Awaken

recognized the rumble that followed the ear-piercing blast. It wasn’t thunder or my cell phone vibrating, letting me know the latest weather alert from Isla Huesos. It was a ferry engine.

“It’s okay,” I said. I couldn’t yet see its bow cutting through the thick wall of fog, but what else could it be? “That’s just the boat.”

“It’s coming?” The He Is First girl gasped with excitement, looking around bright- eyed at the other passengers. None of them could summon up her same enthusiasm, maybe because they were mostly all in their eighties and nineties and were still really upset about the humidity and the remark the other old guy had made about the ravens eating their flesh. “Oh, yay! I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life practically. I’m finally going home.”

Alex had brightened up. He looked about as excited as Chloe.

“Great,” he said. “Our chance to get out of here.”

“Uh, Alex.” I watched as he looked around frantically for somewhere to set the tray of water glasses I’d handed him. “You aren’t getting out of here. Only they are.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, continuing to fumble with the tray. “The boat’s coming. You just said so.”

“Right,” I said, aware that Chloe’s lovely blue eyes had gone wide and troubled as she watched our interaction. “But we can’t get on the boat. Only they can.”

Alex shoved the tray so roughly that a few of the glasses tumbled from it, dropping into the lake. “You said we were going home.”

“No, Chloe said that,” I pointed out. “And she didn’t mean home home. She meant —”

“I meant I’m finally going home to Him,” Chloe said, still wide-eyed. She looked at me questioningly. “That is where the boat’s taking us, right?”

“Absolutely,” I said to Chloe.

If they ask, John had told me earlier, tell them the boat is taking them wherever they want to go. Heaven, their next life … whatever you have to say to get them moving so we can load the next batch of passengers.

Where do the boats take them? I’d asked him.

He’d shrugged. How would I know? The only ones who return to tell us are the ones who don’t like where they got sent.

Also known as Furies, I’d thought with a shudder. I’d had more experience with them than I cared to.

But they only return to earth, I’d said, just to make sure I’d got it straight, to possess the bodies of stupid people. Right?

Weak-willed people, he’d said with a smile. And yes … usually.

Usually? I hadn’t liked the sound of that, but there hadn’t been time to ask more questions.

“What about them?” Alex pointed at the crowded dock opposite the one on which we stood. I could no longer see John, but Frank and Mr. Liu were still hard at work subduing the far more aggressive passengers waiting there.

“Those people are leaving, too,” I said. “But they’re not going back to Isla Huesos, either. And I’m definitely sure you don’t want to go where they’re going.”

Oh, my God, how much plainer did I have to make it? Did I actually have to say the words out loud? It seemed rude to blurt it out in front of them — They’re dead, Alex. But it seemed like I was going to have to, since my cousin was being so obtuse.

“Well, I’m sure as hell not staying here.” Alex stood so close to me, our noses were nearly touching. “How am I going to help prove my dad didn’t kill anyone if I’m stuck in the damned Underworld?”

“As soon as we’ve helped these people, we can go back to the castle to discuss how we’re going to help your dad.”

“Go back to the castle to discuss it? Who are you now, Principal Alvarez?”

What had happened to the old Alex, I wondered, who was so moody and withdrawn he barely said an entire sentence in a single day? Being revived from the dead affected everyone differently, I supposed. It had made Alex a real pain in the butt.

“Hey,” Reed said to Alex. “Don’t take it out on her. She’s just doing her job.”

Maybe Tropical Shorts wasn’t so bad after all.

“Yes, I’m sorry you won’t be coming with us,” Chloe said to Alex. “But please don’t worry. I’m certain the Lord has another plan for you.” She glanced at me. “For both of you.”

“Oh, I can assure you,” said a new, deeply masculine voice from behind me. I turned to see John sitting, tall and dark and disapproving, on the back of his horse, Alastor. “He does.”

4

When I perceived, like something that is falling,

The mountain tremble, whence a chill seized on me,

As seizes him who to his death is going.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Purgatorio, Canto XX

Chloe wasn’t talking about you,” I said to John, leaning my elbows against the rough wood of the dock railing. “She meant the other lord.”

John raised a dark eyebrow. “Oh, that one,” he said. “My mistake.”

He should have looked intimidating — the death deity on the back of his rearing ebony stallion — and I suppose he did seem that way to everyone else, at least judging by their reactions to the sight of him. Behind me, I heard Reed let out a soft expletive of surprise, and Chloe gasped.

But he was the most gorgeous boy I’d ever seen, even with his mouth twisted into a slightly cynical smile at the idea of anyone referring to him as the Lord. He was, as no one knew better than me, far from without sin.

I’d given up trying to control my pulse, which leaped rebelliously every time I laid eyes on him. I had no more control over my heart when John was around than John evidently did over his obnoxious horse, Alastor, who was prancing around in the frothy waves as if he’d stepped on some of the water glasses Alex had dropped … not that it would make a difference, since they’d have been pounded to dust beneath the horse’s massive hooves.

You can get away with making theatrical entrances on the back of a jet-black stallion when you’re the lord of the Underworld, especially while wearing black jeans, studded wrist cuffs, and tactical boots. Granted, John had abandoned the long leather coat he usually wore, but the way the strong, hot wind off the lake caused the waves to crash around Alastor’s forelocks and sent John’s long dark hair — “death metal goth,” I’d once overheard my mom inaccurately describe John’s hair to my dad — streaming around his face and neck gave his entrance an extremely dramatic effect.

John’s appearance did not, however, have the same mesmerizing effect on Alex as it did me and everyone else on the dock.

“Not that guy.” Alex joined me at the dock railing, a disgusted look on his face. “I can’t stand that guy. This is all his fault.”

Uh-oh. This was not the most opportune time for Alex’s memory to be coming back … and not the most ideal tone for him to be taking around John.

“Alex,” John said mildly, his gaze flicking towards my cousin. “I could tell it was you from all the way across the beach. Pierce only gets that particular tone in her voice when you’re around. What are you doing here?”

He had to keep a firm hand on Alastor’s reins, so the muscles in his biceps swelled a little, causing the sleeves of his T-shirt to strain.

This was extremely distracting — at least to me — but I had other things to worry about. I was pretty sure a