The Devil's Intern Page 20

  And I wouldn’t call him M.J., because I wouldn’t want his life to end up in death like mine. My brother would be Mickey, like the mouse, and then, once he was older, I would just call him Mike, and he would be allowed to call me Mitch—the only person who could do that.

  Mitchell Johnson, that’s me. Four syllables and nothing more—to all except my little brother.

  But that will never happen, regardless of the choice I make now.

  The long avenue stretches out on either side of me, and the heat from the sun distorts everything in the distance. White buildings are offset by rows of bulbous green trees.

  And lumbering toward me is a big gray beetle on wheels, shimmering like a wet stone.

  The Greyhound bus is right on time.

  Medusa would know what to do. She wouldn’t be wasting time, dithering one way and then the other. Even if the choice is almost impossible, Medusa has the guts to see anything through to the end.

  Medusa and M.J. and my mom and Alfarin and Elinor aren’t here anymore. I am standing on this street, being pushed by sightseers desperate to get to that big white-domed building on the hill, but I feel completely alone. At this exact moment in time, my three friends are already in Hell. Elinor has been waiting hundreds of years for the final piece of the puzzle to arrive. My little brother hasn’t even been born yet.

  If I do this, Alfarin and Elinor are right. Everything changes.

  And then on the opposite side of the road, I finally see the living me.

  The hairs on my arms stand to attention as a sensation of intense cold washes over me. My stomach drops into my sneakers as I watch myself walking down the street.

  I’m just walking. Two girls in very short skirts skip past me and turn their heads to look at my back. They giggle and flick their long blond hair, but I don’t even notice them. How lame was I? Instead, my living eyes are fixed on the ground as my head nods up and down; the white wires from my headphones disappear into the front pocket of my sweatshirt. Mitchell Johnson is completely oblivious to the world he is about to leave.

  It’s now or never. I have to run across the street and push myself to safety. This form I now have will disappear into smoke and ash. A toxic streak that has existed for four years in Hell will have been erased forever.

  But instead of Radiohead singing in my ears, I hear something else. I want to turn the sound up, but it’s muffled, as if a pillow has been placed over the speakers.

  Don’t let me go.

  It’s the voice I heard the last time I time-traveled with Medusa. I knew it was her in the darkness.

  And yet I let her go.

  The bus is picking up speed. I see the lights changing to red, but the bus carries on, moving right through them. The driver has a schedule to keep.

  Don’t let me go.

  And then the moment of truth arrives. I lock eyes with my other self and I remember, after all this time, what made me run out into the road to my death four years ago.

  Who made me run out into the road to my death four years ago.

  It was me.

  The other Mitchell, the living, breathing impostor, pulls the headphones from his ears and runs out into the road. His blue eyes still gaze in disbelief at his dead mirror image, standing across the street from him.

  And I don’t disappear in a plume of ash and smoke, because I don’t stop my death. I am the last thing I see before the Greyhound bus collides with my body and sends me somersaulting fifteen feet into the air. The sound of compressing brakes isn’t enough to mute the sound of snapping bones as my lifeless body lands in the road.

  M.J. is dead.

  Long live M.J.

  27. Fault Line

  Death has a symphony. It isn’t violins and crashing cymbals and beating drums; it consists of screaming and yelling and, in my case, the screeching of brakes.

  There’s something oddly comforting about the strangers who are now rushing to my dead body. They must know they can’t do anything, but it doesn’t stop them from trying. My faith in humanity is restored, even if I don’t have any in myself anymore.

  One guy in a pink T-shirt is giving me the kiss of life. His friend is pummeling my chest. They’re both yelling at me to stay with them. That fact that my legs are twisted underneath my broken back doesn’t stop them.

  In the devil resources file, I saw the morbid spectators taking photos, but in reality there are a lot more bystanders on their cell phones, calling 911. Then I see the bus driver, and for a second, just for a second, I want to run across the road and punch his fat, sobbing face in.

  He’s yelling that it wasn’t his fault.

  There’s no need to rub it in. I’m standing right here, after all.

  It was my fault I died. It was always my fault.

  “I think you should come back into the alley, my friend,” says a deep voice just behind me.

  “I want to watch, just for a bit longer.”

  “Then view it from the shadows. Ye don’t want people to look up and realize ye look exactly like the boy who just died.”

  The three of us fall back. A red-and-white-striped awning above the Italian restaurant provides enough shadow to shield us from view.

  “It was me all along,” I whisper as an ambulance screams up the avenue, effortlessly weaving in and out of the stationary traffic. “I saw the dead me and ran out into the road. I caused my own death in a paradox.”

  “Do you think Lord Septimus knew?” asks Alfarin.

  “Of course he knew. It was why he wanted me to come back here in the first place.”

  “Why didn’t ye stop yer death, Mitchell?” Elinor is holding my hand; her head is resting on my shoulder. I lean into her.

  “Because of everything that was left,” I reply. “I wouldn’t be able to exist with myself, knowing your deaths were worse because of me. Or that my little brother might never be born if I lived. And—and I have to find Medusa.”

  “But if you had lived, you would never feel the guilt, because you would not know everything you know now,” says Alfarin. “We would cease to exist in your world.”

