The Devil's Dreamcatcher (2 page)

And a hosing down.

With bleach.

“Septimus gave me some money to take you out,” says Mitchell. His face is inches from a computer monitor, and his right hand is maneuvering a mouse across a pad that has an image of The Devil on it.

My eyes narrow. Is this a joke? Mitchell Johnson had better not have placed that ad as a ruse to get girls up here. He may score with Patty Lloyd—most devils do—but I'm more likely to smack him with the baseball bat if he tries anything with me.

Mitchell has obviously sensed my discomfort. He raises his hands and blushes furiously. His cheeks now match the color of his eyes.

Pink eyes are very cute on a boy.

“No, no, no!” he exclaims, stepping back. He trips over a wastepaper basket. “It's not like that, honestly. Septimus gave me some money.” He shows me a thin wad of bills. “I don't have this much money—in fact, I don't have any money! Plus, I thought we could meet up with my friends. If they like you, that's good enough for me. And you aced the written test with the best score by a mile. I'm not pulling a fast one on you or anything like that. Septimus was here just a second ago, but The Devil came in and . . .”

The words are tumbling from his mouth, and here I was, thinking verbal diarrhea was something only I suffered from. Mitchell
looks so worried, I can't help smiling. Sensing he isn't about to get pummeled, he slowly inches around the desk.

“So are we cool?” he asks.

Mitchell looks down at me; I look up at him. I'm not all that short—I stand around five foot seven in my socks—but Mitchell is definitely over six feet tall.

I remembered him being tall.

“You don't remember me, do you?”

Mitchell looks wary. Is he thinking of lying? I hope not, because I hate liars. It's one of the reasons Patty Lloyd and I fell out a few years ago. Mitchell's eyes have narrowed, and he's biting his bottom lip.

“No, sorry,” he mumbles eventually. “We've met before?”

“San Francisco—1967,” I prompt. “Does it mean anything to you?”

Mitchell shakes his head. “You're getting me mixed up with someone else. I wasn't born until 1992, and I died in 2009. And I've never been to San Fran—” Suddenly he breaks off and his pink eyes widen. His mouth is a perfect circle.

I make a whistling sound, which is easy because I have a small gap between my front teeth. “And there it is,” I say. “You do remember me.”

I've played this moment over and over in my head, ever since I found out I'd gotten an interview for the second accounting internship and knew I'd have a chance to speak to him. I first saw Mitchell in Hell a few weeks ago, when I was working in the kitchens. He was with Septimus, carrying a pile of dry cleaning and a tray of coffee. That was when I knew he worked with Septimus. They only came in for a strawberry cheesecake—which was added to Mitchell's pile—and then they were gone. I didn't get a close look, but I was sure it was him: the embodiment of an apparition I was certain I saw while I was still alive, many years before, on the night
he
died.

The feeling of being remembered by Mitchell is just as great as I hoped it would be. It may be just a brief glimpse of me that he recalls, and he may have needed prompting to get there, but I
am
in someone's memory.

I wasn't forgotten after all.

Mitchell is still in a daze. “There was a house. We—I mean Alfarin, Elinor, and I—couldn't remember why we were there, but that was you,” he gasps. “You're the one I saw at that house. They were taking a man away in an ambulance. I saw you—and you saw me.”

“Yes, yes!” I say excitedly. “So that pretty girl with long red hair was Elinor? And the huge guy—that was Alfarin? Are they here in Hell, too? What are they like?”

“They're the best.”

“I knew what you were as soon as I saw you. I mean, I knew you were dead.”

“How?”

“You were surrounded by light. I thought you were angels.”

Mitchell snorts and digs his hands into his pockets. For some reason, he's shaking. “Yeah, right idea, wrong direction.”

“So you've only been dead for four years?”

“And counting,” replies Mitchell. “I . . . I got hit by a bus.”

I'm overwhelmed by a strange urge to hug him, but I don't. I'm not like Patty Lloyd and her dorm sorority of the Underworld. I would sooner throw myself into an actual vat of meringue than throw myself at a guy, regardless of how he died.

