The Devil's Dreamcatcher (14 page)

Okay. Team DEVIL clearly didn't stop any of their deaths, but what
did
they do the last time they were here in the land of the living? For every step forward with my new friends, I seem to take two back when it comes to clearing up mysteries about their time travel with the Viciseometer.

I look down at my shorts pocket when a strange heat starts pulsing through the fabric, almost as if the Viciseometer knows that I'm thinking about it. It's getting impatient for something. I look up to see that Owen is getting fidgety, too. His hand keeps going to his breast pocket.

Suddenly I remember that ball of light I saw before Owen materialized in front of the angel statue. It was white at first, then it turned a brilliant blue, and then Owen appeared. He had something round and silver in his hand, which he placed in the same pocket he keeps reaching for now.

Both appear to work the same
, he said to Team DEVIL's confusion.

“Do you have a Viciseometer?” I blurt out.

My question takes the angels by surprise, which is enough to confirm to me that they do have another time-traveling device. That's how they got here. Of course. It's so simple.

“What do you know about the Viciseometer?” demands Jeanne.

Again, I ignore her.

I look straight into Owen's tired, bloodshot eyes. “Show me.”

Owen pulls a silver pocket watch from his breast pocket. He doesn't even try to feign ignorance. The Viciseometer hidden on me is now surging with heat. I take it out and let the red face hover above my open hand. The burnished gold rim is lit up with tiny sparks. Owen's Viciseometer is reacting in the same way, but instead of a red surface surrounded by tiny flames, its face is a deep sapphire blue, and it's surrounded by tiny diamonds glinting away under the darkening November sky.

“Are those stars around the edge?” asks Elinor, inching closer.

“They are,” replies Owen. “Melissa, how did you guess we were using a Viciseometer?”

“Because you need to jump through time, just like we do,” I reply. “And a Viciseometer was the most obvious way of doing it.”

Owen and I are moving closer together, but it isn't intentional. We are being physically pulled by the Viciseometers.

Our hands are inches apart. Both Viciseometers start to rotate clockwise, millimeters above our hands. The flames tickle, but they aren't painful. The watches are mesmerizing, hypnotic. I know I should pull away, but I can't.

Then our fingertips graze.

The red face of my Viciseometer connects to the blue like two magnets pulled together. Our hands join as well; Owen's skin is warm, nowhere near as cold as Angela's was.

Almost immediately, the others start screaming.

“Where did they go?” shouts Mitchell. “What did he do with Medusa?”

“
Owen would do nothing!
” screams Jeanne. “He is a pacifist, not a warrior. That devil woman with snake hair has taken him.”

Alfarin is swinging his axe like an inverted pendulum. He narrowly misses Johnny, but Elinor doesn't notice. She's arguing with Angela about where we've gone.

“They can't see us!” I exclaim to Owen. “We've become invisible.”

“Did you know this would happen?” Owen asks softly. Our hands are still joined, and the sensation of flame and stars is sending aching spasms through my arm.

“No. I knew about the legend of the Viciseometer, but only because I'd read about it. I hadn't even seen one before today.”

Then a hazy thought, like the memory of a nightmare, drifts across my mind. A shadow. I can taste tears and strawberries.

Owen bites down on his bottom lip. His top lip is so thin it's barely visible. My grandmother once told me not to trust men with thin lips.

That turned out to be bullshit. Rory Hunter's lips were like swollen fingers.

“Can you trust me, Melissa?” Owen asks, as if reading my mind.

“That depends,” I hedge. “What can you tell me that will
help
me trust you?”

Owen smiles, but he doesn't look happy.

“I can tell you that I was made aware of the Skin-Walkers' involvement in this search before we left Heaven. I didn't tell the others because I didn't want to frighten them—or at least scare Angela and Johnny. I even argued against their coming here. Jeanne and I have seen death in a way most of the dead have not. In my case, I saw men, younger than me, cut down in a hail of machine-gun fire. If they passed quickly, they were fortunate. Death does not always come quickly on the battlefield. I know that Skin-Walkers have no regard for anything but death. They enjoy it. What Jeanne and I have seen would be a feast for them. So I was opposed to bringing two innocents within their grasp, but I was overruled.”

