“Insane, and bound to cause problems, but it’s a new idea, and in Hell, that’s rare.” Whew! Now we were back on familiar passive-aggressive territory. “I mean . . . this place has always been in the business of punishing people and keeping them. You’re talking about doing the opposite—no punishment, and letting some of them go. So why Jennifer Palmer? Because if I know why you picked her, we’ll—your committee—we’ll have a better chance of recommending people you think should get out. Time-saver, get it?”
“Yep.”
“So why this one?”
Because we had to start somewhere. And she was one of the first people I got to know here. Her story made me feel bad, which, in this place? Was a good trick.
* * *
“If you didn’t have to be here, where would you go?”*
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, think about it.” I sucked up Julius and waited. I was as patient as a mannequin: unmoving, blank faced, and dressed in trendy clothes. Finally . . .
“I guess I’d go home. Tell them I’m sorry. Tell them the whole story. My folks are still alive, my sister, and he is, too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“The fire was an accident, but they thought it was on purpose.” Definitely warming to her subject, no pun intended. The side ponytail bounced as she gestured. “I couldn’t tell anybody . . . I mean . . . Tammy died.” Bounce. “All because I wasn’t paying attention, y’know?” I didn’t, but nodded anyway. “They thought it was on purpose and I couldn’t— Someone went to prison for it. I could’ve said something. I didn’t. I was,” she summed up, shaking her head so the bouncing turned to swaying, “chickenshit.”
“And not surprised to find yourself in Hell.”
“Suicides go to Hell,” was the flat response. As if catching her mood, the ponytail went still. “So no. I wasn’t surprised.”
“Okay.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t you know that?”
“I could’ve gotten the info. I wanted to hear what you have to say.”
“Oh.” She paused. Swallowed. Then, in a small voice, and with a smaller smile: “Thanks.”
“Sure.” Aww. She was sweet, for an accidental murderous arsonist who watched an innocent man go to prison while never saying a word for fear of incriminating herself. And it wasn’t her fault she died on a terrible hair day. Oh. Wait. It was. Well, no one was perfect.
* * *
“She did something awful—and she’s paid for it, every day, for three decades. She’s exactly the type of person I want to try parole out on. What purpose is served by keeping her here? What is she going to learn, or unlearn, or think about, that hasn’t happened in thirty-one years?”
Nods all around—which didn’t happen as often as you might think. Maybe in our kitchen at home, if I talked everyone into more strawberries in the smoothies, and less blackberries (they were all seed!).
But we were all on board with the parole plan, and not just because the original Satan fucking hated it. Although that alone would have been a good reason to go for it. She’d hated my plans for a newer, gentler Hell so much that she took another form and undermined me all over the place. She wasn’t even clever about it, at the end. The really sad part? That wasn’t the first time I got the drop on her. And when a shoe-obsessed former administrative assistant who flunked out of college can fool the devil? Time for new management.
I just hadn’t thought it’d be me.
“I think it’s great,” Marc said. “Man, the first time I saw a kid getting dismembered and fed to bears— Y’know that’s the first time I’ve thrown up since med school? Fucking bears.”
We all had nightmare stories to share that none of us were going to share. But it’s why I started thinking about the people I wanted out of Hell. The kids, obviously, and the sooner the better. The children who’d gone to Hell because they thought they deserved it—they were the first ones I wanted out. Of course, most of them weren’t children anymore. There had been a pair of twins—brother and sister—who yelled at their mother and then went off and fell through the ice and drowned and woke up in Hell because they’d broken the fifth—fourth?—commandment.
And they never questioned it. Never once. In two hundred years. They’ve been drowning over and over again, reliving their last day as first graders for centuries, and for what?
So in my first few weeks I rounded up the ones who wanted to leave, the ones I agreed could leave, and we had the Talk: “I don’t know how this is going to go. This is all new to me. I don’t know what’ll happen when you leave here. I’m just saying you can go, if you want.”
