Awaken

22

They built their city over those dead bones …

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XX

Mom,” I said, confused, squinting down at the photo. “I don’t understand. Why are you holding up fake bones and laughing? Was it Halloween? Were you guys pretending to be pirates?”

John took the photo away from me.

“Those are not fake,” he said. He put the photo back in the file Alex had laid across the counter and closed the cover.

I glanced from John to my mother. John’s expression was grim. My mother’s was mortified.

I was starting to feel mortified, too, now that I understood.

“We were so young,” Mom murmured.

“You looked like you were my age when that was taken,” I said.

I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. It’s just that no matter how old I was, I don’t think I would ever have picked up real human remains and waved them around, laughing, in front of a camera.

I couldn’t meet John’s gaze. His skeleton could easily have been one of those on that beach, if his body hadn’t ended up in the Underworld instead. The idea of anyone picking up his remains while drunk on a beach and waving them around was causing my blood to boil. A faint pink hue began to tinge the edges of my vision … but not enough to block out the fact that my mother had buried her face in her hands yet again.

“You’re right,” she said. “I was a senior in high school. I should have known better. The four of us — Seth’s father, Nate; and Farah’s father, Bill; and your uncle Chris — we used to go out to that island all the time. I loved it so much … not only because of the birds, which were so beautiful, but because I could get away from your grandmother. She was … well, she was so pushy. She didn’t understand why I loved nature so much. She was always trying to get me to walk with her in the cemetery for some reason.”

I knew exactly why Grandma had always been trying to get my mother to walk with her in the cemetery. She’d been trying to hook her up with John, so she could kill him. Even then, my grandmother had been possessed by a Fury. Mom clearly hadn’t had a very happy childhood.

Still, that didn’t excuse her behavior.

“Gee,” I heard myself saying. “I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t enjoy a nice stroll around the graveyard, considering your affinity for human skeletons.”

John shot me a disapproving look that clearly said, Now is not the time to be sarcastic to your mother.

“I deserve that,” Mom said miserably. “I know. But the truth is, as much as I protest when your father complains about my mother, I couldn’t stand being around her, either. Nate had a boat. So did a lot of our friends. We’d have little parties out at Reef Key. We truly had some wonderful times.”

“Sure,” Alex said. “Of course you did.” He pulled a sheet of paper from the file in front of him. It was a photocopy of a very ancient-looking legal document. “The Rectors own Reef Key. Here’s the deed.”

Alex passed the photocopy to me. It had a lot of aforesaids and upon their oaths in spidery handwriting, but ultimately declared that on the fifth of June AD 1845, William Joseph Rector personally appeared before the judge and was awarded a certain piece of unoccupied land belonging to the government of the United States of America situated in the township of Isla Huesos. That piece of property would heretofore be known forever after as Reef Key.

Before that, it had been known as Caja de Muertos.

“Caja de Muertos?” I looked up. Though my mom’s side of the family was Spanish, the only words in their native language I knew were dirty words I’d been taught by the housekeeper we’d had when I was kid. I was pretty sure muertos meant dead, though.

“Coffin Island,” Alex translated for me as he plucked the deed from my fingers. “Embrace your heritage.” To my mom, he said, “Those Spanish explorers who discovered Isla Huesos in the fifteen hundreds. They called it Isle of Bones because the beach was covered in skeletons. What’d they do with all the skeletons? They didn’t just leave them there, did they?”

Mom didn’t say anything else. She simply looked down at her hands.

The pink tinge deepened until the words were swimming before my eyes. It was difficult to make out anything — or anyone — in the room. Where John was standing, I saw only a vague dark shadow.

I felt an overwhelming urge to reach out to grasp his hand, but at that moment a strong gust of wind blew through my mother’s wide-open French doors. Even though the rain outside was gone, the wind that had fueled the storm raged on.

You were like a kite flying high in the wind, with no one holding its strings. Mr. Liu’s words popped, unbidden, into my head. Only the wind that fueled you was your anger.

