Undead and Unwary Read online

  Yeah, this is soooo fascinating. I made my eyebrows do that “please continue, I’m hanging on your every word” thing while mentally preparing to stake the Ant to an anthill after burying her in a mound of Sweet’n Low.

  “The Morningstar, for all her power and deeds, was to be pitied. Ironic, really, because in part I am also trapped here by my pride.”

  “I thought you were here because you had a coronary on your way to eat river pig.”

  “Yes. But the devil often spoke to me through the voice of my hubris.” He hung his head. “If not for my pride, I might not have led the children into sin.”

  Pity prickled the back of my throat and I had to cough. “Yeah, she was a bitch that way.” Argh, don’t say “bitch” to a priest! I coughed again. “And you’re being too hard on yourself. Like I said, you thought you were helping. Maybe you were, even . . . when I took over the undead reins, horrible mass-murdering jerkweed vamps were the rule, not the exception.”

  “You have changed that?”

  “Tried. Trying, I mean. Attacks and murders and overall vampire nastiness are going down, but it’s more because they’re afraid of Sinclair and me than because they want to be good and not bad. Most of the vamps accept me as queen now. Not out of any huge love for me,” I added, lest he get the wrong idea, because love was definitely not the factor in any of that, “but because they’re starting to realize they have no choice. None of us have a choice. We’re all trapped together. Uh, in a nice way?”

  “Baby steps,” he suggested, and I had to smile. “You were telling me about the Beast.”

  Had I mentioned the Ant? Anything was possible, except . . . ah. “You’re talking about Laura.”

  “The Antichrist, yes.” He was giving me that odd look again. “You’re expecting her to return?”

  “Sure. Like I said, we made a deal. Actually I should have been here a while ago, but stuff kept coming up.” I kept making stuff come up. “And the first thing we’re doing is getting rid of all the nothing.” I waved irritably at all the nothing. “Hell was a waiting room and then it was a beehive. Now it’s nada central and it’s making me nuts.”

  “How would you organize it?”

  “I dunno. It’s one of the things Laura and I have to figure out. Like I said, it’s my fault we haven’t yet,” I added with what I knew was a guilty expression. “I kept stalling.”

  “You’re here now. If you had to choose, how would you do it?”

  “Oh, I dunno, maybe by having it be any setup but this.” For some reason that reminded me of an early Halloween ep of The Simpsons, when Lisa reads Bart “The Raven”: Darkness there, and nothing more. “D’you know what would have been scarier than nothing?” Bart asks her, then answers, “Anything!”

  So then. What was more efficient than nothing? Anything would be an improvement. Even if it was something that didn’t work, at least we’d know about something that didn’t work. “It doesn’t have to be complex,” I continued, thinking about my old office jobs. Thinking about the shopping I would do when I called in sick for my old office jobs. “Something people can grasp, something I can grasp. Like a gigantic filing cabinet. No, that’s idiotic. Like—a mall! Hell should be laid out like a mall! Complete with ‘You Are Here’ signs.”

  “Yes, that sounds sensible.”

  “Sensible? I’m a goddamned genius!”

  Father Markus winced, either because I’d blasphemed or my fingers were sunk into his arm like claws. I loosened my grip and he staggered a little. I steadied him and kept babbling. “I’m sorry. But listen! So many people think malls are hellish anyway, so it’s relatable, organized, and terrifying. The stores are individual hells for various people. They don’t have to stay in their little stores; they can go out and about.

  “The food court will always smell wonderful—you’ll be able to smell your favorites all the time—but they’ll always be out of what you want to eat.” I was thinking of the Mall of America, thirty-five miles from our house, and all the things I loved and hated about it. Thumbs up: Orange Julius and Barnes and Noble. Thumbs sideways: the amusement park. Thumbs down: the enormous parking lot. No matter where I parked, I always ended up as far away as possible from the stores I wanted to check out and had to walk for what felt like hours. And then walk back.

  “Some of the stores could be actual stores, like Apple or Sephora or Aveda. But they’ll never have what you want. Apple’s Genius Bar will be an Idiot Bar staffed with people who will never be able to answer your question or fix your problem. Aveda will have product, but nothing that suits your particular hair problem. Sephora will only have, I dunno, orange lipstick and bright blue eye shadow. Hugo Boss will never have your size and neither will Macy’s. And the stuff they do have in your size will always add ten pounds to your face and be in your least favorite color and feel weird against your skin. The movie theaters will only have out-of-date movies and the projector will break down at the good parts.” I was getting downright giddy. The possibilities for torturing people were endless.

  Father Markus was starting to smile, so my enthusiasm was infectious or he was relieved to find sensation returning to his arm.

  Trapped in my genius idea, I kept babbling. “We could have an entrance just for the new people—or maybe that could be the function of the anchor stores. In real life, lots of people park by the anchor stores and use them as a jumping-off point. And no matter how long you’ve been shopping, by the time you want to go back to your car you realize you’re as far from your anchor store as you can be and still be in mall property.

