Awaken

said anything to warn me.

There could be only one explanation as to why. I saw it in the way his hand trembled as he put the handkerchief back into his pocket. The truth hit me like a slap in the face.

Mr. Smith was afraid. And for Mr. Smith to be afraid, something had to be seriously wrong. Both the cemetery sexton and myself were NDEs. We knew what it was like to die, so death didn’t frighten either of us terribly much. I wouldn’t say Mr. Smith had enjoyed dying, but I knew for certain he longed to go to the Underworld again, because he didn’t remember his journey there. He’d always been a little jealous of the fact that I did, even though I hadn’t liked it.

No, Richard Smith didn’t fear death … not for himself.

But he was definitely afraid of death — or possibly something worse — now. What was it?

Without changing my tone or looking around, I slowly began to unhook the whip that still sat on my belt.

“So you know what John and I did last night after I rescued him?” I asked him conversationally.

“I cannot even begin to imagine,” the cemetery sexton said, looking extremely uncomfortable.

“We went back to my mom’s house,” I said, “snuck into my room, and made sweet love all night.”

“That’s simply wonderful,” Mr. Smith said. His head looked like it was about to explode not only from the effort he was making not to chastise me for my irresponsible behavior, but because of his fear. Trickles of perspiration were flowing down the sides of his face, and there was a smile frozen on his lips. “Simply wonderful.”

Bingo. I’d been right. Something was definitely going on. There was no way the cemetery sexton would ever say that John and I sneaking up to my room to “make sweet love all night” was “wonderful” — not unless he’d been given a complete lobotomy.

The Mr. Smith I knew would have given me a lecture about how I should have used protection because when making love outside the Underworld, death deities were notorious for their ability to make little death deities … or something along those lines.

Whatever it was that was going on, Mr. Smith was deathly afraid. So afraid, he was ignoring his basic principles in order to warn me about it. But what could it be? What could possibly be so awful to two people who’d already experienced the worst possible thing there was — death — and lived to tell of it?

“Yeah,” I said, careful not to look around, since I didn’t want whoever it was that was threatening Mr. Smith to know that I was onto them. “I wonder what we’ll call the baby, if there is one. Maybe, if it’s a boy, we’ll name him Richard, after you, Mr. Smith —”

“That is enough.”

The sharp-toned voice came from behind me, but I knew exactly who it belonged to. I’d have recognized it anywhere.

It was the voice of the woman who’d killed me.

26

And lo! at one who was upon our side

There darted forth a serpent, which transfixed him

There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XXIV

Really? It was my grandmother Mr. Smith was so afraid of?

I wanted to laugh.

I didn’t, of course. It would have been rude. But honestly, my grandmother wasn’t that frightening. True, she’d killed me once — and tried to kill me a few other times. And when she got her Fury face on, she was ugly as sin, which I could understand for Mr. Smith — who wasn’t as experienced with Furies as I was — was probably quite frightening.

But she was still only my grandmother.

Granted, she’d bested me once or twice — okay, three times — before.

This time, however, things were going to be different. This time, I wasn’t some scared, lonely high school girl. This time, I was armed with John’s father’s whip, which I knew how to use. This time, I was on my own turf, the Isla Huesos Cemetery, which I’d tromped through so many times, I knew it like the back of my hand. This time, I had friends — not to mention the police — who were about to show up any minute to support me.

This time, I had the power. This time, I was queen of the Underworld.

Most important, this time, I was ready for her.

What I wasn’t ready for, I realized the second I spun around to face her, was the fact that my grandmother had an arm around my best friend, Kayla Rivera’s waist and was holding a knife to her throat.

“Hey, Gran —” The words died on my lips.

“You’ve always thought you were so amusing.” My grandmother’s voice was scornful. “There goes Pierce, with another one of her little jokes. But you aren’t amusing. You know what you are? An abomination, just like him.”

My pulse stuttered, then quit altogether.

Now I knew exactly why Mr. Smith had been so frightened and had kept repeating the word wonderful. It’s hard to think of anything witty to say when there’s an innocent girl with a knife stuck to her carotid artery, a girl who’d been dragged into a battle between good and evil simply because I happened to sit next to her at school one day during an assembly.

All ability to think rationally fled my brain. Not Kayla. Those were the only words my mind could summon up. Not Kayla.

Then, No wonder my diamond had always turned purple around her. Not because it was her birthstone. It was a warning … a warning that I needed to save her from dying at the hands of a Fury.

At the hands of my grandmother.

“If you hurt one hair on her head, I swear … ” My fingers tightened on the handle of my whip.

My grandmother only laughed. It sounded like the cackle from one of the ravens.

“Or what?” she asked. “You’ll hit me with that dirty old rope? That’s exactly what an abomination like you would do, strike her own grandmother.”

I wasn’t surprised Grandma didn’t recognize a whip when she saw one. She wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer … not like the knife she was holding to Kayla’s neck. It was a knife I recognized, a knife from a very expensive gourmet knife set. I knew that for a fact, because it was a knife from my mother’s own kitchen. I’d used it many, many times to slice apples and sandwiches.

Now it appeared my grandmother had stolen it and intended to use it to slice open my best friend’s throat.

“Pierce,” Kayla said.

The word slipped out of her without her seeming to have meant it to. As soon as it did, she bit her plump lower lip as if to remind herself to keep still, or the razor-sharp knife that had already, I saw, caused a ruby-red drop of blood to slide down the side of the silver blade would cut even more deeply. All of the dark lipstick Kayla normally wore had been chewed off due to the effort she was making to keep still, and her eye makeup was smudged from the tears she’d shed, though I could tell she’d been trying to hold them back.

Kayla was no longer wearing her flowy lavender Underworld-issued gown — I could imagine her hanging it back up in her closet, thinking, I’m going to save this to wear later, maybe for Prom — but a black belted shirtdress covered in kicking zebras, with black platform wedges.

Obviously, when she’d chosen this outfit, it had never occurred to her she’d be wearing it in a hostage situation.

“It’s all right, Kayla,” I said, though she and I both knew this was a lie. “Where’s Frank?”

This was the wrong thing to ask.