  “Do you want me to go back and try again, Alfarin?” I ask. “I have the Viciseometer. I can go back and watch this moment another hundred times if I want to. I can still change my death.”

  “That isn’t what Alfarin meant,” says Elinor.

  “Then spell it out for me,” I snap. “One minute you’re telling me I can’t change my death because it’s too late, and the next minute you’re saying I could have done it anyway because I would never feel the guilt in the first place.”

  “You have a choice, Mitchell,” replies Alfarin calmly, “and we cannot move from this moment in time until you have made it.”

  “I’ve made the choice. I’m still dead, aren’t I?”

  “Your head made the choice—now your heart must agree. You have to let this moment in time go. Now and forever, my friend.”

  I watch the paramedics in their blue uniforms. One is covering my broken body with a white blanket. The cops have arrived, and they’re instructing the paramedics to set up some screens. Others are directing the traffic for the living. The fat, sobbing bus driver is still declaring his innocence, but he’s being Breathalyzed just in case, because the main witness is dead.

  I could stand here and watch how this unfolds for hours. Questions I’ve never really given much thought to are now rushing through my head: Who identified my body? How many people came to my funeral? Am I missed?

  Then a despairing, pained voice drags me away from my self-obsessed thoughts.

  “Not my son . . . not my M.J.”

  My dad towers above the policemen who hold him back; I get my height from him and the blond hair from my mom. Elinor instinctively steps out onto the pavement, as if she intends to rush to comfort him, but this time I’m the one holding her back. He called me M.J., too.

  My dead feet are protruding from the bottom of the blanket. I wait for someone to straighten me out. One leg lies at ninety deg
rees to the other. Only one has a black Nike sneaker still on it. I can’t see the other sneaker. I hope someone finds it. They were expensive.

  Bizarre, the things you think of when you’re watching your death.

  But now the picture in front of me is getting smaller, as if it’s being replayed on a television set. Reality is slipping away from me and I’m back in a paradox. Mitchell Johnson is lying dead in the middle of the road, and yet his soul, or whatever I am now, is watching from the shadows.

  But there is also another me. I’ve just arrived at the HalfWay House. I’m looking for the way out, because seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t die.

  Over the next four years I will meet Alfarin, Elinor, and Medusa. They will welcome me as if they’ve been waiting forever. Medusa and I will battle it out to become The Devil’s intern, and when I get the job, instead of hating me, Medusa will become my best friend.

  From the moment I learned about the Viciseometer and its power, I’ve been obsessed with stopping my death. All I wanted was to go on living. To live those dreams that haunt the dead. I wanted to be a rock star, I wanted to party with my friends, I wanted to live. My heart stopped beating before the wheels on the Greyhound bus had stopped turning, but that doesn’t mean it can’t feel. Alfarin is right. I have to let this moment go, now and forever. My life is over, and I am immortal now. I’m in on the biggest secret the world will never know until it is their time.

  This isn’t fair. This will never be fair.

  “Ye can draw comfort from knowing they have yer photos, Mitchell,” says Elinor softly. “Yer little brother adores ye.”

  “You are not forgotten, my friend.”

  Seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t have to make this kind of decision. No one should be forced to make this decision.

  In my head I tell my dad I love him and I’m sorry. Then I turn away from my dead body.

  “Hold on to me.”

  The Viciseometer sparks to life in my hand. The red needle dances around both faces as if it’s skating on ice.

  It is time to say good-bye to my life.

  It is time to find my best friend.

  We arrive back at the park in San Francisco. The same scent of smoke lingers in the air; the same guitar laments; the same couple are still making out in the tree that looks like the wooden skeleton of a mammoth.

  Nothing here has changed.

  “Are we likely to see ourselves?” asks Alfarin, hastily looking around for any other Alfarins that may be lurking in a paradox. Elinor pushes his axe away from her head; she doesn’t need another extreme close-up.

  I shake my head. “Ever since New York, I’ve been keeping track of where we are in time. We left here about a minute ago.”

  “What about Septimus?” asks Elinor.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious that no one can control Septimus,” I reply.

  “You say that with pride, my friend.”

  We sit down on the sun-parched grass. Most of it has died, or at least looks as if it has withered away.

  “We have to think,” I say. “Every little detail, every conversation you’ve ever had with Medusa about her home, her family. Where she liked to hang out—places she hated. We need to be able to visualize everything.”

  “You think she is here in San Francisco, then?” asks Alfarin.

  “Absolutely.”

  And I am sure of it. I imagine closing my eyes and opening them again to see her standing before me. Medusa could be so near we just have to reach out and grab her. Take her back before the Skin-Walkers find her.

  “Let’s narrow it down to what we do know,” I say, drawing circles in the dusty ground with my finger. “We know Medusa left us with the Viciseometer showing eight o’clock on the eighteenth of June, 1967, and we know she hated her stepfather. She dies on the twenty-fifth, and we know where.” I jerk my thumb to the towering red bridge behind me without bothering to look at it.

  “Are ye sure Septimus isn’t coming?” asks Elinor. Her voice is rather high-pitched, like a child’s.

