The two females stared at one another, exchanging the same contemptuous gaze.
“Well?” the principal said finally. “Why are you here?”
Lilith smirked. “I hate to intrude upon your beauty regimen,” she replied. “Badness knows you need it. But intrude I must. I need you to go to Rapacia now and prepare the staging area for my arrival.”
“And you can’t prepare it yourself because … ?” Principal Bubb grumbled.
“Someone of my stature can’t be too careful,” Lilith replied. “I could be a target.”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb snorted. “Why would anyone view you as a target?” she asked. “I mean, someone who didn’t personally know you, of course?”
Lilith put her hand on her waist so that her arm formed a sharp, bony triangle. A curtain of blond hair fell into her face as she glowered down on Bea “Elsa” Bubb, leaving exposed a fierce green eye.
“As you well know, I am indispensable to the Big Guy Downstairs,” she said with brittle hostility. “I possess a wealth of information vital to the underworld, not to mention a diverse modeling portfolio!”
Lilith took a deep breath. Bea “Elsa” Bubb could see the creature’s ribs poking through her tailored business suit.
“Bottom line,” she said calmly, “the Big Guy Downstairs can’t afford to take any chances now, and if I were to come to harm, it would look bad.”
“Fine,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb said wearily. “I’ll do my part. For him. Not for you.”
She looked at Lilith’s gleaming hooves, then down at her own drab, cracked ones. She rubbed them together quickly, buffing them clean.
“What if there are new arrivals?” the principal asked. “Who will—”
“I will,” Lilith said as she turned to leave. “Before I leave. How hard can it be?”
“But you’ll need to assess them and tell them where to—”
“Go. You. Now,” Lilith interrupted, glowering at the principal. “You don’t have time to dilly or even dally, for that matter.”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb stopped herself. After all, why should she help Lilith?
The devil’s advocate glanced at the expensive watch that hung limply on her golden, skeletal wrist. “Your clock is slow,” she said, gesturing toward the clock on the wall as she strutted out the door, her tail swishing and sparking behind her.
“It’s Limbo, you idiot,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb muttered as she swept a collection of toiletries into her old leather bag. “The clocks are all stopped.”
She knelt down and gave Cerberus’s right head a scratch. It turned away, punishing its owner for her impending departure. This was, in Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s mind, the problem head.
“Aww, sweetums,” she said, undeterred. “Don’t be that way. Mommy has some business to do, making sure that Rapacia is safe for that bad, bad lady so that she’ll be around to thoroughly embarrass when I deliver the diamonds that will be stolen from right under her snooty nose job and fix whatever damage she’ll undoubtedly do here.”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb teetered upright and gave herself one last once-over in the mirror. She cracked a smile at her reflection. The mirror cracked in kind.
Milton tumbled off the miles-long corkscrew slide and into the kiddie pool full of Ping-Pong balls and garbage. Again.
“If you’ve lived a life so bad
that you drove your parents and teachers mad,
one day then, perhaps your last,
you’ll have to pay for every disrupted class…”
The lizards performed the sole song of their repertoire, hopping about in their gold lamé suits, on the stage just outside the Gates of Heck.
Milton felt like he was learning a new video game and had just been knocked back to Level One, forced to play the whole thing over again.
The iron gate, festooned with sugared spikes and barbed licorice, squeaked open. Apart from a few somewhat interested toddlers with squirming fingers wedged in their runny noses, no one seemed to even notice Heck’s only two-time visitor.
Two other boys plunged down the slide and into the kiddie pool behind him, unfortunately triggering another performance of the official “Unwelcome to Heck” song.
The boys—one, a stocky boy with a bandaged eye, and the other, a gangly Asian boy with a smoldering hand shy an index finger and pinky—had that newbie glaze of disbelief, as if it were all a dream.
If only, Milton thought.
Milton and the boys loitered in silence for several minutes by the you must be this short to enter heck sign before a demon guard gathered them, prodding them into the oppressive and depressing Foul Play Ground.