No wonder I’d felt such a strong urge to reach for John. Mr. Liu was right. I really did need to get control of my own strings, or I’d blow away.

I reached for the handle of the whip Mr. Liu had given to me. I’d slung the belt around my waist on my way back downstairs after brushing my teeth. I wasn’t sure why.

Now I knew. The minute my fingers closed around the handle, the pink began to fade.

“Wait,” I said. “Those explorers buried the remains they found, didn’t they? On Coffin Island? Is that why it’s called that? Is that why you found all those bones there? A storm or something uncovered them?”

Mom brought her hands from her face. Unlike me, she hadn’t noticed the wind. “Bones aren’t all we found there,” she said.

“What else, Dr. Cabrero?” John asked gently, as he returned from closing the French doors.

“Gold?” I asked. My mind was spinning, trying to think why she could look so pale.

Alex shook his head. “Square grouper.”

Confused, I looked from my mother to my cousin. “Is that some species native to this area, like the roseate spoonbill?”

Alex burst out laughing. “No, you idiot. It’s when a drug runner dumps his load in the ocean in order to avoid being charged. When you find a floating bale of marijuana, it’s called a square grouper.”

My eyes widened. “Wait. Drugs? So this is about drugs?”

“Don’t call her an idiot,” John said, frowning at Alex.

“Sorry.” Alex even looked as if he felt a little sorry. To my mom, he said, “So that’s how this all started? A bale washed up while you guys were partying on Reef Key?”

She nodded again, her eyes shining with tears. “Nate got the idea to dry it out and break it up and sell it to tourists. Back then, there was no such thing as Homeland Security, and no one was paying very much attention to what went on on an island so much closer to Cuba than to Miami, where all the hard drugs were. And certainly no one would ever suspect a bunch of straight-A high school kids. It all seemed so innocent and even a little bit fun ….”

“Until someone got caught,” Alex said.

Tears had begun to trickle down Mom’s face. I handed her a napkin. She thanked me and wiped her eyes, glancing furtively towards the dining room, where Dad was still yelling into his cell phone at Gary, the guy who had the ferries.

“Exactly,” Mom said. “Then someone had to take the fall. Nate convinced Chris to take the blame, insisting that as a minor, he’d go to juvie and then serve only a year or two. Nate promised Chris that if he took the rap, when he got out, he’d have a job and a small fortune waiting for him.”

“But that wasn’t true,” Alex said.

“Of course it wasn’t true,” Mom said, her voice clogged with emotion. “None of it was true. There isn’t a Rector alive or dead who hasn’t broken every single promise he or she ever gave. It turned out Nate wasn’t even dealing marijuana anymore. Unbeknownst to us, he’d cut a deal with some guys from Miami and moved on to much harder stuff. That’s why Chris got charged as an adult instead of a juvenile. The police knew and wanted Chris to reveal who he was working with.”

Alex’s gaze was on his father, who was across the yard, busily picking up palm fronds and other flotsam from the storm and stuffing them into the garbage can. “But my dad wouldn’t say.”

“Of course not,” Mom said. “You know how he is, loyal to the core. I was horrified when I found out about all of it — the hard drugs, Chris being encouraged to take the blame for what Nate started, the fact that Nate never intended to keep his promise to preserve Reef Key as a spoonbill nesting ground. I was so ashamed of not having had the guts to turn in Nate myself. I wanted to, but he threatened me, saying if I went to the police with what I knew, he’d see to it that Chris had an ‘accident’ in jail.” She began to cry again, raising the napkin to her eyes. “He said he had friends who could arrange it. I was so frightened, I broke off our relationship and left for college and never came back to Isla Huesos, except for my father’s funeral.”

“Oh, Mom,” I said, and went to her side to put an arm around her shoulders, glancing over at John. It was at my grandfather’s funeral that he and I had met. Granted, I’d been only seven, and we’d bonded over a dead bird he’d brought back to life — Hope’s twin. But it had still been a meaningful moment in our relationship. “I’m so sorry all of that happened to you.”

