The Wish List (3 page)

“Hmm,” said Peter, entirely unhappy with Beelzebub's acquiescence. “Just as long as we understand each other.”

“Perfectly,” hissed the demon, pressing the Terminate button.

Peter stuffed the cell phone into his pocket. This wasn't over. That sneaky tone had crept into Bub's voice. He intended to send a demon to Earth, to reclaim the lost soul. A Soul Man. Peter was certain of it. Beelzebub was going to risk untold repercussions on the mortal plane for the sake of one Irish girl. Who was this Finn person? And why was she suddenly the most popular spirit in the cosmos?

Beelzebub stuck his nose out of the shadows. All clear. So, Finn got to go back. Well, it wouldn't be for long. He would make sure of that. Just long enough to add a few more points to her negative column. Then Lucifer would have his precious soul. And Beelzebub would hold on to his job until the next crisis.

So he had lied to Peter. Big deal. He was a demon, wasn't he? What did that white-suited goody-two-shoes expect?

MEG DIDN'T WANT TO OPEN HER EYES. SO LONG AS SHE lay here hiding behind her lids, she could invent her own little story to explain recent events. That was it. She'd just lie here forever, and never even peek at what lay outside her head.

So: the pains all over her body were not the result of smashing into the walls of a celestial blue tunnel, but into the gas tank. That explained why she was lying down too. Doubtless she was in hospital, grievously injured. But alive. And the hallucinations, they were probably brought on by the painkillers. She would have laughed, if her sides weren't wracked with shooting pains. Obvious, really. And it made a lot more sense than the other version of the story. I mean, dog-boys and giant tunnels?

Meg was so confident in her new theory that she decided to risk cracking open her eyelids. Her initial impression was blue. A lot of blue. Still, don't panic. You get blue in hospitals. A soothing color.

Then a pair of disembodied, bloodshot eyes blinked in the azure panorama, bringing her hopes for a happy ending crashing down around her ears.

A set of sooty teeth appeared beneath the eyes.

“Never seen nothing like that,” said a phantom mouth.

Faced with something like that, lying-down-with-your-eyes-closed tactics suddenly seemed dubious at best. Meg scrambled to her feet, backpedaling until she was flattened against the tunnel wall. Yep, that tunnel again. Looked like the hospital theory wouldn't fly.

“Spectral trail,” continued the mouth, oblivious to Meg's discomfort. “Blue, red, purple. Wow-wow-weee.”

Features and limbs flickered into focus around the slablike teeth. Some form of creature stood on the ledge overlooking the tunnel chasm. A diminutive humanoid. Its blue-tinged skin matching the walls exactly. Perfect camouflage.

“What are you?” croaked Meg.

“What am I? asks the girl,” snorted the creature. “What am I? I be resident. You be intruder. No greeting? No felicitations? Just ignorance and bluntness.”

Meg considered her options. The thing was small enough; maybe she could hit it with a rock and make her escape along the ledge. But escape to where? To what?

The creature scratched a pointed chin. “You must pardon Flit, young lady. Company never land. Float on by. Floaty, floaty, floaty.”

“Where am I?” asked Meg.

Flit threw his arms wide. “Where? Tunnel, girl. The tunnel. Life . . . tunnel . . . afterlife.”

Meg sighed. Just as she'd feared. Dead then. “And you are?”

“Man once,” sighed the creature. “Bad man. So now mite. Tunnel scraper. Flit's penance. Girl, look.”

Flit hauled a wicker basket from behind a kink in the wall. “Soul residue. Clog tunnel.”

Meg peered inside. The basket was full of glowing stones. Blue, of course. She could be imagining it, but she would have sworn the stones were singing.

Flit stroked the stones lovingly. “Two hundred baskets. Then Pearlies.”

Meg nodded. It made sense, she supposed. Sort of a heavenly community service.

“So that's it, is it? I'm a . . . mite . . . am I?”

Flit found that hilarious. “Girl? Mite? Oh, no, no, negative. Girl one in a million billion. Purple spectral trail.”

“I don't . . .”

Flit rapped Meg's forehead with his knuckles.

“Ears open, girl! Blue trail Pearlies. Red trail pit. Purple trail, half-half.”

Meg gazed into the vastness of the tunnel. The recently deceased were zooming past her refuge on the ledge. Some flew so close that she could see the disbelief in their eyes.

