Page 81 of The Catacomb King
Josie was one of the last to go. She squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll see you at home,” she whispered.
Home? Did she mean her house? I could have laughed.
Eventually the only people left were me, Calix, Calix’s War Police pallbearers, and the gravedigger. The War Police had drifted off to the side of the graveyard, where they jostled each other impatiently. Calix, standing next to me while we watched the gravedigger shovel soil, kept glancing back at them. He was practically on his tip-toes, he was so desperate to get to them.
The sixth time he looked over his shoulder, I remarked without looking at him, “Your boys are waiting for you.”
Calix jumped guiltily. “Sorry. They need me. There’s stuff to be done.”
“It’s fine. Go have a beer or whatever.”
“We’re not havingbeer.”
“You sound like I’ve impugned your honor. I don’t really care what you do.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Because I saved your life. You were about to die in that underground lake, under that monster’s hands. You realize that, right?”
I didn’t want you to savemylife, I wanted to scream,I wanted you to savehers!“Thanks.”
Calix reached across my body. He took my hands.
For the first time since we’d arrived in the graveyard, I tore my eyes from my mother’s casket and looked at him.
He really wassohandsome. With his spun-gold hair and chiseled jawline, he looked like an angel, here in the sun.
“Persephone,” he said quietly, earnestly, while the gravedigger dug and studiously ignored us. “I know you’re angry at me, and I don’t know why, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Again, thanks.”
He huffed. “No, that’s not what I meant! Not that it doesn’t matter, but — it doesn’t change anything.” Change anything about what? “I need you to talk to me.”
“I’m talking to you now.”
“I mean about the underworld. I’ve given you two days, but I’m running out of time. I need you to tell me what went on down there.”
This again. Why was he being so insistent? I knew I should ask, but I was too exhausted, and I wanted him to leave so I could get on with resurrecting my mother. He probably wanted the information for some college-boy research paper. “You mean the Gestörbunlund.”
“What?”
“The underworld. They call it the Gestörbunlund.Catacomb land.” He stared at me, his brow furrowing. “You said you wanted to know. Look, we’ll talk later. I’m at my mother’s funeral.”
He had the decency to look chastened. But still he said, more quietly than ever, “No, Persephone, I need to know now. Because we’re going back.”
My blood spiked. “Who’s going back?”
“All of us. Myself, the War Police. The Body has authorized an invasion of the underworld. And they’ve appointed me to lead it.”
No. This didn’t make sense. I couldn’t process it. Calix didn’t know what he was getting into, or else he had gotten his facts mixed up. “Why would the Body appoint a first-year diplomacy student to lead an invasion?”
“Because I grew up here, so I know more about the underworld than anyone else in Corcagia. And because… it was my idea.”
“What?”
“I had to save you somehow,” he said softly. “I had to make a case.” He drew the enormous sapphire from his pocket. “So I did.”
