A high-pitched sound between a scream and a sob escaped my mother. When we all turned to look at her, she’d slapped a hand across her mouth.
“Deborah,” my father said curiously. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, her hand still riveted in place, and made a motion with her other hand for us to go on with the conversation. I noticed her eyes were wide and unnaturally bright.
“I’m not sure you’re right about the Fates, Mr. Oliviera,” John said. “But I’ll welcome any help you’re willing to give us.” He held out his right hand.
This time, my father walked across the room and shook it.
“Great, great. But Mr. Oliviera is my father. Call me Zack. I’m right about those fate things, though,” he said. “You’ll see.” He dropped John’s hand, then pressed the name on his contact list. “Gary? Hey, Gary, it’s me, Zack Oliviera, how are you? Yeah, I know, me, too, that was some storm, huh? How’d you make it through? Any of those ferries of yours left?”
John sent me a long-suffering look as my father wandered into the dining room, his cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Thanks,” I said, slipping an arm around his waist. “I know he can be a challenge.”
“A challenge?” John echoed in disbelief. “That’s not how I tend to describe someone threatening to shoot me.”
“I know.” I flinched. “Sorry about that. But you see how amazing he can be when he tries.”
“Perhaps,” John said, sliding one of his own arms around my waist. “But, Pierce, even if your allegedly amazing father is able to acquire those ships, how am I supposed to get them to the Underworld?”
“Can’t you just blink them there?”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “You do know that the heaviest thing I’ve ever transported to the Underworld is Frank, right?”
I toyed with the diamond at the end of my necklace. “I’m the one who has to get rid of all the Furies somehow. Talk about challenges. You concentrate on yours, and I’ll concentrate on mine.”
John shook his head, pulling me closer. “No. We’ll work on our challenges together.” He glanced at the kitchen counter. “What are we going to do about her?”
I gazed with concern at my mom, who had her head buried in her arms again. “She can be amazing, too,” I whispered, “but I think I’m going to need to spend a little quality time with her in order to help her adjust, especially now that you dropped the M word in front of her.”
John looked puzzled. “The M word?”
“Marriage. Between that and the revelation that this is about demons and not drugs, I’m pretty sure she’s having a nervous breakdown.”
John’s expression went from puzzled to as concerned as mine, but not, I soon learned, for the same reasons.
“I wish we had that kind of time, but we don’t.” He released me to dig into his pocket for the tablet he’d retrieved at the same time I’d snuck back upstairs to brush my teeth, wash my face, and run a brush through my hair. “Mr. Liu says the number of newly arriving souls has slowed down since the storm moved out to sea, but the situation is still beyond critical.”
“I’m not the one causing the imbalance, then,” I said, still fingering my necklace. “I’m not there. It wasn’t Thanatos, either, since I destroyed him. Something else is. Only what?”
There was a loud rattling sound on the other side of the French doors, all of which my mom and dad had unshuttered and thrown open to let in the beautiful morning sunshine. It sounded as if someone was letting himself in by the side gate where my mom and I kept our bikes and the trash cans.
My heart gave a sudden swoop inside my chest.
“John,” I whispered. “What if it’s the police, come to arrest us?”
John reached out and took my hand. “They’ll never lay a finger on you,” he said.
I knew what he meant. We’d be gone before the police ever got inside the room.
It wasn’t the police, however. It was Alex, who loped inside, a backpack slung over one shoulder. He’d changed clothes since the last time I’d seen him. His dark hair was still damp on the ends, and he smelled newly showered.
“There you are,” he said casually, not noticing the tense looks John and I wore. “I’ve been calling you for ages. I don’t know why I bothered; you never answer your phone anyway.”
I’d remembered to slip my phone into the pocket of my dress. I’d forgotten, however, to turn it on.
“We, uh, just woke up a little while ago,” I said, sheepishly dropping John’s hand to hit the power button on my phone. “Where are Frank and Kayla?”
“They went to Kayla’s place to change, then to your friend Mr. Smith’s,” he said, with a meaningful glance at my mom. It was clear he didn’t think we should be talking about any of this in front of her. “They wanted to give Patrick his, er, car back. Then they said they’d meet us” — he lowered his voice, mumbling the next few words so only I could hear them — “at the cemetery.” His tone returned to normal. “Hi, Aunt Deb. Are you okay? You look like you’ve got a headache or something.”
Mom lifted her head. “I’ve been better,” she said. “Would you like some waffles?”
“That’s okay, I just took my dad to breakfast at Denny’s to get him out of the house.” Another meaningful glance at me. “Away from Grandma.”
Mom looked surprised. “Your dad? Oh, Alex, that’s great. How is he doing?”
“Still charged with murder, thanks, Aunt Deb. But I appreciate your bailing him out. Dad? Hey, Dad?”
To my surprise, Uncle Chris poked his head through one of the open sets of French doors. In one hand he was holding an enormous black plastic trash can. In the other, he was dragging a five-foot-long palm frond that had been knocked down by the storm.
“Oh, hey, Deb,” he said with a grin when he saw my mother. “Alex said he wanted to come over and I thought it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get started on your cleanup. Cassandra was a mean one, huh? Lot of poinciana blossoms in your pool, which is weird, since I didn’t think there was one of those trees around here ….”
His voice trailed off as his gaze landed on me. Then his eyes lit up … until he noticed John. Then he frowned a little. “Piercey! And … you.”
John stepped up to him, his right hand extended. “John,” he said. “Remember? It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Cabrero.”
Uncle Chris didn’t look as if he thought it was so nice to see John again, but he stuffed the palm frond into the garbage can, then shook John’s hand.
“How you doing?” he asked. Then he took a deep breath and said, “Well, I’m going to get back to work. Lots to do if we’re going to get this place cleaned up.” He wrinkled his nose slightly. “Hey, uh, no offense, Deb, but it smells like burned toast in here.”
“Oh, no,” Mom said with a semihysterical laugh. “That was just Pierce’s boyfriend. He lit the carpet on fire with his brain.”
Uncle Chris looked at her as if she’d lost her mind — which I think she had, sort of — and nodded.
“Okay,” Uncle Chris said. “Just checking.” Then he quickly wheeled the trash can away, into the backyard.
Alex, who’d slid onto one of the kitchen counter stools, froze. Only his eyes moved as he cut his gaze towards my mother. “Wait … you know?”
“Of course we know,” Mom said. “Why haven’t you told your father yet, Alex? This involves him. After all, Grandma is his mother, too.”
Alex glanced from me to my mother like we were both crazy. “I know. Why do you think I haven’t let him out of my sight since I got here? I’m keeping him as far away from her as I possibly can. But I can’t tell him about any of this. He wouldn’t be able to handle it.”