Read Online Underworld by Meg Cabot - Free Book Online

the captain’s guest, Mr. Graves,” the boy with the thorn tattoos — Frank, the old man had called him — said. “Guests aren’t usually confined to quarters. Prisoners are, though. And don’t prisoners usually get punished for disobeying orders?”
    There was a gleam in his cold dark eyes as he said the word punished that suggested he enjoyed administering punishments.
    I clutched the back of the chair nearest me and sank down into it. I was pretty sure it looked natural, though, and not like my knees had given out, which of course they had.
    “Stop trying to frighten her, Frank,” said a mountain of a man sitting across the table from me. I hadn’t noticed him because he’d been so quiet. But he was even bigger than Frank, and like him, dressed in black leather and covered in tattoos. Unlike Frank, who looked to be about John’s age, and wore his black hair in a complicated pattern of short braids close to his head, this man was older, and had shaved his skull completely bald … except for one long single black braid growing from the back of his head. His tattoos were of colorful birds and flowers, not thorns. “As if that dog didn’t scare her half to death already.”
    “Her being so easy to frighten just further proves my point,” Frank said, continuing a conversation I’d obviously interrupted … a conversation they’d been having about me. “She’s not the one. So why are we bothering with niceties?”
    “Only a fool is never afraid, Frank,” Mr. Graves, the old man by the fire, said. “Heroes are the people who carry on despite their fear, because they know the job’s got to get done —”
    “— and they’re the only ones left to do it.” Frank snorted. “Yes, yes, you’ve only mentioned it a thousand times. How did she even get in here, Henry? Did you forget to lock the door again?”
    “It’s not my fault.” Henry, having set the tray of breakfast things down on the table, looked indignant. “She followed me. She said I was spying on her. She says she wants to see the captain. She says she saw a Fury.”
    Frank let out a harsh bark of laughter.
    “Just now? That’d be quite a trick, considering none of us heard or saw anything. What kind of Fury was that, then, miss? The invisible kind?”
    I felt myself flush. I’d gotten used to being the outsider in school, the one other people laughed at or simply chose to ignore because my near-death experience had made me the oddball, the misfit, the girl who didn’t fit in.
    It was something else entirely to be standing in the place I’d always insisted existed, and find myself being treated in the exact same way.
    “Excuse me,” I said, a little hotly. “It wasn’t Henry’s fault. I did follow him, because I was looking for John. Or the captain, as you call him. Would one of you please tell me how I could find him?” I just hoped I wouldn’t have to encounter that dog again in doing so….
    “I apologize, my dear,” old Mr. Graves said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had visitors, and I’m afraid we’ve forgotten our manners. Please don’t allow anything Frank says to trouble you. He was always an able seaman, but never much of a gentleman.”
    I shot Frank a worried look, fearing he’d be insulted upon hearing this. He only folded both hands behind his head and put his boots up on the table, looking pleased to be referred to as never much of a gentleman .
    “I’m Mr. Graves, ship’s surgeon to the Liberty ,” the old man said, apparently not noticing his shipmate’s behavior. “And this is Mr. Liu, ship bosun.” The giant with the braid, who had a cup of tea in front of him, nodded at me unsmilingly.
    None of this made any more sense to me than what Henry had said earlier. The Liberty , again. Was Mr. Graves supposed to be some kind of doctor? Because he certainly didn’t look like one, in his old-fashioned black wool suit.
    If he was a doctor, maybe the foul-smelling substances in the pots he was