Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (11 page)

15 · HOPELESSLY DEVOTED

BEA “ELSA” BUBB
did
not
like people going through her things. She arranged her office as a reflection of herself—inscrutable, challenging, and possessing a beauty of form so perfect as to be nearly imperceptible to the untrained eye.

And here she was, forced to stand idly by while Lilith Couture—
ugh, the name itself made one’s tongue contort grotesquely
, Principal Bubb fumed—riffled through her files.

A music-video program played on the plasma screen behind them.

“Welcome to
Total Request Dead!
I’m your host, Carson Nightly with the latest video from Yojuanna B. Covetta, ‘I’m L8 ’n’ Gr8, Gonna Make U Saliv8.’”

“Ugh,” Lilith said as she punched the mute button of the remote.

As Yojuanna danced on the crest of a shimmering tidal wave, Lilith resumed fingering her way through a stack of bulging folders.

“The only words I can think of to describe this travesty of a filing system aren’t suitable for a children’s facility.”

“You don’t know what it takes to run an institution such as Heck,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb said haughtily.

“And neither do you,” Lilith replied with a voice like a snooty sorority girl with a head cold. “This isn’t just about your sloppy management skills, Ms. Blob.”

“Principal
Blobb … er …
Bubb,”
corrected Bea “Elsa” Bubb.

“Do you follow the Netherworld Soul Exchange?” Lilith inquired. “It’s an organization that issues, trades, and redeems souls, with each transaction—”

“Yes, of course I am familiar with it,” Principal Bubb replied defensively. “I’ve only got my retirement tied up in the thing. Did you notice that I happen to have a stock ticker on the wall?”

Lilith looked over at the pulsing stream of letters and numbers on the wall and smiled weakly to herself. “Well, then,” she said, “you may want to rethink your retirement plan. There’s been considerable volatility recently. And the embarrassment of you allowing a little boy to escape Heck, the first such escape ever recorded, was just more kerosene on the brimstone.”

Lilith put her dainty feet up on an Ottoman, a mummified Turkish sultan preserved on all fours.

“While the Powers That Be and the Powers That Be Evil grapple with the deeper issues vexing the soul market,” Lilith went on, “it is up to me—us—to work with Chairman Mammon to stave off an after-realm recession …
or worse.”

Chairman Mammon
, the principal contemplated.
The legendary entrepreneur … the cunning, merciless lone wolf responsible for the Netherworld Soul Exchange and—in turn—the entire underworld economy!

“So, dear heartless, you and I have a lot of work ahead of us,” Lilith said, rising and strutting across the lair to the desk, each step sounding like another nail in the coffin of Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s career. “We start by renovating your little babysitting operation, showing that we are reacting swiftly and decisively to your bungle with the Fauster child.”

Principal Bubb cringed. The mere mention of that once-again-living brat’s name caused her skin to prickle, as if a frostbitten Eskimo were giving her a back massage.

“And, to instill faith within our infernal investors,” Lilith continued, “Heck is going to play host to the most precious gems in the underworld: the Hopeless Diamonds.”

“The Hopeless Diamonds?” the principal gasped. “Here?!”

On the plasma screen, Yojuanna—the glamorous eye of a hurricane comprised of twirling male dancers—stopped dancing in mid-gyration. She tiptoed closer to the screen and pressed her ear against the glass.

Lilith smirked as she straightened up a pile of folders and dusted off her hands. “The ultimate act of faith in Heck security” she said. “The value of human souls may fluctuate, but the safe money is always on commodities you can trust, such as rare, useless minerals.”

“W-wow,” Principal Bubb stammered. “I suppose they could go in my private safe, along with the rest of my precious things.”

Cerberus nudged his way between Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s ankles. Principal Bubb smiled down at him.
“Most
of my precious things,” she cooed, scratching the beast on the back of its middle neck (her personal favorite).

Lilith looked on with distaste. “The Hopeless Diamonds will be kept in the last place here that anyone would want to go, much less be able to access.”

“The teachers’ lounge?” Principal Bubb offered.

“SADIA!” shouted Lilith. She composed herself, smoothing a lock of shiny blond hair behind her ear.

“Mammon and Luci …
Lucifer
are still working out the details below,” Lilith said. “As soon as the particulars of the transfer are ironed out, you’ll know exactly what you need to know, perhaps less.”

Lilith’s hand beeped. In her palm was one of those
new ClawCommander organizers, the ones that are surgically attached to your hand, paw, or mitt, depending.

“Speaking of the market,” Lilith said while staring into the small blinking readout in her hand, “it’s time for
Laughing Stock.”