“What else do you know about the Skin-Walkers, Owen?” I
ask. “I need to know as much as possible if I'm going to protect the others. They have no connection to the Unspeakable whatsoever. They're here because of me, and I can't—I won't—let anything happen to any of them.”

“Apart from their love of death and pain, I know little about the Skin-Walkers. I have heard there are nine in total: one for each circle of Hell, or so I was told. I don't know if this is true. He who rules Heaven is not what you would expect.”

I came here for information, for help, and I'm finally getting it, but I don't want to stay invisible like this. The sound of the others yelling is being muffled somehow. We can still see them, but I'm starting to feel like I'm fading away.

“Owen, we should let go,” I say.

“Wait. There's something else,” adds Owen urgently. “Something you need to know about yourself, Melissa. I know more about your task than you realize, and I want to warn you, because you're being used. The Unspeakable who took the Dreamcatcher is your stepfather, and you're being used as bait to lure him. Those who sent you out here are using you in the same way I was used back in 1916.”

“I already know this, Owen. Now please let go.”

“Do you? Do you really understand what they are prepared to sacrifice to get the Dreamcatcher back in Hell? Septimus is a Roman general who fought and made sacrifices in some of the bloodiest campaigns in history.”

“Septimus
was
a Roman general, but he's worshipped in Hell. He's a good guy.”

“I said the same about my commanding officers. I believed the same up until the moment I was hit by a hail of bullets. I thought they would come for me to help, but they didn't. They didn't come to help any of us.”

“Septimus is different. Now let go.”

“They are all the same, Melissa, but Septimus has given you a gift. You have a Viciseometer. So use it. Run away. Leave the others and go, before it's too late.”

Owen's eyes are wide and pleading. The skin around them looks
pinched and bruised. Unlike his angel comrades, Owen actually looks dead.

“You think I should desert the others?”

“Yes. You said yourself that you wanted to protect them. By leaving them, you will do that.”

“I can't.”

“It's because of Mitchell, isn't it? Already I can see that the way you look at him is different from the way you look at Alfarin, or Elinor.”

“You know nothing about me, Owen. You've only just met me, and I don't care anymore what information Up There has given you, or what you're keeping from Jeanne, Angela and Johnny. . . .”

But Owen has a fire in him now. I can smell it. It's wood and mud and rain and blood.

“Listen to me. Your name is Melissa Olivia Pallister. You died on the second of December in 1967, at the age of sixteen, after you fell from the Golden Gate Bridge. The Grim Reapers marked you down as a suicide, but you wouldn't sign the form to accept that declaration, so they sent you to Hell for your defiance. But there's another date of death, Melissa, one in June of 1967, that was listed in your records above December second. And then it was crossed out.”

“What are you talking about? How have you seen my records?”

“You all trust Septimus. Well, you're fools. You've died twice, Melissa. Did Septimus tell you that?”

“A person can't die twice. Now let go of me.”

“Something happened to you. In life and death. You have an entire parallel existence that's been wiped out. I think you're in danger.”

With a wrench that almost pulls my arm from my shoulder socket, I drag my hand away from Owen's. Mitchell, Alfarin and Elinor immediately rush toward me, but at the last second, Mitchell veers away and grabs hold of Owen's jacket.

“Do that again and I swear I'll drag you back into Hell with me,” he growls.

“It was an accident,” replies Owen. “My thumb must have pressed down on the Viciseometer.”

The fire in Owen has gone. Did I just imagine all of that? He's telling the rest a blatant lie, and I feel complicit in it, even though it doesn't come from my mouth. My head feels foggy. What was that nonsense he was just spouting about two deaths? I must have hallucinated that. I was probably overwhelmed by the Viciseometers' connection.

“We should remove ourselves from this place,” says Jeanne. “Separately.”

“Not now, Jeanne,” says Johnny. “Please. I've only just found our Elinor.”

