by Donna Hosie
A plume of dust belches out of the rock-hewn cavity as the heavy door is released. We keep records of sensitive security breaches in here. The last one was about six months ago. I don’t know what happened, but I know it involved the city of Paris. Septimus was very strange that day; he kept looking at me as if I was in some kind of trouble. It wasn’t anger—more regret. One day I’ll find the time to read all the records in there, including the Paris one, but I’m drowning in paperwork as it is.
Septimus reaches for the third shelf from the top. Underneath a thick sheaf of papers is a small box. It’s made of pale wood and is completely plain. No carvings, no etchings. It looks like the box I made in my first woodworking class in school.
Septimus hands it to me. I don’t open it. I blow off the thin layer of dusty black crystals that has settled on it. The safe door is pushed shut and locked once more.
“What’s this, Septimus?”
“Open it.”
The catch on the lid releases with ease. Inside is a purple silk handkerchief. Lying on top of that is a stopwatch unlike any timepiece I have ever seen. It’s glowing with tiny particles of red flame.
I don’t need to be told that this is the Viciseometer. Medusa would be freaking out right now if she were here.
Septimus remains quiet. He picks up the stopwatch and places it in my open hand.
The Viciseometer is forged from a nugget of gold. It looks substantial, but it feels as light as air. I get an unnerving sensation as I hold it, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
I flip the stopwatch over and see it’s double faced. The surface on one side is milky white, with twelve thick golden Roman numerals stamped around the rim. It has three golden hands of differing lengths. For all intents and purposes, it looks like an ordinary watch. I slowly stroke it with my forefinger before turning it over again. The Viciseometer quivers in my hand.
The reverse is very different. It’s colored a deep red with three black hands, and it’s a lot harder to figure out. In addition to various symbols and runes, there are three rings of writing around the rim. The innermost ring is made up of numbers, one to thirty-one, spaced out evenly in tiny blocks. The middle ring is Latin script denoting the months of the year, starting with Januarius and ending with December. The months are spaced out like the twelve Roman numerals on the other side. As I focus my eyes on the outermost ring, I notice it’s not stenciled with a pattern, as I first thought, but stamped with tiny snakes that form the numbers zero to nine. Beneath the twelve and six o’clock positions are a plus and a minus symbol, again carved like snakes.
On the outer rim of the stopwatch are seven buttons. The largest sits above the Roman numeral twelve. It’s red and buzzes with an electrical current. Connected to this button, on a delicate golden chain, hangs a thin red needle.
The other six buttons are identical: small, round, and black. Three of them are placed together on the top hemisphere, next to the red button. The others sit diagonally across from these on the bottom hemisphere.
I am mesmerized. I am holding time itself.
“How did you die?” is the question everyone asks one another in Hell.
But what if I had never died in the first place?
6. Blood Oath
It takes me ages to find Alfarin and Elinor. Medusa has disappeared completely and my texts and increasingly lame voice messages go unanswered.
Why did I kiss Patty?
If I had that Viciseometer back, that’s the first thing I’d change. I’d go back in time and just walk out of the library before her tongue fell into my mouth.
It wasn’t even a very good kiss, so why do I feel strange and hot every time I think about it?
Thomason’s Bar is not far from the central business district, but it still takes forever to reach because there are so many devils trying to get somewhere, anywhere. Thomason’s serves beer, more beer, and then the dregs left in the keg once the beer is gone. It doesn’t have air-conditioning, either—nowhere in Hell does—so when the bar is heaving with Vikings you can literally swim home in the sweat that pours out of the place.
When I explain this to other devils, they usually get an instant look of disgust on their faces. I can’t blame them. It does sound gross, but it’s our gross. Alfarin works here, collecting the dirty glasses. He isn’t very good at it and smashes more than he collects, but Thomason is family so Alfarin gets away with it.
Elinor and Alfarin are sitting at our usual table: a rickety hunk of stained wood, situated right by the door so we can get out fast if trouble starts. Self-preservation, even when you’re dead, is priority number one when hanging with Vikings.