I have so many questions for Mitchell, now that we're finally talking. What was he doing that night outside my house, for a start? And how was he there in 1967,
dead
, when he hadn't even been
born
yet?

Unfortunately, Mitchell beats me to the punch. “How did
you
die?” he asks. “Septimus said you've been dead for over forty years. You must have passed over not long after I saw you.”

It's that question again. Arching my back, I glare up at Mitchell. And to think we'd been getting along so well. The strange urge to hug him vanishes. Instead, I turn around and jab my elbow into his stomach.

“
Ow!
”

“I don't like talking about it, and you'd know the answer if you'd bothered reading my devil resources file.”

“According to the first page in your devil resources file, you talk about everything. Nonstop,” he retorts.

So Mitchell Johnson has read at least some of my file, then. He must be the first devil who's done that. I wonder why he didn't bother to read the rest. Then again, I've never bothered to read my file, either—but why would I want to, when I already know all too well how I died?

“Knowledge is power,” I tell him. He grins and ruffles my hair. No one is allowed to touch the hair, so I flick his forehead with my finger. He retaliates with “Leave it, short-ass,” which is rich coming from someone who looks like he's been stretched out on a rack.

“Your face looks like you're covered in fluff,” I retort. “Not enough testosterone in that puny body to grow a beard?”

We aren't even at the door yet.

“Why are you called Medusa?”

I point to my head. “Have you not noticed the hair?”

“Can't miss it.” But his reflexes are quicker this time, and he jumps out of my reach with a bark-like laugh. I smile in spite of myself.

“The Grim Reapers at the HalfWay House gave me that name. They misheard me in the processing center,” I explain. “I decided I liked it, but not just because of my hair. It separated me from the Melissa I was on earth. It sort of allowed me to start again, you know?”

“That's actually kinda cool.”

“Thanks.”

“You have dimples,” says Mitchell. “You look like the Raggedy Ann doll my mom used to keep on her bed.”

I think that was a compliment, kind of. We stand there staring at each other, but it starts to make me feel strange. Not as awkward as in some of the encounters I've had with guys in Hell—trying to talk to the ones who are still stoned from their accidental OD back in the land of the living, for example, is a pretty ridiculous endeavor—but this is enough to make me feel self-conscious.

“Do you believe in fate, Medusa?” asks Mitchell.

“Yeah, I do,” I reply. I don't add that I don't consider this a good thing.

But perhaps meeting Mitchell is finally the beginning of something okay in this hope-forsaken place. I just need to give it a chance. I just need to trust. And call it a sixth sense, but I feel like I know Mitchell already.

Maybe that's because, like Septimus, Mitchell remembers me.

“I never used to believe in fate or any of that crap, but I think we'll make a good team,” he says. “I have a pretty good feeling about this.”

“Does this mean I have the job?”

“Yeah, why not?”

What?
Easiest interview ever! (Apart from the one for the kitchens, of course, which was over before it even started.)

“
Oh, let me be the one to tell Patty Lloyd,
” I beg under my breath. “
Just this once, let
me
be the devil to hold something over
her.
”

I pause for a moment when a little voice in my head reminds me that I didn't always feel this way about Patty. The truth is, when she first arrived, I looked after her. She was terrified and would sob into her pillow every night. But after a while she got comfortable and chose another crowd, which wasn't difficult because there are hundreds of us squished in the dorm. Now I can always hear her, cackling away, saying mean things about how I look and dress and talk. That witch and her cronies are always trying to lord their superiority over me.

But finally, brains and wild hair have beaten out boobs and tattoos. Mitchell turns off his computer and extinguishes a couple of candles with his thumb and forefinger. Today is going to be a good day—a rare day; I can feel it in my bones. And wiping the smug smile off Patty Lloyd's face will be the icing on the cake.

“So does Septimus usually give you money to take devils out?”

“Are you kidding?” replies Mitchell. “That was a first. When he said he wanted to do another interview, I could have cried. I couldn't believe he was seriously going to make me keep working. These interviews have made today the day from Hell. After the fifth one, I figured this was how Septimus had decided to punish me.”

