“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, 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.