I stared down at him, thinking of my own dad. Which line would he end up being sorted into when he died, this one, or the one with Hospital Gown, Chloe, and Reed? A lot of people really hated my dad, the infamous millionaire Zack Oliviera, because his company was partly responsible for one of the largest accidental oil spills in history, which was still affecting the wildlife and economy of not only Isla Huesos but also the entire Gulf shoreline.
That didn’t mean my dad was a bad person, however. He’d always been there for me when I needed him (well, with the exception of those times his mother-in-law had tried to murder me). But he hated Grandma and had done everything he could to keep me away from her. Dad was almost like a walking Fury detector, now that I thought about it.
Maybe the Fates made mistakes, just like people. Obviously they did, if they thought it was fair to punish someone like John for a crime he’d been completely justified in committing.
I was opening my mouth to tell the poor man in the khaki pants that though I sympathized with his plight, there wasn’t much I could do to help him at the moment — I had problems of my own — when Frank strode up and wrenched the man back to his feet.
“The lady said she has to go,” Frank snarled, dragging Khaki Pants back to the line. “You can tell her your sad story — which I’m sure is perfectly true — later.”
“It is true,” Khaki Pants insisted. “You know, I was abused as a child. Isn’t anyone going to take that into account? It’s not my fault —”
“If I had a piece of eight for everyone I met down here who tried to use the fact that he was abused as a child as an excuse for his behavior, I’d be the richest man in the world,” Frank said. “My father abused me as a child, but I never hurt anybody. Well,” he added thoughtfully, “anybody who didn’t deserve it, that is.”
I glanced away from Frank and his new friend, distracted by the crowd of lost souls who’d gathered around Alastor. They were keeping a careful distance from his baleful glare but looking up at me expectantly, like I had something they wanted.
It took me a second or two to realize that I did.
“Excuse me, dear,” an old woman said in a quavering voice. In her silk blouse, with a pearl necklace at her throat and a cane in her hand, she could have been a teacher from my old school in Connecticut. Maybe that’s why I didn’t mind so much when she called me dear. “It’s getting quite cold. We saw the accident, so I know it will be a while before the next boat arrives. Is there somewhere we can go in the meantime to be out of this wind?”
I looked up and down the beach, though I knew very well there was no shelter of any kind for them, unlike at a normal terminal. Passengers had never had to wait that long for a boat before. Of course, never before had they faced such dangers as bird bodies plummeting from the sky and much worse, for all I knew.
There was only one thing I could say — though I knew John wasn’t going to like it very much when he found out.
“Yes,” I said to the old woman. I pointed towards the castle. “You can go there.”
“Oh,” she said, her gaze following the direction of my finger. “I see.”
She didn’t look all that excited. It took me a second or two to realize why. Every time she took a step, her cane sank into the wet sand as she leaned on it. It was many, many feet to the castle.
Worse, I could see that several of the people from Frank’s line — including Khaki Pants — were eyeing her pearl necklace with a great deal of interest, even though I had no idea what they thought they were going to do with it once they’d snatched it. It’s not like there were any pawnshops in the Underworld where they could make a quick buck selling it.
“Hold on a minute,” I said to the old lady with the pearls. “I’ll get you some help.”
I glanced around for Mr. Liu. He was so huge, he could pick her up and set her on his shoulder.
Only, Mr. Liu looked busy. One of his charges really had jumped into the lake, as they’d feared would happen, and Mr. Liu had leaped in after him. Now he was towing him to shore.
It seemed like I was going to have to start offering rides to the castle on Alastor’s back like he was a pony at a children’s party. He ought to love that.
Then I heard Mr. Liu call my name … my first name. Mr. Liu had never called me by my first name before, only Miss Oliviera. Normally unwavering in his old-world politeness, I knew something truly horrible must have happened to make him forget it.
Alastor must have heard the urgency in Mr. Liu’s voice as well, since his ears turned forward, and before I had a chance to press my heels against his sides, he’d plunged into the water, splashing towards the Asian man and the body he was towing …
… a body that, as I grew closer, I began to realize looked familiar. It was male, and shirtless, in black jeans.
It was John. And he looked — there was no other way to put it — dead.
8
After she thus had spoken unto me,
Weeping, her shining eyes she turned away …
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto II
He said he couldn’t die.”
I looked accusingly at Mr. Graves from the bed where I was sitting next to John’s lifeless body.
“He can’t.” The ship’s surgeon had a strange instrument pressed to his ear. It looked like an upside-down trumpet, only it was made of wood. He pressed it against John’s naked chest, listening for the same heartbeat I’d been unable to find down on the beach. “At least, he isn’t supposed to.”
“Then I don’t understand what’s going on here,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Because he seems super dead to me.”
“To me as well.” Mr. Graves moved the trumpet-like instrument to a different part of John’s chest and listened some more. “This is very troubling.”
“Troubling?” I echoed. “I think I could find a better word than troubling to describe the fact that my boyfriend, who was supposed to be immortal, is dead.”
My voice broke a little on the word dead. I couldn’t stop replaying over and over in my head that last moment I’d spent with John on the dock.
Tell me you love me, he’d said.
Why hadn’t I said yes when I’d had the chance?
How could any of this be happening?
When I’d tumbled off Alastor’s back and into the rough waves to snatch John’s lifeless body away from Mr. Liu, he’d assured me in a voice as broken and ragged as my own that if we got him up to the castle and to Mr. Graves, the surgeon would know what to do.
I’m not sure if Mr. Liu had ever really believed the ship’s surgeon had some magical cure for death that the rest of us didn’t know about, or if he’d only said this to placate me, seeing my near-hysteria. He couldn’t have thought it would keep me from doing what I’d done next, which was drag John to the beach — with Mr. Liu’s help, and Frank’s, when he’d realized what was happening — and attempt to revive him myself.
Why wouldn’t I think I could bring John back to life? I’d done it for Alex. I knew a thing or two about CPR, since it’s what had saved my life the first time my grandmother had tried to kill me. I was convinced it — or my diamond pendant, or a combination of both — would work on John.
Only they didn’t. Of course they didn’t. This was the Underworld. This was where things came to die.
It wasn’t until someone took me by the shoulders and physically pulled me away from him that I realized my own lips had grown as cold and frozen as John’s from pressing my mouth — along with my heart — against his for so long.