“Where?” one of them finally asked, one small question out of the sea of bewildered faces.
“Wherever. You ended up here for whatever reason because you willed yourself here. Now you can will yourself somewhere else. Back to earth? Up to Heaven? Argh, not up. Or maybe you just want to fade away . . . I don’t know. I don’t.” I threw up my hands. “My point is, it’s up to you now.”
Now, I wasn’t expecting a parade. But a few thank-yous, maybe? Sure. Alas: I’d set that bar unreasonably high.
A few left, gone who knew where. Most stayed. It took me the better part of the week to figure out why: They thought it was a trick. Or a trap. Nothing had changed here in forever, and all of a sudden there was a new devil and she was telling some of the people they could leave anytime they liked, no strings attached, nothing to worry about, certainly not a hidden agenda, so just go already, what’s stopping you?
Yeah, when you put it like that, I guess I’d have trouble believing it, too.
I also explained that those who didn’t want to leave were welcome to stay as long as they liked, and they didn’t have to be punished anymore. It was all minor shit, absolutely nothing worth an eternity of torture. There were kids who’d stolen candy bars; there were women who’d cheated on their husbands; there were men who’d coveted their neighbor’s homesteads: Fly, be free! Or at least stop putting up with torture.
Don’t get me wrong: the baddies weren’t going anywhere. Dahmer needed to stay right where he was. So did Elizabeth Báthory and Walter Disney.
(You want to hear something that makes no sense? Hitler wasn’t here. Why the hell was Hitler not in Hell?)
But the ones who wanted to stay? Some of them partnered up, and even formed little groups, and went off into Hell and set up their own living situations that weren’t eternal torture. There were whole apartment complexes starting where the parking lot would have been in the real MoA. The duplexes of the damned, Marc called them.
Cathie pulled me back to the meeting with a gentle kick to my ankle. “But you don’t want Jennifer Palmer to just gallop gaily off into the sunset, right?”
“Right. No gay galloping. I mean, she really did do something bad; she’s not like the little kids. So she can leave, but she has to do what she can to make amends back in the real world. And for that we need Lawrence and Cindy.” I paused. “Well, just Cindy, but I have to talk to Lawrence about vampire stuff anyway.”
“Getting ready for a new TV interview?” the Ant asked with a smirk. “Figured you’d get the opinion of a vamp who doesn’t adore you this time?”
I shuddered. “Noooooo. To both of those things.” Then, louder, “I want Lawrence. Right now.”
And there he was. It was just that easy. I read somewhere that Hell is other people. The writer got it wrong . . . Hell is me, mostly.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Lawrence cut himself off—he’d been talking to someone when I summoned him—looked around, flinched at all the Lego bricks, saw me. He instantly went to one knee. “Dread queen,” he said in that wonderful courtly manner of his. This guy would be killer on the radio. If anyone still listened to the radio. His manner went well with his black suit
, shiny black dress shoes, deep blue dress shirt, blue-and-black tie, and blue silk handkerchief. He was like a suave escapee from GQ circa 1890. An issue on sexy undertakers, maybe. Or sultry haberdashers. “How may I serve?”
“Stop that; get up.” As he eased to his feet I continued. “We wanted to talk to you and Cindy about Jennifer Palmer. And there’s vampire stuff going on that I wanted to ask you about.”
“As you will. Cathie. Mrs. Taylor. Dr. Spangler.” They all got a courteous nod. Cathie didn’t let anyone call her “Miss” anything, which Lawrence had found out the first time he tried it.
“I want Cindy Tinsman, too,” I said, and so there she was. Her face lit up when she saw Lawrence, like always, and she found polite smiles for everyone else. Even me, which was an improvement. She was a little skittish around me since I’d cut her head off a few weeks ago.*
I cleared my throat. “We wanted to talk to you about Jennifer.”
The smile dropped off her face. “Listen, whatever it was, I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”
“If you don’t know what it was, how d’you know she didn’t mean it?” Cathie asked.