There’s still no sign of Medusa.
A three-legged stool has been left vacant between Elinor and Alfarin, and I squish myself in.
Elinor frowns. “What have ye done, Mitchell?”
I fake innocence. “Nothing.”
“Medusa is not pleased with you, my friend,” says Alfarin seriously. “If she were armed with a blade, you would be joining the Eunuch Choir tonight.”
“I haven’t done anything.” My voice is a little high. Several bearded Vikings stop their axe-throwing game to stare at me.
“She was crying, Mitchell,” whispers Elinor.
Now I feel sick and guilty and annoyed because I really haven’t done anything wrong. Medusa and I are friends, best friends. I tease her; she hits me. I buy her hot dogs; she eats mine as well. I complain about being dead; she listens.
“I accidentally kissed Patty Lloyd in the library.”
“How can ye accidentally kiss someone, Mitchell?” hisses Elinor.
I choose not to reply; I don’t have the energy to argue. Why can’t Elinor and Medusa get how hard it is for guys sometimes? It’s as if our brains turn to custard and the only thing that matters is that very second in time—thinking about consequences doesn’t factor into it. I just wish my friends could see inside my head; that would make everything a lot easier.
I don’t understand why Medusa is so upset. She didn’t even see the kiss. Maybe that’s why she’s so upset, because I didn’t tell her first. Best friends like to be the first people to know, don’t they? But then, if I had told Medusa she would have gotten angry with me, because she hates Patty.
My head hurts. I just don’t understand girls.
“Where is she?”
“M is near the bar, Mitchell, but I wouldn’t disturb her,” replies Elinor. “She is a little busy.”
“Let me just make it up to her and then we can go get some food,” I reply. “I’m starving.”
“An excellent plan of attack, my friend,” says Alfarin. “Now go claim your woman back.”
I push my way through the crowd. The smell of sweat and beer is shocking. And why is that bearded woman setting that table on fire?
Then I see Medusa and an unnatural wave of cold washes over me. It’s like having pins and needles in every limb.
Medusa is straddling a guy with long black hair. Her skinny legs are wrapped around his body and his hands are up the back of her T-shirt. Medusa isn’t twisting his fingers, even though his fingers are a lot more rabid than mine were at the Masquerade Ball. I can’t see what kind of devil he is because I can’t see his eyes. I can’t even see the dude’s face properly because Medusa’s wild corkscrew curls are covering most of it.
So is her mouth.
I’ve never seen Medusa make out with anyone before. She goes on dates sometimes, but Alfarin and I manage to sabotage most of them. I’ve never seen her open mouth moving against someone else’s.
Bloody Hell, I can see her tongue.
The stench in here is overwhelming. I think I’m going to puke. A rage that I haven’t felt in years is chomping at my dead heart. I want to pull Medusa off this freak and pummel his head with my fists. I want to chop his tongue out with a Viking axe and then borrow some steel-toed boots and break every rib he possesses.
My fists are clenched so tightly they’ve gone white. If I pu
sh my back teeth together any harder they’ll shatter into dust. Two thick, pale arms, the weight of concrete posts, spread around my chest.
“We don’t want any trouble, Mitchell. Certainly not from the likes of you.”
It’s Alfarin’s cousin, Thomason. He’s a good ten inches shorter than me, but like Alfarin, he’s made of iron.
“I’m not going to start trouble.”
“Then you won’t mind if I kick you and my cousin out. We’ve been tipped off about a raid tonight.”
Medusa finally comes up for the air she doesn’t need. She must have heard my voice, because she turns her head away from the jerk with long black hair and stares directly at me.
He has dark-pink eyes and his mouth is wet. I can see it glistening in the firelight. I want to place my fist in that great gaping hole. Instead, it’s filled with Medusa’s skin as he lowers his head and starts sucking on her neck.
