Meg Cabot - Awaken

“That’s enough,” my dad said sharply. He swung around to glare at John, his expression angrier than I’d ever seen it … and Zack Oliviera was famous for his ill temper. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of this — money, celebrity, whatever — but you’ve been taking advantage of a mentally ill young woman. That may not be a prosecutable offense, but trust me, by the time I’m through with you, not only will you never walk again, you’ll also never work in this country, or any other —”

Thunder rumbled. It was soft at first, like the sound of an unmuffled motorcycle engine on a neighboring block. But as John’s impatience with my parents grew, so did the sound, until every bit of glassware in my mother’s house was tinkling from the vibration.

“What is that?” she cried. In a panic, she’d thrown her hands over her ears.

“Earthquake?” my dad asked. He tried to steer me from beneath the elaborate wrought iron and crystal chandelier Mom had hanging in the foyer, but I stepped from his reach.

“No,” I said. “It’s him.” I pointed at John. “John, stop it. You’ve made your point.”

My parents hadn’t seemed to have gotten it, however.

“That’s impossible,” my dad said.

“He’s ruler of the Underworld.” I shook my head. Why had I thought reasoning with them would work? “You think he can’t control the weather? John, stop it, please. It’s too much.”

The thunder ceased. But a bolt of bright white lightning cracked from the center of my mother’s living room ceiling to the floor, causing one of her expensive imported carpets to burst into flame.

“I love your daughter,” John said to my stunned parents. “And no one is going to keep us apart. I hope you understand now.”

“Now you’re just showing off,” I said dryly to John as I went to the garage to get the fire extinguisher.

“’Tis true that in the early centuries,

With innocence, to work out their salvation

Sufficient was the faith of parents only.”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Paradiso , Canto XXXII

My parents’ attitude towards John improved significantly after he set my mom’s living room carpet on fire with a lightning bolt.

Improved might be too strong a word. I think they were actually a little bit afraid of him.

Fear isn’t such a bad thing if it causes people to be more careful about the things they do and say. But it’s upsetting to see people you love acting fearful around someone else you love, even when it’s preferable to the way they were acting before. I had to help my mom into one of the chairs at the kitchen counter and make her another coffee with extra sugar before she could begin to process the whole thing. It seemed too much for her ultra-organized scientist’s brain to take.

“It’s not possible,” she kept repeating. “It’s simply not possible. An underworld? Beneath Isla Huesos? And that’s where you’ve been this whole time?”

“Yes, Mom,” I said, sliding a plate of waffles in front of her. “Here, eat these. You’ll feel better, I promise.”

Maybe because his brain was more entrepreneurial, my dad was able to take the whole thing more in stride.

“So do you think you could do that trick with the lightning on a larger scale?” he asked John. “Turn it up ten thousand or so megawatts — whatever they call them — and focus all that energy on a target about the size of, say, a military base?”

“Dad,” I said with a warning tone in my voice.

“I suppose I could.” John was eating bacon from a plate my dad had put in front of him. “But I won’t.”

“That’s fair,” Dad said. “That’s fair. I like a man with principles. Would it change the way you feel if I told you this military base had fired on American soldiers?”

“John, don’t listen to him. Dad, I told you, John already has a job.”

“Right, right, he sorts souls of the dead. How much does one earn in a job like that, if you don’t mind my asking? Ballpark figure, of course.”

“Dad!”

“I’m just saying, if the boy came to work for me, I could pay him double or triple what he’s earning now —”

“It’s not that kind of job, Dad. But I do think there might be a way you could help us.”

John scowled at me over the forkful of eggs he was scooping into his mouth. We’d foregone the waffles, the memory of our great waffle fight still being a little too fresh in our minds for comfort. Fortunately, there were also scrambled eggs.

I could understand how John might not be eager to accept help from a man who’d threatened to shoot him in the knees, but the truth was, my dad had access to considerable resources. And I figured if there was anything the two of us — not to mention the Underworld — could use right now, it was resources.

“My dad owns a really big company, John,” I explained.

Now John scowled into the cup of coffee he was drinking. “You might have mentioned it one or two hundred times since I met you.”

“It’s a company that makes things for the military.” I raised my eyebrows meaningfully.

John’s scowl deepened as he set down the coffee cup. “Weapons don’t work on Furies. You know that.”

“Not Furies again,” my mom said. “All this talk of Fates and Furies … none of it makes any sense .”

“Grandma being possessed by a murderous demon from hell makes perfect sense to me,” Dad said. “It’s about the only thing I’ve heard this morning that does.”

My mother dropped her head down onto her folded arms. “You told Christopher it was drugs,” she said to the kitchen counter. “Why couldn’t it be drugs?”

I stared at her. “You’d rather this whole thing was about drugs?”

Mom lifted her head. “Than demons? Yes, Pierce, I would. Drugs I can understand. Drugs make sense. With drugs you can go to rehab or call the police and have someone arrested. What are we supposed to do about a demon possessing my mother?”

Dad lifted his coffee. “You’re entitled to your own opinion, of course, but if she really did try to kill Pierce —”

Mom dropped her head into her arms and groaned.

“— well, then I say John here should just hit her with one of his lightning bolts.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Dad,” I said.

“I need an aspirin,” pleaded my mom.

“And I’m not talking about weapons,” I said to John. “I’m talking about boats. Really big boats.”

My dad glanced from me to John and then back again. “A division of my company does make boats. What kind of boat are you talking about? Tanker? Frac? Lift?”

“Passenger,” I said quickly. “I was thinking of a passenger ship. Something along the lines of a ferry.”

“Pierce,” John said warily.

“We make ships specializing in oil services,” Dad said, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. “But I know a guy who … well, let’s just say I know a guy.”

“We’d need two,” I said. “And we’d need them right away.”

“For how long?” Dad scrolled through his contact list.

“Forever.”

My father’s finger froze on the screen of his phone as he glanced at me in surprise. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Pierce.” John pushed away from the kitchen counter and stood up. “May I have a word with you outside?”

I knew how much he hated asking my father for help, but I couldn’t see any alternative.

“John, it’s all right. After everything we’ve been through, I think we can talk in front of my parents.” I crossed the room to take one of his hands. He was so tense, he was holding them both clenched in fists. I had to pry his fingers open in order to slip mine through his. “If you’ve thought of some other way to get the ships, tell me what it is.”