“Because everybody’s walking soft these days. No one knows what’ll happen next. So, whatever it is, I promise, promise she didn’t mean it. What?” This in response to Lawrence’s “argh, don’t talk to the queen like that; you’re embarrassing me and might get us killed again or worse” expression. “We’re supposed to watch out for our buddies. That’s one of the new rules. Well, Jenn’s my buddy. So this is me, watching out for her.”
I smiled. Good answer. “It’s okay, she’s not in trouble. Nobody’s in trouble. Well, in this room anyway. At this exact moment.” Who knew what shenanigans the Ant would get up to later in the week? “In fact, we— Listen, will you two unclench and sit down, please? You’re looming and cringing, which is amazing if you think about it.”
Cindy instantly plopped into a Lego chair, closed her eyes in pain, wiggled in a vain attempt to get comfortable, gave up, opened her eyes. Meanwhile Lawrence had done something elegant and classy like float into his. Was it the years and years of being a vampire that taught innate grace? Or did people born more than a century ago just naturally have better posture?
“Thanks, that’s better. Listen, Jennifer might have told you she’s on the short list for parole.”
The sentence was barely out of my mouth when Cindy shook her head. “Nope. She sure didn’t. Because if she talked about it she might get her hopes up. And that’s the worst thing that can happen down here.” Her level brown gaze nearly pushed me back, it was so unwavering. “So no. She definitely hasn’t said anything about parole.”
And that was it right there. The devil was in the business of making people suffer. So how about raising hopes impossibly high, then smashing them in their faces? Wouldn’t that be the most diabolical mind-fuck ever? Worthy of a new devil out to make a name for herself? A real attention getter?
“Dammit, I’m not diabolical!” Then I remembered I hadn’t said the other stuff out loud. I coughed. “What?”
“Nothing. No one here wants to argue. Well, we do, but not about that.” Cathie turned to Cindy. “No strings. No tricks. Betsy wants you to talk Jennifer into going back to the real world. But it’s not a free ride. While she’s there, she’s got to make amends for the people she hurt, for the thing that landed her here in the first place. And if she can do that, she doesn’t have to come back. If she can’t, or won’t, she’s got to come back here, maybe forever.” She looked at me. “Did I miss anything, chief?” When I shook my head, Cathie sat back. “That’s it. That’s the deal on the table.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Cindy said at once. “She wants to, even though she’s scared. If she knew it wasn’t a trick she’d be on board. Well, probably. Hell’s awful, but it’s, like, a known awful.”
I studied her for a few seconds. She’d ditched the cheerleading outfit within days of arriving and now went around in standard teenage chic: boyfriend jeans, a butter-soft black T-shirt, blue ballet flats, no socks. Her black hair was pulled tightly back, which made her dark brows arch, and an occasional dark curl tried to escape its scrunchie. Her gaze, once she’d realized no one was going to shout at her, or decapitate her, was disconcerting.
“You’ve changed,” I said after a long moment. “It’s only been a few weeks, but you’re different now.” Not that I knew her that well before I killed her. But still, the difference in a few weeks was remarkable.
“Time to grow up,” she replied, her tone all sorts of no bullshit. “School’s out. This is real. I threw my life away; I’m not gonna make that mistake with my afterlife. Besides, I—” She glanced at Lawrence, who was watching her with a face carefully blank so she wouldn’t see the depth of his pity. “I don’t have to do it alone. I’ve got Lawrence; I’ve got Jenn. She’s introduced me to some others; most of them are nice. And—and—” She pulled in a breath and the rest of it just rushed out, blah, all at once: “MaybeifitworksforJennyoucouldletLawrencegotoo?”
“Uh—”
“Cynthia Rose Tinsman!” Whoa. I’d had no idea Lawrence’s killer radio pipes could get that high. Like, opera-soprano high. Nor did I know Cindy’s middle name until just now. He really nailed the tone, too. Everybody knows they’re in deep trouble when an authority figure uses all your names at once. I was the queen of Hell and I still ran for cover when my mom did that. “Do not trouble the queen with trivialities! And do not ever presume to ask the sovereign a favor on my behalf!” He rounded on me and made a visible effort to control himself. “Please forgive her impertinence; she’s young. I’ll remove her immediately from your sight.”
