Meg Cabot - Awaken

The police chief was rubbing his chin. I could tell from his stubble that the past few days had been as difficult for him as they had been for me. He hadn’t even had time to spare on personal grooming.

As the chief rubbed his chin, he finally noticed his men — and a single female officer — had their pistols drawn.

“Hey,” Chief Santos said to them in a surprised voice. “Saddle up the pieces, people. There’s no need for that.”

All but one officer obediently slipped their guns back into their holsters. The one who did not was a husky guy with a lot of dark hair. He kept his firearm pointed steadily at Uncle Chris.

Chief of Police Santos didn’t notice. He turned back to my mother to say something in a low voice that Alex and I were too far away to hear.

But I was sure none of my mother’s neighbors missed what the dark-haired officer shouted a second later.

“Send the girl out!”

Police Chief Santos spun around.

“Poling,” he said, making a disgusted face as his gaze fell on the officer still holding the gun. “Are you nuts?”

Poling? Where had I heard that name before?

“Not nuts, sir,” Officer Poling said. “Just here to do my job. We came to get the Oliviera girl, and that’s what I intend to do.”

“Not like this, you numbskull. We came here to question her, not shoot her. Put your firearm away, before I shoot you myself.”

I noticed a number of my mother’s neighbors beginning to hurry indoors, sensing that the scene had taken a sudden turn for the worse. No one came to get Daddy’s Little Princess, however. She stayed where she was, still staring at us and sucking on her finger.

“Sorry, sir,” Officer Poling said, his pistol not wavering. “Pierce Oliviera killed a friend of mine. We have to bring her in.”

I felt the blood in my veins grow cold. He knew. But how ?

“What in the hell are you talking about, Shawn?” Chief Santos demanded.

“My friend Mark,” Officer Poling said. “She killed him. She’s going to have to pay for that. I have my orders.”

Mr. Mueller’s first name was Mark.

“Orders?” the police chief echoed. “Orders from who, Shawn? Not me. And who the hell is Mark?”

The dark-haired man looked up. It was almost impossible not to follow the direction of his gaze, even though a part of me wanted to keep my eye on his gun.

When I raised my head, however, I knew it would be impossible to look away.

The sky above our heads was filled with ravens — the same kind that had been circling the ceiling of the cave in the Underworld just before the Furies had caused the ships to sink. There were hundreds — maybe thousands — of the scavenger birds, their black wings spread out against the cloudless blue sky, flying in circles above Isla Huesos, some of them letting out their odd, almost human-sounding cries.

I had seen ravens on the island before, but always over the cemetery, and of course at Reef Key, not my mother’s house. It had made sense to see them in a graveyard and a development that had been built over a burial site. They were carrion birds, after all. They ate the dead.

So what was with the flybys over the nice gated subdivison?

The ravens clearly knew something the rest of us were just beginning to suspect … like that maybe there were about to be some dead bodies for them to feast on.

Daddy’s Little Princess pointed to the sky with the finger she’d been sucking. “Bad birdies,” she said. She was speaking to Alex and me conversationally, imparting information she seemed to think we needed to know. “Bad . ”

“Yeah, kid,” Alex said. “I think we figured that part out already.”

Only Chief of Police Santos seemed unfazed at the sight of the silently wheeling ravens.

“Don’t tell me you’re taking orders from a bunch of damned birds, Shawn,” he growled. “I don’t have time for that kind of thing today.”

Officer Poling did not appear to care what his chief had time for.

“Either the girl comes out,” the young officer said, taking careful aim, “or I shoot her mother in the head.”

The bottom of my world dropped out as I saw Officer Poling swing the mouth of his gun directly at my mother.

Suddenly I remembered where I’d heard his name before. Officer Poling had been one of the two officers helping Jade to patrol the cemetery the night she died.

Helping Jade? Or helping to murder Jade in order to cover up for a crime some other Furies had committed?

What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion, although in reality it must have taken only a couple of seconds.

Uncle Chris stepped in front of my mother to shield her from Officer Poling’s bullets with his own body. Chief of Police Santos did the same thing, only he stepped in front of both Uncle Chris and my mom, attempting to push them back inside the house and to safety.

Meanwhile, every cop standing around Officer Poling struggled to draw his or her weapon in order to point it at their colleague, sensing their chief was under attack, shouting, “Stand down! Stand down!”

In a few seconds more, the wealthy community of Dolphin Key was going to become a shooting gallery.

“We’ve got to stop this!” Alex whirled around to shout at me. “They’ll kill each other.”

Daddy’s Little Princess had another opinion. “Run,” she said in the same matter-of-fact voice she’d used before about the bad birdies , shaking her head until her blond ringlets quivered. “Run away.”

Something struck me about the little girl’s eyes. I didn’t have time to analyze it, but I knew it reminded me of someone.

“Alex,” I said. “Grab her.”

He looked down at me uncomprehendingly. “What?”

“Grab the kid,” I said, pointing at Daddy’s Little Princess. “Figure out where she lives and take her inside so she doesn’t get hurt if anyone starts shooting. Then meet me at the cemetery.”

Alex did as I asked, grabbing the little girl by her elbows. She laughed, thinking we were playing a game. “What are you going to do?” Alex asked.

“This,” I said. Keeping one hand on my handlebars, I raised the other and began to wave. “Hey! Officer Poling?” I shouted. “Looking for me? I’m over here.”

Officer Poling’s face wasn’t the only one who swung in my direction. Every single officer who’d had a gun trained on him looked my way, too. So did my mom and Uncle Chris. So did Chief of Police Santos. So did Daddy’s Little Princess. So did Alex.

Besides my mom’s and Officer Poling’s, Alex’s expression might have been the one that was most shocked.

“Are you crazy?” Alex demanded. “He’s going to come after you now.”

“That’s the idea,” I said, and stepped hard on my pedal.

Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath,

With stones a young man slaying, clamorously

Still crying to each other, “Kill him! kill him!”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Purgatorio , Canto XV

THANK YOU FOR VISITING DOLPHIN KEY, A GATED LUXURY COMMUNITY IN ISLA HUESOS. PLEASE COME AGAIN!

That’s what the sign in the gatehouse read. Funny how I’d never really noticed it until I was sweeping past it as a psychopathic cop was trying to kill me.

I had a pretty strong feeling no one in Dolphin Key wanted me to come again, ever. Especially as I neared the gatehouse and saw the guard inside it waving madly at me … possibly because of what she saw directly behind me: a line of police cruisers, each with their lights and sirens blazing.

I was sure she was waving at me to stop. She certainly hadn’t raised the garishly colored swing-arm barricade that was supposed to keep the residents of Dolphin Key safe inside, and undesirable nonresidents out.