Lilith picked up the remote control on the desk and waved it at the plasma screens lining the walls of Principal Bubb’s lair. Yojuanna, grinning from ear to ear, kicked up her heels in manic delight as the channel switched to a bald, apoplectic demon with smaller-than-usual horns bouncing around a studio set. The set looked like a more masculine version of Principal Bubb’s lair, with blinking screens and a ceaseless parade of stock information, only—instead of velvet wallpaper and brimstone—the room was decorated with wood paneling and hunting trophies.

“Okay, caller,” the demon said, “I’ll make you a deal: if your stock actually earns a profit, I’ll personally polish the Pearly Gates. How about that? Boo-ya!”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb scrunched up her already scrunched-up face. “Who is this whack-job?” she asked.

Lilith stared at the screen, entranced, her green eyes drinking in every pixel. “Follow the stocks, you say?” she grunted. “How can you say that if you’ve never heard of Otto Seight and
Laughing Stock
?”

The host leaned close to the screen and arched his eyebrows. “Sorry about that last outburst,” he apologized to the camera. “The NSE has me in debt up to my
keister, and some bad, bad demons want to collect. Hear my cries, believe my lies! Boo-ya!!”

Lilith snorted girlishly. “What a card!” she commented.

Yeah, a joker
, thought Bea “Elsa” Bubb as she grimaced at the screen.
And that’s exactly what Milton Fauster has made of me. If I ever see that boy again, it will be too soon for me, and too late for him
.

16 · FERRET OUT

A BAND OF
early-morning sunlight slashed across Milton’s face. He blinked his eyes open and, to his surprise, found that he had wriggled out of his sleeping bag and was curled up in a ball.

His tongue felt very strange, as if he had eaten a bowl of scalding hot soup and chased it with a heaping spoon of Vick’s VapoRub. He also experienced a series of uncontrollable nose twitches.

The poultry thermometer lay a foot away from his barely used pillow.

I must have spat it out, or it was yanked
, he thought as he followed the jumper cables leading out of the garage and into the driveway.

The Insecticide 3000 was shattered underneath the basketball hoop, outlined with the ashes of thousands of small insects. Beside the wreckage of blackened wire
grids and smoldering transformers was a charred black bat, and—wrapped around it—the twitching paws of a smoking white ferret.

“Lucky!” Milton yelped as he rushed to his pet’s side.

Flecks of foam covered the ferret’s slack mouth, and his eyes were rolled back in his head.

Milton scooped Lucky up and placed him on his lap. He stroked his smoldering fur and checked to see if he was breathing. Milton opened his pet’s pointy mouth. Out came a gush of anchovy breath. The ferret’s fuzzy white belly gently swelled.

Alive
, thought Milton as he held his pet close.
Barely
.

Lucky’s eyes rolled back into their proper place and a peculiar sensation overtook Milton. A nervous energy cascaded throughout his body. He felt whole again, but …
different
. Antsy. Restless. Kind of like—

Lucky’s pupils came into focus. Milton blinked. In that blink, he saw a picture of himself as viewed from his own lap.

—
a ferret
.

Milton’s experiment in subtle energies had been a mixed blessing, like the
Star Wars
prequels. He had regained etheric energy, gluing his physical and sentient selves back together, but it wasn’t
his
etheric energy … or even human energy, for that matter. So while he was held “in phase,” it was through the skittish energy of gnats, mosquitoes, a bat, and—apparently—part of a little ferret.

Milton took Lucky into the garage and gave him a sip of water from his thermos.

Milton’s
own
mouth felt cooler and damper somehow. When he blinked, he still had those weird intermittent images of himself as seen from a ferret’s eyes. It was as if two different takes of the same scene had been spliced together in one movie, one from his perspective and another from Lucky’s.

“Honey?” Milton’s mom called from inside the house. “Is everything okay?”

Hardly
, thought Milton. He had been avoiding his mom ever since he had left the present behind at the hospital. He had no idea what the gift was and couldn’t spill the beans—not only to save his own skin, but also to spare his parents yet another child-inflicted trauma.

“Everything’s fine, Mom,” he lied. “Just cleaning up my science experiment for school.”

“Okay, hon. Do you need a ride to school?”

“Nope, I’m good,” Milton replied. “I’m going to go in early and … hit the books.”

“All right, then. Have a good day. Did you have a chance to …”

“Gotta hustle,” Milton interrupted. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, sweetie.”

That should buy me some time
, Milton thought.
But I can’t keep putting her off forever
.

Lucky shook himself fully awake and hopped off Milton’s lap. The weird ferrety energy seemed to get
more intense as Lucky became more alert. Milton looked down at his watch, fighting for focus among a storm of convulsive fidgets.

He really
did
have to hustle. Milton had made an appointment to see Algernon Cole, the lawyer, at the Paranor Mall before school. It was a bit out of the way—he had a sneaking feeling he’d be a little late for Mr. Castaneda’s Spanish quiz—but
que sera, sera
. Milton had a plan that could result in both free legal counsel and its direct delivery to the place where it was needed most.

