I whispered in his ear, which had multiple silver hoops pierced through it.

He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Remember,” he said. “Don’t let go of your strings.”

My eyes so filled with tears I could hardly see, I nodded, then wrapped the belt around my waist. The last hole fit, but barely. The end of the belt trailed down almost to my knees, so I tucked it back through. I suspected the effect wasn’t going to win me any teen magazine fashion awards.

Then Mr. Graves was back, saying how there was absolutely no reason for us to go to Isla Huesos, as he was fairly certain he had enough yeast left over from his attempts at beer brewing to bake some bread, and if we could only wait —

Thunder clapped again, loudly enough to cause even the thick castle walls to tremble.

“No more waiting.” Mr. Liu took me by the arm and began to sweep me up the stairs, saying, in a low voice, “Go now. We’ll hold them off as long as we can —”

“Hold who off?” Kayla asked, alarmed, lifting her long skirts as she hurried up the stairs after us. “The Furies? I thought all they wanted was to kill Pierce’s boyfriend.”

Thunder boomed so long, the metal sconces on the walls rattled.

“Clearly that isn’t all they want,” Mr. Liu said. At the top of the stairs, he gave Frank a stern look. “Don’t be late getting back. For your sake, as well as ours.”

Frank adjusted his bag, which tinkled suggestively. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I very much doubt that,” said Mr. Liu.

We reached the open doorway. Standing in front of it was my cousin.

“What if I’m the one causing the pestilence?” Alex asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if I came with you? It might draw the Furies away from here.”