Abandon - Meg Cabot [70]
Why? I asked myself. Why wasn’t I seeing red, when I most needed to? What was wrong with me? This guy wasn’t that good. He was just what Dad would have called a kook.
Maybe that was why. He was just a kook. I didn’t get the sense that he wanted to hurt me.
So what did he want?
“That…doesn’t prove anything,” I managed to murmur.
“No,” he agreed, sweeping all the hair back into his desk drawer and locking it away. Evidence for later, I thought bleakly. “It doesn’t. I only mention it because I was so surprised to see you, of all people — Carlos Cabrero’s granddaughter — involved with something so…messy. I would think you’d want to stay out of trouble, at least for your uncle’s sake.”
Oh, God. Not Uncle Chris. He really was good.
“I do,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I do want to stay out of trouble.” That’s what John had given me the necklace for.
And now look at what had happened. Why had he thrown it away?
It’s not safe for you here.
“Well,” Richard Smith said, looking a little taken aback, perhaps because of my tears. “You’ve certainly got an interesting way of showing it. Now, tell me. Who gave you this necklace?”
I looked down at the stone. It wasn’t the lighting. It wasn’t my imagination. The diamond wasn’t gray anymore. It was white. White.
The opposite of what it had become outside his office windows, where it was now almost as dark as night. Thunder rumbled. It was distant, but it was there. Maybe it was the feeder bands Uncle Chris had mentioned we were supposed to get. They seemed to have come on awfully quickly, though, considering we were supposed to have been only under a watch.
I shook my head.
“I can’t tell you,” I said. It was hard to talk with the tears prickling my nose. “I’m sorry. I’d like to. But you seem like a nice man. And…” I couldn’t help thinking about what had happened to the jeweler. I didn’t think John would be coming back — ever. But I didn’t know for sure. “I just can’t.”
Mr. Smith frowned, obviously frustrated with me.
“Miss Oliviera,” he said. “Are you aware that this diamond is stolen? Not just stolen but cursed?”
I sucked in my breath, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was so like John to have given me a cursed, stolen diamond.
“It’s quite famous, actually, in certain circles,” he went on. “Well, mine, anyway. Allegedly, it was mined by Hades, the Greek death deity, to give to Persephone, his consort, in order to protect her from the Furies.…”
I felt goose bumps break out all over my entire body. Cemetery Sexton Smith, of course, was seated too far away to notice.
The Furies. John had mentioned them.
“As a death deity, Hades was, of course, disliked by the spirits of a good many souls who weren’t satisfied with where they ended up after they passed through the Underworld,” Mr. Smith went on, oblivious to my discomfort. “The Furies — this is what the spirits who disliked him so much were called. There’s some scholarly dispute over it, of course, but I believe this version. The Furies could be quite tricky in their efforts at retaliation. So Hades needed to make sure his consort had a way to protect herself, or supposedly — Are you all right, Miss Oliviera?”
I thought I was going to throw up my Coke float. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people I’d seen in line for the other boat…the one John had told me I didn’t want to be on. Had they all turned into Furies?
Something told me they had.
“No,” I said. Outside, lightning flashed so abruptly, it made me jump. “I need to go. I’m on my bike, actually. I need to go before it starts raining. So —”
“Don’t worry. I’ll give you a lift.” Mr. Smith reached for a large book that was sitting on a shelf behind him. “Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the Hades/Persephone myth. So much drama, with him kidnapping the poor girl in that distasteful manner and forcing her to live with him down in the Underworld against her will, and then Persephone’s mother having to intervene.…I never enjoy stories where the mother gets too involved.