It’s amazing how hot your eyebrows can get when you want to cry. I feel like a total idiot. I need to get away from Thomason and Medusa and the jerk with dark-pink eyes before I do something I’ll regret. I want to forget this day ever happened. I want to turn back time and return to this morning before I kissed Patty, before Medusa let some dickhead suck on her neck.
And now I feel angry and hungry and I swear I’m going to put my fist through a wall because right now only physical pain will do.
Somehow I break free from Thomason’s hold. I’m not so arrogant as to think I did it myself; I know he loosened his grip. I push my way back past sweating Vikings. The bearded woman is now setting fire to a set of curtains, beating her chest like a gorilla. Freaks, the damn lot of them.
A glass window shatters, but it’s several long seconds before I register the release of pain in my chest. Only when Elinor starts screaming do I notice the pain throbbing in my clenched fist, and that my hand is sliced into ribbons of skin. Thick, slow-moving waves of blood are gathering in the cuts. Because our hearts don’t beat anymore, the dead don’t pump out blood from injuries the way we did when we were alive, but thanks to the Highers, we can still feel the pain.
Medusa isn’t very good around dead blood. She gets queasy and usually needs to put her head between her knees, because it looks like lumpy gravy.
Not today. Medusa takes off the red-and-white-checkered shirt she’s wearing over a black vest top and wraps it around my throbbing hand. Her eyes don’t meet mine.
“You are an idiot, Mitchell Johnson.”
“Go back to your freak, Melissa.”
Without a word, she turns away and starts to walk back to him. He obviously heard me, because he’s standing there with his hands on his hips like a big girl.
“Medusa, I didn’t mean it.”
I know I sound pathetic and needy, and I am. Thomason is striding toward me with a scowl on his big round face that could strip wallpaper. He’s going to give me a pounding, I just know it. Broken glass anywhere is a sign of trouble. If the HBI is coming, they’ll think people have already been fighting. The bearded pyromaniac is coming toward me as well. She’s striking matches against her black teeth.
“We need to get ye to sick bay, Mitchell,” says Elinor. She turns and smiles at Thomason; her eyes lower and her fair lashes flutter. They’re so long they touch her cheekbones.
Not for the first time, Elinor saves me from getting my ass kicked.
I’m lying on starched white sheets that cover a rock-hard bed. My right hand is covered in a gauzy bandage.
Alfarin and Elinor are gone, but Medusa is sitting at the foot of the bed, swinging her skinny little legs over the edge. I still want to slam-dunk her. The thought makes me smile, but my lips are dry and sore so I stop.
“Sorry I ruined your shirt,” I mumble. My throat is dry. Someone must have fed me sandpaper at some point.
“You can find me a new one.”
“I’ll cover a shift for you in the kitchens, too, if you want.”
“Apology accepted.”
This is why Medusa is my best friend. We argue, we make up. She won’t mention Patty again—I hope—and I’ll try not to mention what happened tonight. It’s in the past, like everything else.
Blood is oozing through the bandages. They tell me I needed fourteen stitches, but I’ll heal quickly because everyone in Hell does. Ironic, right? Septimus sends me a text message and tells me to stop hanging out with Vikings. I know he’s only joking. Septimus prefers the in-your-face attitude of the Norsemen to the scheming backstabbing of the Romans in Hell.
I wish I could start this day again.
I could start this day again.
Vikings make blood oaths; Alfarin does it all the time. His dinner-plate-sized palms are scarred like a subway map from the number of times he has sworn to do something after taking a knife to his flesh.
I already have the sliced skin, so now I need the oath. It comes in three parts:
I will never go near the library again.
I will pay for the damage to Thomason’s window.
I will learn how to use the Viciseometer.
7. Practice Makes Perfect
Heating bills remain unpaid and invoices are left to pile up in the office in-box.
A month has ticked by and I have become obsessed with time.
