Meg Cabot - Awaken

His fingers were already slipping away from mine, despite how tightly I’d held on to them.

“I know you can, my bloodthirsty little love,” he said, his grin wider than ever. “The problem is that the Furies know it now, too.” Instead of moving away from me, he wrapped his arm once more around my waist, drawing me close to his bare chest. “The last place you should be is out here in the open where they can find you. You’re our weapon of last resort. We can’t afford to lose you.”

I looked up at his lips, hovering just inches above mine. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed those lips until they were as close as they were now. I could feel the heat from his thighs through the thin material of my dress, the strong sinews in his arms beneath my hands.

“I’m the one who can’t afford to lose you ,” I said.

“But I can’t die,” he reminded me. “I only know what it’s like to feel dead inside. That’s how I felt until the moment you appeared on this beach … remember? You marched up to me and started telling me how unfairly you thought I was treating everyone. That’s when I started feeling alive again for the first time in … well, a long time. That’s why it hurt so much when you left —”

“Why do you have to keep bringing that up?” I asked. His close proximity was making me feel a little breathless. “I’ve apologized a million times for throwing that tea in your face —”

“Because that was my fault. I didn’t handle that situation, or others involving you, in the” — he searched for the word he wanted — “gentlemanly fashion I should have. But I swore if I got a second chance, I’d make it up to you. It hasn’t been easy. Sometimes it’s seemed as if I’d lost you. That made me feel dead again inside.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips. “So then why are you in such a good mood?”

“Because,” he said. He was holding me so close, I could feel his own heart beating against mine, strong and steady. “I think I have the answer to my question.”

“What question?”

“Whether or not you’ve forgiven me. You must have, or you wouldn’t be so concerned for my health.” He was openly grinning now, his teeth flashing even and white against skin that was almost as dark as mine due to the amount of time he spent wandering around the Isla Huesos Cemetery. “Tell me you love me.”

“No,” I said. It was difficult to keep my voice from shaking, but I was determined not to fall apart in front of him. I figured that was what a consort would do, stay strong.

The smile faded, his face awash in sudden uncertainty. “No? No, you don’t love me? Or no, you won’t tell me?”

“I mean, no, I’m not telling you that. See, this way you won’t be able to do anything stupid like sacrifice yourself for the rest of us. You’ll have to come back to find out how I really feel about —”

He didn’t let me finish. He lowered his lips to mine, kissing me so deeply that the cold shards in my spine turned to warm tingles, rippling from the soles of my feet all the way up to the base of my neck. Even my frozen heart began to thaw. Every inch of me melted at his touch, became soft in response to his hardness, alive in a way it hadn’t been the second before his mouth met mine.

It wasn’t only because he had the ability to raise the dead and heal wounds (and I had a lot of wounds to heal — my scars simply didn’t show on the outside, though, so no one could see them), or even because he was so incredibly attractive.

It was because of what I hadn’t told him: that I loved him. I don’t know how he couldn’t tell from the very first second our lips touched. Every beat of my heart seemed to shout it: I love you. I love you. I love you.

But I knew I was right. I didn’t dare say it out loud.

Then, just as abruptly as he’d started kissing me, he thrust me away, as if I were something he’d suddenly remembered he needed to resist. Which I was, at least for now. He was something I needed to resist, as well, because like he’d said, the Furies weren’t only on those boats. They were everywhere.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

“Don’t worry,” he said. The smile had returned, but it wasn’t quite as cocky as it had been before. “I’ll be back.”

Then he leaped over the dock railing and dove towards the dark, churning waves, vanishing from sight right before he struck the water.

If only I’d realized then that I’ll be back were the last words I was ever going to hear him say.

“Mars draws a vapour up from Val di Magra,

Which is with turbid clouds enveloped round,

And with impetuous and bitter tempest … ”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno , Canto XXIV

Kayla appeared a moment after John vanished, keeping a wary distance from Alastor’s enormous jaws.

“Did I see what I think I just saw?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I’d ducked my head in the hope that what she thought she saw weren’t my eyes filled with tears. “What do you think you just saw?”

“Your boyfriend dive into, like, three feet of water. He didn’t come up, either. He’s probably drowned or turned into a merman. Honestly, I don’t know which would be worse —”

“Did you see a splash?” I interrupted.

Kayla looked surprised. “Now that you mention it … no, no splash.”

“Yeah. He’s not in the water.” All the warmth that John had injected into my body with his kiss had disappeared. I felt cold again, and not only because fingers of fog had begun to creep ashore and were tingeing the formerly hot wind with ice.

“Well, where is he, then?” Kayla asked.

I exhaled. “I can only assume he’s off fighting invisible forces of evil. They’re called Furies. Did Frank mention those to you? John’s job is to fight the Furies and to make sure this place runs smoothly and that the souls of the dead get to their afterlives. And Frank’s job is to help him.”

Kayla shook her head with enough energy to send her springy dark curls bouncing on her bare shoulders. “The way Frank described it, it’s his job to run this place. Your boy, John, is more like his sidekick. Frank said they get paid in pure solid gold. He said he’s going to give me some.”

“Right,” I said, reaching for Alastor’s bridle and then gritting my teeth in annoyance as he swung his head away from me. “You should totally believe everything boys tell you, especially Frank. Help me grab this horse, will you?”

“Uh, no thanks,” Kayla said. “Frank better not have been lying about the gold. I was planning to use it to pay for my surgery.” She pointed to her chest. One of the first things she’d told me the day we’d met was that she was having breast reduction surgery as soon as she turned eighteen.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, if we don’t get out of here, you’ll be able to use those as flotation devices.”

Kayla laughed. “You really are crazy, chickie,” she said. “You know that? I couldn’t understand what you were doing in all my classes at first. I was like, ‘Poor little white girl.’ But now I know. No wonder they put you in D-Wing.”

“They put you in D-Wing, too,” I said defensively. “So what does that say about you?”

“Everyone knows I’m crazy,” she said. “But you go around looking like the pretty little rich girl on the outside, not a care in the world.”

Her words chilled me to the bone, more than any wind ever could. Did people really think of me that way? I wondered. Pretty little rich girl? Was that what I got for keeping my scars so well hidden, buried so deep?

“Well, everyone’s wrong,” I said. “I’m not just a pretty little rich girl without a care in the world. I’m the queen of the Underworld. So people better stay out of my way.”