Hmm, I could get used to that. Why wasn’t everyone here like Lawrence? Your bitching offends me; someone remove the Ant from my sight! And anyone else who looks at me funny this morning! Wait, is it morning? It might be lunchtime . . . remove lunch from my sight, too! Just—everybody remove everything from my sight, all the time!
“It’s fine.” I turned to Cindy, who looked gloriously unrepentant. “One thing at a time, okay? Right now you need to be focused on getting Jennifer to agree to try parole. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ugh, no. How many times? Betsy.” Cathie’s “chief” was the least annoying moniker, which is why I’d let it go. “I’m the queen—or the new devil—no matter what you call me. So just—Betsy. Betsy. Betsy.” Argh, I was doing that thing where after a while, your own name starts to sound like gibberish. “Betsy. Betsy. Betsy.”
“Stop that at once,” the Ant insisted.
“I might be—Betsy, Betsy—stuck.”
Lawrence was the only one in the room with sufficient self-control to not roll his eyes. A good man, that Lawrence. He and Sinclair had been buddies back in the day. Man, he must have stories.
“That’s it for now,” I said, but the others were already getting up, possibly realizing that when I kept saying my name over and over and over, that meant the meet was over and over and over, too. “Except you, Lawrence. I wanted to talk to you about the vampires going public.”
“Ah,” was the reply.
“I could use some advice from a silver-tongued dude like yourself. That’s what the Native Americans called you back then, right? The Sugar Guy?”
“No-Sugar-in-Your-Mouth.* Yes, the Indians were kind enough to give me such a name.”
“A good trick,” I commented as the others filed out, Cathie and Ant already plotting literally behind Marc’s back. “Getting one group of people to work with another group of people. Both of them not at all sure of the other—scared of the other, maybe even hating them a little.”
“I may have deduced why you wished for my company this day, great qu—Betsy.”
“Well, no one ever said you were a dumbass, Lawrence. Not that I know of, anyway.”
“As ever, you are generosity personified.”
<
br /> I laughed and he fell into step beside me as we started heading east, where Sears would be in the real MoA. As usual, people ebbed and flowed around us, all trying their best to look like they weren’t paying attention while watching everything we did. “So you probably heard, the Antichrist outed vampires.”
“Yes. And you exercised your royal prerogative.”
“I sure did. I exercised my prerogative right in her face. By which I mean I didn’t deny any of it.”
“Bold.”
“More lazy than anything else. And it’s causing problems.”
“To be expected. I have all confidence you and my lord will overcome any difficulties this may cause you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, and this is a great chat we’re having, but I’ve got no time for yes-men.” This was the dichotomy of my life: none of the people around me were yes-men, so naturally I kind of wanted yes-men, except when I had one. Then I remembered they were useless. Super pleasant to be around because they made you feel great about yourself, but useless.
He blinked at that. “Forgive me, I only ever had dealings with your predecessor.* He, ah, encouraged positive feedback.”
“Oh, I’ll bet. All positive all the time or he’d kill you and drain you. Or drain you and kill you. Or just chuck you into a pit o’ Fiends. Or bury you in a cross-wrapped coffin for a few decades.”
“Yes, those were some of the ways he expressed his displeasure.”
“But he’s extremely dead now and very gone, and Sinclair and I are running the show these days, which you probably noticed. So . . . advice?”
He talked. And talked. But some of it was interesting. Maybe even helpful. Basically, I’m not sure how but your blundering seems to be working, so maybe keep blundering?
“And there have been some hints that the vampires might push for an election.”
Lawrence just looked at me. Too startled to speak, maybe? So I kept going. “Which just seems dumb. But who knows? Maybe they’ll feel better if we let them— What?”