Free Underworld by Meg Cabot

not a science. You’ll be thanking me once this mash is processed.”
    Beer? That’s what the doctor was making? Well, I supposed it wasn’t like there was a 7-Eleven they could run to. Apparently the Fates didn’t serve ice-cold Buds.
    “Look,” I said, trying to bring the conversation back on topic. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. But isn’t it possible you might be? John said the Furies would leave my family alone if he brought me here. But they haven’t.” I pulled my cell phone from my sleeve and turned it on. “Look.”
    Frank was already shaking his head. “Don’t bother. Yours won’t work here.” He fished in his pocket and brought out a flat black device that looked very much like the one John had used earlier that morning. “Only ours do.”
    “Hers does,” Henry said, coming to stand by my chair, drawn as much by the expression on my face as I watched my cousin’s struggles as by any ten-year-old boy’s fascination with gadgets. “I saw her playing with it. What’s it showing you, miss?”
    “This,” I said, tilting the screen so he could see the dark, disturbing image. It probably wasn’t appropriate for a child his age … but then, he lived in the Underworld. “Can you tell what it is?”
    “That’s impossible.” Frank, looking incredulous, glanced from me, to Mr. Graves, to Mr. Liu, and then back again. “It’s working. How can hers be working?”
    Henry took the phone from me and squinted down at it. “It’s a man,” he said. “No … a boy. He’s in a box. A dark box. It doesn’t look as if he’s being attacked by Furies to me, though. He’s just trapped. Do you know that boy?”
    I took the phone back from him. “I do,” I said, my heart rate beginning to speed up, as it had the last time I’d seen the video. “It’s my cousin Alex.”
    “Does Captain Hayden know you have that?” Mr. Graves asked nervously. “I can’t imagine he’d be too pleased —”
    Mr. Liu held out a hand the size of a slice of country ham. “May I see it?” It wasn’t a question so much as a command.
    I passed him the phone, then glanced down at my necklace because of the sense of foreboding that had once again gripped me. As I’d expected, the stone had turned black.
    Henry noticed it, too, and asked curiously, “Wasn’t your necklace silver before?”
    Before I could answer, Mr. Liu looked up from the screen.
    “This boy,” he said, solemnly, “isn’t in a box. He’s in a coffin.”
    The word coffin slammed into me like a fist.
    “Oh, God,” I said, the blood seeming to go cold in my veins. “Of course.” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it before. “It’s a coffin. Not a real coffin … it’s a tradition at Isla Huesos High School. Coffin Night.” I could see from their expressions that they didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. I babbled on anyway, because I was so upset. “The senior class makes a coffin and hides it….”
    I reached across the table to take my phone from Mr. Liu’s fingers. The screen remained fixed on the morbid image of Alex. Now that I knew what I was looking at, I could see plainly that it was, indeed, a coffin.
    “I knew Alex was up to something,” I said, more to myself than any of them. I was so disturbed, I wasn’t thinking straight. “He was so pleased when I told him Seth Rector and those guys asked me to be part of the coffin committee. But he hates them … I don’t know why. I’m sure he found the coffin — Seth was storing it in my mom’s garage — and was going to do something awful with it, and they caught him, and nailed him into it as a prank. But this has gone way further than any prank should go. He looks as if he can’t even breathe! Please, you’ve got to tell me what I can do. I’ve got to go back. I’ve got to help him!”
    Mr. Liu, a somber expression on his face, said in his deep, slow voice, “Often the images we see in this world of the world above are not what is occurring now,