“Welcome to Limbo,” the guard sneered, marching the boys along the filthy plastic runner. “Sorry for the wait.”
What is going on? Milton wondered. Where is Principal Bubb?
The demon guard shoved him and the two other boys down a hallway and into a room that was frighteningly familiar yet wonderfully devoid of its owner. Here was Milton, once again, in Principal Bubb’s not-so-secret lair. Only instead of the lumpy creature he had been dreading to reunite with, he was presented before a slender, sharply dressed woman appraising herself approvingly in front of a full-length mirror. She pouted and posed, hands on her negligible hips, pointing her dainty hooves girlishly. Her smile dimmed as her nose wrinkled at a sudden, disagreeable odor.
The woman turned sharply.
“Excuse the intrusion,” the demon guard said meekly. “I was expecting Principal Bubb.”
A cold swarm of prickles ran up and down Milton’s spine at the sound of the principal’s name.
The woman sighed and returned to her reflection, applying a fresh coat of Beriberi to her pursed lips.
“Then I’m sure you’re pleasantly surprised,” she said. “Blob isn’t here right now, so I’m in charge for the next”—she looked down at her watch—“five minutes. So if you’re going to disturb me, then be quick about it.”
The demon shifted his weight nervously from hoof to hoof. “Right. Sorry. It’s just that I have several new arrivals that just passed through the gates.”
“Oh,” the woman murmured absentmindedly as she preened. “So that was what all the noise was about.”
Milton was stupefied. Had Limbo changed hands, or claws, or whatever? Who was this woman who commanded so much fear and deference, yet seemed to know Jack-squat about running an infernal boarding school for postmortem minors? Though the woman was pretty and smelled good, Milton suspected she was like a carnivorous flower that lured insects close with its bright colors and beguiling fragrance before chomping down on them and digesting them slowly.
The woman turned and appraised Milton and the two other young prisoners. Her body shuddered.
“Ugh … those dreary, pathetic faces,” she said with revulsion. “They positively reek of the Surface. The hopelessness, the inefficiency the blatant disregard for authority …”
“Yes,” the demon continued, rubbing a scar on his dull gray cheek. “Usually—actually, always—Principal Bubb personally greets the arrivals, and has them assessed, processed, and sent to the circle of Heck best suited for—”
The woman spun around. “No wonder this place is in the state it’s in!” she barked. “It’s smothered by process! We need a leaner, meaner machine down here, led by someone with enough guts to make knee-jerk decisions, unencumbered by proven methods and procedures.”
Wow, Milton thought. This woman is like a boa constrictor eating her own tail: totally full of herself.
“Um … okay,” the demon said after a pause. “So what should I do with …”
“Send them off to Sadia on the next stagecoach,” she said coolly.
Milton felt as if the air had been knocked out of him.
The demon’s face crinkled in surprise. “Without even looking at their files?” he croaked.
The woman smiled, exposing every one of her pearly, pointy teeth. “Look, they are down here in Heck: where the bad kids go,” she clarified. “If they
didn’t want to end up in the worst, mostly beastly circle imaginable, then they should have thought about that up on the Stage.” She clapped her hands in three sharp swipes. “See,” she added. “Swift, efficient injustice delivered in record time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a ceremony to monopolize.”
“But that’s not fair!” Milton cried out. “We’re supposed to have our souls weighed and assessed first! I demand to see—oww!”
The demon guard had clopped Milton hard on the ear. Aghast, the woman eyed Milton as if he were a piece of dog poop suddenly gifted with the power of speech. She prodded the demon guard with burning eyes.
“Do something about … that,” she said, waving her finger at Milton.
The demon blinked his dull eyes. “Of course,” he replied before riffling through a bulging gunnysack strapped across his shoulder. He pulled out a filthy kerchief. “Ah,” he hissed as he stuffed it into Milton’s mouth. “Just your size.”
The kerchief tasted like a hobo’s boxer shorts.
The demon seized the boys and pitched them into the hallway.
