“Excuse me,” I said. I felt like I had to say something, especially if I’d been chosen as consort for the reason I suspected … that I’d always felt a certain obligation to help wild things. They certainly qualified — though I was willing to admit that my success rates hadn’t been very good thus far. “I get that some of you may not like me, which is fair, since I realize the last time I was here, I didn’t make the best impression.” That was an understatement. “But I do think we all have something in common.”
Mr. Liu looked curious. “What would that be, Miss Oliviera?”
“Well, we’d all like to —”
— go home, was what I almost said. Then I remembered that for them, home no longer existed. Everyone they had known on earth, all of their families and loved ones, had died over a hundred years ago. They had no homes to go to. Maybe this was their family now, the Underworld their home.
“Go to Isla Huesos,” I said lamely instead. Surely that was better than the Underworld, wasn’t it?
When they sat and stared at me — except for Mr. Graves, who couldn’t see, and wore a troubled expression instead — I began to suspect I’d made an even worse mistake than saying home. “You’ve heard of Isla Huesos, haven’t you?” I asked worriedly.
The blind man spoke first, in a slightly stiff tone. “Every man who’s ever sailed under the Union Jack knows Isla Huesos. It’s only one of the busiest — and wickedest — ports in the Americas.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
This was not the answer I’d been expecting. I wasn’t quite sure how to break it to him that while Isla Huesos might have been one of the busiest ports in the Americas nearly two hundred years ago, now it was where about a half million tourists showed up every year, generally either by cruise ship, rental car, or commercial airline, to sunbathe, rent Jet Skis, and buy T-shirts that say My Grandma Went to Isla Huesos and All I Got Was This Crappy T-shirt. Hardly the wickedest place in the Americas …
On the other hand, it was also a place that had gotten its name from the many thousands of human bones that had been found littering its shores back in the fifteen hundreds. Isla Huesos means “Island of Bones.” How those bones had gotten there had always been a source of some speculation.
The fact that it turned out to have an underworld beneath it may have been a clue.
“I’ve never been to Isla Huesos,” Henry said, a wistful expression on his face. “The Liberty was on her way there when —”
Mr. Graves suffered a coughing fit, possibly from breathing in the fumes of whatever it was he was cooking.
“Well, don’t let her fill your head with dreams, kid,” Frank warned Henry, his voice a rumbling growl. “Because you’re not going there now, either.”
“I’m not trying to fill anyone’s head with anything,” I said, stung. I was only trying to do what I was pretty sure was my new job. “I’m just saying maybe we aren’t so different as you think. I know I behaved … badly towards your captain the last time I was here.” I could feel myself blushing, but I plunged on, keeping my gaze on Mr. Graves, who could not, of course, even see me. “But I feel differently now. I want to help. John gave me this.” I pulled the diamond by its chain out from the bodice of my gown to show them. “I was thinking that maybe, using it, and working together, we could figure out how to defeat the Furies someday —”
My words were met first with incredulous silence … then laughter. Everyone was laughing at me, even Mr. Graves.
“What?” I glared at them. “I don’t understand why that’s so funny. Think about it. Why would someone have gone to all the trouble of making a necklace that alerts its owner to the presence of evil spirits if there wasn’t some way to get rid of those evil spirits? On TV people get rid of ghosts all the time just by waving some stinky burning stuff and saying an incantation. So I would think the Underworld would have an even better weapon.”
“Furies are not ghosts,” said Mr. Liu, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
“What’s TV?” asked Henry.
“If bad smells worked on Furies, we’d be rid of them all by now, thanks to Mr. Graves.” Frank nodded at the black pots bubbling on the fire behind Mr. Graves.
“Frank,” the blind man said, his laughter dying abruptly, and his voice growing testy, “as I’ve explained to you before, the fire-brewing of a world-class lager is an art, 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?”