  “And we’ll add insult to injury by making the damned endure the gigantic parking lot and all the walking, so it’d be unpleasant before they even got to Hell. And the security office would be where Laura and I hang out while pretending to work and—oh my God, as we walk Hell is forming itself into a mall behind us, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

  “I haven’t looked,” he admitted, “but there’s definitely something going on behind us. I learned very quickly not to look over my shoulder in Hell. You wouldn’t think it possible but what’s coming up behind is always worse.”

  Fuck that. I turned and looked.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “You must be pretty excited.”

  “Well, it is nice to see you again, and doing so well. It’s not the first time I’ve been glad the children didn’t kill you.”

  “That’s not what I meant. And besides, they did, but the Bling Waddlers couldn’t keep me down for long.”

  “I decline to rise to the bait, young lady.” He’d been looking out over the amusement park, which was set in the middle of the Hell mall. The lines were hideous, the park employees were sullen, the food was either too cold or too hot or too stale, and the smell of vomit from woozy ridegoers lingered. Ever had stale popcorn after riding a ride that flipped you upside down? Glurt! “I know you know they’re the Blade Warriors. I’m not going to keep reminding you.”

  “You caught on a lot faster than my friends and family,” I admitted, sipping an Orange Julius that tasted like water. Was water, I was pretty sure. I had to laugh at the old saying (people in Hell want ice water). Water was Hell when you wanted a frosty, tangy, sweet Orange Julius. Coke was Hell when you wanted lemonade. Steak was Hell when you wanted couscous. I could go on, but won’t.

  We were seated at the far end of the food court, looking out over the Hell mall. Yes! Seated! Tables, a place to sit and have a convo and people-watch. Hell was finally becoming civilized.

  And crowded! Because that was the worst thing about malls. However a necessary evil gigantic shopping plazas were, we endured them a lot more than we enjoyed them. The Hell mall would always be crowded bordering on claustrophobic. I didn’t see anyone I recognized, either waiting in a never-ending line for a ride that was under repair, sitting at one of the tables staring dejectedly at cold rubbery fries, or behind
the counter handling food they wanted no part of. Several of them were sneaking glances my way, but no one came over. Did not blame them.

  They didn’t have to come to me, anyway. Nobody did. And I didn’t assign anyone to do anything, but the mall format was taking care of that. Hell had employees, which I’d always unconsciously known but was only now remembering. It wasn’t staffed entirely by damned souls. The human resources office probably had a file cabinet stuffed with demon résumés. “It kind of looks like Hell almost . . . runs itself? Is that right?”

  “It can. But only under the proper dominion. There needs to be a—how to put this?—a guiding hand. Which it now has.”

  “Wait’ll Laura sees this! She’ll be super impressed by what I’ve managed to accomplish entirely by accident.” I was practically rubbing my hands together. “Accuse me of shirking, will she? This’ll show her.”

  “About the lawless one,” Father Markus began.

  “Are we back on the Ant again?”

  “Your sister. You have of course noticed that this realm has been a void until you put your mind to changing it, yes? From the moment the Morningstar went to her reward—”

  “Not sure it was a reward.” Also, where does an unrepentant unforgiven fallen angel go after goading a vampire with great shoes into killing her? Not Heaven. Definitely not Hell. I think my earlier theory—that she just let herself go into nothingness—was the answer.

  “There has been nothing at all for weeks. Or centuries, I’m not sure.” He made a vague gesture encompassing the amusement park, using the hand that was holding his flat Pepsi (if the lack of carbonation wasn’t bad enough, the priest was a Coke man all the way). “Time is different here.”

  “Ugh, really? The ‘time moves differently in Hell’ trope? Yawn.”

  “What is a trope?”

  I took another sip and watched the employee working the ice cream stand, where the only flavor they had left was spumoni. “It’s like a TV or movie cliché, I guess. Or a stereotype. It’s something that, when you see it, you know exactly what that character or situation is going to be. Like the sexy librarian trope.”

  “But librarians are sexy.”

  I waved that nonsense away. Despite (because of?) that particular trope, every librarian I’d ever seen had crow’s-feet like canyons and wore thick support hose to control the varicose veins. “You’re a priest, what do you know?”

  Father Markus laughed so suddenly it was startling. “I suppose that’s my cue to say something like ‘I’m a priest, not dead’ except—”

  “You are dead!” I replied, giggling. Luckily the dead guy was also giggling, so it wasn’t as insensitive as it could have been. “Okay, fine, you think librarians are sexy. How’s this for another example . . . you’re a trope.”

  “But I’m not on television or in the movies.”

  “Yes, but you’re a symbol of organized religion in an unlikely place where I would not expect to find aid, and you’re friendly and helpful.”

  “That’s a trope?”

  “Yeah, and it’s a boatload better than the evil unhelpful priest trope.”

  “There’s an evil priest trope?” he repeated, horrified.

  “I think we’re losing focus.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “Focus, damn you and your librarian-loving ways! We’re not going to wonder about tropes, we’re going to wonder about why time’s different here, remember? I wonder how Satan handled it. Or is she the one who made it like this? That would be so her, making time be all—uh—whatever the opposite of linear is, that’s what she did to it. Just to make things more difficult for me!” I paused. “Okay, I hear it. Her decision probably didn’t have anything to do with me. Or much to do with me. What d’you think?”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with you.”

