by Donna Hosie
The room is shaking, and my hands feel wet. I squint, not daring to fully open my eyes, and I can see that the entire floor is now deep red and glistening.
Blood. The floor is bleeding. I scramble to my feet and retch as the familiar metallic smell fills the room. Thick red blood like lumpy gravy is oozing out of the center of the room like a volcanic mud pool. It’s coming so fast that my sneakers are already covered.
My stomach and chest are in so much pain that I feel as if something is inside me trying to claw its way out. The Devil’s face is still grotesquely stretched out across the room. I don’t know if he’s really expanded like that or this is just a projection of his anger, but his dense black eyes are boring into me, reading my soul like a book.
With a guttural cry I try to expel the pain. I take a step forward, and my sneakers squelch in the bath of blood that is now at calf height.
“Beatrice Morrigan!” I scream. “The original Dreamcatcher. She’s in the circles of Hell. The dwelling of the Skin-Walkers . . .”
But now The Devil is wailing, and his cries are biting at my very existence. Stabbing, burning. My dead body, this soul I entered Hell with, is dissolving. Blood is in my mouth. My eyes, my ears, are streaming with it.
Is this what Elinor feels? Is this what The Devil dreams?
Elinor. This is all for Elinor. My best friend. My sister. And then I see and hear it all. Elinor linking arms with me as we cross my old street. Team DEVIL in my mother’s kitchen. The gun spinning across the floor. Screams. A gunshot. Mitchell and Alfarin dragging me and Elinor down the alleyway.
Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go.
My timeline changed. I dissolved. Me, Medusa Olivia Pallister, who died on the twenty-fifth of June in 1967, was erased from the records of Hell.
“You can’t cheat death, Medusa.” The Devil’s voice cuts through my visions. “You can buy more time, but you all come back in the end.”
It’s December 2, 1967. I’m climbing over the edge of the bridge. She didn’t believe me. My mom didn’t believe me about Rory hurting me. She’s watching me. Screaming at me to get back in the car. I just want her to believe me. Scaring her like this might be the wake-up call she needs.
But the mist has fingers. It’s groping at me. Pulling me.
“Don’t let go!” screams my mother.
I didn’t. But death claimed me anyway.
31. A Second Chance
The room is suddenly quiet, apart from my sobs. “Why are you showing me these things?” I cry.
“Your nightmares are my dreams, Medusa,” sneers The Devil. “You wanted to know.” I look up to find that his face is back to normal—yet somehow more hideous than before.
“I came here for Elinor,” I say, trying to regain control.
“Liar. You wanted to know how you were special. And I have shown you. You are one of the rare dead. One who tried to cheat death. Septimus is one, too. A kindred spirit. But I claim you all in the end.”
“I didn’t try to cheat death!” I scream. Then I notice that the door behind The Devil is starting to close. Elinor. I can’t lose her now. Not when I’m this close. “My timeline changed, but it was an accident. I remember now! Rory Hunter didn’t die in my first timeline, but when he was killed in a paradox, it changed my death.”
“Postponed your death,” corrects The Devil. He licks his lips, and I see that his tongue isn’t forked, it’s black.
“Postponed my death, then. What does it matter? I’m dead. You still got me, and I’m even more messed up than before, because I’ll have to exist with these flashbacks of my previous existence forever. Isn’t that what you want?”
“So now you know,” says The Devil, tilting his head back in triumph. “Now get out.”
“No.”
“Do you want me to call my guards?” he threatens. “You’ve seen them before. They were gentle then. You don’t get a second chance, Melissa.”
“Is that what she said to you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Is that what Beatrice Morrigan said to you? That you don’t get a second chance?”
“I ordered you to stop saying her name!”
Time is running out. The door is almost shut. I have to throw everything at The Devil now, including myself.
“I’m telling you, Beatrice Morrigan is somewhere in the nine circles of Hell,” I insist.
“I know where my wife is!” screams The Devil. Spit flies from his mouth, and it sizzles where it lands. “I know everything that happens in my domain—everything.”
“Then why didn’t you try to get her?” I shout. “Or was it just easier to take children who couldn’t fight back?”
“You think you know about love? Foolish child.”
“I know it hurts,” I say. “Love isn’t hearts and flowers. It makes you lose control. You stop thinking. Love makes you reactive. When you love someone, you put their happiness first, even if it causes you great pain.”
The Devil slumps against his desk. He steadies himself with one hand, which gently caresses the silver metal of a photo frame that is facing away from me.
“Letting her go caused me pain,” he whispers.
“Yes,” I reply. “She hurt you, but you loved her.” I sense that his mood is shifting, and suddenly I think I might know how to play this after all. “You loved her, and so you didn’t go after her. But what if she wanted you to? Your wife could be alone and scared. She might think that you—the most powerful devil here—don’t want her. If I were Beatrice, I’d be destroyed. I might be too scared to come back, even if I loved you with everything I had to give.”
