TWENTY-THREE
“If I haven’t mentioned it before—”
“You’ve brought it up several times on our walk.”
“—this is Just. So. Stupid.”
I’d gotten tired of standing around in all the nothing during our chat, so I’d taken the priest’s elbow and started walking. And that was when it happened: I opened my big mouth and accidentally did something that at worst would make everything worse and at best would only raise more questions.
And it had all started soooo innocently. My own fault for dropping my guard. Whitebearwhitebearwhitebear.
“This place would be a lot easier,” I had stupidly bitched, practically yanking Father Markus in my wake, “if it was organized.”
“Yes, well. I imagine that’s why you’re here.”
“Me and my sister,” I corrected him. “Or my sister and I; Hell is probably teeming with grammar police so don’t you dare report me. Anyway, we’re comanagers. Except she’s not here, still.”
“Your sister.”
That was odd. He said it so flatly and gave me a look, something like “why would you say something you know to be false,” except that couldn’t be it because a) it wasn’t false and b) how would he know if it was?
“Your sister,” he said again, like he thought maybe I didn’t hear him from a foot and a half away.
“Yes, after I, um, did the thing . . .” And now I was on tricky ground again. Father Markus was in Hell for doing what he thought was right. My sins were so much greater than his and yet I was one of the people in charge. How to just blithely rattle off my Satan-murdering antics? “After that, after we—I mean I—after I—” Tongue, stop flopping down on the job and help me form words and actual sentences! Don’t make me bite you while I’m chewing gum!
“After you freed the Morningstar,” he prompted.
“Yeah, after I freed her by freeing her head all over her—I’m not sure free means what you think it does, Father.”
“The Morningstar paid a heavy price for his—”
“Her, when she looked like Lena Olin.”
“—dissatisfaction.”
“You sound like you felt sorry for her.”
“A heavy price,” he said again, forgetting (again) that I was only a foot or two away. “He, or she, or what-have-you, could have returned to God’s grace at any time. Pride prevented that.”
“Uh-huh. So she was stuck with the job because she was too proud to tell God, ‘Hey, sorry about the whole war-in-Heaven thing, can you prodigal me already?’” A million years running the pit? More? And all she had to do at any time was cough up an apology to a deity basically made of sunshine once you were forgiven? “Boo hoo.”
“For shame, have you no compassion?”
“For the devil? So you don’t remember anything about me at all, do you?”
He ignored that. “All this time and I had no idea prodigal was a verb,” the priest mused. “But back to the Morningstar. She had fallen, it was true, but there was a way back. It was known to her but her pride prevented her escape as effectively as any jail.”
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.