had always been threatening to ship me off to.
Alex now saw his father only when he came home from “boarding school” during holidays and breaks. But when he did, they spent almost the entire time working together on Uncle Chris’s boat. I’d never seen the two of them happier.
My father was only too pleased to facilitate Alex’s lie. He’d found the entire adventure with John — teleporting to get the boats, visiting the Underworld, even discovering that his daughter had a boyfriend with supernatural powers — extremely exciting.
The only problem was, now every time he saw John, Dad wanted to be teleported somewhere, such as Paris, even just for a few seconds, as a joke. He didn’t understand why John wouldn’t participate with him in a joint-teleporting — or corpse-reviving — venture.
“Even if you only revived people’s dead pets,” he’d insist, “we could make billions.”
This might perhaps have been another reason John wasn’t particularly eager to leave the Underworld often, especially to visit my parents, though he was too polite to tell me so to my face. He cited fear of lingering Furies as the main reason, and the fact that we had so many responsibilities in our roles as lord and queen of the Underworld to simply dash off whenever we wanted to.
Mr. Graves didn’t approve of any of us leaving at all, at first, for any reason, but as time went by and nothing bad happened — the realm of the dead returned to normal; hot, delicious meals began appearing again on the dining table three times a day, courtesy of the Fates; and new rooms and wings showed up in the castle as if by magic … a chapel for Chloe, a gym for Reed, a library for Mrs. Engle, and a “sick” game room for Alex, complete with every console imaginable — there was really no protest he could give. Nothing except — as Mr. Graves stood outside the game room one night, watching, with his fully restored sight, Alex and Reed patiently explaining to Henry, Mr. Liu, and Frank the finer points of
“Cheer up,” Mrs. Engle said to him. “It’s better than Furies.”
“Is it?” Mr. Graves didn’t seem certain.
Mrs. Engle laughed and hugged him. Flowers were blooming everywhere after the storm, even in the most unexpected places.
We may have had to listen to the sound of video game explosions ringing through the rest of the castle, but John and I couldn’t hear them from the privacy of our bedroom, which we did not, thankfully, have to share anymore with anyone else, as the Fates generously supplied everyone with a room of their own.
Still, as the days after the storm stretched into weeks, and the weeks stretched into months, I found that, though I had more happiness than I’d ever dreamed possible, living with John in the Underworld and doing work I actually enjoyed and found meaningful, I was missing … something.
Not school, of course, since unlike Kayla, I didn’t have a goal outside the realm of the dead towards which I’d been striving (Frank had become Kayla’s primary investor in Save Yourselves, though I knew that, when the time came, I’d invest, as well).
And not the sunshine, either, since anytime I wanted I could slip out the door at the top of the double staircases through which I’d once bolted so madly, and take a stroll through the Isla Huesos Cemetery (though I rarely mentioned doing so to John, who would definitely not have approved, even though I always kept my whip at my side).
It seemed ungrateful of me to complain, since I had so much happiness, and there were so many people in the world who would have been happy with a mere sliver of my portion of it. But I couldn’t help wishing that, now that they were finally back together again, I could spend more time with my parents.
Yet it always seemed as if just when my parents and I began to relax in one another’s company, it was time to go back to the Underworld.
I understood why John didn’t feel comfortable hanging out in Dolphin Key. More than once, Chief Santos dropped by my parents’ house for an impromptu “visit” that happened to coincide with one that John and I were making. Was he watching the house … or John? The chief of police was no dummy. He hadn’t believed a word we’d told him in the cemetery. He knew something was wrong and was still determined to get to the bottom of it … someday.
He wasn’t wrong, either. Ever since I’d met John, our lives had been in perpetual danger, and a lot of that danger had come from a member of my family, one who didn’t seem particularly anxious to make amends. I’d heard that the burn my diamond had singed into my grandmother’s skin had left a permanent scar.
But Grandma couldn’t remember — or at least, pretended not to — how she’d gotten it. She seemed to remember very little about what had happened during the time she’d been possessed. She even turned out not to have much of a work ethic, since Knuts for Knitting began to fail financially. This was only partly because Mr. Smith’s partner, Patrick, had stopped buying his knitting supplies there.
Grandma began to complain that if things didn’t look up, she was going to have to close the shop and move away.
“Good riddance,” said my father. Apparently his motto of forgiving and forgetting didn’t apply to people who’d tried to kill his daughter.
The only person who offered to help was a distant cousin in Tampa, who sent Grandma a brochure on an assisted living community founded by her church. Grandma became enchanted with the idea, sold both her house and Knuts for Knitting, and left Isla Huesos, another piece of bracken the storm had swept away.
This suited everyone fine except for John, who still didn’t believe we’d seen the last of her.
“Even after she’s dead and we’ve sent her on,” he said, “I still won’t trust her evil spirit not to show up and try to hurt you again.”
Patrick, on the other hand, made a full recovery. Mr. Smith would tell me about it when I’d happen upon him in the cemetery, which I visited even more often as the days grew colder, now that winter was upon us (though winter on Isla Huesos meant that the temperature occasionally dipped below seventy degrees).
“I’d think you’d have bad memories of this place,” Mr. Smith said, falling into step beside me one evening as the sun was setting.
“I don’t,” I said, amused. “It seems peaceful and beautiful to me.” We were near John’s crypt, the roof of which had been repaired. The branches of the poinciana tree were bare of blossoms, but that was all right. I’d been assured it would bloom again in the spring. “Maybe because it’s where I met John.”
“Strange,” Mr. Smith said. “I can remember a time when you didn’t think quite so fondly of him as you do now.”
“I can remember a time when he didn’t think so fondly of me, either,” I said wryly.
“No such time existed,” Mr. Smith said. “I know another person who thinks fondly of you. Patrick. He often asks about you. He wants me to invite you and John over for dinner. He doesn’t understand, of course —”
Mr. Smith delicately avoided mentioning what it was that Patrick didn’t understand, that John and I were Underworld royalty and couldn’t go out to eat like normal people. Also that Patrick had been struck from behind, and so unable to identify his attackers, one of whom might very well have been my grandma. There’d been a second set of fingerprints found at the scene that the police had never been able to identify.
“Patrick keeps reminding me that you never tried his lobster tacos,” Mr. Smith said.
This struck me to the heart. I longed to go back to their house and enjoy their festive hospitality and have the lobster tacos I’d missed.
I put the question to John later that evening, as we lay in bed together in front of a roaring fire in the hearth.
“Obviously it wouldn’t be a good idea, I know, to run off and leave the Underworld for months and months at a time,” I said, “because then you’ll turn into a hundred-and-sixty-year-old man —”
He ignored my attempt at humor.
“But a few days or nights here and there … what would be the harm? Mr. Liu and Mr. Graves, now that he can see, can certainly handle things for a night or two. I’m not saying it would ever be a good idea to leave Chloe and Reed in charge, or — God forbid — Frank or Henry, but Mrs. Engle has turned out to have a nice soothing influence on everyone. Even Alex … well, I wouldn’t trust Alex to bird-sit, and Alastor would eat him alive, but surely he could be kept from burning the place down. And we, in turn, could look after things for everyone else if
