Meg Cabot - Awaken

I didn’t follow his gaze. I still couldn’t glance towards the bed without feeling the way I had when I’d fallen into that swimming pool the day I’d died … like icy cold water was filling my lungs.

“Keep it that way,” I said to Henry, and turned towards the bottom of the double staircase, where Frank and Kayla already stood, waiting for me.

“Pierce,” Frank said. “Tell her she isn’t coming.”

“She’s coming,” I said. “We need her car and her driving skills. I don’t have a license. I’m not a very good driver.”

“ I can drive the bloody car,” Frank said.

“No, you can’t,” Kayla said. “You died before cars were invented.”

“If I can navigate a two-hundred-foot clipper ship through the Florida Straits during a hurricane, I’m fairly certain I can drive an automobile.”

“I am the only one who drives my car,” Kayla said.

Mr. Liu stood alone on the opposite staircase. I could tell from his expression that he wanted to speak to me privately. I crossed the flagstone floor until I reached him. He looked down at me, his expression somber.

“When you first came here,” he said quietly, “you were like a kite flying high in the wind, with no one holding its strings. Only the wind that fueled you was your anger.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t angry. I was frightened.”

“Maybe a little,” he said. “But mostly you were angry, like the captain. That isn’t a bad thing. That’s why he chose you. You’re very alike. You both feel angry — at what was done to you, and at what you see being done to others. You both need someone holding on to your strings, to keep your anger from taking you so high into the sky, you’re lost forever.”

Tears filled my eyes. This time, I couldn’t stop them. All I could do was hope that if I didn’t speak, they might go away on their own.

“Now that the captain is gone,” Mr. Liu said, “there’s no one to hold on to your strings. You’re going to go wherever the wind — your anger — blows you. You might even blow away from us altogether. The thought has crossed your mind.”

“No.” The word burst from me unbidden, along with a sob. I choked both back. “No,” I said in a calmer voice. “That isn’t true.”

How had he read my mind? And what was this nonsense about my being a kite?

“It is true,” he said. “Until you get control of your own strings, you can help no one. Not the captain. Not us. Not even yourself.”

I reached up to swipe at my tears.

“Mr. Liu,” I said. “Thank you for that. Now I really need to get going —”

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not the first to say it to you. Someone else has said it to you before, I think, only in a different way.”

“Mr. Liu,” I said, laughing in disbelief through my tears. “I can guarantee that no one else has ever accused me of being a kite fueled by anger with no one to hold on to my strings.”

“No. But a person who needs to discover herself?”

Children who fail to do well in school can often still be successful in life — my school counselor’s assurance to my parents, back in Connecticut, suddenly popped into my head — if they discover something else in which to engage.

Mr. Liu must have read the dawning recognition in my face, since he held out his massive hand. “Here,” he said.

I looked down. “Oh, no,” I said, instantly recognizing what he was giving me. “I can’t take that. John said —”

“You must take it.” Mr. Liu’s voice was unyielding. “It is the string for you to hold on to.”

It was the whip, neatly coiled and attached to one of Mr. Liu’s wide leather belts, through which Mr. Liu had poked a few extra holes so it would accommodate my slimmer waist.

I took the belt from him, shaking my head even as I reached up to put my arms around his burly neck to hug him. “Thank you,” I whispered in his ear, which had multiple silver hoops pierced through it.

He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Remember,” he said. “Don’t let go of your strings.”

My eyes so filled with tears I could hardly see, I nodded, then wrapped the belt around my waist. The last hole fit, but barely. The end of the belt trailed down almost to my knees, so I tucked it back through. I suspected the effect wasn’t going to win me any teen magazine fashion awards.

Then Mr. Graves was back, saying how there was absolutely no reason for us to go to Isla Huesos, as he was fairly certain he had enough yeast left over from his attempts at beer brewing to bake some bread, and if we could only wait —

Thunder clapped again, loudly enough to cause even the thick castle walls to tremble.

“No more waiting.” Mr. Liu took me by the arm and began to sweep me up the stairs, saying, in a low voice, “Go now. We’ll hold them off as long as we can —”

“Hold who off?” Kayla asked, alarmed, lifting her long skirts as she hurried up the stairs after us. “The Furies? I thought all they wanted was to kill Pierce’s boyfriend.”

Thunder boomed so long, the metal sconces on the walls rattled.

“Clearly that isn’t all they want,” Mr. Liu said. At the top of the stairs, he gave Frank a stern look. “Don’t be late getting back. For your sake, as well as ours.”

Frank adjusted his bag, which tinkled suggestively. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I very much doubt that,” said Mr. Liu.

We reached the open doorway. Standing in front of it was my cousin.

“What if I’m the one causing the pestilence?” Alex asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if I came with you? It might draw the Furies away from here.”

“Alex,” I said hotly. “As you once pointed out to me, the whole world doesn’t revolve around you. And I’m pretty sure that’s true of the Underworld, too. But if it’s so important to you to come with us, please, be my guest.”

Mr. Liu might not have been so far off base about me being fueled by anger after all. Because as I said the words be my guest , I shoved Alex into the doorway, then followed him through it, figuring whatever happened next, he’d thoroughly deserve.

“Thou wouldst conduct me there where thou hast said,

That I may see the portal of Saint Peter,

And those thou makest so disconsolate.”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno , Canto I

What the —”

As he stumbled through the doorway, Alex let out a stream of expletives so colorful, I was glad Chloe wasn’t around to overhear it.

Frank seemed to agree. “Kiss your mother with that mouth, mate?” he whispered, lifting a finger to his lips.

It was so dark, however, the gesture was barely visible. Outside, I could hear the steady pounding of rain. The scent of moist earth was heavy in the air.

“I don’t have a mother,” Alex said irritably to Frank. “What is this place? Why are you whispering? And what’s this I’m stepping in?” He lifted his shoes in disgust as they made crunching sounds against the material carpeting the stone floor. “Sick, it’s everywhere.”

“Dried poinciana petals,” I whispered. “There’s a huge tree outside.”

I realized I might have overreacted when I shoved him through the door. I hadn’t given him or Kayla much prepping as to what to expect. As a team leader, I kind of sucked.

On the other hand, experience was on my side. The first time I’d passed through this door, the journey had ended with my own body on a gurney in an emergency room.

This time, because none of us was dead, we ended up somewhere else entirely … somewhere I’d also been before. Only that time, I’d had John as my guide.