The Devil's Intern Read online

  This warning has to be why Septimus wanted a team. It’s like the marines—no one gets left behind. Septimus has even started interviewing candidates, although it’s all very secretive. He holds the interviews here in the office. The poor devils walk out looking very confused. Septimus mentions travel and being away and great responsibility, and I’m sure half of them think they’re being sent Up There for a vacation. The Viciseometer is never mentioned.

  I hear all of this because Septimus asks me to take minutes. He trusts me completely. I’m such a loser. I should be cleaning the toilets that are being built for when the Kardashians arrive.

  Now I have a choice: I can do this alone, and risk ending up somewhere I can’t get back from; or I can involve my friends and risk their dead necks as well as my own.

  Taped to my computer monitor is a photograph. I like it because the flash gave me red eyes; Medusa, too. It’s a picture of the four of us on Alfarin’s deathday—although why anyone would want to celebrate that date is beyond me. I certainly don’t. Medusa and Elinor are leaning over Alfarin and me from behind; their arms are draped around our necks. The biggest plate of fries you’ve ever seen in your life is on the table in front of us. Alfarin has two long fries stuck up his nose.

  All three of them would risk their necks for me. I know this without asking.

  Before I even realize what I’m doing, I reach for my cell phone. The text message is sent in seconds.

  thomasons @ 7. something 2 ask u.

  8. Friends Like These

  My head is pounding. I either have the Underworld’s only pulse or there’s a battering ram inside my skull.

  I grab the fragile box that contains the Viciseometer and open it. One of the hinges has already splintered away from the wood. I wrap the watch in its silk handkerchief and put it into my backpack.

  I put the box back on the shelf and cover it with the red security papers, the one marked Paris on top. I don’t close the safe right away because I need cash and a credit card. Not from the petty cash we use in Hell; I’m talking US dollars.

  I’m not greedy. This isn’t about the money. I pull open the lower drawer, which contains earthly currency, and take out a wedge of hundred-dollar bills. I don’t bother counting it, but I figure there’s probably about four thousand bucks in my hand. It won’t be missed—not yet. The credit card is for emergencies. It’s red, with a long row of sixes. The Devil has a special arrangement with the brokers on Wall Street. Hell is inevitable for them, but they get special privileges once they’re dead in return for low-interest lending.

  Who did you think finances Hell?

  But already I’m regretting sending the text to all three of my friends. I can’t risk the girls’ necks for this. It’s too dangerous.

  I’ll only ask Alfarin to come with me.

  But Medusa will get upset if I don’t ask her.

  Elinor will balance out the numbers.

  But then all four of us could end up floating in another dimension.

  I won’t ask Elinor.

  But then she won’t have any friends left in Hell.

  So I won’t ask Medusa, either.

  But I can’t go without my best friend, can I?

  One thing I know for sure: I have to leave tonight. I can’t stay in this place anymore. I heard rumors that the cleaners scooped up gallons of congealed blood from the Oval Office this morning after The Devil set the chimeras onto some lawyers. Even Septimus looked pale as he left for the evening. He had a folder marked Operation H under his arm, and I know what’s in there. When I was filing the notes from the interviews, I read the minutes from one of Septimus’s meetings with The Devil. It was impossible to miss because The Devil had drawn black hearts around every word that referred to Operation H. He’s nuts, and now Septimus is going to give the Viciseometer away because he’s running out of time. Septimus told me late this afternoon that he has a shortlist of five names now. That’s a team. The Viciseometer could be gone tomorrow and then I’ll be stuck here for the rest of time. I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen.

  I look at my watch. I’m already thirty minutes late. Medusa, Alfarin, and Elinor are going to be so pissed at me. I know they all think I’m sick or something. They think I don’t see them, whispering behind their hands.

  My eyes may be pink, but they’re not blind.

  Picturing the three of them waiting for me, I decide I’ll tell Alfarin. I’ll give him the choice to come with me. I won’t tell the girls. They’ll be safer here.