The Devil’s back straightens. He picks up the photo frame and traces a line across it with his finger.
“I cannot just leave to traipse around the nine circles, searching for my beloved,” he says, his high voice cracking. “There would be a bloodbath of anarchy with me gone from the office. Septimus is my wise second-in-command, but he does not have my skills. . . .”
He trails off, and his black eyes snap from the photo to me.
“You will go in there in my stead. You will find Beatrice. I will give you Elinor Powell back and the four of you—Team DEVIL—will find my wife and bring her back. I will have a second chance, in the same way you had a second chance at death.”
“Yes, Sir,” I reply quickly. “You’re so clever. Death really did make me special. Don’t you think it’s more than a coincidence that Septimus and I are working together just feet from your office? What if this was all building to this moment? My second chance becomes your second chance. A second chance with Beatrice Morrigan. Your wife. Your true Dreamcatcher!”
The Devil regards me coolly, and I worry I’ve laid it on too thick.
“Don’t overflatter me, child, or I may just decide to hang on to Miss Powell after all,” he says, stepping away from me. The pool of blood parts as he walks through it. It ripples back, lapping at my legs. I try to follow him to the glass-paneled door, but my legs are stuck fast. Everything suddenly seems to be slipping out of control again.
“Elinor!” I scream. “Sir, please give her back to us,” I beg. “She is to us what Beatrice Morrigan is to you. We love her.”
The Devil stops walking and places his right hand on the door-frame. He leans forward, steadying himself. His jacket is starting to smoke.
“I told you to stop saying Beatrice’s name!” he snarls.
“A second chance!” I yell, trying to redirect him. “Your plan, Sir, it really is an amazing idea. Because you have nothing to lose. At least let us try, and if we don’t find your wife, then you get . . . you get . . .”
“Miss Powell back?” prompts The Devil, saying the words that even now I can’t speak.
“You have nothing to lose, and we have everything to lose. Isn’t that how you like it?”
The Devil starts to laugh, and as he does, the bloody pool around me starts to drain away. I look down at my legs, expecting to see thick lumps clinging to
my skin, but there’s nothing.
It was another hallucination.
“I do not cope well without sleep, Medusa Pallister,” says The Devil. “Septimus may well rue the day he started this chain of events.”
My heart soars with hope as his long, pale fingers inch across the door toward the knocker that’s shaped like a woman. Trailing his fingers downward, as if he’s caressing the figure’s hair, he leans forward and pushes the door back.
“Elinor Powell,” says The Devil. “You are wanted.”
Even though it could be another hallucination, I don’t care. I start running. I can’t even see the room anymore or the real monster in it. All there is, is Elinor. She falls into my arms and we tumble and roll as the Oval Office spits us out with an earsplitting scream.
The four of us, Team DEVIL, are huddled together on the floor of the library. We wanted to be away from other devils, and this was the only place we could think of. It’s been a couple of days since Elinor was taken. She’s slept a lot and eaten nothing. Trying to give her space to get over her ordeal didn’t work. We were all so worried about her, we ended up watching over her from a distance, which really just felt like spying. She finally told us to stay with her, and so we have. She may be battered and emotionally wrung out, but our Elinor is hanging on. When I asked her about her time as The Devil’s Dreamcatcher, she played down the horror and wouldn’t talk at all about what she saw. Apparently the nightmares weren’t constant, because The Devil didn’t sleep for very long most nights.
Or so she says.
Now Alfarin and I are on either side of Elinor, barricaded in a fortress of books we built up around ourselves, and Mitchell is leaning in so close, his legs are wrapped around hers. Without saying it, we need to touch one another, to make sure we’re solid and real and here.
I’m dead, but I’ve never felt more alive—or more thankful.
“I will go alone,” whispers Alfarin. “I will not ask either of you to come with me.”
He’d better not be bringing this up again.
“Either?” whispers Elinor. Her voice is cracked and barely audible. It’s not the voice of someone who is unwell; it’s the voice of someone who has been shouting.
Or screaming.
“Elinor, there’s no way in a million years you’re coming with us,” replies Mitchell gently. “And when I say us, I mean me and you, Alfarin. ’Cause you’re not going into the circles of Hell alone.”
I reach out for Elinor’s hand, but I don’t take it. I just let my fingers hover above hers.
She takes my hand and leans into me. Were her nails always this short and ragged?
“Team DEVIL, right?” I whisper.
“Always.” Elinor squeezes my hand and I hear a tiny crack, like a wishbone being pulled apart. Elinor flinches.
