Jareth gives me a rueful look. “Sorry, Rayne. I would have hit the ATM in Seaside, had I known…”
“And my manager never lets me touch money,” Race adds. “He says I’ll blow it all on strippers and blood.”
“You would,” Prim agrees, looking at us all in dismay. “So not one of you has a dime to your name?”
All three of us shake our heads. “I don’t suppose he takes MetroCards?” I ask.
Charon rolls his eyes. “Does this look like the MTA to you?”
“Come on!” I plead to the ferryman, panic surging through me. “Give us a break, huh? We’ll pay you later, I swear.”
“Sorry, boss’s orders,” he says with a helpless shrug. “I mean, have you ever experienced the boss from Hell? ’Cause I have him. Literally.”
I swallow hard, my mind racing for ideas, but coming up blank. I can’t believe we got this far, only to get stuck right at the front gates. I turn to Prim. “So what do we do now?” I ask. “Go back up to Earth and go to the ATM, then return?” I hate wasting the time—not to mention going through another hot tub trip—but if it’s the only way…
Prim shakes his head. “Sorry, but this is kind of a one-way thing,” he explains. “You’re going to have to wait with the others.”
I stare at him, then at the refugees at the shore. “I’m not waiting for a hundred years!”
“I don’t actually think you have much of a choice in the matter,” he replies, not sounding as sympathetic as he should, seeing as this whole thing is really his fault. “Anyway, sorry it didn’t work out. I did try.” He starts walking back down the dock.
“Wait, where are you going?”
He looks back, surprised. “Home, of course. You think I’d wait here for a hundred years? Who would feed my cat?” He turns to Race. “I’ll check on that curling iron thing for you, too,” he adds, before continuing on his way.
Oh my God. I want to smack him so hard. “So you’re just going to leave us? That is so unfair.”
“Yeah, well, welcome to Hell,” he replies, before waving his hands and vaporizing into thin air.
Race scowls. “I hate it when he does that.”
I stare at the empty space that moments before held the Prim Reaper—our only guide to this crazy place. Did he really just poof himself away? Leave us here all by ourselves on the banks of Hades for the next hundred years?
I slowly turn to the two vampires, terror washing over me. “What are we going to do now?”
19
Reluctantly, we head back down the dock, toward the shore, where the masses are watching us with intent scrutiny. There’s quite a motley crew here—vampires, fairies, werewolves, mermaids (who, hello!, you’d think could swim across the river instead of waiting for a ferry ride!), dragonkin, nymphs, and even a few bogeymen. A practical who’s-who guide to the supernatural. And while most of them still seem pretty well put together body-wise (considering they were most likely killed in a pretty extreme fashion and should, for all intents and purposes, look like the waiting room in Beetlejuice) they all have that strange purple translucency that makes us stick out like sore thumbs.
“Do you mind?” I ask, kicking a leprechaun who’s currently sniffing my leg. Beside me, Race shoves away a curious Puca who’s shape-shifted into a giant rabbit while Jareth stares down a particularly ugly troll.
“Leave her alone, Iggy!”
I startle as a strangely familiar female voice cuts through the dead chatter. I look through the crowd, my eyes widening as I see a girl, dressed all in black, pushing through the masses to reach us. When she does, she throws her arms around me and gives me a huge hug.
“Rachel!” I cry in surprise, as the vampire pulls away, giving me a big fanged grin. “Oh my God. Is that really you?”
I stare at her in disbelief. It seems like only yesterday the poor vampire sacrificed her life at Riverdale Academy so Corbin and I could make our escape. Of course, had I known what Corbin would choose to do with his second chance at life, I probably would have tried to save Rachel instead.
“Rayne! It’s so good to see you!” she says, hugging me again. “Come on over here. I want to hear everything.” She leads me over to a small makeshift fire pit at the center of the encampment. Race and Jareth follow some bit behind, still being tormented by the eager dead, a few of them, it turns out, big fans of the rock star. “Why are you here?” she asks as we sit down on a couple of large stones. “You’re not dead, are you? I mean, you don’t look dead. You look great, in fact. Really great.”
“Thanks,” I say. “And, uh, yeah, I’m still technically alive. Or undead. Or whatever. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my sister.” I give her the short version of the story. “So we came down here to talk to Hades about getting her released.” I take a quick glance around camp, cataloging each face. “I don’t suppose she’s here, is she?” I ask hopefully. Maybe she didn’t have ferry fare either…
“She was,” Rachel confirms. “I saw her a couple days ago when she first arrived. But lucky for her, she had exact change to cross the river, so she got to jump ahead in line.”
Of course. Leave it to my former Girl Scout twin to be prepared… even down here.
“How did she look?” I ask eagerly as Jareth manages to shake off a banshee to sit down beside me. “Was she sad? Scared? Did she say anything about me?” I really, really hope she isn’t blaming me for her death…