“I’ve got plenty of spring left in my spork, troublemaker!” he roared. The demon’s voice—now a wicked, commanding baritone—exploded and reverberated through the hallway like a clap of thunder. The woman tucked her purse underneath her arm and strode into the hall behind them. Milton could hear her mumble to herself.
“Is someone making popcorn?” the woman murmured.
The demon pitched Milton forward.
“All right, you miserable wretches!” he barked as he herded the boys away. “Next stop: Sadia!”
31 · A STROKE OF LUCKY
LUCKY STIRRED AWAKE across the street from the Barry M. Deepe Funeral Parlor. The sky was darker. The street was still. The smell of humans was faint.
He sniffed his makeshift bed, Milton’s navy blue Windbreaker, and yearned for its owner.
Lucky had dreamt of hot, stale, enclosed spaces. And fear. He knew his master was in trouble.
His pink eyes winced at the harsh yellow radiance of the streetlight. Lucky wriggled across Jordan Avenue like a swift white caterpillar.
Outside the funeral parlor, Lucky stood on his fuzzy haunches and sniffed in the night air with his moist pink nose. He could taste Milton’s smell, faintly, in the back of his throat. It was different. The odors told a story, and the ending stunk. Like burnt popcorn.
His nostrils drank in an invisible trail of scent, leading him to the side of the building in an alley full of strong, biting smells that made the ferret hungry.
There was a door. It was closed. Lucky sniffed the door’s metal jamb. There was a narrow piece of rotten weather stripping at the bottom. Lucky tugged at it with his teeth and soon made a small gap, just large enough for him to squeeze through.
The ferret spilled down the steps, untying the knot of odors with his expert nose. He followed the loops of smells down a hallway soft with grass-green carpet, stopping at a pair of metal doors bookended by potted palms.
The doors were open, but two men in blue robes stood barring the entrance, looking inside the room. Lucky’s nose was temporarily distracted by the smell of chicken blood on the front of one of the men’s robe. The ferret caught his master’s scent again and squirmed past them.
“What the—?” Sentinel Shane exclaimed as he backed away from the fuzzy white creature darting past his feet.
A number of men circled a charred crate that was more ash than wood. A ring of burnt popcorn cinders surrounded it. The smell slapped Lucky dead in the face. He recoiled from its intensity. It confused him. It smelled like his master, but it wasn’t. At least not anymore.
“That’s Milton’s ferret!” yelped Necia, her face streaked with dried tears.
The Guiding Knight broke the circle around Milton’s remains. “Grab that thing,” he ordered Warder Chango and Sentinel Shane, aiming his long bony finger at Lucky.
Lucky stopped and sniffed the air. He hissed. There was something about the spindly, ratlike girl he didn’t like. She smelled like two people instead of just one. Lucky turned and fled toward a large plywood box.
Again, another familiar yet less-than-comforting smell assaulted his delicate senses. He jumped onto the box’s handles and pressed his nose beneath the lid. A cruel boy who had devoted much of his waking life to tormenting his missing master lay sleeping in the box. Lucky hissed.
“Shoo!” Chaplain Charlie said as he stepped toward Damian’s casket. “Get away from there!”
Lucky breathed in the blast of his master’s smell that was slung across the strange man’s back. Milton’s knapsack! Lucky leapt toward it.
“No bite!” the man yelped.
Chaplain Charlie dropped the knapsack to the ground. Lucky had dug his claws into its fabric and was now coiling himself inside this nest of comforting, reassuring smells.
“What’s this?” the Guiding Knight inquired as he knelt to the ground, his blue robe bunching up to reveal black socks and sandals. He picked up a stack of papers that had fallen out of Milton’s knapsack.
“The Subtle Energies Commission?” he murmured as he pored through Milton’s notes. “Etheric energy trap … life force … reanimation?”
The skeletal man licked his thin lips and gazed at Damian’s casket. He opened the lid and stared inside at the sneering boy in his cheap navy blue blazer. The Guiding Knight rubbed his chin until he, too, was sneering.
“Sentinel Shane,” the Guiding Knight said after a prolonged pause. “I have an idea and will need your help in carrying it out.”
