Meg Cabot - Awaken

Kayla looked down at the stone in my fingers. “It’s the exact same color as my streaks,” she said, pulling on one of the violet strands in her voluminous curls. “And my dress.”

“It is right now,” I said, tucking the diamond away again. “It only turns this color when you’re close by. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what it does.”

Kayla looked pleased. “It means you should take me with you. Amethyst’s my birthstone. I was born in February. I’m an Aquarius. Aquarians are highly adaptable. They get along with everyone.”

Alex made a sound in his throat that suggested he didn’t agree with this statement.

“Everyone,” Kayla corrected herself, “except fake bitches like Farah Endicott. And my brother, of course.”

Frank let the sack he’d been shouldering fall to the floor. The jingling sound it made as it hit was loud enough to draw the attention of a number of people in the room. “No. She’s not going. They saw her. Or they will have by now, on the film from those cameras at that bloody tomb. It’s too dangerous.”

“They saw all of us,” I reminded him.

“Oh, sweetie,” Kayla purred, wrapping her hands around one of Frank’s heavily tattooed biceps. “It’s so sexy when you get brutish and protective. Even though it won’t do any good, because I’m going. We may be in the Underworld, but I’m pretty sure this is still a free country. Or under one, anyway. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Mr. Graves’s face had gone almost as purple as my stone. “Frank. What is in that bag?”

Frank shrugged his arm from Kayla’s grip in order to reach defensively for his sack. “Just a few weapons we might need if we run into trouble, and some gold coins for bribes, of course —”

The surgeon threw an aggrieved look in my direction, as if to say, This is the team you’ve chosen to save us?

I didn’t entirely disagree with his opinion on the matter. Taking Frank instead of Mr. Liu — who was adding wood to the fire he’d started in the hearth, hoping it would help warm the shivering dead — had been a tough decision.

But what other choice could I have made? The worsening storm outside had forced us to give shelter to hundreds of discontented, hungry people, resulting in a growing storm inside . I needed to leave someone strong behind with this rabble, someone who could manage them but who also wasn’t a hothead, someone who would keep them safe while also showing them compassion. Already we’d had to banish the man in khaki pants who’d kept insisting to me that he was on the wrong dock, because he’d sidled up to Chloe and done or said something that had caused her to scream, startling Mrs. Engle so badly, she’d dropped a tea tray.

She’s my daughter , Khaki Pants had insisted. I can’t believe she’s here. I just wanted to say hello .

Chloe, her eyes wide and frightened, insisted she’d never seen Khaki Pants before.

I understood more than ever why the two sets of passengers had to be kept separate, and also why strong individuals of a certain temperament were needed to ensure that they stayed that way.

I was also finally able to understand how, after nearly two hundred years of dealing with this, John had lost his grip on his humanity, and why, by the time I’d met him, he’d so often behaved like a brute.

It seemed wiser to take Frank and leave Mr. Liu. Kayla, however, was another matter.

Until she said, as I was shouldering my bag and turning to leave, “You know, I left my car parked at the cemetery after I followed you guys there. If the storm’s gotten as bad as everyone says, you’re going to need a ride.”

I didn’t want to endanger anyone’s life except my own. But considering all the warnings I’d received on my phone — and the fact that John wasn’t around to teleport me anywhere — the offer of free transportation that would keep me dry was too good to pass up.

“Fine,” I said to her. “But you’re staying in the car. You’re the driver, that’s it .”

Alex cried out in dismay, even as Kayla let out a happy squeal and began to leap around. Mr. Graves shook his head in disapproval. Reed, still shirtless over at the dining table, raised his hand.

“Excuse me,” he said. “ I can drive. Why does she get to be your wheelman and I don’t?”

“Because Miss Rivera isn’t dead,” Mr. Graves snapped. “And you are. If you were to leave the Underworld now for any reason other than to reenter your corpse — which I have no doubt is in a mortuary somewhere, either filled with embalming fluid or cremated to ashes — you’ll lose any chance whatsoever at moving on to what awaits you in the afterlife. That is your choice, of course, but you asked earlier what a revenant is. A revenant is what you’ll be if you choose to walk out that door … doomed forevermore to abide here with us in the Underworld. Is that really what you want, young man?”

Reed put his arm down. “Uh, no. I withdraw the question.”

I was zipping up my tote bag, ready to go, when Henry approached me.

“Miss,” he said, tugging on my skirt.

“Forget it, Henry,” I said. “You’re not coming. We need you here, and not just to bring people tea. You’re the only one who knows where anything is, now that John is … away.”

“No,” he said. “Not that. I have something for you.”

I turned and held out my hand, hoping he wasn’t going to present me with a kiss. If he did, I knew I would completely break down. I could not — would not — fail these people.

And yet I had no idea how to save them.

Instead of rising onto his tiptoes to press his lips to my cheek, as I’d feared he might, he pressed a well-worn, smooth piece of wood into my palm.

“What’s this?” I asked, surprised.

“It’s my slingshot,” he said matter-of-factly. “I modified it for you.”

I saw that he had, indeed, tied one of my hair bands between the two wooden prongs.

“Vulcanized rubber is best,” he explained, pulling on it. “I figured since you were a girl, and your fingers aren’t very strong, you’d need something quite a bit stretchier than the rope I normally use. This thing from your hair works like a peach. What you do is, you put your diamond in the pocket here, see” — he demonstrated using a small stone — “stretch it back, and then let go. If you run into anyone who’s possessed by a Fury, just shoot your diamond at ’em. That way you don’t have to get so near them, see? And they can’t hurt you.”

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked quickly in order to dash them away before he could notice.

“Henry,” I said. “It’s the most ingenious thing I’ve ever seen.”

I didn’t mention that if I went around shooting my diamond necklace at Furies, I would also have to run around trying to find where it had landed after hitting them. This apparently hadn’t occurred to the boy. While he’d lived in the Underworld for more than a century, he was still mentally only ten or eleven or so.

“I thought you’d like it,” he said, looking pleased.

I tucked the slingshot into my bag, then reached down to ruffle his hair and kiss him on the forehead.

“Thank you,” I said.

Henry’s round cheeks turned pink.

“It was nothing,” he said, and started to turn away, then seemed to have second thoughts and flung his arms around my waist, which was approximately as high as he stood.

“Don’t die,” he said into my stomach.

“I won’t,” I said, hugging him back. It was more difficult than ever to hold back my tears. “You don’t, either.”

“I can’t,” he said, releasing me as abruptly as he’d flung his arms around me. He reached up to scrub angrily at his eyelids, then glanced nervously in the direction of the bed on which John’s body lay. “At least, it’s not likely .”