by Donna Hosie
“What happened?” I yell. “Is anyone hurt in there?”
A new pitch accompanies the growls and howls surrounding us. It’s a siren.
“The police are coming!” cries Elinor. “How did they get here so quickly?”
“It’s the Skin-Walkers!” yells Alfarin. “We must flee.”
“My mom, my mom! It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”
Medusa is getting lighter by the second. It proves easy to pull her away to the end of the garden, where we all climb over a low wire fence and run down a narrow alley lined with metal trash cans.
“Alfarin, what happened?”
Alfarin takes a quick left, then another left, and leads us back into the park where we arrived. We’re at the far end, several houses away from Medusa’s old home. A police car has already drawn up, quickly followed by an ambulance. Two tall, thin officers climb out, but something isn’t right. Even though it’s dark now, the two officers look as if they’re surrounded by a dense black cloud.
The Skin-Walkers are here.
But instead of claiming us, they disappear into the house with another two men from the ambulance. They seem to lope into the house on all fours, their extra-long arms swinging in tandem with their legs.
Alfarin can’t speak. His cheeks are crimson and sweat is dripping down his face. I’m struggling to hold on to Medusa, not because she’s trying to get back to her mom, but because her clothes are slipping through my fingers like sand.
We hear the living version before we see her. Melissa Pallister is screaming and sobbing as she runs out onto the weathered porch of the house. A female neighbor has run out of her house and is now cradling the living Melissa in her arms. Even in the twilight, we can see the blood on Melissa’s hands.
“He was shot,” gasps Alfarin finally. “There was a struggle for the gun. The gun went off. There was nothing I could do.”
“Is Rory dead?” Medusa sways on the spot. She goes straight through my hands.
Elinor screams. “M, what is happening to ye?”
Medusa is in shock and doesn’t understand. I try to hold her hot little hands, but there’s nothing but wispy vapor that swirls around my fingers like steam.
“She’s disappearing!” I cry. “Time has changed. Her stepfather was shot, which didn’t happen the first time around. That means Medusa’s timeline has changed.”
“The Skin-Walkers weren’t coming for Medusa!” yells Alfarin. “They were coming for someone else in her timeline, and we led them straight here.”
With a stricken look, Medusa makes to grab me, but there is nothing to hold on to as her soul starts to dissolve.
“Mitchell, help me!” she screams as tiny red pinpricks of fire start to appear on her body.
“The Viciseometer—who has the watch? We need to go back again!” I cry.
But Medusa is being swallowed by fire. It isn’t the same as Elinor’s death because Medusa isn’t in any pain, but her face is terrified. I throw my arms around the flaming shadow of Medusa, but I can’t feel any part of her.
“Stay with me, Medusa. Don’t leave me!”
“Don’t let me go,” sobs Medusa, and she raises her right hand to touch my face. “Mitchell, don’t let me go.”
But she is gone before I can say another word.
“What is going on here, do you think?” asks Alfarin.
“What are we doing here?” asks Elinor, scratching her head.
The three of us—the triangle that is Team DEVIL—look around at each other. Alfarin is the first to start laughing. His chuckle is infectious, and it isn’t long before Elinor and I join in.
“Who took us here?” giggles Elinor.
“Well, I have the Viciseometer . . .” I reply, pulling it out of my back pocket. The date reads the eighteenth of June, 1967. “Does this date mean anything to anyone?”
Alfarin and Elinor shake their heads.
“I think lack of food has affected your judgment, my friend,” snorts Alfarin.
“Hey, maybe the recipe for fried chicken was invented in one of these houses and we’re the first to ever try it out,” I suggest hopefully.
We’re interrupted by the sound of a woman screaming. We look over to one of the houses on the street, where a police car and an ambulance are parked. I have no idea what brought us here, and I’m in no rush to find out. I’ve heard dead people scream like that in Hell. You never want to find out why.
“Where are we?” asks Elinor.
“I have no idea where we are, El.”