“Of course,” the man with the weather-beaten cowboy face replied. “Anything you wish.”
Necia appeared at the Guiding Knight’s side, eyeing him quizzically as he leafed through the stack of papers in his hands.
“What is it, O honorific one?” she asked humbly.
A smile broke across the Guiding Knight’s drawn face, like the arctic sun peeking through the clouds, teasing, before retreating for several months of blizzards.
“If a bridge goes out,” he said mysteriously, “you simply take a detour.”
32 · WARREN PEACE
MARLO RACED PAST the dissipating paintings, sculptures, and glasswork that lined the hallway leading to the Grabbit’s warren. As she ran, she left small explosions of plaster dust with each footfall. Marlo was caked with the stuff, a sleepless, punch-drunk powdered doughnut in stirrup pants, her head nearly cracking with schemes restless to hatch.
She wanted to tell the Grabbit all about the perfect heist she was just about to execute. It involved all the essentials for a classic caper: dupes, disguise, psychological profiling, and brazen brinksmanship. Marlo wasn’t even completely sure what that last word meant, but it sounded smart and confident in her head.
As she made the turn leading to the Grabbit’s golden door, she nearly ran smack into the bionic bunny as three straining demons wheeled it down the hall on a massive bronze dolly.
The Grabbit’s leer had grown wider ever since the twin atom smashers had been attached to the creature’s sides, like coiling tentacles spiraling inward.
“Oh, hello, Grabbit,” Marlo said, jarred by seeing the vice principal outside of its warren. It was like seeing a mountain going out for a leisurely drive. “I just wanted to tell you about … you know … our little job.”
The demons grunted as they heaved the Grabbit forward. Marlo trotted at their side.
“It’s actually happening right now,” she continued with pride. “My part is just about to—”
“We don’t have time for your babbling,” one demon with a gold sash tied across his heavily muscled chest growled. “If we stopped for every Chatty Cathy who wanted to suck up to the Grabbit, it would be late for its own ceremony.”
“So scram!” yelled another burly demon, wincing with exertion as it lurched the Grabbit onward.
Lately, Marlo reflected, everyone seemed on edge. Tempers flared, emotions ran high … the entire Rapacian population was restless, se
eking some kind of relief. It didn’t help that, with the exotic fur carpet outside the Grabbit’s lair, every step built up a charge of static electricity that either nested within you like a swarm of hornets or nearly electrocuted anyone you touched.
“Don’t get your togas in a bunch,” she called out, watching the demons wheel the Grabbit around the bend. As each beam of fluorescent light grazed the Grabbit’s metal skin, hidden grooves and crevices were illuminated, turning its cheerful smoothness into something ancient and malevolent. It was like watching someone’s fake smile fade when they thought no one was looking.
The Grabbit sang—if you could call it that—as it was carted away:
“What’s yours is mine,
what’s mine is yours,
and that’s just fine and dandy …
But more’s divine,
and time ensures …”
Marlo shrugged her dusty shoulders and began to walk away. She paused, a mischievous grin spreading across her chalky face as she looked behind her at the Grabbit’s warren. The golden door had been left open. Marlo trotted into the Grabbit’s warren for one brief glimpse of Mallvana to give her the electric tingle she needed to pull off her part of the heist.
The warren was deathly still. Spotlights sliced through the dark in languid sweeps, spilling down from Mallvana through the bronze ceiling grate. Marlo crept across, scraped the Smash ’n’ Flash Atom Cannon crates across the floor, then clambered atop them to peer through the grate.
She could just make out some activity in the main concourse. There was a stage, some scaffolding, and a large screen. Even though the sharp angle made it difficult to fully discern, Marlo thought that—if she squinted her eyes just right—she could make out Yojuanna on the screen, jabbing her elbows out to her sides and bobbing her head back and forth. She sang into her pearlescent microphone headpiece.
“But more’s divine,
and time ensures,
I’ll soon have all your candy!”
Marlo could see two demons in overalls working beneath the screen, securing aluminum supports and railings to a platform on the stage.
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Page 16
