The Devil's Intern (3 page)

“Excellent,” continues The Devil. “We wouldn’t want a repeat of last year’s entertainment, would we?” He laughs and thousands of sycophants laugh with him. Medusa and I don’t laugh, though. I don’t think there’s anything funny about a rabid three-headed dog tearing dead people to pieces, which is apparently what happened to the devils who arrived too early for last year’s ball.

“Well,” continues The Devil, “all that remains is for me to thank the committee once again for their tireless work in organizing such a party. I understand Chopper only lopped off one hundred and eighty heads this year, which is a vast improvement from last year. Special mention must also go to Joanne Cartwright, a new . . .”

I zone out as my thoughts drift back to what I heard earlier between Septimus and The Devil. What is a Viciseometer? I’m sure I’ve heard of it before. Maybe Medusa knows. She knows everything. Then again, I shouldn’t get her involved in this, even on the periphery. The Devil is psychopathic on a good day. Medusa is smart because she asks questions; I’m smarter because I know when to keep my mouth shut.

Eventually, The Devil stops talking, the butt-kissers stop
cheering, and the arrival of roasted potatoes and flame-grilled steak is enough to bring my attention back to the present. After I fill my stomach to the point of bursting, Medusa announces she wants to dance. I’m unwilling to part from my third bowl of crème brûlée but relent when Medusa threatens to pummel me with her elbows. She says she never got the chance to dance when she was alive, but I haven’t danced ever.

Since I’m a good friend, I slip one hand around Medusa’s waist and, rather stiffly, we waltz around the dance floor. My fingers go searching for the bare skin of her back, but I quickly learn my lesson after Medusa grabs hold of them and twists.

“You may have been a musical prodigy when you were alive, but I am not a piano,” she growls. “Leave your hands where I can see them.”

“Can we go back and sit down? Dancing is for girls.”

“I
am
a girl, Mitchell,” replies Medusa, “and try telling The Devil that.” We both look over at the master of Hell, who has cleared the dance floor with his moshing.

We sit back down at our table and I pull my bowl of crème brûlée toward me. But I’ve lost my appetite—thoughts of this Viciseometer thing and Septimus’s plan are eating away at my insides. I don’t understand why. Maybe it was the tone of The Devil’s voice in the Oval Office. It was chilling.

“What’s wrong, Mitchell?” asks Medusa.

I stare at her hair. The curls are already starting to escape from the bun she tied them into. I don’t know why she bothered. I love her hair. It’s different.

“Hell calling Mitchell Johnson,” says Medusa in a singsong voice.

I tuck the errant curls behind Medusa’s ears. Her cheeks have gone red. She must be hot from the dancing.

“I need to ask you something,” I say. “In private.”

She laughs at the irony. Okay, so there is no such thing as
private
in Hell.

“Never mind,” I say, lowering my voice. “I’ll ask you here.”

I lean in toward her; she does the same. We’re so close our noses are almost touching. My head is telling me I shouldn’t share information from the office with Medusa. It’s just too dangerous. I don’t know what my heart would say, because it’s dead.

And that reminder is enough to make up my mind.

“Do you know what a Viciseometer is?” I whisper.

Medusa’s face falls a little and I notice that her shoulders slump a fraction.

“It’s okay,” I say quickly. “Ignore me. It was just something I overheard.”

“I thought—” Medusa stops. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.” She smiles thinly, not wide enough to show her dimples. “I know what a Viciseometer is,” she whispers. “It’s a legend; a stopwatch, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to look like. Only two were ever made, apparently, one for Hell, and one for Up There. They’re supposed to be really powerful objects.”

“But what does a Viciseometer do?” I ask. I knew Medusa would know. She’s always got her crazy hair buried in a book.

“A Viciseometer is a time-traveling device,” she explains. “But why do you want to know? How did you hear about it?”

I get out of answering by forking two whole profiteroles into my mouth. Then Septimus joins us. I start choking, worried that he somehow overheard us.

“I have to say, Medusa, the kitchen has outdone itself this year,” drawls Septimus. “That peppered salmon was to die for.”

Medusa smiles but doesn’t reply; all her hair is now escaping and she’s desperately trying to pin it back.