“Don’t be,” Mom said, patting my hand. “It was my fault. I never should have gotten involved with Nate in the first place. I was the older one and set a terrible example for Chris. He was only following my lead. I thought by coming back now that he’s out of jail, I could help him, but things have turned out worse than ever.”

“Well,” I said. “You didn’t know there was a hellmouth under Isla Huesos, or that Grandma was a Fury.”

John narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s not a hellmouth.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “It’s our home. An entrance to the Underworld, then.”

The sound Mom let out was halfway between a sob and a laugh. “No. That’s not something I ever suspected, although perhaps I should have. But I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear Nate Rector parlayed all his illegal drug earnings into the real estate market and has converted Reef Key into a high-scale luxury resort. That seems exactly like the kind of thing the Rector Wreckers would do.”

“I agree.” I dropped my arm from around my mother’s shoulders and moved to tap the file in front of Alex. He’d kept close hold on it when the wind burst in. “What I want to know is what it says in here about those bones they found on the beach.”

Alex grinned devilishly as he reopened the file. “You mean, are Seth’s and Farah’s dads building their fancy new subdivision on top of an ancient Indian burial ground?”

“I believe the politically correct term would be ancient Native American burial ground,” I said. Alex began to crack up, which caused me to crack up, but neither my mother nor John smiled.

“It isn’t funny,” Mom said. “I know what I was doing in the photo was wrong, but I had an excuse: I was young, in love, and maybe a little bit drunk.”

I widened my eyes. Mom said, quickly, “I didn’t say it was a good excuse. And Pierce, if you ever do anything remotely similar, I will ground you for the rest of your life.”

Trying not to smile, I met John’s gaze and found that he, too, was grinning. Mom still didn’t seem to get it: I was already grounded for the rest of my life … in the most delicious way possible, in the Underworld, with John.

“The Calusa Indians were fierce warriors and expert sailors,” Mom, not having noticed my smile, was saying. “And they managed to eke out an existence on these islands hundreds of years before comforts like purified drinking water, mosquito repellant, or air-conditioning were invented. They stayed true to their own religion and own way of life, refusing to capitulate to invading foreigners, even as their families were being slaughtered for doing so. It’s hard not to admire them for that.”

“No one here is saying they don’t admire them,” Alex said, pulling another sheet of paper from his file. “We’re saying the exact opposite of that … that we think somewhere along the line, someone dropped the ball. Because while there is this photo of you and my dad playing pirates on the beach — and of course that reference to Coffin Island in the deed — nowhere in any of the paperwork for the Rector and Endicott Reef Key Luxury Homes and Real Estate Development is there one mention of human bones being removed and properly reinterred elsewhere.”

Mom looked troubled. “Well,” she said, rubbing at a spot of maple syrup that had spilled onto the counter. “I suppose it’s possible that Nate had them removed sometime after he and I broke up —”

“Really, Mom?” I said to her. “If he did it right, don’t you think there’d be a marker or a plaque wherever he had them laid to rest?”

She stared at the counter. “It’s been twenty years. There’ve been a lot of storms. It’s possible they simply washed out to sea.”

“It’s also possible they’re sitting in some Dumpster somewhere on the construction site. He’s probably already thrown them under a bulldozer and crushed them into powder, but in case he hasn’t, we need to go back and look.” I glanced at John. “This could be what’s causing the imbalance. One of the first things Mr. Smith ever said to me was that no life, if it was led by a decent person, should go unremembered. He was talking about you, and Coffin Night, but I think maybe we’ve just found out about a whole lot more bodies that were never properly buried.”

John nodded. “We’ll go back.”

Mom reached out to snatch my hand, her face draining once more of color.

“Pierce, no,” she cried. “You can’t. Didn’t you hear what your father and I said? Mr. Rector has filed charges against you for attacking Seth —” She looked up at John. “Both of you. You can’t go anywhere near that place.”