It has taken me weeks to get the operation streamlined, and the stress is beginning to show. I know the others have noticed; girls—and Vikings—are way too intuitive for their own good. Medusa and Elinor are worried about the black shadows under my eyes, and Alfarin almost snapped my spine in half the other day when he rugby-tackled me and I didn’t have the energy to even try to put up a fight.
It’s the Viciseometer. It has sparked its way into my soul.
I used to go to sleep thinking of girls. Now I dream about changing time. I used to plan my days around meals. Now I plan my entire existence around the Viciseometer.
I have both faces of the timepiece committed to memory. As soon as Septimus heads out for lunch, I send all calls to voice mail and retreat to a corner. Then I practice moving the thin red needle over the roman numerals and symbols, perfecting the same movements again and again.
I was really musical when I was alive. My tutor went so far as to call me a prodigy, which at the time didn’t mean anything to me other than the name of a techno band. In no time, my fingers became the fittest and nimblest part of my body. It’s the same now. For the first time in my four years of being dead, I feel awake. I have time in my hands and they feel alive once more.
Since my own attempt at the library failed so miserably, I bite the bullet and ask Elinor to find me a book that will teach me about the Viciseometer. She knows exactly where to go and comes back to me with the perfect book the same day. I know Elinor is going to start asking questions at some point, but right now I need to avoid Patty Lloyd. She’s been sending me text messages twenty times a day. She told her best friend, Samantha Clarke, I was playing hard to get. How about impossible to get? The problem is all the guys in my dorm think I’m a hero. They all want to know how far I went with her, and whether she has piercings and tattoos in places that really shouldn’t have needles anywhere near them, and it is totally messing with my head.
And Medusa and Elinor wonder why I’m not eating. If I weren’t already dead, the stress of my life right now would lead to a heart attack.
Today Septimus’s lunch is going to be a long one. It’s the annual Roman Empire catchup in the Temple Bar, and those meetings go on for hours. All of the former Caesars like to speak and pass motions and sanctions, and then they feast and apparently have a quick orgy and then it ends with someone getting knifed in the back.
For my purposes, this is perfect.
I open the book Elinor borrowed and start reading. According to the author, two Viciseometers were forged by the Highers and given to Hell and Up There. The function is simple: a Viciseometer enables the bearer to travel through time and realms of the Afterlife.
Powerful is way too understated to describe the f
eeling I get when I hold this thing. I could do anything, be anyone. Gods and girls would fall at my feet and worship me with champagne and concert tickets. I could steal a Porsche and never get stopped by the police.
I could be that rock star I always wanted to be.
Studying has to be done in sections, like cramming for tests between sleep and food. I learn that the Viciseometer’s main milky-white face, with the golden numerals, never changes. The three hands represent the hour, minute, and second of a particular day, as on an ordinary clock. The thin red needle is used to manipulate each golden hand into place beneath one of the numerals. The desired time is then secured by pressing the three black buttons on the lower left of the watch. This part is easy.
The opposite, red face of the Viciseometer took me a lot longer to master, but now I feel confident enough to use it. The three black hands are again manipulated into place by the thin red needle, but once in place, they are secured by pressing one of the three black buttons that now appear on the top left of the timepiece. The lowest button secures the day, the next button secures the month, and the third button secures the year. Only when all six buttons are fixed in place can the larger vibrating button at the top be pressed.
As the tiny numbered snakes slither around the red face, I feel physically connected to the device. It’s as if the snakes are tunneling through my intestines. Good luck finding food in there, guys. I haven’t eaten anything in days. When I finally get the courage to use this thing, I’m going to binge like a king.
Weeks have passed, and my next problem has presented itself. I’ve mastered the theory of the Viciseometer, and now I need to test it. But the book says—warns in thick, bold capital letters—that under no circumstances should the Viciseometer be used by a lone time-traveler. If something goes wrong, at least two other devils should be traveling with the user to correct any incidents.
The book doesn’t elaborate on what kind of incidents could happen, though. Are they talking about loss of limbs? Time-traveling to another dimension? What if I end up on Mars or the Moon?