“We have a task, given to us by the great Lord Septimus,” says Alfarin. “We must locate the Unspeakable and reclaim the Dreamcatcher. That is our purpose. However, if we do not find food soon, I will be forced to eat my friend Mitchell, and as you can see, he is but skin and bone. I will choke on him. Food, then foe. Together or separate is of little consequence to my stomach.”

“I bet I'd taste pretty good, actually,” replies Mitchell. He glances at me and then quickly looks away.

“You can still eat?” asks Angela. “No fair. I never know if what they tell us in Heaven is truth or rumor. Jeez, I'm so jealous. I would die—again—for one last pizza.”

“Up There isn't crowded, though,” says Elinor. “Ye could not swing a mouse in Hell without hitting another devil.”

“But ye get to sleep,” says Johnny. “I haven't slept for over three hundred years. I'm bloody knackered—and starving.”

They can't eat or sleep Up There? Suddenly it makes sense why Owen looks so tired, and why he talks such incoherent nonsense. I'm beginning to wonder if Up There is as great as we devils have been led to believe.

“What do you think, Melissa?” asks Owen calmly, still acting as if nothing happened. “Do we stay together and pool our resources, or do we part?”

“A meeting of Team DEVIL,” I say, and with a jerk of my head, I motion to a mausoleum several yards away. Owen's calmness is
unnerving, and my head is hurting. The soldier was just talking utter bullshit and complicating everything. All I want to do is save the Dreamcatcher from Rory. The Skin-Walkers can take
him
back to wherever it is he escaped from, and then I can go back to existing.

The Viciseometer is back in my pocket, but there's no sense of urgency pulsing from it. Like Owen, it seems placid—for now.

The four members of Team DEVIL close into a tight circle against the mausoleum. We're all different shapes and sizes, yet we fit together perfectly. Alfarin swings his left arm over Mitchell's shoulder, and Mitchell wraps his arm around my waist. His skin is hot; I had never noticed just how hot before the ice-cold angels touched me. Elinor is picking at the skin around her fingernails and leaning into Alfarin. She looks really nervous, and I know why. It isn't because of Skin-Walkers or Unspeakables or even crazy French angels.

It's because she thinks we're going to separate her from her brother.

Elinor smiles at me. Her smile is almost pathetic in its sadness. And I know in that instant that we have to stay with the angels, at least for the time being. I can't do to Elinor what we've done to Mitchell by coming here.

“I do not trust Jeanne,” says Alfarin. “She would sooner steal my blade and lodge it in my back than assist us.”

“I don't trust that Owen dude, either,” mutters Mitchell.

“What do ye think, M?” asks Elinor.

I glance back at the angels. “I think they might have information and resources that could help us, but I agree that we need to be careful around them,” I reply, trying futilely to tuck my hair behind my ears. “But I'm not going to split Elinor and Johnny up while we're back on earth. We'll stay together, but just be cautious, okay? Especially around Owen and Jeanne.”

“Thank ye, M.” Elinor hugs me and beams over at the angels. I hear a whoop from Johnny, who has interpreted his sister's smile. We break our huddle and start walking back to the angels.

As we get closer, I see Owen pulling a sheaf of folded papers out of his jacket. The papers are bound with brown leather laces. He beckons us over.

Jeanne has the look of someone sucking a lemon, but at least Angela and Johnny seem happy we're joining forces—for now.

“Do you have money?” asks Owen.

“We have nothing,” I reply.

“Then you can have this,” says Owen, and from inside the folded sheaf of papers he draws out a thin wad of bills. Mitchell and Angela both make a sound of longing.

“Food!” exclaims Mitchell.

“Shopping,” moans Angela.

“This is money, from this time,” says Owen. “It will be very similar to what Angela and Mitchell used before they passed over.”

“I've changed my mind about these angels,” mutters Alfarin. “If we stick with them, we dine like kings.”

“Do we stay here in this time and find food, then?” asks Johnny glumly. “Not that I can eat anything.”

“No,” says Mitchell quickly. “My mom and little brother are here. They can't be allowed to see me.”

“I've got an idea,” says Angela. “Why don't we travel to New York in the spring? We could head for Central Park and lie on the grass. No one will look twice at us.”