“What spectral trail? I don't see any . . .”

Then Flit passed a blue hand before her eyes, and she saw it. Behind each soul, a fiery discharge. Crimson or sky blue. Those with red trails were plucked from the stream, and sent spinning into the pit. Meg stared at her own hands. Violet sparks were playing around the tips of her fingers.

“See, girl, see! Purple. Goodie and baddie. Evenstevens. Fifty-fifty.”

Meg was starting to get the gist. “So what happens now?”

“No Pearlies. No pit. Back.”

“Back?”

The thing that had once been a man nodded. “Back. Fix the bad things.”

“Bad things?”

“Girl stupid parrot,” said Flit angrily. “Learn speak proper! Bad things done in body life. Back, back, floaty back. Mend. Then spectral trail lovely blue.”

Meg's ghostly heart quickened. “I can go back? Be alive again?”

Flit cackled, slapping his hands in mirth. “Alive? No. Ghost—boo! Help wronged one. Use soul residue.”

It wasn't easy keeping track of this conversation. Flit had been out of touch with humanity for so long that his vocabulary had been eroded to the bare essentials. As far as Meg could figure it, she had a choice. Either stay here on the ledge, or go back and try to patch things up with old Lowrie. Some choice. A gibbering creature or a . . . make that two gibbering creatures. How did you take back a sin, anyway? What was she supposed to do?

“Hurry, girl,” advised Flit. “Time ticking on, ticky-ticky-ticky. Good wasting away.”

Meg stared at her aura. Tiny red shoots were striating the purple. She swallowed. Once her ghostly energy ran out, it was down below with Belch for her. She could feel the pit drawing her like the North Pole pulling on an iron filing. Wisps of her aura broke off and were whipped into the abyss, like fluff down a plughole.

“How do I get back?”

The blue creature shrugged. “Flit not sure. Never happen before. Flit just hear from other mites.”

“Well, what did Flit hear?”

Flit pointed at the marbled wall. “Go through.”

“I tried that,” said Meg, rubbing her head. “Didn't work.”

Flit frowned. “Not think wall. Think hole.”

This sounded a bit like surfer logic to Meg. “You're sure about that?”

“Nope,” admitted the tunnel mite. “Crank tell I.”

Crank? Probably another blue creature with limited vocabulary. Meg tried to marshal her brain into some sort of order. Hole, she thought. Hole, hole, hole. The notion gripped her mind and spiraled in on itself like a mini-twister. Soon the word boomed in her head, pounding with her pulse. Hole, hole, hole. What was going on here? She'd never been able to concentrate on one thing her entire life. Maybe that was it. Life wasn't here to distract her now.

She stretched out a hand. The wall did seem less solid now. Fluid somehow, as though it were a slow wave rippling with barely noticeable momentum. Her fingers brushed the surface and sank into it. Silver sparks danced around the contact point.

“See!” gloated the mite.

Meg whipped her hand back, flexing the fingers experimentally. Everything seemed in working order. Not bad for a dead girl.

“Go, girl—go!” urged Flit. “Pit strong here.”

Meg nodded. The farther away she was from that thing, the longer her spectral trail would last. And she'd need every ounce of strength in what was left of her body to make it up to old Lowrie.

“Okay. I'm going. I just hope you're right. This'd better not be a shortcut to hell.”

“No, no, no. Flit sure. Straight homey home.”

No point in hanging around here putting it off. Into the wall and be done with it. She'd never been afraid of anything in her life, and she wasn't going to start in her afterlife. She took a deep breath and . . .

“Girl, wait!”

“What?” spluttered a startled Meg.

“Here.”

Flit pressed something into her hand. Two small stones from his basket. Blue with silver ripples.

“Soul residue. Extra batteries.”

“Thanks, Flit,” said Meg, stuffing the stones deep into the pocket of her combats. That was all she needed. Some rocks. Still, better not dump them in front of the little guy. Might hurt his feelings.

“Girl go now! Fast. Roadrunner fast.”

“Beep, beep,” said Meg nervously.

She reached into the rock face again. The sparks danced around her wrist, then her elbow, then she was gone.

Myishi was fiddling around in Belch's brain.

“Well?” said Beelzebub impatiently.

