He looked uncomfortable. “She wasn’t herself. And I owe it to your grandfather. We were friends, and … I should have looked after her a little more closely after his death.” He squeezed my grandmother’s hands. “As a religious but not very intellectually curious woman, the discovery that there exists a world beyond ours that isn’t the traditionally taught heaven and hell must have been deeply disturbing to her. Of course, to her, that world would have seemed very threatening, and so that world would have needed destroying, along with John. Oh, she’s waking up. How are you, Mrs. Cabrero?”
My grandmother blinked at him and said vaguely, “What? Oh, hello, Richard. How are you today?” like they’d run into one another at the grocery store. Her gaze flicked right past Mr. Graves and Mrs. Engle, since she didn’t know them, but when she noticed John and me, her mouth flattened into a thin line of disapproval.
“You two,” she said. She looked — and sounded — angry, but more like a prissy grandmother than someone possessed by an evil spirit. “When I get you home, young lady, we are going to have a thing or two to discuss with your mother. Having boys over all night long! I never heard of such thing. Why, in my day —”
I glanced at John in alarm. His eyes were wide.
“Hmmm,” Mr. Smith said, gently setting down my grandmother’s hand and giving her shoulder a pat. “I see that without a demon controlling her mind, Mrs. Cabrero’s reverted back to her, er, more conservative, religious roots. Perhaps taunting her about your sexual relationship with John wasn’t the best way to handle that situation earlier.”
“You did what?” John had stood to hit a Fury who’d come storming up. He was way more shocked over what Mr. Smith had said than the fact that the Fury had been carrying a pitchfork.
“I didn’t know she was there!” I protested.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Engle said, and turned pink. Mr. Graves put his arm around her and looked rightfully outraged.
“I suppose your mother will think it’s all right,” Grandma went on in a critical tone. “She’s always had modern ideas. But this is a small town, and people talk. I won’t have my only granddaughter behaving like a slattern.”
“I won’t have her behaving like a slattern, either, Mrs. Cabrero,” John said earnestly. “I keep asking her to marry me, but she won’t.”
“John,” I cried. Now I was the one who was outraged.
“Well, that’s more like it,” my grandmother said, seeming pleased. “A young man with proper Christian morals, in this day and age? That’s what I like to see. Though he’ll have to get a haircut, Pierce, whoever he is. He looks like one of those dirty hippies that ride their motorcycles around downtown, making all that racket.”
“Oh, my God, no,” I said with a groan, as John looked confused and asked, “What’s a hippie?”
With all this drama, it was almost easy to forget there was a Fury war going on … at least until Kayla walked up to us, dragging behind her the shovel Mike had dropped.
“Here,” she said, handing it unceremoniously to Mr. Smith. “You’re an undertaker, right? You should be good with this.”
“Cemetery sexton,” Mr. Smith said, looking nervous. “I’m a cemetery sexton, actually. Undertakers and cemetery sextons are two different things.”
“Whatever,” Kayla said. She had a dazed look on her face. “Start digging.”
“And, uh, why should I do that?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Because I’m about to murder someone, so we’re gonna need a grave.”
She walked over to Mike’s prone body, then raised the knife I’d confiscated from my grandmother, ready to plunge it into the back of the handyman’s neck.
“He killed Frank,” Kayla said simply. “He should pay.”
The knife was on a downward swing when I went rushing towards her, crying, “Kayla, no!”
It was John who stopped her. He flung an arm around her waist and swung her bodily off her feet, pulling her from Mike’s side and startling her so badly, she screamed and dropped the knife. It fell to the ground below, landing in the poincianas that lay in such a thick cushion, the metal blade didn’t even make a sound against the paved path.
“Kayla,” John said, keeping a gentle but restraining hold on her as she struggled to escape him and retrieve the knife. “I understand how you feel, but that’s not the way.”
“Why not?” Kayla asked, looking furious as she squirmed in his grip. “Frank’s dead. He killed him.”
John’s face went slack with shock at the news.
I thought he’d known, but it was clear from his expression that he hadn’t. Kayla’s words seemed to have been almost a physical blow to him. Unfortunately, much as I wanted to put my arms around him to comfort him in his grief, this was not the time for that.
“We’ll fix it,” John said to Kayla, taking her by both arms and giving her a little shake, since holding her had done no good. His heartache and desperation were obvious both in his tone and the tightness of his grip on her. “I swear, Kayla. I’ll find a way to fix it.”
“John.” I laid a hand upon his shoulder. I didn’t want him to make promises he couldn’t keep, especially not to someone I cared about as much as Kayla. “I killed Thanatos. Remember?”
John’s gaze met mine and held it. Around us was chaos — the shrieking of the increasingly agitated birds overhead, coupled with the shrieks of the Furies as they battled, Typhon’s ferocious barking, the mad whinnies of Alastor, the rushing of the steadily growing wind in the few palm fronds that remained in the trees, and Kayla’s sobs.
But there was a stillness within John and myself that, now that we were truly back together, no amount of external mayhem could disturb.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
There was no need to say it out loud anymore. We could read it in each other’s tear-filled eyes.
“We’ll find a way to fix it,” he said, correcting himself as he looked back down at Kayla. “I swear we will.”
The fight had gone out of Kayla. She was staring down at her feet, her riotous mane of multicolored curls falling over her face. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it and have him be … the same.”
“We’ll find a way,” John assured her. “Kayla, you have to believe me. But killing this piece of trash … that isn’t going to help anything.”
They were so intent on their discussion, neither of them saw the piece of trash they were discussing sit up and look around, notice the knife lying next him, then reach for it.
But I did.
“Not this time,” I said, and struck Mike in the chest with the tip of my whip.
Mike cursed and dropped the knife to clutch his heart with both hands. His face twisted in pain as smoke began to pour from his chest.
John and Kayla stared down at Mike as he lay curled at their feet, moaning. John knelt to lift up the knife.
“What did you do?” he asked me in wonder.
I’d jerked the end of my whip back to me. Now I held it up so the sunlight caught the winking, shining object on its tip: the Persephone Diamond John had given me.
“This works much better,” I said. Then I noticed another Fury behind them. “Hold still.”
Crack. The Fury, who appeared to be around our own age, dropped the switchblade he’d been holding and ran away, grabbing his arm, from which a thin trickle of black smoke began to stream.
John turned to grin at me. “Well done.”
“It was Henry’s idea, really,” I said. “I modified it a little. I can’t take all the credit.”
John glanced around at all the many Furies who were still roaming the cemetery. I could practically see the plan forming in his head. “We’ll be able to reach more of them more quickly on horseback.”