“What did ye just call me?”
“El.”
“When have ye ever called me El?” giggles Elinor.
I shrug. “I dunno. It just popped into my head.”
“I like it,” replies Elinor rather wistfully.
“Where is my axe?” says Alfarin suddenly.
Both Elinor and I look around the park. It’s Elinor who spots our backpacks half hidden under a bush near a rusty-looking swing.
We jog over, just as two men are bringing a man out of the house on a stretcher. Blood is splattered all over his chest. We can see it pulsing out in dark waves, but he’s still flailing and screaming. He’s saying he’s sorry. The three of us stop suddenly as two tall, thin policemen follow out the door. They look in our direction. They smile at us, and for a split second I swear I see them morph into walking wolves with black, bared teeth. Goose bumps break out over my entire body, and even Alfarin shudders. The horribly injured man is pushed into the back of an ambulance—still begging for forgiveness. One of the policemen reaches into the back. There is a bloodcurdling howl, like maniacal laughter, and the screaming stops. The siren on the police car screams and they speed away with sparks of flame spitting from the tailpipes.
“Are they what I think they are?” whimpers Elinor. She’s clutching Alfarin’s arm.
With our line of sight clear to the house, I can see another two people on the porch. One is a fat woman with straggly gray hair. Her flabby arms are wrapped around a much younger woman: someone my age. The younger girl is really pretty, with the craziest hair I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the color of roasted chestnuts, and it looks alive under the beam of weak sunlight. Her hair reminds me of snakes.
The pretty girl looks over at me. My stomach flips as she continues staring. I can see that her hands are covered in blood, and I’m the one who turns away.
Alfarin slaps me on the back. “It is time to return to Hell, my friend. We can but pray to the gods that the Lord Septimus will forgive our indiscretions and will not torture us on the rack for our duplicity and thievery.”
I sigh. “Have you checked the backpacks?” I ask Elinor one last time. “We don’t want to leave anything behind.”
“Well, the three of us didn’t leave Hell with much in the first place,” replies Elinor, but there is an abstract look on her face. She keeps pulling at her neck in that nervous way she does when she’s worried about something.
And I feel it, too. A sense of unfinished business. It has nothing to do with changing my death anymore—I have no choice but to let go of that completely or I’ll end up changing Alfarin’s and Elinor’s destinies. But I do have this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’ve forgotten something.
Something really important.
I open my backpack and take out the photo of the three of us that I’ve carried around since the beginning. Nothing has changed. Alfarin still has fries stuck up his nostrils. Elinor has her arms wrapped around Alfarin’s shoulders, and as usual, nobody is there to hold on to me because no other girl has ever fit into our group.
I look back at the house opposite. The pretty girl is gone, although several more police cars have arrived. The policemen don’t look anything like the creatures that took away that other man.
What am I forgetting? The feeling is starting to eat into my brain.
“Mitchell?” prompts Alfarin, handing me my backpack. “It is time to return to the HalfWay House.”
I input the same date on which the three of us originally left but add a couple of minutes. I don’t think Alfarin, Elinor, or I should meet the three devils who left Hell with nightmares that ended up coming true.
Nightmares. Why am I thinking about nightmares?
Elinor can sense my hesitance. “Are ye nervous about facing Septimus?” she asks.
“Something isn’t right,” I say, although the Viciseometer is starting to whistle and spit fire; it’s getting impatient. “Can anyone remember anything about why we’re here?”
“Everything is starting to blur together in my head, to be honest,” replies Elinor.
“I can’t remember what is real and what is not anymore,” adds Alfarin gravely. “Our time among the living has passed, my friend. We must face the consequences like men.”
“And women . . . or rather woman.” Elinor pulls at her neck again; she looks really confused.
“I’ll take responsibility for everything,” I say. “I’ll tell Septimus I made the three of you come with me.”
“Three?” says Alfarin, looking at Elinor with a smirk. “No wonder the finances of the Underworld are so precarious, with an intern in accounting who cannot add.”