  “About Satan. About how she did it, or why she did it.”

  Father Markus shook his head. “I rarely saw the Morningstar.”

  “The devil didn’t have a sit-down with all the newcomers? You must have met her at least.” Maybe that had been the Ant’s job. “No ‘Welcome to Hell, flogging to the left, delousing to the right, and you’ll never finish the paperwork’ sort of thing?”

  “Well, yes, but we weren’t sitting. I was hearing Eva Perón’s confession—”

  “I don’t want you to get off track but we should circle back to that later.”

  “—and she came right up to me and asked just what I thought I was doing.”

  “And then the flogging started!”

  “No. She laughed when I explained. Then she said—”

  “‘Begin the flogging!’”

  “No. She said it was brilliant. Then I said I was sorry for her—”

  “So then flogging started.”

  “No. I’m not sure why you’re obsessed with my flogging. I was never flogged. She just laughed again.” Father Markus paused, thinking about it. “I didn’t expect her to have such a sense of humor. Which was naïve, I know. Who would laugh more than the devil herself? She’s seen everything of the human condition and lacks our Father’s compassion. She must have found nearly everything funny.”

  “Uh-huh. She said you were brilliant?”

  “No, she said giving hope to the damned was brilliant. She said I could raise their spirits just enough for her to stomp on them again. And so she gave me the run of the place.”

  “The better to get to the stomping, no doubt. I can’t say I’m surprised. If she was slowing down time in Hell to have sit-downs with all the souls, however brief the meetings were, no wonder she was so grumpy. No time off? No sick days? God must be the worst HR head ever. And you never answered my question.”

  Father Markus tried another sip, grimaced, then pushed the cup full of room-temperature flat pop (the Hell food court was always out of ice) away with a sad look. “I don’t recall you asking me a question.”

  “About how you must be pretty pleased. You know. Relatively speaking. This.” I gestured. “All this. It proves Catholics are right about Heaven and Hell and all that. It must be vindicating. Right?”

  “I think,” he began slowly, “that ‘pleased’ and ‘vindicating’ aren’t the words I would use.”

  “Except that doesn’t really solve anything. Hell exists, so what? That just raises a fuckload more questions I think God better get around to answering. Does that mean there’s a Purgatory? What about Jews? Are any Jews down here? There must be.”

  “Must be?”

  “You know what I mean,” I snapped. “Not ‘must be’ in the sense that they’re here because they are Jewish, ergo ‘see you in Hell, yarmulke boy!’ And if there’s Hell, there must be Heaven, too, right?”

  “Oh, definitely,” the priest said with a nod. “I haven’t been there yet, but I’ve heard about it from people who have.”

  Intriguing! And deeply confusing. “How does that work?”

  “There’s an exchange program.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Pardon, my dear?”

  “You did not just say there’s an exchange program between Heaven and Hell. Between Germany and the U.S. I get. We had a German exchange student when I went to high school and she was pretty cool. She was one of the few people in that school who appreciated my shoes. That’s something I can wrap my head around. I can’t wrap my head around exchange programs and field trips to and from Hell.” But even as I said it, I realized how stupid I sounded. “Except that’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it? Field trips.”

  “I think so.”

  I spoke slowly, the way I did when I was realizing something and verbalizing it at the same time. “And I can’t do that anymore. Can I? This isn’t a place to visit and forget about when I leave; this is my responsibility.”

  The priest’s gaze was steady. “I think so.”

&nb
sp; I nodded and sipped my Orange-Julius-that-wasn’t. I should have been scared and angry, realizing that. But instead I felt relief. It was good, it was so very good to finally face the thing I had been so carefully, obsessively avoiding. And it wasn’t like I had to do it alone. I never had to do anything alone again. I’d changed the timeline and obliterated Ancient Betsy, that worthless tyrannical bitch, to ensure it.

  “Will you help us?” I asked, straight-out, no fucking around. Father Markus was in or out. I’d understand if it was the latter but hoped for the former.

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Oh. Sure, I get it, you don’t know Laura that well.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Would you like a refill?”

  We both looked up and there was the Ant. She was still wearing her awful outfit but now had a small gold name tag pinned just below her left shoulder with her name: “Antonia.” A round white pin with black lettering on the opposite side read, “Serving seven billion and counting!”

  “There are no refills in Hell,” I replied almost without thinking.

  “Correct. That was a trick question.” She was holding a clipboard and looking from the priest to me to the priest again. “So I should put your father down—”

  I nearly spilled my Orange Not-Julius. “He’s not my father. I mean, he’s a father. Just not mine. My father, I mean.” Was I saying “father” a lot? Did they notice? “Right, Father? Who is not my actual father? Faaaather father father.”

  She kept going like I hadn’t interrupted her and, for once, I was grateful. “—as a consultant?”

  “Yeah, sure, put him down. Wait! Let me elaborate: put him down as a consultant. Don’t insult him or anything.” To Father Markus: “Thank you.”

  “And thank you,” the Ant said after scribbling something on the clipboard. She made a point of looking around the Hell mall. “Very well done, Betsy.”