“Punish you for what?” I ask.

“Uh, nothing.”

We push through the crowds in silence. I still desperately want to ask Mitchell what he was doing outside my house forty years ago. Seeing him and his friends that day was the first time I thought there might be something beyond the wretched life I was being forced to live. An honest-to-goodness afterlife. Not that I wanted to die, but knowing there might be something else . . . well, it gave me hope.

But I'm worried about badgering him, and I don't want to annoy the guy who's just hired me. I've waited this long to finally find and speak to Mitchell alone, and a little while longer won't kill me—metaphorically, of course.

I decide to play it cool.

“So how long have Alfarin and Elinor been in Hell?”

“Alfarin's a Viking. He died in battle over a thousand years ago,” replies Mitchell. “Elinor died in the Great Fire of London in 1666.”

“And how did you all meet? You aren't the kind of guy I would expect to see hanging out with Vikings—no offense, Mitchell.”

“Why wouldn't I hang out with Vikings?” he asks indignantly. “I can handle myself.”

“Says the boy who got hit by a bus. Wasn't it big enough for you to see?”

“I was . . . distracted.”

“By a girl in a short skirt, no doubt.”

I'm only teasing, but Mitchell isn't smiling. At first I think I've offended him—I'm not very good at making jokes—but then I realize he isn't paying any attention to me at all. He's looking at
her
. She's clearly been waiting for him in the shadows, ready to pounce like a leopard. A mangy one. With fleas.

“Uh, hi, Patty,” mumbles Mitchell at the figure swaying toward us. Honestly, if she moved her hips any farther from side to side she'd dislocate them.

“Hello, Mitchell.” Patty flutters her eyelashes at him and then glares at me, but her pink eyes don't have the same ferocious intensity as red, and she's years away from that. I smile sweetly because I know it will annoy her.

“I have some free time right now,” she says, turning her attention back to Mitchell. “I'm doing the late shift at the library tonight. I thought we could practice some of the things we'll be doing together in the office.”

The Easy-Lay-from-the-Library licks her lips and winks. I don't know whether to laugh at how obvious she is, or push her annoying dead ass over the balcony. I once pushed Patty into a vat of crème caramel when she came by the kitchens to heckle me, and she dragged me in with her on her way down. It took me a month to get all that sugar out of my hair, but it was so worth it.

Mitchell's voice brings me back to the present. “Sorry, Patty, but Septimus meant it when he told you you're too valuable to the library to leave it,” he says. “And also, Medusa got the job.” The tone of his voice fills me with confidence. He seems pleased.

Patty looks horrified. This is even better than if I'd told her
myself! “Well, we'd love to stay and chat, Patty,” I say. “But Septimus gave us some money for a date, and it's burning a hole in Mitchell's pocket. Enjoy your night shift—alone.”

Mitchell is still laughing as we reach Thomason's Bar. I'm on such a high that if we weren't trapped underground, I'd be touching the clouds Up There. This was the best revenge I could have wished for after Patty and her friends' latest prank on me. Last week they thought it would be funny to make hundreds of posters with
ESCAPED ANIMAL
written in bold letters across the top and my picture below. They plastered the posters on every free surface in the library. I took them all down myself, one by one. I wasn't going to ask for help. I didn't need anyone's help. But I spent every moment wishing someone would at least offer. After what just happened, I have a feeling that if Mitchell had been there, he'd have given me a hand.

Inside Thomason's, I recognize Alfarin and Elinor at once. Alfarin is built like a house. He has long blond hair and a beard with tiny braids in it. His enormous frame is balanced precariously on a stool as he stands on tiptoe, poking at something on the ceiling with a double-bladed axe.

Elinor has the longest hair I've ever seen. It cascades down her back like a red waterfall. It's so pretty—and straight. I would love to have hair like that instead of always looking like I've been electrocuted. For some reason, she's grabbing the back of her neck like she's nervous about something, which, judging by the wobbling Alfarin, is probably his balancing skills.