  A small weight eases off my shoulders. I’ve finally made a call. It should feel good, but I just feel sick.

  I’m going to miss Medusa so much it hurts. I had good friends—awesome friends—back when I was alive, but nothing like this. Medusa says it’s because everything in Hell is more intense. We’re dead and hidden away in the Underworld. It’s the biggest secret in history, and we’re in on it. It’s a bond forged in fire.

  I should leave her something to remember me by. My leather jacket. She’s always wearing it, even though it swamps her. And my wristbands. Medusa likes to play with those when I wear them.

  Her fingertips are burned and callused from working in the kitchens. It was why I was so surprised to feel her soft skin when we danced at the ball; I’d expected her to feel like scales.

  I’m not sure why I’m remembering all of this now.

  I’ll leave Medusa everything. I won’t be coming back.

  I wonder if I’ll ever see Septimus again. I hope so, but not for another eighty years. The next time I die, I’ll be an old man. I’ll have been president, or, even better, a ten-time Grammy winner. Anything I want.

  My wallet goes in my backpack next, but not before I’ve stolen a few more seconds. The scrap of paper with living written on it goes in the wastepaper basket. I don’t need to remember; I’m going to be doing it.

  My final item is a letter. It has the official seal of The Devil imprinted in the bottom left corner and is signed by Septimus.

  It’s a forgery. I learned to sign Septimus’s squiggle years ago. It was easy because it looks like a treble clef. I never thought for one second that it would be the final link I needed to get out of here.

  The contents of the letter are simple: it gives the holder permission to visit the HalfWay House to collect receipts. Not one of the clerks will question it. They’re all too dumb. Their stupidity is no match for my cunning.

  I’m sure I wasn’t this devious when I was alive.

  Medusa smells like strawberries; I bet she tastes like them, too.

  I snatch the photo of Alfarin’s deathday party. I’ll have to wait another hundred years for my crack at red eyes.

  I’m sorry, Medusa.

  I’m sorry, Septimus.

  I take no backward glance at the accounting chamber. I head straight for the elevator and then to Thomason’s. The bar is on the way to administration, which is where new devils are processed in Hell. You would not believe the amount of paperwork involved in dying. It doesn’t end with a death certificate. There are forms of acceptance at the HalfWay House, and then once you’re stamped and given a final destination—Hell in my case—there are more forms . . . it goes on and on and on. Why do you think the rain forests in Brazil are being destroyed? If the environmentalists knew it was all going to make paper for the administration here, they’d really start freaking out.

  Global warming is nothing compared to the heat of Hell.

  Medusa, Alfarin, and Elinor are all standing outside Thomason’s. There’s a fight going on inside; I can hear the battle before I see it. Bar stools and men dressed in black suits are being flung through the windows. It must be a raid. You have to hand it to the HBI; they’re total suckers for punishment. Apparently this is how they train new recruits. Arrest a Viking and you get your badge. Arrest a Viking without slicing an artery and you get your badge and a gun, and your name goes on a special plaque.

  Alfarin is watching the scene with a big grin spread over his enorm
ous face. He lives for these sorts of scrapes. If I’d been here on time, he’d probably have been in the thick of it, punching the lights out of some skinny little HBI newbie.

  But instead, Alfarin is just standing outside, watching. His arms are spread wide as he shields Medusa and Elinor from flying shards of glass.

  The girls have their cell phones out, the ones Septimus scored for us as a reward for all the extra work I do in the office. Alfarin refused one. He likes to read about modern technology among the living, but he doesn’t like pants with pockets, so he had nowhere to put a cell phone. At first I think Medusa and Elinor are recording the fight, but then I notice how quickly their fingers are moving. My phone vibrates in my back pocket; I have two messages.

  Medusa sees me. She pokes Elinor in the side and points. She’s smiling, and from here I can see her dimples. My little raggedy doll.

  “Mitchell, my friend,” booms Alfarin. “Now that you’ve graced us with your presence, would you like to tell us why we were summoned?”

  Here it is. My moment in time. But I don’t know how to say good-bye to Medusa and Elinor.