17 · A SIDE OF COLE’S LAW

“I’D LIKE TO
say I’ve had consultations in weirder places than this,” Algernon Cole said when entering the Para-nor Mall, “but I can’t. This is the icing on the fruitcake.”

Lester Lobe’s mellow was officially harshed. “It’s a museum,” he said tersely.

“Whoa, chill, Wavy Gravy,” Algernon Cole said, palms out. “You definitely have an interesting place. I meant no disrespect. I
dig your scene
.”

Milton came rushing through the door. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, panting. “I woke up not feeling quite myself.”

Algernon Cole cocked his eyebrow and simpered. “Wait,” he said while slapping his hands together. “You’re the kid who was in the paper the other week!” He thrust his hand out to Milton. “Algernon Cole,” he said
while pumping Milton’s hand vigorously. “Practically-lawyer, at your service.”

He dropped Milton’s hand.

“Ooh, sweaty” he said while wiping his palm on his dark, ill-fitting suit. “So, you want to sue the medics who revived you or something? Unnecessarily rough intubation? Allergic to the stuff they used to wash your hospital sheets?”

“What?” Milton replied with a twitch. “No, no. Nothing like that. I wanted to talk to you about … a book I’m writing.”

“A
book?” Algernon Cole replied, swiping his hand through his thinning, ponytailed hair. “So you want to talk representation, right?”

“Not exactly,” Milton replied. “Let’s talk … in here. I get an hour, right?”

Milton fidgeted. He couldn’t help it—he had a squadron of restless gnat energy swarming inside him.

“Sure, right,” Algernon Cole said warily.

Milton had worked on his story during the bus ride. He thought he had a good chance of pulling this off, if only he could keep his newly acquired bug-bat-ferret constitution in check. He motioned toward the Elvis Abduction Chamber, otherwise known as a Psychomanthium.

“For privacy,” Milton said after a pause. “The book isn’t finished, and, you know, I’m just a little superstitious, that’s all.”

Algernon Cole snickered.

“I understand completely,” he said. “I’m sure we can keep you safe from those publishing sharks.” He tapped the side of the chamber. “Knock on wood.”

Lester Lobe turned away.

“Don’t mind me,” he said as he walked toward a box in the corner. “I just got a haunted ballot box in the mail today. From Florida. An old lady said it bit her as she cast her vote.”

Lester flipped on a classic-rock radio station and unpacked the latest addition to his museum.

Milton and Algernon Cole entered the Psychomanthium and sat across from each other on Fat Elvis bean-bag chairs. Milton reached up and yanked on the cord to an electric bulb. The soft red light came on with a rattle and click.

“Cozy,” Algernon Cole commented, squatting down with a one-two pop of his knees. “So, what’s your story, morning glory?”

Milton laced his fingers together fitfully.

“As you may have read,” he relayed, reading from the teleprompter of his mind, “I was …
dead …
for a while.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a vacation,” Algernon Cole interjected. “Sorry, go on.”

“And that’s when I got the … the idea. For my book.” Milton drew in a deep breath.

“It’s called …
Heck.”

“Heck,”
repeated Algernon Cole, shifting uncomfortably in the beanbag.

“Yeah,
Heck
. See, I had these, um,
images
I guess you could call them, and I thought they would make a great book.”

“I’m something of an author myself,” Algernon Cole said.

“Great.” Milton nodded. “So it’s about what happens when—”

“Would you like to hear my idea for a book?”

Milton squirmed. He needed to stay on track if he was going to get through this.

“Maybe later,” he offered.

Algernon Cole folded his arms together. “Right. Your hour,” he huffed. “Continue.”

“So, the book—
Heck
—it’s about what happens when kids die. Bad kids.”

“Sounds dark,” Algernon Cole said dismissively “Who’s your audience?”

“Look, I don’t really want to talk about any of that,” Milton said as a glaze of perspiration formed on his forehead. “I need legal advice for this … character of mine.”

“The protagonist?”

“Yes. See, he was sent to Heck by mistake. He’s a good kid. Never did anything bad in his life. Well, at least his first one.”

“Oh, I get it,” Algernon Cole said, nodding. “Heck, it’s like an allegory for—”

“Yes,” Milton continued. “My character—the protagonist—signed a contract with the Principal of Darkness.”

Algernon Cole chuckled. “That’s not half bad.”

“But the contract is bogus—it just has to be,” Milton said desperately. “I’ve got to find some loophole in the contract, or a way that I can prove that the whole place is just a big sham and shouldn’t exist at all. If I don’t, my sister and my best friend will be there … for …”

Milton put his head in his twitchy hands. Algernon Cole rolled his eyes and leaned over to pat Milton on the back.