“Mom.” I squeezed her fingers. “Don’t you get it? Mr. Rector can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt Uncle Chris, either. You have us.”

“You have me, too.”

We turned to see my father standing in the entrance to the dining room, his cell phone dangling from one hand, his expression bemused as he stared at my mom and me.

“But then, you’ve always had me.” He took the step down from the dining room into the living area, and crossed the room to put his arm around my mother. “I’m not entirely certain why you ever thought you didn’t. And if I overheard correctly, and it involves that Rector clown, then you not only have me, but you also have my .22 Magnum.”

“You see,” Mom said. “This is exactly why I never wanted to involve your father. He always overreacts.”

“I don’t think Dad’s overreacting in this particular case,” I said. I glanced up at my father. “How’d you do on the boats?”

“Gary can get them here in six hours,” Dad said, looking pleased for himself. His gaze fell on Alex. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded gruffly.

“Zack,” Mom said. “That’s Alex.” When Dad continued to look blank, she added, frustrated, “My brother’s son? Your nephew?”

“Oh,” Dad said. His manner softened somewhat. “How you doing?”

Alex looked at my father with something like wonder, taking in his business suit slacks, T-shirt, and unshaven face. “I’m fine. Nice to finally meet you, Uncle Zachary.”

It was only then that I realized why Alex seemed so astonished. It wasn’t my father’s peculiar state of dress. It was that this was the first time my father had ever visited Isla Huesos. Alex had never seen my father in person before, due to Dad’s extreme prejudice against his in-laws … which was somewhat understandable, when you factored Grandma into the equation.

“Call me Zack,” Dad said to Alex. “You know about all this Underworld business?”

“I do,” Alex said with a nod. “I’ve been there. These two” — he nodded first at me, then John — “brought me back to life after Seth Rector stuffed me in a coffin and I suffocated to death.”

“What?” Mom cried.

Dad, however, didn’t skip a beat. “No kidding. I’d love to hear more about that if we’ve got the time.”

“We don’t,” John growled. “Six hours isn’t fast enough, either. We need those ships now.”

My father eyed him. “Six hours is as fast as a two-hundred-twenty-five-foot-long ship built to accommodate twelve hundred passengers can travel … especially in rough seas, when they’ve only got two diesel engines with a top speed of” — he glanced down at his phone — “sixteen knots.”

John looked at me. “It isn’t going to be soon enough. Mr. Liu says some of the passengers have already begun to riot outside the castle.”

“Then take my dad’s advice,” I said, “and make your own fate. Do you know what I’m saying?”

He gazed down into my eyes, his expression filled with love, but also with uncertainty. “I already told you, the heaviest thing I’ve ever lifted is Frank.”

“I know,” I said, reaching for his hand. “But if you don’t do this, more people are going to die. People like Uncle Chris out there, and my mom.”

Dad looked up, alarmed. “What are you two talking about?”

I crossed the room to take my father’s hand. “Nothing,” I said. “We need a little favor from you, that’s all. It’s only going to take a second.”

“What is?” Dad protested as I steered him closer to where John was standing.

“Pierce,” Mom said. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing, Mom,” I said. “John just has to take Dad somewhere for a minute. They’ll be right back.”

“What do you mean, we’ll be right back?” Dad asked. “Where are we going? I don’t have my car, it’s with my driver back at the hotel. I’ll call him if you need to take a car somewhere, but —”

“John doesn’t need a car,” Alex said, with a smirk from where he was sitting at the kitchen counter. “He is the car.”

“Wait a minute,” Dad said, as I plucked his cell phone from his fingers and scrolled back to his last communication. “Here,” I said to John, showing him the attached photo. “Is that clear enough?”

John shrugged. “It better be,” he said, laying his hand on my father’s shoulder. “Hopefully we won’t end up on a dock in Hong Kong.” Then he laid a hand upon my shoulder, as well.