  “I sent you two the text by accident. I need to see Alfarin—alone. Men’s talk.”

  “Well, that is charming,” says Medusa. I tense my body, waiting for the inevitable punch on the arm. She kicks me instead.

  “Ow.”

  “Pig.”

  “Why do girls think they can get away with slapping guys around? If I hit you, the feminist brigade would have me tied to a stake and burned.”

  “A very good point, my friend,” replies Alfarin, nodding, but Elinor’s lips are pouting, so he shuts up.

  “Ye should count yourself lucky ye have friends like us, Mitchell,” says Elinor.

  And I know she’s right.

  “Come on, El,” says Medusa, grabbing Elinor’s hand. “We’ll find our own thing to do.”

  The girls turn their backs to us and start walking off. Medusa is wearing little denim shorts over black tights. Chunky biker boots make her skinny legs look ten times thicker than they really are.

  “Medusa,” I call after her. “Wait up.”

  I definitely hear her tell Elinor to ignore me, but I’m faster than both of them and I catch up before they reach the next flaming torch. Long black shadows creep along the dripping stone walls. They aren’t ours.

  “I want you to have this,” I say, removing my leather jacket. “It’s always looked better on you than me.”

  Medusa doesn’t say a word. She just has an abstract look on her face as if she doesn’t know how to answer. Which is weird, because Medusa always knows what to say.

  “Wow, Mitchell.” At least Elinor is impressed.

  “Why are you giving me your jacket?” Medusa’s pale-pink eyes have narrowed into catlike slits. Her skin looks dark in the shadows and her mad hair is rippling with the warm breeze that whistles down the stone corridors.

  “You can have these as well.” I pull off the beaded olive-and-black bracelets that I arrived in Hell with. The bands are elastic, and yet they’re still a loose fit over Medusa’s skinny little wrists.

  “What are you doing, Mitchell?”

  She’s too smart for her own good. Now I’m so worried that Medusa will figure out my plan that I go on the attack. I don’t want to say the words that are spilling out of my mouth, but I can’t help myself. I have verbal diarrhea.

  “Why are you always so suspicious? I just want to give you a present—to make up for the fact that I’ve been kind of a jerk lately, but I can’t even do that right, can I? I don’t know why I bother, Medusa. Maybe I should get that jerk with the dark-pink eyes back—he can give you his jacket. Payment in kind . . .”

  “Just go away, Mitchell. I don’t want your stinking jacket, or your pathetic bracelets.”

  My farewell gifts are thrown back. Elinor looks at me as if I’ve just slapped Medusa. Her eyes are wide open and her mouth has dropped to a perfect circle. My best friend turns away, and I see the shudder that convulses her shoulders.

  I’ve made Medusa cry, and I hate myself. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  Alfarin stoops down and picks up the jacket. His stomach gets in the way of his attempt to pick up the bracelets, and they’re quickly smashed into bits by the boots of other devils.

  “Let us go talk like men,” he says seriously, slapping me on the shoulder. “Then you will apologize to Medusa for the slight you made on her character.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “What happened at the Masquerade Ball, my friend? Medusa has been bringing out the best and worst in you ever since,” says Alfarin, walking past the groaning heap of HBI investigators. Their limbs stick out at strange angles. They look like an enormous pile of spiders that has been run over.

  I was hit by a bus. Did I look like that afterward?

  “This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen,” I mutter.

  “How what was supposed to happen?”

  We turn into a dark corridor. It smells like blocked toilets, and a thin stream is running down one of the walls. I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s water.

  “I’m leaving, Alfarin. I’m leaving now.”

  “Leaving what?”

  I lower my voice to a whisper. Everything has ears here, including the walls.

  “I’m leaving Hell. I can’t explain everything here, but I’m going to ask you to trust me, Alfarin. I’m asking you to come with me.”

  “No one can leave Hell, my friend.”

  “I’ve found a way.”