He slaps me on the back as Elinor giggles.
“I meant two, obviously. I’m just hungry and distracted.”
I give the house one last look, but the commotion and whatever happened inside are starting to draw a crowd. It’s better we leave now. Alfarin, Elinor, and I link arms for the final journey. As the mirrored building of the HalfWay House comes into view on the Viciseometer, my eyes are drawn away for a split second to an upstairs window. A dirty net curtain is pulled back to reveal the girl with a mass of curly hair watching us.
I’m sure she sees us disappear into the night, but I’m not worried.
After all, who among the living would believe her if she told?
30. The Other Intern
“How did you die?”
I’m not going to bother with the saving kittens story line anymore. It was pretty lame in the first place. Of course I’m not going to tell devils the truth, either. How can I? Well, you see, I stole a time-traveling device called a Viciseometer and ended up causing my own death after my living self saw the dead version standing across the road with a Viking prince and a peasant from the Great Fire of London . . .
Who in Hell is going to believe that?
I’m expecting Septimus to be mad at me when I return to the office. In fact, he’s waiting in the darkness for the three of us as we try to slip the Viciseometer back into the safe. Elinor is in a state of near collapse once more, and Alfarin has his axe ready to decapitate anyone from the HBI who may appear to arrest us.
Instead, Septimus is sitting with his feet up on the desk, a large strawberry cheesecake at his side and a strange expression on his face. He isn’t angry. He just looks sad. It reminds me of the time my parents told me they were getting divorced. They had the same look then: downturned mouths; watering eyes; trembling jaws. I’ve never seen Septimus look this grieved before, and I don’t like it. I don’t want him on the warpath, either, but it just aggravates the feeling that I’ve done something I’m not yet aware of. Something bigger than a mistake.
Septimus asks us if we’ve seen enough. I say we’ve seen too much.
The combination of the safe has been changed. If that’s my only punishment for stealing the Viciseometer, I’ll happily take it. Septimus tells me he, too, tried to change his death on a number of occasions, but he always ended up back in Hell because living meant being back with his wife. Being married has got to be tough if you’d rather be dead. I don’t think the two of them got on that well.
It’s a month after our return and Septimus still won’t tell me how he got hold of the other Viciseometer: the blue-faced one from Up There. I’ve noticed he gets perfumed letters delivered weekly, though. Elinor thinks Septimus is dating an angel. Only Septimus could get away with something as devious as that.
I keep meaning to ask him about the two angels I saw at the cemetery, but there never seems to be a good moment. Maybe I’ll keep it as my secret. Someone once told me that everyone has secrets, but I can’t remember who.
Speaking of dating, tonight I’m seeing Patty Lloyd from the library. I know I should be enthusiastic about it, but I’m really not. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Hot girl, minimum third base guaranteed, and I even have Alfarin and Elinor coming along for moral support.
The devils in my dorm think I’m a hero, but Patty Lloyd just isn’t my type. I want something different, someone who isn’t obvious. Somebody I’m sure I’ve met before, but I can’t for the death of me remember when. Time travel has shot my memory into a million little fragments, and I don’t know how to stick it all back together again. I’m like a tall, skinny Humpty-Dumpty.
Patty meets up with the three of us in Thomason’s Bar. She immediately gets under my skin by calling the place a dump. So what if it is? It’s my dump. Mine and Alfarin’s and Elinor’s and . . .
Well, not Patty Lloyd’s.
Alfarin and Elinor are holding hands now like a proper couple. I don’t think Elinor has let Alfarin kiss her yet, but the hands thing is a start, and as Alfarin says, he’s waited several hundred years to get this far. Patty sits on my lap. I’ve faked a cold sore by gluing a cornflake to my lip, so she doesn’t kiss me.
The date is hopeless. Patty doesn’t even attempt to speak to Alfarin or Elinor. She whispers in my ear about finding a quiet corner where she can show me how much she likes me without kissing my mouth, but that just freaks me out. This girl moves way too fast.