My father wasn’t the only one who instantly attempted to twist away from John’s grasp. Dad was the only one who wasn’t successful, though.

“No, John,” I said. “What if Grandma or some of her cronies show up while you’re gone? Someone has to stay to protect them.” I gestured towards my mother and Uncle Chris, now busily skimming the pool.

“What do I look like, a helpless kitten?” Alex complained. “I’m not going to let anything happen to them.”

John glowered at Alex. “How are you going to fight a Fury?”

Alex picked up a butter knife from the kitchen counter and began to dance around, jabbing the knife into the air.

“Like this,” Alex said. “See? I’ve got moves.”

Rolling my eyes, I took the whip from my waist, uncoiled it, then cracked it once, neatly striking the knife from Alex’s hand, disarming him.

“Ow!” Alex cried in indignation, grasping his wrist. “That really hurt. What did you do that for?”

“I’ve got moves, too,” I said, recoiling the whip.

“She always did have good aim,” my father said with admiration. “Remember the throwing stars, Debbie?”

“How could I forget?” Mom murmured. She was staring in shock at the butter knife, which had landed with a clinking sound at her feet. “You had to keep them locked up away from her.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” John said. But I could see the grudging admiration in his face.

“It proves you should probably let go of me now,” my father said, referring to the iron grip John still had on his shoulder. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to make her angry, any more than it is you.”

John held on to my father more tightly. “No,” he said. “Sorry. We’re still going.” To me, he said, “If you’re going to stay here, lock the door and don’t answer it. Don’t let anyone inside, no matter who it is. And don’t go anywhere until I get back. Not anywhere, especially Reef Key. Do you understand, Pierce?”

I made a face. “No. Could you explain it again? Because I was thinking about going to Reef Key without you, and also letting any Fury who knocks inside.”

John ignored my sarcasm. “I don’t know how long this is going to take,” he said. “But I promise this time I’ll be back soon, Pierce.”

I crossed the room to stand beside him, laying a hand upon his arm. “You’d better be.”

His gray eyes seemed to burn through me. “If anything should go wrong —”

“It won’t,” I said firmly.

“Which it won’t,” he said. “But if it should, you know where to meet me, don’t you? Where we met the first night I saw you back in Isla Huesos —”

“In the cemetery.” In the cemetery sounded better than saying Next to your tomb.

He nodded. “Under our tree —”

Before he could utter another word, I rose up onto my toes to press my lips to his. He seemed surprised — surprised enough to release his hold on my father — but not unpleasantly so.

I hoped he could feel through the emotion of my kiss the words I was too embarrassed to say in front of my parents … words I felt I could never say enough: I love you, I love you, I love you.

He not only seemed to get the message, he didn’t seem at all embarrassed, since, as soon as our lips parted, he whispered, “I love you, too.”

I looked up at him and smiled, my heart so full of happiness, I was certain it was about to burst. My joy made no sense, of course. What did I have to feel joyful about? There was no future for us in this world, and the only one in which we could live was being pulled apart.

But he loved me, and that, at least, no one could destroy.

“Hello. Remember me? The dad. The dad is standing right here. Could the two of you please not do that in front of me?” My father sounded even crankier than usual. “Also, would someone mind explaining to me exactly what’s going on here?”

“Sorry, sir.” John dropped his hands from my waist and reached to grasp my father’s arm as I walked away from them. “Don’t worry. In a moment it will all become clear. Just close your eyes.”

Another burst of wind swept in from outside, causing the French door John had closed to crash open again with a bang. Flower petals and leaves Uncle Chris had yet to sweep up came swirling inside in mini vortexes. My mother yelped in alarm.

“What’s happening?” she asked anxiously. “What are they doing?”

“Don’t worry, Aunt Deb,” Alex said, reaching for a waffle. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to close my eyes,” my father said.

“We’re all going to be damned anyway,” John said, “if this doesn’t work out.”

One. Two. Three.

Blink.

They were gone.