Was 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 noisy barking …
Because he was still doing that, only now it was beside me along the shore of the vast, cold lake on which I found myself. A large black horse stood chewing on the grassy dune nearby, pausing every so often to give me — and Typhon — the evil eye: Alastor, John’s horse, who’d once tried to kick me in the head.
There was no need to ask where we were. I knew even before I heard the long, sad blare of the marina horn from the dock.
“Sorry,” John said. He was apparently referring to the horn. “We’ve been behind schedule all day.” He picked up a piece of driftwood and gave it a powerful throw. Typhon dashed after it with a joyful bark.
“The people leaving on those boats are already dead,” I said. I raised my cell phone to show him the video of Alex. “My cousin Alex is not. But he will be soon if we don’t do something. Look at him.”
John glanced down at the screen.
“Pierce,” he said, his mouth tightening. “I’m sorrier than I can say. But —”
“That’s your coffin, you know,” I said. “The one the seniors at Isla Huesos High build for you on Coffin Night, because they think you’re dead and will keep haunting the cemetery until you get a rightful burial.”
“They don’t bury it,” he said, with a grim smile. “They burn it on the fifty-yard line.”
I gasped, my heart seeming to stop in my chest. “They wouldn’t! You don’t think —” I looked down at my phone. “Do you think they’d really burn him alive?”
“Pierce, no.” His smile turned sympathetic. “They’re not going to burn your cousin alive. I’m sure they’re only trying to scare him. Even so, what the men told you was right.” John’s gaze had gone deadly serious. “I can’t let you go back there. It’s too dangerous.”
I released his arm. Typhon had returned, holding the driftwood in his huge, slobbery jaw, his massive tail wagging behind him. In John’s presence, the dog somehow seemed more mischievous than terrifying, maybe because of the obvious adoration for his master that gleamed in his eyes.
Tears stung my own eyes … not only because I was so disappointed, but because of the cold. A biting wind blew in from the surface of the lake, whipping my hair around my face and flattening my skirt to my legs.
“Pierce,” John said, after taking the driftwood from Typhon’s mouth and tossing it away again for the dog to chase. He put out a long arm to catch me by the waist, then pull me to him. “I know you’re worried about your family, and you want to go back to Isla Huesos to help them. But Mr. Liu was right. What you’re seeing on that screen may not have happened yet. It may never happen. It’s more like a glimpse, a … shadow of something that could happen in your cousin’s life. What we have to be concerned with are the facts. We know for a fact that someone in your family has tried to murder you … twice. Did it ever occur to you that what you’re seeing might be a trick by the Furies to lure you from here so they can try to kill you again? It’s you who needs protecting, Pierce, not your cousin.”
“I’m already as close to dead as I can get, living here,” I pointed out. “What does it matter if they kill me?”
“They can still hurt you,” he reminded me, in a voice that was every bit as cold as the wind from which his body shielded me. “In ways you can’t imagine, and that I’d rather you never find out.”
He didn’t have to say more. The scars left over from similar attacks — not just on him, but on his shipmates, too — were testament enough.
“Oh, John,” I said, with a groan, dropping my head to rest it against his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said this morning. Not the way it came out, anyway. I was upset.”
I felt his lips brush my hair. “I know,” he said.