Serpent's Storm (32 page)

“Oh,
he’s
not talking to anyone,” the girl said, referring to Jarvis. “He’s not authorized.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said, but Jarvis grabbed my arm.

“It’s okay, Miss Calliope, relax.”

I took a deep breath.

“Fine.” I sat back in my seat, the plush cushions fluffing out around my head, and sighed angrily.

Ignoring us again, the girl went back to her typing—but now the
clickety-clack
just got on my nerves.

“Jarvis, bad stuff’s happening down in Purgatory and we’re just gonna
sit
here?” I moaned, frustrated.

“This is God, Miss Calliope,” he said. “I assume that God works in God’s time.”

“But that’s nuts,” I said.

Jarvis had no answer for me, which kind of sucked because he
always
had an answer for everything.

“Don’t you think we should demand to see God?” I asked.

Jarvis shook his head.

“I think we should just wait and see what happens—”

I stood up. I was sick of “waiting and seeing.” It hadn’t served me well in the past and it certainly wasn’t serving me well now.

“I’m sorry, Jarvis,” I said. Then I walked over to the girl and slammed my fists down on the desktop. She stopped typing and looked up at me. She didn’t seem particularly annoyed, but she didn’t seem pleased, either.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I raised an eyebrow.

“I think you know what I want.”

“The bathroom,” she said, pointing at the stairway, “is back down the way you came.”

I reached down and grabbed her typewriter out from under her, marveling at how much heavier the thing was than it’d looked. I swung my body away so it was out of her reach and glared at her.

“You want your typewriter back, then you tell God I want to see him/her, and I mean right now.”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” the girl said. “The door’s right there. Be my guest.”

I turned around to make sure she wasn’t pulling my leg—she wasn’t. A pale cream door with a white ceramic doorknob had magically appeared in the wall behind me.

“Careful with that,” she said, clucking at me like a hen as I hefted the Remington back onto her desk.

“Sorry to be such a bitch,” I said, “but please don’t let my bad behavior reflect poorly on my friend Jarvis over there. He thinks you’re cute.”

The girl raised her eyes to mine, studying me for a moment—probably trying to decide if I was bullshitting her or not—then pursed her full lips and flicked her gaze over to where Jarvis was sitting on the couch, his face bright red. I gave the former faun a wave, which he halfheartedly returned, then I walked over to the doorway, wrapped my hand around the knob, and opened the door to God’s office.

I stepped into God’s office, expecting to find, I don’t know what . . . a white office with a yellow couch and maybe an egg yolk-colored phone or two? But what I discovered was the opposite of that.

No, it was worse than the “opposite” of what I’d expected:

Not my tiny apartment in Battery Park City near the missing Twin Towers, the Financial District, and the Statue of Liberty, but my bedroom at Sea Verge, where I’d lived—minus time away at boarding school—for the first eighteen years of my life. I’d spent my first “alive in this world” night here as a newborn—although the room hadn’t been very different then than it was now: The carpet was still the same shade of dusty rose and the white wicker desk, dresser, and nightstand had been with me from the beginning, too. The double bed came later, after I’d graduated from the cradle. The comforter set and walls had changed colors and themes numerous times during my occupancy, but I’d gotten the deep rose bedding that was on the bed when I was sixteen—and it hadn’t been changed since.

I’d dreamed in this bedroom: While I sat at the desk “pretending” to do my winter break homework or lay on the floor staring up at the pale cream ceiling, imagining what my life might be like when I grew up. I’d had pillow fights with Clio here, and I’d lain on the bed and cried my eyes out for two days straight when I’d lost my two best friends in a car accident. This room, whether I lived in it now or not, was me, was everything that I’d been . . . that I’d hoped to be. It was like walking into a ghost, but one whose every moan you knew by heart.

