The Devil's Intern (15 page)

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Medusa smiles. It isn’t her openmouthed, dazzling-teeth, happy smile. It’s sad and thoughtful.

“Not right now.”

I wish Medusa wouldn’t keep secrets from me, but I don’t push it. I have the Viciseometer, so I have all the time in this world and the next, and I can put it on hold until she’s ready.

Medusa is yawning. Our internal body clocks are all over the place. It’s like celestial jet lag, which has got to be worse than living jet lag. Now that she’s started, I can barely keep my own eyes open.

“You take the bed, I’ll take the sofa,” I say, placing the now-empty platters of food back on the cart. I open the door and wheel it out. I jog along the carpeted corridor and have a quick look around, but there’s no sign of Alfarin or Elinor. I hope they’re all right. They still haven’t washed off the thousand-year-old layer of mud we were soaked in, and more worryingly, they don’t have any money. They may think they know this time from reading books, but it’s not the same as living it.

As I walk back along the corridor, I notice that a huge arrangement of flowers has started to wilt. Pink-and-white petals are falling like a ticker-tape parade. I reach out and touch something that could be a lily, I’m not sure, and it disintegrates into ash between my fingers.

Death has made me poisonous.

Feeling ill, and not because I’ve eaten so much, I head back toward the room. I’m getting my coat and I’m going to look for Alfarin and Elinor. Team DEVIL is safer together.

But Medusa is on her cell phone talking to Elinor. When she says “El,” it sounds like “Hell” and I get strange pangs of what I think is homesickness. I want to talk to Septimus. I want to explain why I did this. He would understand, I’m sure of it.

I hope I didn’t get him into trouble.

“El and Alfarin are in the park,” says Medusa, disconnecting the call after she has told Elinor she loves her. “They’re talking.”

“As long as they’re okay.”

“El also said she wants to go next.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because Elinor is more . . . more delicate than everyone else, and like she said earlier, we have to go to the place of death to see how to change it.”

“El is tougher than you think, Mitchell,” replies Medusa.

She turns off the main lights in the room but leaves a bedside lamp on. Dark shadows start creeping up the walls. They don’t match the shape of anything in the room. The skin on my arms puckers like a chicken leg as the hairs rise. Medusa plumps the bed pillows and flops down. The shadows look as if they’re reaching for her, so I turn on another lamp to scare them away.

I grab a pillow from the cupboard and pull out a toffee-colored blanket as well. I’m not looking forward to sleeping on the sofa. I’m at least two feet too tall for it.

“We can share the bed, you know,” calls Medusa. Her voice is muffled by the covers. She has buried herself underneath them so that only the top of her head is showing. Curls are splayed over the pillow.

I immediately drop the blanket and pillow on the carpet. “You sure?”

“I think I’ll be able to resist jumping you.”

I slip in beside her.

“Do you want to put a pillow or something between us?” I ask.

“I’ll just use Alfarin’s axe to chop off anything that comes wandering in my direction,” she says, giggling.

We turn off the lamps and are in darkness.

Outside, New York City continues as normal. The noise of the living is back as sirens wail and car horns blare. We can hear music from somewhere: a heavy thumping bass that vibrates in my back
teeth. Raised voices and laughter echo all around. Then there is a long howl, but it doesn’t sound right. Not like a normal dog howl. It rises and falls, like howling laughter. Medusa reaches out and grabs my hand, but her fingers grope along my thigh first as she tries to find my fingers in the dark.

I swear I can feel my heart beating. I’m lying on the mattress like a statue in a tomb. I don’t know where to put my hands, legs, or head, so I stay straight and completely still, staring up at the black ceiling.

Medusa rolls toward me and hooks her leg over mine; her arm wraps around my waist. She’s so warm, it’s like having a hot water bottle on top of me. I pull my arm free and move it up toward her head, which is now resting on my chest.

“You were amazing today,” she says. My fingers have spread out a bit and are massaging the whole of her neck. She’s so warm and soft. Her hand comes to rest against my chest where my dead heart lies useless and shriveled.

“It was pretty full-on, wasn’t it?”

“Scary.”

“Terrifying.”

“Are you glad we came with you now?”

