Meg Cabot - Awaken

“Hope,” I cried. “Is that your husband? Is that where you were this whole time? Did you fly off to find your family and then bring them home to help us fight those nasty ravens?”

“Okay,” John said, his grip tightening on me. “Now you’re talking to the birds. I think you’ve killed enough Furies for one day. Let’s go round up the others and head home —”

“Of course I talk to Hope,” I said. “You talk to Alastor. And why wouldn’t that be Hope’s husband? You’re the one who told me mourning doves mate for life. I think we should name him. What do you think would be a good name for —?”

“Excuse me,” said a deep, masculine voice behind us. “But would you two mind getting down off that horse? We’d like to have a word with you if we may.”

I turned my head and looked down. It was Chief of Police Santos. Standing next to him was my father and my cousin Alex.

And, he to me: “Thou’lt mark, when they shall be

Nearer to us; and then do thou implore them

By love which leadeth them, and they will come.”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno , Canto V

Patrick Reynolds,” Chief of Police Santos said, looking at the notepad he’d drawn from his belt. “Says here he’s in stable condition after surgery for blunt-force trauma to the head. Neighbor found him and called an ambulance.”

Mr. Smith buried his face in his hands. “Oh, thank God.”

I laid a hand on Mr. Smith’s back. We were all gathered on the front porch of the cemetery sexton’s office. Even though the roof of the back of the cottage had been smashed in by the Spanish lime tree, the front of the house seemed sturdy enough, and the porch offered a rare bit of shade. Though it was late afternoon, the sun was still beating down like it was … well, an island in the subtropics.

“It was Mike,” Kayla said, her voice as cold as the bottle of water we’d each been handed by one of the emergency medical services technicians who’d shown up shortly after Chief Santos and his officers. “Mike did it.”

Chief Santos didn’t have to check his notepad. “I got that, young lady,” he said. “The last five times you said it.”

“I just want to make sure.”

Kayla hadn’t said anything about Mike having killed Frank, because John had assured her that he was going to “fix” Frank. Mr. Liu had hidden Frank’s body in John’s crypt so the police wouldn’t find it. We’d all agreed privately that it was better not to admit to Kayla that John had no idea how he was going to “fix” Frank.

The thought of Frank lying dead in that cold, dank crypt made me shudder. I could only imagine how it made Kayla feel.

“His prints are all over Mr. Smith’s house,” Chief Santos said. “We have them on file from a B and E he committed a few years back. Mike actually has quite an extensive record.”

“I thought he was doing better,” Mr. Smith said mournfully.

Chief Santos made a sarcastic sound, like a hard-bitten cop who didn’t have much faith left in humanity. Of course, he didn’t know the island he worked on had literally been overrun by demons from hell, though he might have wondered about the odd migratory patterns of the birds here.

“You might want to see if his DNA matches up to any found at the scene of Jade Ortega’s murder,” I said. “Also Officer Poling’s.”

Chief Santos sent me a sharp look. “What do you know about Officer Poling?”

“My daughter’s not going to offer up any more information,” my dad said casually, from the porch railing against which he was leaning, “without a lawyer present.”

“A lawyer shouldn’t be necessary,” Chief Santos said with practiced ease, turning a page in his notepad. “She isn’t being charged with anything. I’m just curious. Officer Poling is dead.”

My eyes widened. “He is ? What happened?”

“He drew his weapon on a civilian,” Chief Santos said. He kept his gaze on his own handwriting. “We were forced to fire.”

Now I knew why it had taken the police so long to get to the cemetery. It hadn’t just been the tree that had been blocking the road.

“Was the civilian the man with the chain saw?” I asked worriedly, though I was fairly certain I knew the answer. “Was he hurt?”

“Yes, he did have a saw, and no, he was unharmed,” the chief said, looking up at me. “Why? Did you know him?”

I shook my head. John, seeing my discomfort, put his arm around me, and Hope, still sitting perched on my shoulder, trilled a few notes. Her mate, perched in the rafters of the porch, trilled back.

Why had the man with the chain saw, I wondered yet again, risked his life to save me, a total stranger? None of it made any sense.

“What kind of dog did you say that was again?” Chief Santos said, pointing at Typhon, who lay in the dirt at the bottom of the porch steps, panting heavily, though he’d been offered a large bowl of water by the EMTs.

“He’s a bullmastiff,” Mrs. Engle said cheerfully, as Chloe gave the dog a pat on the head, which he showed his appreciation for by licking her on the leg.

Chief Santos eyed the dog skeptically. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve seen those kinds of dogs before, and they didn’t look like that. I’ve seen you before, too,” he added, jabbing his pen in Chloe’s direction. “You look a lot like that girl that’s been all over the news, the homeschooled, Christian one from Homestead, who they say gut shot her father because he was physically abusing her mom.”

I stared at Chloe in horror, remembering the man in khaki pants with the huge bloodstain on the front of his shirt, the one who’d kept insisting he was in the wrong line — the one to hell — and that he knew Chloe.

He had known Chloe. She was the one who’d put him in that line.

“Oh,” Chloe said to Chief Santos, a dazzling smile on her face. “That couldn’t be me. That girl died in the storm in a horrible car accident.”

“Yeah,” Chief Santos said, lowering his pen. “I heard that.”

I noticed the shards of glass were gone from Chloe’s hair, and she’d washed away the blood, too.

“Oh, the poor dear,” Mrs. Engle said, laying a hand on Mr. Graves’s shoulder. “How perfectly awful for that girl.”

“Sounds like a bad situation all around,” Mr. Graves agreed.

“But I’m happy that her mom is finally free,” Chloe said.

“I’m happy for that girl’s mom, too,” Reed said, reaching out to take Chloe’s hand.

On my shoulder, Hope cooed happily, but I was thinking of a different girl, the one from my mom’s neighborhood who’d worn the Daddy’s Little Princess T-shirt. I wondered what had happened to her. I looked around for Alex in order to ask him. He had been with my father and the chief of police earlier, but now he seemed to have disappeared.

“What are you two supposed to be?” Chief Santos demanded, his gaze falling on Mr. Liu and Henry, Mr. Liu in his leather and tattoos, and Henry in his silver-buckled shoes and long, nineteenth-century jacket.

On cue, Henry flung his arms around Mr. Liu and began to weep crocodile tears. “Daddy,” he cried. “Don’t let the policeman take me away!”

Mr. Liu laid a massive hand upon Henry’s head and patted his not-particularly clean hair. “He’s adopted,” he said to Chief Santos in his usual laconic fashion.

“I see,” Chief of Police Santos said, not falling for the act for a second. “Okay. Here’s the situation. I got a problem with all of this. And all of you, too.” He made a circle in the air with his pen that seemed to incorporate the whole of the cemetery and everyone sitting on the porch, as well.