Overwhelmed, I sat down at the foot of the bed then I instantly shot back up, thinking I might find some clothes in the closet that I could change into. I got to the closet door before remembering I’d taken all my stuff with me the last time I’d visited, so I sat back down on the bed and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long.

I sat up, my spine straightening as God’s voice punctured the silence, its honey timbre palpitating in my ears and tickling the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. I’d experienced God’s dulcet tones before, but I was still surprised by the RuPaulish quality of his/her voice, the brassy low end mixing nicely with the high-pitched purrish vibrato.

“Why am I here?” I asked, cutting to the chase. I didn’t have time for pleasantries.

“Because you asked to see me,”
God said.

“But I don’t
see
you,” I said. “I don’t see anything but my old room.”

Suddenly, I felt a chill race up my body. It started at my toes, rushed up my calves, through my midsection, and into my jaw before settling inside my head. I blinked twice, my thinking clearer than it had ever been before.

“Look in the mirror,”
he/she said, using my lips to give body to his/her words. I turned my head, catching my reflection in the white wicker mirror above my dresser. I looked like me, only a more “knowing” me.

“Are you inside me?” I said, but I knew the answer.

“When I was that I was,”
God said,
“I found myself to be a very lonely creature. So, I created this universe—and all the other universes—so that I would not be alone anymore. My first attempts yielded the angels and then the demons, but both of them lacked a spark, an ability to be both perfection and imperfection at once. They were rigid, inflexible, and so the perfect ones stayed in Heaven and the imperfect exiled themselves to Hell—”

“They make it sound like you kicked them out,” I said, marveling at the oddness of having God speaking to me through my own body.

“They exiled themselves by their very nature, but that’s neither here nor there,”
God said.
“You want to know why I created humans . . . it’s a question I can feel resonating inside you, even now.”

“It’s one of many questions I have, actually,” I said.

“I don’t want to be Death,” I said suddenly, selfishness welling inside me. “I know it’s selfish of me, that my family is depending on me, but I’m so scared to be something more than . . . just
me
.”

In the mirror, I watched God laugh (using my body).

“This is why I enjoy you so much, my dear,”
I (God) said.
“I spend entirely too much time losing myself in your life, in your choices. You please me more than you will ever know.”

“Is that why you’ve helped me with the Demon Vritra and the Devil and my sister?”

I nodded to myself in the mirror.

“But I’m just some girl,” I said uncertainly.

God’s answer was silence, and then I understood that the greatest gift we, as human beings, have been given is our humanity. No matter whether I was immortal or supernatural or just plain old human, I possessed humanity and nothing could ever take that away from me. It was this character (flaw, some might say) that made me so special . . . and so important.

And it was the reason God had asked so much of me.

“So, now you see,”
God said.

“I do,” I replied, as scary as it was to admit.

“Then go do what needs to be done,”
God said, his/her enthusiasm making me smile.

 

 

i guess i shouldn’t have been surprised by what I learned, but in the end, it made a strange kind of sense: a sense that in the days to follow would become even clearer.

 

 

jarvis was waiting for me when I returned. He wasn’t on the couch anymore, though. Instead, he’d found his way over to the secretary’s desk and was helping her put another ribbon on her old Remington typewriter. I took care to make as much noise as I could as I closed God’s office door behind me, but they both looked up, startled, like I’d caught them making out or something.

“Get your lady friend’s number,” I said, heading back to the spiral staircase. “And then let’s get the hell out of Dodge. We’ve got shit to take care of.”

I didn’t wait for Jarvis’s answer, just started down the stairs, my feet rap-tapping on the white lacquer as I descended. A moment later, I heard Jarvis’s matching steps behind me.

“What did God say, Miss Calliope?” he asked breathlessly.

I didn’t stop, or even turn around, as I spoke.

“God likes this. All of this,” I said, “He/she built this world for conflict and now we’re gonna go give him/her a whole bunch of it.”

As Jarvis mulled over what I’d just told him, the only sound was the staccato beat of our feet on the stairs. Finally, he asked:

“All right, then. So, where are we going?”

