Free Awaken by Cabot Meg Page B

his company was partly responsible for one of the largest accidental oil spills in history, which was still affecting the wildlife and economy of not only Isla Huesos but also the entire Gulf shoreline.
    That didn’t mean my dad was a bad person, however. He’d always been there for me when I needed him (well, with the exception of those times his mother-in-law had tried to murder me). But he hated Grandma and had done everything he could to keep me away from her. Dad was almost like a walking Fury detector, now that I thought about it.
    Maybe the Fates made mistakes, just like people. Obviously they did, if they thought it was fair to punish someone like John for a crime he’d been completely justified in committing.
    I was opening my mouth to tell the poor man in the khaki pants that though I sympathized with his plight, there wasn’t much I could do to help him at the moment — I had problems of my own — when Frank strode up and wrenched the man back to his feet.
    “The lady said she has to go,” Frank snarled, dragging Khaki Pants back to the line. “You can tell her your sad story — which I’m sure is perfectly true — later.”
    “It is true,” Khaki Pants insisted. “You know, I was abused as a child. Isn’t anyone going to take that into account? It’s not my fault —”
    “If I had a piece of eight for everyone I met down here who tried to use the fact that he was abused as a child as an excuse for his behavior, I’d be the richest man in the world,” Frank said. “My father abused me as a child, but I never hurt anybody. Well,” he added thoughtfully, “anybody who didn’t deserve it, that is.”
    I glanced away from Frank and his new friend, distracted by the crowd of lost souls who’d gathered around Alastor. They were keeping a careful distance from his baleful glare but looking up at me expectantly, like I had something they wanted.
    It took me a second or two to realize that I did.
    “Excuse me, dear,” an old woman said in a quavering voice. In her silk blouse, with a pearl necklace at her throat and a cane in her hand, she could have been a teacher from my old school in Connecticut. Maybe that’s why I didn’t mind so much when she called me dear. “It’s getting quite cold. We saw the accident, so I know it will be a while before the next boat arrives. Is there somewhere we can go in the meantime to be out of this wind?”
    I looked up and down the beach, though I knew very well there was no shelter of any kind for them, unlike at a normal terminal. Passengers had never had to wait that long for a boat before. Of course, never before had they faced such dangers as bird bodies plummeting from the sky and much worse, for all I knew.
    There was only one thing I could say — though I knew John wasn’t going to like it very much when he found out.
    “Yes,” I said to the old woman. I pointed towards the castle. “You can go there.”
    “Oh,” she said, her gaze following the direction of my finger. “I see.”
    She didn’t look all that excited. It took me a second or two to realize why. Every time she took a step, her cane sank into the wet sand as she leaned on it. It was many, many feet to the castle.
    Worse, I could see that several of the people from Frank’s line — including Khaki Pants — were eyeing her pearl necklace with a great deal of interest, even though I had no idea what they thought they were going to do with it once they’d snatched it. It’s not like there were any pawnshops in the Underworld where they could make a quick buck selling it.
    “Hold on a minute,” I said to the old lady with the pearls. “I’ll get you some help.”
    I glanced around for Mr. Liu. He was so huge, he could pick her up and set her on his shoulder.
    Only, Mr. Liu looked busy. One of his charges really had jumped into the lake, as they’d feared would happen, and Mr. Liu had leaped in after him. Now he was towing him to shore.
    It seemed like I was going to have to