Septimus leans down, puts a hand on my shoulder, and whispers into my ear, “I don’t mean to ruin your evening by talking about work, Mitchell, but I’m afraid I will need you to come into the office tomorrow.”

Really? On my one day off all year? “Any reason in particular?” My voice doesn’t betray how worried I am. I’d bet everything
that Septimus just heard me talking about the Viciseometer, which means I might have gotten Medusa into trouble as well. Why did I listen to my heart? The damn thing isn’t there anymore.

“I’ve had an idea,” replies Septimus. “Mitchell, we are going to stop the dead.”

I don’t like being dead, and it’s important that you know that.

I get on with existing in the Afterlife because I have no choice. Septimus calls me
stoic
. I admit I had to look the word up. He says it’s a good quality, especially in Hell.

I think what he means is that I just go with the flow. I go to work, and I do my best. I hang with Medusa and my two other best friends, Alfarin and Elinor, and I’d like to think they see me as a pretty excellent friend. Loyal, funny, maybe cute in a dorky sort of way . . .

I shouldn’t be in Hell, though, and it isn’t fair that I am.

My old best friends, the ones still alive, will be turning twenty-one now. They’ll be graduating, traveling, dating, and living.

Living
. I have that one word written on a piece of scrap paper. It sits in my wallet, scrunched up and faded from being unfolded and read all the time.

And living is the one thing I will never do again.

I just exist.

So if Septimus’s plan is to stop the dead, I am totally in, because seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t die.

Because once you’re here, there is no way out.

The morning after the ball, I wake up in my dorm and immediately rub the crusty remains of sleep from my eyes. It takes me a while to
focus my brain. I could lie here for another few hours easily, especially as the other two hundred and sixty dudes I share the dorm with are all at work and for the first time—ever—I have the place to myself. I think back to last night and smile. Then I think I could be having a night like that every day if I were still alive, and my smile disappears. For a few hours I felt as if I were alive again. A fun, pretty girl keeping me company, great music, a ton of food . . .

Yeah, for a few hours I felt alive. And now for the rest of my existence I’ll be reminded that I’m not.

I make a pact with myself.
No more maudlin thoughts today
. I have a day off work—finally—and I intend to hang with Medusa, Alfarin, and . . . aw, crap. I don’t have the day off work at all. Septimus asked me to go in, didn’t he?

Okay, five more minutes . . .

Three hours later, it’s Medusa who wakes me up. She has a pillow in her hands and she’s thumping me around the head with it.

“I’m getting up. . . . I’m getting up. . . .”

“Septimus sent me a message!”
Whack
. “He is waiting”—
whack
—“for you”—
whack
—“Mitchell.”

“I’m getting up, I’m getting up. Now stop hitting me, you maniac.”

My feet are already on the floor.

Whack
.

“What was that for?”

“You insulted me.”

Whack
.

I wrestle the pillow from Medusa and start to smack her with it. Her yellow T-shirt rides up her stomach and I can see her tummy ring glinting like a new coin. It has a pink diamond hanging from it. Medusa got it to match her eyes.

Whack
.

Medusa grabs a pillow from another bed and lays a padded right hook across my jaw. She plays dirty. I was distracted by the sight of her skin.

“Cheat.”

“You’re pathetic.”

“We’ll call it a draw.”

“No way, loser. I owned you.”

My honor as a man is being called into question. This demands just one response.

Second death by pillow fight.

Ten minutes later we collapse onto my bed. Feathers are floating around the dorm room like elongated snowflakes. Being dead doesn’t cure allergies, and it isn’t long before I’m sneezing, wheezing, and scratching at the hives on my neck.

Medusa is still mocking me as we arrive on level 1.

The boss is already waiting. Septimus is still dressed in the clothes he wore to the Masquerade Ball—including the mask. He’s lounging in his big black leather chair with his feet up on the desk. Then we hear the snoring.

“He’s asleep,” says Medusa fondly. “We should have gotten him some coffee before we came.”

“I’ll have a hot chocolate while you’re at it.”

“Get your own, hive boy.”

“Ah, the sounds of young love,” says a deep voice. Septimus pulls off his mask and stretches.

“Ugh,” we both reply, although I notice that Medusa’s cheeks are suddenly red. I resist the urge to stick my finger in one of her dimples.