“Don't rush me,” muttered the diminutive technician, not bothering to raise his eyes from the gray jelly before him.

“I'm on a tight schedule here, Myishi. Is he worth salvaging or not?”

Myishi straightened, shaking the slop from his fingers.

“Not in this state. Total burnout. The canine brain meld blew his mind. Literally.”

Sparks rippled at the end of Beelzebub's talons. “Damn it to heaven! I need some background on that girl!”

The computer wizard grinned smugly. “No problem, Beelzebub-
san
. I can uplink him.”

Computers were something of a mystery to hell's Number Two, a bit like transubstantiation.

“Uplink?”

Myishi grinned nastily. “On Earth, my methods were somewhat curtailed by professional ethics. Here . . .

He didn't need to finish the sentence. In Hades, human rights were no longer an issue. Myishi removed a nasty-looking object from his box of tricks. It resembled a small monitor on a metal stake. Without hesitation the programmer plunged it into the morass of Belch's brain.

Beelzebub winced. Myishi was one creepy individual. He made Doctor Frankenstein look like a Boy Scout.

“The brain spike. I love this little baby. The brain's own electrical impulses provide the power source. Ingenious, if I do say so myself.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Beelzebub, feeling just a tad faint.

Myishi pulled a remote from the pocket of his designer suit, smearing the silk with gobbets of brain matter.

“Now, let's see what this creature saw.”

The tiny screen flickered into life, and the two demons saw themselves staring at themselves as Belch saw them. It was all very confusing. The sort of thing that would give you a headache.

“That's no use, you moron.”

Myishi bit his bottom lip to hold in a reply. Beelzebub made a mental note. Watch him. Getting uppity.

“I'll rewind it.”

The picture wavered and sped into reverse. Belch flew down the tunnel, and was born again. Only in his mind, of course.

“Right. Play.”

On the screen, Belch was once again grinning down at the writhing old man.

“I like this boy,” commented Myishi. “Real talent.”

“Plodder,” sniffed Beelzebub, ever the hypocrite. “Okay, hold it there!”

Myishi jabbed at the controls and the memory playback froze. In the jittering frame, Meg Finn was kneeling protectively over the frame of the injured old man.

“Aha!” said Beelzebub. “She protected him. That's what got her off the hook. What are the odds of that? Must be a million to one.”

Myishi consulted a calculator the size of a credit card.

“Eighty-seven million to one, actually,” he corrected, the words plopping smarmily from between his lips.

Beelzebub counted to ten. You'd need the patience of a saint to put up with this smart aleck. And he was no saint. He pointed his trident threateningly at the computer programmer.

“This blob is no good to me like this, and neither are you if you can't fix him up somehow.”

Myishi grinned, unfazed. “No problem, Beelzebubsan. I'll install a virtual-help hologram, and upgrade him from catatonic to . . . let's say . . . dogged, if you'll excuse the pun.

“What about infernal?”

“Can't be done. Not with his cranium. Very few skulls can support true evil, takes real strength of character. This particular specimen is never going to be anything more than a thug.”

“Dogged will have to do, then.”

Myishi's manicured nails clicked on the remote pad. “That, added to the canine genes, should turn him into a right automaton. Once you set him in motion, he won't stop until the job is done, or his life force runs out.”

Myishi hit SEND, and Belch's frame spasmed as the bytes ran down the brain spike. “What's all the urgency, anyway? What have you got in store for this guy?”

“This is my new Soul Man,” said Beelzebub, his eyes shining. “He's going back to reclaim our lost spirit.”

Myishi stroked his goatee, a miniature version of the devil's own. “I'd better juice him up, then. A few cc's of liquefied residue straight into the cortex. He . . . it'll be running smoother than a newborn babe.”

“It?” noted Beelzebub. “You can't get the dog out of him?”

“No, Beelzebub-
san
. The mainframe is too corrupted.”

“Mainframe?” Beelzebub was certain Myishi used these technical terms only to confuse him. He was, of course, exactly right.

“Mainframe—brain. Imagine trying to unmix salt and water with a spoon.” All this was said in a tone of barely disguised condescension.

“How soon will he be ready?”

Myishi shrugged casually. “A day, perhaps two.”

Beelzebub had had enough of all this flippancy. It was true he could not afford to nullify Myishi's soul, but he could certainly cause him some discomfort.