I laughed, enjoying the way the tables had turned. I was usually the one asking where we were going, not the other way around.

“We’re going to Hell,” I replied. “The Devil and my sister have staked out Purgatory and left Hell all by its lonesome.”

“How are we going to get there?” Jarvis asked. “I can’t call a wormhole—the Devil will be watching to see if we attempt anything and then he’ll know where we are.”

“Oh, I’ve got all of that under control,” I said, massaging my stomach while it burbled unhappily.

The pain had been more manageable while we were in Heaven, but now that we were leaving, the hard-core indigestion was back. I would’ve cursed Sumi and his magical jewel . . . if I hadn’t had plans to use the gem for my own nefarious purposes.

“We have to get out of Heaven first,” I continued. “Being here hampers the jewel’s powers.”

“You don’t plan to use the wish-fulfillment jewel, Mistress Calliope?” he said incredulously, stopping midstep.

I turned around and put my hands on my hips. What I had to say to Jarvis, I needed to say directly to his face.

“Jarvis,” I began. “First of all, I want you to call me Callie, not because I’m being impertinent, but because you’re my friend and friends don’t use the term ‘Mistress’ in front of other friends’ names. It’s just weird.”

“All right,” Jarvis said, turning over my request in his mind.

“And secondly: Damn straight I’m using the jewel to get to Hell—”

Jarvis opened his mouth to protest, but I overrode him.

“I don’t think Sumi and Hyacinth are working for the Devil
or
Thalia. I think they’re independent operators, using this opportunity to further their own agendas, whatever that may be. I want to draw them out, and the best way to do that is to use the jewel.”

“Are you certain?” Jarvis asked.

“Very certain,” I said, nodding. “The jewel is how Frank found me in the subway, and the more I think about that whole sordid experience, the more I think he used the jewel somehow to seduce me. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but who knows.”

Jarvis’s mouth dropped open.

“In his own totally screwed-up way,” I continued, “I think he actually likes me, and seducing me wasn’t even part of the bigger plan.”

“Hmm, I suppose you could be right, Callie,” Jarvis said. “But my worry is that their agendas, whatever they are, will not coincide with our own.”

My brain was already one step ahead.

“It doesn’t matter what they’re really after,” I replied. “Because for my purposes, all they have to do is just
exist
.”

“Okay, then,” Jarvis said, getting used to the idea. “You sound as though you know exactly what it is you’re doing, so command me as you will.”

I grinned and punched him in the arm.

“Jarvis, I command you to follow me down these goddamned stairs and then come with me while I go knock a few heads around.”

Jarvis didn’t hesitate for a moment.

“Sounds divine.”

 

 

we tackled the remaining stairs with renewed vigor, cutting the time it’d taken us to originally climb them by half. They were still punishing, but not nearly as painful as they’d been on the way up. We were making great time and I actually found myself growing to enjoy each tip-tap our feet made on the lacquered stair, because I knew it meant I was one step closer to getting the hell out of there.

I was looking forward to throwing myself onto one of the very comfy yellow couches and resting my weary calves for a minute or two when we finally reached the bottom, but to my surprise, I saw that our subway train was still there, doors wide open and waiting.

“Looks like our chariot awaits,” I said, gesturing to the empty car as we climbed aboard and fell onto one of the benches, the doors sliding closed behind us.

The train sprang to life, picking up speed as it sailed down the track. With my new take on life, I was in a much better frame of mind than the first time we’d boarded the train, and I found myself closing my eyes, the gentle rocking motion putting me to sleep. I wasn’t too worried about missing my stop, because Jarvis was beside me, keeping an eye out for our destination, so I snuggled against the window, using my arm as a pillow. I realized it had been like a day and a half and I hadn’t slept once. I figured I was due for a little nap—not that ten minutes of shut-eye could make up for missing a whole night’s sleep.