“Yeah, I’m glad you came.”

A satisfied sigh escapes her lungs. A devil never breaks the habit of breathing. I feel her body go limp on top of mine, and as I continue to massage her soft neck, contented little purrs sneak out of her mouth.

Medusa has fallen asleep. She doesn’t hear the howling laughter coming closer and closer until I swear it’s right outside the bedroom window.

We are on the tenth floor.

I have time in my hands, yet I have completely lost track of it. Am I in the past, the future, or the now? I just don’t know anymore. Alfarin and Elinor come back to us after I doze off with Medusa slumped across my chest. They have another key card with them, and they do try to be quiet, but Alfarin has the build of a baby elephant. It’s inevitable that he’ll trip over something while trying to tiptoe across the darkened room. As it turns out, it’s his axe that betrays him; he left the guitar case lying on the carpet. He goes ass over heels and crashes into the table. Elinor thinks he’s being dragged away by some freakish entity of doom and starts shrieking. Medusa flings herself out of the bed but manages to knee me between the legs in the process, and I am now in so much agony I think I must be dying again.

I’m definitely in the present. Pain doesn’t stay with a person this long unless it’s real.

Elinor goes next door for a shower and Medusa follows her. I think they want to gossip, although what they could possibly have to talk about is beyond my understanding. All Medusa has done is eat and sleep.

Alfarin squeezes himself into our shower, and I find some clean clothes for him out of the stuff the girls bought last night. He isn’t self-conscious about showing off his body, and he walks around the room, dripping wet, with a bath towel barely covering him. He has a
tattoo of a longboat on his right shoulder. I think it will mean more to him now.

I’ve been thinking about getting inked, but I can’t decide on a design. I like those full-on sleeves. But I’d need to work out a bit more, because they’d look sort of stupid on skinny arms.

Once I’ve stopped my death, I’ll get both arms tattooed.

Medusa comes back to the room, grabs some clothes, and disappears again. Alfarin and I make small talk.

“You all right?”

“Yes, my friend.”

Alfarin and I are such good friends, we only need six words.

Medusa and Elinor come back into the room. They’re playing twins again. Both are dressed in gray skinny jeans and black T-shirts. They also have their hair tied back, although Medusa’s curls are already escaping and falling around her face.

No one mentions the imprints filled with dark gray powder that cover the white sheets where Medusa and I slept.

We are molting death.

The Viciseometer is in my hand. “I need the date, Elinor.”

She’s sweating and looking as green as I’ve ever seen her. Both of her hands are on the nape of her neck now. It’s almost as if she’s checking to be sure her head is still attached to her shoulders. Elinor squeezes Alfarin’s arm.

“Promise me ye will do exactly as I ask,” she says to him.

Alfarin kisses her hand. “I am your slave.”

“Ye know my date of death, Mitchell. It was my birthday: the fourth of September,” she says. Her voice is breaking; Elinor is terrified. Yet if anyone deserves a second chance at life, it’s Elinor, and if we can stop such a horrible death, that can only be a good thing. Right?

“What time do you want to take us back to, Elinor?”

“It was midafternoon. The boys had come back to tell us that the fire had reached Fleet Street, so try three o’clock.”

I don’t need reminding of the year: 1666. Devils who died in that year were all given a commemorative pin. It has an enameled image of The Devil with the year imprinted underneath.

The Viciseometer starts to whistle and vibrate long before I’ve finished inputting the coordinates for time travel. It can sense the expectation of everyone in the room. The snakes on the rim seem to connect with my stomach, which is squirming and writhing with nerves.

“You’ll have to imagine it, Elinor,” I say, “but don’t land us in the fire. We need to be hidden bystanders at first.”

“I understand,” she says, resting her slim fingers on the Viciseometer as it vibrates in my hand. Elinor gazes at Alfarin with tears in her eyes.

“This is what I was talking about earlier when ye and I were alone in the park,” she says strangely. “This is why we were meant to be friends in the Afterlife.”

Medusa and I look at each other. She is as confused as I am, which is a relief. I don’t want to be the only one out of the loop.

“Ye must hold onto someone now,” instructs Elinor. She screws up her face with concentration and the red surface of the Viciseometer face starts to swirl.