“Wow,” he said, “you’ve certainly got a lot invested in your characters. That’s good. They’ll be more believable that way, especially since the story you’re writing is so …
. far-fetched.”

Lester Lobe’s radio music drifted into the chamber—a spooky song about a white rabbit.

Milton sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “So you think … Do you think you can help me?”

Algernon Cole pulled up his mismatched socks and sat up straight to the sound of dried, settling beans.

“Always willing to help out another struggling writer.” He looked at his Mickey Mouse watch. “We’ve got fifteen minutes. Enough to give you a taste of your
options. If you find my advice helpful, then you can put me on a retainer and call me anytime.”

Milton had a feeling that Algernon Cole’s retainer would cost about as much as, well,
Milton’s
retainer had cost. So it was now or never. All Milton had to do was activate the Psychomanthium—
somehow
—and give Marlo some supernatural legal counsel, something that she could use to build a case against the Powers That Be Evil from the inside.

“Firstly,” Algernon Cole said, “your protagonist is a minor. Under eighteen years of age. Without a
Guardian Ad Litem
to represent the minor, I’d think that it would be hard to uphold the legality of a contract such as yours in a court of law.”

Milton nodded and looked down at his hand. In his palm, he had written a summoning spell that he had seen last night on a
Taliswoman
rerun. The problem was that his palms were sweaty, and he had smudged the spell when shaking hands with Algernon Cole. He squinted in the low, red light to read the smears in his hand.

“Spirits, hear my cry,” Milton murmured. “I … cinnamon?
Summon
you from the other side. Come to me and cross the Greek decline.”

“What was that?” asked Algernon Cole.

“Oh, um, nothing,” replied Milton.
“I’
m just trying to memorize what you’re saying.”

Algernon Cole shrugged and shook his head. “It’s
your time. You paid for it. Or didn’t, technically. So, as I was saying, being a minor, it’s doubtful your protagonist could be bound by such a contract. At least by the laws of the living. However, the rules in your ‘Heck’ may be different, being that it’s a place overrun by minors.”

“Great divide!” Milton said. “Cross the
great divide
!” He looked around at the six mirrors surrounding him. Despite the spell, he could still see only six of himself and a half dozen of Algernon Cole.

The pseudo-lawyer stared at Milton, troubled and irritated.

“Do you want to do this another time, kid?”

Milton shook his head. “No,” he said urgently. “Please, go on. I’m just … This is all really good stuff. I’m excited, that’s all.”

Algernon Cole glared at Milton suspiciously.

“Well, I hope you include me in your acknowledgments. Or think of me when you start licensing Heck toys.”

Outside, Lester Lobe turned up his radio.

“I haven’t heard this song in years!” he cried enthusiastically.

Heavy guitars and loping drums filled the chamber.

“I really
must
get an office,” Algernon Cole complained.

“Please,” Milton begged, “go on.”

Algernon Cole sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “There is also the possibility of duress.”

“A
dress?” Milton asked above the noise.

“No,
duress,”
Algernon Cole clarified. “Though a boy forced to wear a dress would definitely be a form of duress. Was your protagonist coerced into signing this contract?”

“Yes!” Milton replied. “I can still feel the bite marks from the snake pens.”

Algernon Cole rubbed the back of his neck.

“Okay, then. Well, being threatened with a dangerous animal would definitely count as duress.”

The music throbbed through the Psychomanthium.

“This contract, though, could contain a subclause where the signee expressly agrees that the contract was not entered into under duress. I’ve read of cases like that before.”

Milton looked down at the ink streak smeared across his clammy palm.

“Guardians of the spirit gum …
realm,”
he murmured.

The hippie music droned outside.

Algernon Cole plugged his ears.

“Then there’s fraud,” he continued. “But, I would think that by the Principal of Darkness’s very nature, he—”

“She,”
interrupted Milton.

“It’s nice to know that there’s equal opportunity in the afterlife,” Algernon Cole quipped.
“She
would be prevented from engaging in fraud or deceit.”

“Hear and guide my pee …
plea,”
Milton chanted.

“Either that,” Algernon Cole said, “or just the opposite: the legal assumption that every transaction she oversaw was fraudulent, thus rendering the notion of fraud obsolete.”

Suddenly, a gust of cold wind filled the chamber. The mirrors seemed to warp and ripple like the surface of a disturbed pond. Milton could see a faint image joining that of Algernon Cole and his own in each of the six mirrors. It was a figure. A bald little …
creature …
with nubby horns. It was bouncing around, yelling, in what appeared to be a television studio.

“Otto Seight,” the bald creature hollered. “Back at ya here with more
Laughing Stock …”

Milton trembled as the horned-man’s image gelled in the mirror. He had actually made contact with the underworld!

“What the … ?” The little creature snorted, glaring at Milton.