  “Elinor, I have no idea what Septimus is going to do anymore,” I reply. “For all I know, we could get back to Hell and find that while we were time-traveling, a celestial war has broken out between the Vikings and those two humping in the tree.”

  Elinor takes her backpack off and opens it. Her long fingers fumble with the straps as her green eyes dart in all directions.

  “I took this from devil resources,” she says, pulling out a slightly bent red folder. “I thought it could help Alfarin and me find Medusa if ye left us.”

  I take the file from Elinor’s trembling hands and swear. It’s Medusa’s devil resources record.

  “How did you get this? It wasn’t in the drawer.”

  “I had an idea,” replies Elinor nervously. “I thought if yer record was in Medusa’s place, then the same person might have just done a straight swap and put this one in yer place. So when ye were looking through yer papers, I used the Viciseometer and traveled up a few floors. Medusa’s file was sticking right out of an open drawer.”

  “You’re a genius!” I exclaim, recalling the moment I thought Elinor was running around like a headless chicken in the files, when in reality she was the only one who had actually kept her head.

  “A princess among peasants,” sighs Alfarin.

  “This is why you were throwing up, wasn’t it? You traveled alone?”

  Elinor nods. “Osmosis of the Dead is not very nice.”

  “Elinor, you are an absolute genius,” I repeat.

  “A rival to better the goddess Frigga,” says Alfarin.

  “Oh, behave, the pair of ye,” replies Elinor, but she is beaming with pride.

  I start tearing pieces of paper from the file and handing them to Alfarin and Elinor.

  “We’ll start with addresses,” I say.

  A color photo slips out. It’s Medusa’s deathday picture. Her brown eyes are already swirling with white; they look like miniature pools of milky hot chocolate. Her head is leaning back slightly in the photo. My raggedy doll doesn’t look scared or confused the way I was, but she does look shocked. The wild curls are wet against her face, making them look longer, and leaves and other river debris are caught up in several ringlets. She made a mistake, she never meant to let go.

  My stomach feels hot and flustered as I gaze at her. I haven’t eaten in days, or at least it feels that way. I don’t understand why Medusa makes me feel hungry all the time. When I see her I think of chocolate and strawberries.

  “I have Medusa’s home address and a photo!” cries Alfarin.

  “She worked weekends in a shoe store; the address is here,” says Elinor.

  “And I have her stepfather’s name and place of work,” I say darkly. “He’s a mechanic—”

  A howl interrupts me. The three of us turn around in a panic, but we can’t see anything that could have made that noise. It seems to be coming from above us, as if it’s being carried through the wind.

  “Where do you want to start, Mitchell?” asks Alfarin. He’s shivering. “We are down one, but you are still our leader.”

  “We’ll go back ten minutes before the time Medusa put into the Viciseometer and try to intercept. We can’t stop her time-traveling because of the fixed-point-in-time rule, but we can get her as soon as she arrives somewhere. Plus she’ll be suffering from Osmosis of the Dead, so she’ll be easy to get to. We’ll go to her family’s house first, but we’ll have to be careful. Elinor arrived in Hell already knowing us—but Medusa didn’t. We’ll have to make sure we intercept the right one: the dead Medusa, not the living Melissa.”

  Alfarin is rubbing his temples with the flat side of his axe. He probably finds it comforting, but it makes me really nervous. One slip and he’ll take off half his face.

  “Is this going to work?” he asks.

  “It has to. I won’t let the Skin-Walkers take her.”

  The three remaining members of Team DEVIL stand and link arms. The air feels heavy around us. Even
the laughter and music seem to have stopped. I move the minute hand on the white dial back by ten minutes. I hope it will be enough.

  Warm fire wraps around us as we rush through the wind. Alfarin and I are on either side of Elinor, and I swear I feel someone holding my other hand, but when we land outside Medusa’s run-down house, it’s only the sparking Viciseometer that I see when I look down.

  Medusa’s house is old and wooden and sits on a small lot on a quiet street. The outside is painted white, but even from our position in a small park across the road, I can see the thick curls of peeling paint. A metal screen covers the front door. There are large windows on either side, and the upstairs floor looks cramped, with two dormer windows settled into the roof like watching eyes. There’s a white Dodge Polara parked on the street right outside the house. The hood is up and the windows are wound down, but I can’t see anyone around.

  It’s ten minutes to eight in the evening. The sun is still setting and the sky is splashed with pink. The color reminds me of Medusa’s pretty dead eyes.

  It’s my fault she’s here, hidden somewhere from me and her other best friends, who would do anything to protect her. I want to shout her name until my throat bleeds.

  I won’t let her go again.

  28. Mom’s Loaded

  “Should we knock on the door?” asks Elinor.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But we need to find her,” she protests.

  “And we will,” I say, “but we’ve blundered from one time to another since we left, Elinor. My leaving Hell caused me to die in the first place, and now it’s something I’ll never be able to fix without screwing up a bunch of other lives and deaths in the process. I won’t mess this one up.”

  “Mitchell is right,” says Alfarin, looking up and down the quiet row of shabby detached houses. “So do you think they serve buckets of chicken in this time?”