Septimus starts chuckling. “Mitchell, thank you for coming in this—” He stops speaking and looks at his wristwatch. “Is it the morning after, or the evening after before the morning?”

“Uh . . .”

“I think Mitchell left his brain in the ballroom, Septimus,” says Medusa, throwing a punch toward my kidneys.

“Well, while you work that little riddle out,” says Septimus, winking at Medusa, “how about we have a little chat about my plan?”

“You seriously think you can stop the dead from getting into Hell?” I grab a chair and wheel it over to Septimus’s desk.

Septimus shakes his head. “We’ll never be able to stop the dead, Mitchell, and I apologize if I gave you that impression. The Bloody Mary cocktails were aiding and abetting my imagination last night—I’m sure that frightful woman puts something illegal in them. Alas, if there is one guaranteed event in life, it is the impending arrival of death.” Septimus exhales a long sigh, which has nothing to do with tiredness. “However,” he adds quickly, “I do believe that with the correct tools, we can stem the mass migration to these particular transcendental shores, and together we can start leveling the playing fields of death once more.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“You were lost years ago,” quips Medusa.

“Don’t you have something important to do?” I ask, unleashing an elastic band in her direction. “Girl things, like doing the dishes, or cleaning?”

“Are you sure you two aren’t married?” drawls Septimus. “The pair of you sound exactly like my wife and me, before the joyful release of death finally separated us once and for all.”

“I would rather marry a skunk,” replies Medusa. “Better hygiene.”

“Hell will freeze over before I get married.”

Why am I feeling hot and shaky? It’s probably because I haven’t had any breakfast. I forget that Septimus has asked me here for a reason, and I start to mentally plot my day around meals. It immediately makes me feel better.

Septimus stands and stretches. “I know it’s your well-earned annual day off, Mitchell, but I need you to collate a list for me.”

I push thoughts of corn dogs out of my head.

“What kind of list, boss?”

“Responsible devils. People we work with on a daily basis who can be trusted absolutely. Don’t go for CEOs, they’re all corrupt. Start with department deputies, or even better, their executive assistants. Preferably devils who have been dead for at least two hundred years. They won’t have the same longing as the newly dead.”

“Longing for what?”

“What do you know about the Viciseometer?” asks Septimus. My boss isn’t just looking
at
me, he’s staring so hard it’s as if he’s seeing
through
me.

And I realize he knows that I know.

Medusa answers before I get a chance. “It’s an urban legend,” she blurts out, her eyes darting between me and Septimus.

“Most legends have their foundations in a truth, Medusa,” says Septimus.

“Are you saying it’s real?”

“As real as you or I,” replies Septimus. Medusa whistles through the gap between her two front teeth. “The Viciseometer has been used to go back in time to introduce the wheel; fire, of course, to the cavemen; and even the recipe for Coca-Cola. Alas, it has also been used to reveal the secret of atomic fission, and it was also responsible for sowing the seeds for cabbages—truly the most heinous use ever recorded.” He shudders. Septimus hates vegetables.

“Back to this list, Septimus. How many names would you like on it?” I ask. As much as I adore Medusa, I’m the one Septimus called in to help him.

“I think a shortlist of twenty names should suffice,” says Septimus. “Now, if you will both excuse me, I need to check on our lord and master. He is usually rather delicate the day after the Masquerade Ball and that does not bode well for anyone.”

“I’ll e-mail the list to you, boss.”

Septimus pauses by the door. He has a strange look on his face. I get the impression he wants to say something long-winded, like a warning, but all I get is, “Thank you, Mitchell. I won’t forget this.”

“No problem, boss.”

“And I’m sure I don’t need to remind either of you that discretion is paramount.”

“Absolutely,” I reply.

Once Septimus has gone, Medusa skips over to my desk and sits down on the edge. Her skinny legs dangle over my wastepaper
basket. I have a sudden urge to dunk her like a basketball, and the thought makes me laugh.

“Can I help you with the list?” she asks.

“If you want.”

“What about Dominic in banking?”

“He’s a moron who gets lost in his own department.”

“What about Patrick in the legal department? I’ve worked with him and he’s very diligent.”