Free Underworld by Meg Cabot Page A

but what is to come.”
    I glanced at the screen. “Wait … so this isn’t happening?”
    “It may be happening now,” Mr. Liu said, soberly. “It may already have happened. Or it may happen in the future. There’s no way to tell.”
    “That’s why the captain ordered us long ago not to look up personal acquaintances on the magic mirrors,” Frank chimed in.
    “Though he did a good job that time I saw my mum get her purse snatched, remember that?” Henry was beaming. “He showed up in time to give that man a great big —”
    “So John went,” I said, my hopes suddenly soaring. “John went and helped your mother?”
    “Henry,” Mr. Graves said, sounding uneasy. “Please don’t put ideas in Miss Oliviera’s head. That was an extraordinary circumstance, miss —”
    “Did you not hear me? Did you not see this?” I stood up to show them my phone. Alex was still pounding on the sides of the coffin. I hoped someone had remembered to drill air holes through the top. But knowing Seth Rector and his friends, I doubted it. “ This is an extraordinary circumstance. And what about this?” I lifted the diamond at the end of my necklace, which was inky black. “This means there are Furies around. If they aren’t here, like you keep assuring me, then they’re there, around Alex. So if there’s some way I can help him, I’ve got to go. You’ve got to tell me where I can find John so I can go —”
    “Miss Oliviera, you haven’t been here long enough to realize that our work is of vital importance,” Mr. Graves said. “If the dead went unsorted because the captain was always running off to help the living, do you have any idea of the consequences, of the chaos? The souls of the dead would come spilling out onto the earth. They’d have nowhere to go, nothing to do but haunt the living. It would be a disaster. Your cousin’s difficulties are heartbreaking, yes. But so is pestilence, I can assure you.”
    “Didn’t Captain Hayden bring you here because members of your own family are possessed by Furies and are trying to kill you?” Mr. Liu asked.
    “Yes,” said a quiet voice from the stable yard door. “He did. Pierce, could I have a word with you, please?”
    I don’t know how long he’d been standing there, or how much he’d overheard.
    Judging from the expression on John’s face, the answer was enough .

 
    W as that really necessary?” I asked as soon as I was able to catch my breath. Whenever John hurtled me through space and time to some other location (or astral plane), I always felt a little nauseous afterwards, or as if I might have left a limb or vital organ behind.
    When I looked down, I saw that not only did I seem to be in one piece, I was holding my cell phone in one hand … the one that wasn’t clutching John’s arm in a grip so tight, I was sure my fingers were going to leave a mark through his leather sleeve.
    “It was,” he said. “We’re running behind schedule, and it’s clear you and I need to talk.” Then he must have noticed the expression on my face, since he looked concerned and asked, “Are you all right?”
    “Just give me a second,” I said. It didn’t help that he hadn’t told me we were going to the beach. I could feel the heels of the delicate slippers I was wearing sinking in the sand.
    “Take as much time as you need,” he said.
    But his dark eyebrows were still lowered in disapproval, the way they’d been since the moment he’d appeared in the kitchen doorway. I hadn’t yet determined how much of our conversation he’d overheard. Mr. Liu saying they were stuck with me? Frank flirting (or that’s what he seemed to think he’d been doing) with me?
    John hadn’t mentioned it. He’d simply crossed the kitchen to take my hand, I’d blinked in surprise to see him, and a moment later, it was all gone — the noisy confusion of everyone in his crew trying to make excuses at once, the smell from Mr. Graves’s mash, everything except Typhon’s