“Now.”

Screams, much louder than before, echo in the suffocating darkness. Something else is traveling with us. I sense the metallic smell of blood and hot, panting breath. It isn’t human. I can feel traces of something fine against my skin, like cobwebs, and then I feel fingers, groping at my body.

We arrive in a blanket of smoke. Everyone falls to their knees.

“There was something there, in the darkness!” cries Medusa. Her eyes are bulging in their sockets.

“What was that noise?” booms Alfarin. “It wasn’t human.”

“I felt it, something grabbed me.”

“I don’t want to do that again,” says Medusa. She rubs at her arms, as if trying to warm them up.

“Perhaps I didn’t do it right,” says Elinor, panic-stricken, and
she takes her fingers away from the Viciseometer. Tiny reds sparks are spitting around the rim, but it doesn’t burn my hand.

“There was nothing wrong with the way you used it, El,” says Medusa supportively.

“Listen, everyone. The fire must be near,” says Alfarin. “I can hear the crackling from here.”

For the first time we take in our new surroundings. We have arrived in yet another rickety wooden tenement. The smell of piss makes my eyes water. Several burlap sacks are stacked up in a corner. Two mice lie dead on the ground.

“Are we in yet another toilet?” I ask.

“This is an old warehouse. Old man Blinkerton used to trade out of here. He’s moved to new premises down by the river,” replies Elinor. Her past has already become her present.

She walks to a wooden door, which is banging against the frame, and opens it a fraction.

“Do you live near here, El?”

Elinor nods. A glazed, almost drunken expression has spread across her freckled face.

“I haven’t seen our John or William in over three hundred years,” she sighs. “They’re just as I remember them.”

“You can see your brothers?” we all cry, rushing to her side.

We peer out of the crack. My eyes don’t immediately fall on the two kids fighting in the narrow street. Instead, they’re gripped by the blaze of tangerine flame that hovers in the skyline. It may be afternoon, but above the fire, the sky is black. Thick chunks of ash are falling like dirty snow.

“What would you like us to do, Mitchell?” asks Alfarin. “We are in your hands once more.”

“I think this one is going to be easy,” I reply confidently. “I think we just need to grab Elinor from wherever she is at this moment and get her out of that . . . that . . . is that thatched building your house, Elinor?”

“Hold on a second,” interrupts Medusa. “We aren’t really
thinking this through properly. What happens when you rescue the living El? What happens to the version we already have? We can’t have two Elinors.”

I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this. I’m kicking myself for not bringing along the reference book on the Viciseometer and I’m mentally thumbing through its pages when a bomblike blast ricochets through the narrow cobbled street. The sound of screaming slices through the air. Medusa and Elinor are thrown off their feet as the wooden door disintegrates into matchsticks, sending lethal splinters flying through the air like daggers.

Alfarin takes the full force of the blast. His head smacks into the wall with a sickening thud.

“Alfarin!” screams Elinor. She crawls along the floorboards to where Alfarin is now lying unconscious. His axe is still in his hand.

Medusa and I rush over to our friend. He’s out cold. A pink lump the size of a plum is already forming on the side of his enormous head.

“What now, Mitchell?” screeches Medusa.

“Elinor, you stay with Alfarin. Medusa and I will go into your house and . . .” But I shut up because Elinor is absolutely freaking out.

“It has to be Alfarin!”
she screams.
“When the time comes, it has to be him!”

“What are you talking about?”

“It has to be him. He was the one. It’s all gone wrong.”

I have no idea what Elinor is screaming about and I don’t have time to find out. The fire’s crackling has been replaced by a roar. The inferno is coming closer by the second.

Medusa starts pulling at my arm. “We have to go now,” she urges me.

I hand Elinor the Viciseometer.

“You know how to use it if you have to get away.”

“It isn’t mine!” she cries, tears streaming down her soot-covered face.

“Didn’t stop me.”

We leave Alfarin and Elinor in the cramped warehouse; the sound of Elinor begging Alfarin to wake up disappears in the gusting hot wind. The two little boys have vanished into the thatched building, but we can hear them yelling from inside.