  Alfarin crosses his trunklike arms and leans back against the damp stone. His blond beard has tiny braids woven into it, fixed with blue and yellow beads. Medusa and Elinor’s work. They say the colors remind them of the sun and sky.

  “Then when do we leave?” he asks.

  I’m forced to hold on to the stinking wall. The relief makes me go light-headed, which is totally embarrassing. I didn’t think it would be this easy to persuade Alfarin, but he’s the most loyal person I know. Alfarin is like a brother.

  “You’ll really come with me?”

  “The gods would curse me if I allowed you to undertake this on your own, my friend. How much time do I have?”

  “I can give you thirty minutes to get what you want from your dorm.”

  “May I bring my axe?”

  “It’s a long walk to the HalfWay House.”

  “I have the strength of ten men,” says Alfarin proudly.

  “Then bring what you want, but do not, do not, do not tell the girls. I don’t want Medusa or Elinor to risk their necks for me.”

  “May I ask you a question, my friend?”

  “Anything.”

  “Why are you leaving?”

  “Because I want to live, Alfarin. I don’t want to just exist. This is it for me, and it isn’t fair. If I told you I’d found a way to control time, wouldn’t you want to change the way you died? If you had the chance to fight more wars, or live to grow old and become a Viking king, wouldn’t you grab hold of it and never let go?”

  “You are my friend, Mitchell, and I will follow you into any battle, but you are playing with fire.”

  “Here there is nothing for us but fire, Alfarin,” I reply. “Now go. I’ll meet you at the admin center in thirty.”

  I arrive at the lobby of the admin center on autopilot. This is happening—this is really happening.

  There’s a devil on duty 24/7. There has to be. Death is too inconvenient to work between the hours of nine and five.

  I slink into the shadows and send Alfarin a text.

  where r u?

  I get nothing back.

  The on-duty devil in the admin center is processing someone who has just arrived. I couldn’t do that job. All that wailing and crying. The HalfWay House is a lot calmer than Hell’s processing center. The newly dead arrive here and think they’re going to be encased in fire and flayed with whips and have their teeth pulled out by demons with pliers. Stay on the right side o
f The Devil, and that won’t happen, you hope.

  I wonder who will take my job. I hope Medusa goes for it again, because she’d make an awesome intern. She’s smart and funny and she doesn’t take any crap from anyone. And she gets along with Septimus.

  Seriously, if Brian Molewell gets the position, I’ll come back to Hell just to spite him. In the end it was between the three of us: me, Medusa, and Brian. He’s the same age as me, but he’s been dead longer. He died in the Vietnam War. Septimus doesn’t need another soldier in the office egging him on; he needs someone peaceful. Someone like Medusa. Except when she’s hitting me, of course.

  Another glance at my watch. I’ve been waiting fifty minutes. I’ll give Alfarin ten more, and then I’m leaving. The on-duty devil has just called for security. The new devil is refusing to be admitted. Just suck it up, man. Being a pain in the ass won’t get you into Up There. Dead people my parents’ age are the worst. I know, because I see the insurance quotes for broken furniture and smashed windows. You wouldn’t believe the fight they put up when they get here. Troublemakers, all of them, but they soon learn you shouldn’t draw attention to yourself in Hell.

  I’ve been banging my head against the wall this whole time, or maybe the shadows were pulling it, I’m not sure. Either way, I have a headache. At some point, I’m going to have to go through the—now broken—administration doors and request passage up to the HalfWay House.

  And I’m going to be alone, completely alone, because Alfarin isn’t coming.

  I’m not scared about using the Viciseometer by myself. I’m pretty capable. I keep my head in a crisis. What was that word Septimus used to describe me?

  Stoic.

  Stoic, that’s me. Mitchell Johnson—four syllables and nothing more.

  When I see Medusa again I’ll be old and she’ll be totally grossed out at the sight of me. She’ll have had a hundred boyfriends like the guy with dark-pink eyes. Medusa may even fall in love. And Alfarin will probably get to hold Elinor’s hand. They’ll all continue to mosh it up at Thomason’s, and I won’t get to see Alfarin shove fries up his nose.