Patty storms out in a bad mood after Alfarin and I start joking about slapping buttocks and cheeseburgers, and because Elinor was laughing it was obvious it was an inside joke, but I wasn’t in a rush to share it with Patty. She wouldn’t understand because she wasn’t there.
“We’ll find ye someone,” says Elinor soothingly as the three of us leave Thomason’s.
Time traveling has brought the three of us closer together, but we all share a strange feeling that, for me, sets my teeth on edge. Elinor thinks it may be time-sickness; Alfarin reckons his stomach couldn’t cope with twenty-first-century food and all the toxins and additives in what we ate.
I don’t even bother offering an opinion, but it feels as if wind is whistling through a door that has been left open. I still miss my life, desperately. I miss my little brother, too, even though I don’t know him. I would have just liked the chance to know him.
Work is getting crazier by the day. Septimus is nearly in tears with the amount of money Hell costs to run and is muttering about war again. The Devil’s Executive Board of Management had a meeting in the Oval Office, and even I could hear The Devil screaming about Operation H without putting my ear to the door. Then the financiers of Wall Street got involved and the stock market plummeted and Hell had another huge influx of dead because the stress killed so many people. So now I’m working at least fifteen hours a day and my eyes have black rings under them that look as if someone has punched me and then run over my face with a tank.
My eyes. My pink girly eyes are back with a vengeance, looking brighter and sparklier than ever. It is so not fair, because both Alfarin and Elinor have their bloodred eyes back, and Alfarin’s beard has already grown back, too. Not as long as it was before, but give it a couple of months and Elinor will be able to braid things into it the way she used to.
Pink girly eyes and fuzz on my face that looks like the stuff that collects in a clothes dryer. What decent girl is going to go for that? I’m back in an overcrowded Hell, and instead of being the next Chris Martin, I’m still The Devil’s intern.
And I’m still on my own.
Septimus announces that he’s getting another intern to help me out. This comes after one of the legs on my desk collapses under the weight of invoices that have yet to be cleared. He allows me to sit in on the interviews, and the applicants get worse as the day drags on. The first devi
l we see thinks working on level 1 will get him closer to Up There; the second devil failed the written test (she couldn’t hold a pen the right way up); the third devil had good credentials but was wearing a white shirt that had mold growing under the armpits; and the fourth devil was Brian Molewell and I will go clean the toilets on level 666 before I work with him.
Patty Lloyd was candidate number five, and by now I’m willing to revisit my death as she slips me a note that quite explicitly details what she intends to do to me on a desk once Septimus is out of the office.
Septimus thankfully ends the interview early and advises Patty she is far too valuable to the library staff to make a move into accounting.
“Are you up to one more interview tonight?” asks Septimus, before downing the triple-shot espresso the kitchens have just sent up to him.
“No,” I groan. “I swear I’ll work twenty-four hours a day for the rest of eternity, Septimus. Just please don’t make me sit through any more interviews.”
My boss laughs. “Well, this last one today looks quite promising. A young devil, about your age. Dead for forty years—perhaps she’ll tell you about it. She comes with excellent references from the legal department and the kitchens.”
“Great,” I reply sarcastically. “Someone who can file the dirty dishes, just what we need.”
“Let’s give her a go,” says Septimus. “She is well known for her strawberry cheesecake, which is a plus. If you could ask Miss Pallister to come in, Mitchell. Once we’ve seen her, I will let you run off to play third wheel to Prince Alfarin and Miss Powell.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I reply. I push myself out of the chair that has been slowly numbing my ass for the last four hours.
I’m not sure which is worse these days: the albino hedgehog look with my blond hair and pink eyes, or the sad-and-alone loser look I wear whenever I’m with my two best friends. Alfarin and Elinor go out of their way to include me still, but I’m very aware it was me who joined the two of them, and they’ve been best friends forever. After Elinor’s death . . . well, they’re tighter than ever.