“We all have to go, Alfarin. Even Elinor,” I say. “When I was in with The Devil, he showed me things about my second death. It’s just like Owen kept talking about. I have memories of my two timelines. They’re faint, but they’re getting stronger. When Rory was killed, my first death and timeline were erased from the records, because Team DEVIL altered time. But I was part of Team DEVIL when you all went to San Francisco. When everything changed, I still had to die, and so six months later, I did—again.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with—” says Mitchell.
“My first death was an accident, Mitchell. It was marked down as the twenty-fifth of June, 1967. The records say I killed myself. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I slipped. I was trying to make my mom believe me about what my stepfather was doing. I’ve known all three of you for so much longer than we all remember, but it’s starting to come back, like a whisper. It was the four of us who originally left Hell with the Viciseometer. So I was there, a devil in San Francisco, when Rory was killed.”
“It wasn’t just the three of us?” says Alfarin. “I knew it.”
“Don’t let me go,” whispers Mitchell. His pink eyes are wide, not with surprise, but with remembrance.
“Yes!” I cry. “I remember those words, too.”
“But why?” asks Elinor. “Why do ye think that is? Why have we all struggled with these blanks and almost-memories?”
“This is only a theory, but my guess is that even though I was erased from the paradox, there was something left behind, kind of the way a pencil still leaves a faint trace on paper when it’s erased. I think it’s those lines that I’ve been remembering.
“So with my first death and existence in Hell removed, I carried on living. But I still went back to the bridge on the second of December in 1967. It was like something was pulling me there.” I take a deep breath. “See, my mom didn’t believe me about the abuse, and even though Rory was dead, I still needed her to understand that what I was telling her was true. Even if no one else believed me, I needed her to. Does that make sense?” I’m relieved to see my friends nodding. “My head was so messed up. So I threatened to hurt myself. I went to the bridge, and when my mom found me there, I tried to convince her that I wasn’t making things up.
“I never planned to die,” I say forcefully. “Something dragged me off the bridge that day. For a split second, I even wondered if it was the fog. It was like death was controlling it.”
“Fate,” says Elinor softly, squeezing my hand again.
I nod. “Now, after everything that’s happened, and knowing what we have to do next, I think this is the reason I was taken again,” I say. “My second death is linked to getting Beatrice Morrigan to give The Devil a second chance.”
“This is seriously hurting my head,” says Mitchell. “I can’t even begin to get my brain around it.”
“Neither can I,” I reply. “And I’m the one it all happened to.”
“Remember a time when death was easy?” asks Mitchell.
“No,” the rest of us reply together. The same perverse smile spreads across our faces.
“So Mitchell, Medusa and I will enter the dwelling of the Skin-Walkers,” says Alfarin.
“I keep telling ye all,” croaks Elinor. “Ye are not going anywhere without me.”
“The Nine circles of Hell,” mutters Mitchell. “I don’t know anything about Dante. Does anyone else?”
“I know most of the circles,” I reply.
“I don’t suppose any of them involve an all-you-can-eat buffet and kittens?” asks Mitchell sardonically.
“Ye are allergic to cats, Mitchell,” says Elinor, rolling her eyes. “That would be a circle of Hell for ye anyway.”
Alfarin snorts. He tries to hide his laughter behind his plate-sized hand, but his convulsing shoulders knock Mitchell over. Mitchell’s foot accidentally kicks Elinor, so I slap him in the stomach.
Mitchell grabs me and pulls me on top of him, roughing my hair like he’s drying a dog.
“Medusa’s circle of Hell would involve a comb,” he calls.
“And yours would be having to bench-press something heavier than a stapler,” I retort.
“Mine would be having to wear those garments called under-pants,” says Alfarin. “My manly parts cannot be constricted. It affects my appetite.”
“Well, that is an image I did not need in my brain, Alfarin,” scolds Elinor, standing up. “And I thought the dreams of The Devil were bad enough.”
It’s so wrong, but Mitchell and I can’t stop laughing. Hell has finally made me hysterical.
“You must not joke about such matters,” says Alfarin gravely. “I will never—”
But Elinor pushes Alfarin’s large lips together with a pinch of her thumb and forefinger.
“We are Team DEVIL, and nothing can break us,” she says softly. “Not time, not death, and not some Banshee. We have a quest. Now we need to get ready.”
And she kisses Alfarin on the cheek. It’s swift and yet intimate, as two pairs of gleaming red eyes meet and block out the Underworld and everything in it. Mitchell and I stop laughing and wrestling and just watch Elinor and Alfarin, who have been through th
e worst ordeal imaginable and still only have eyes for each other.
And to think I had to die to appreciate the purity of love and friendship.
Mitchell wants to make a quick getaway from the main entrance to the library. Not because he wants to get going into the circles of Hell, but because Patty Lloyd is walking toward us with her hips swinging from left to right like she’s bouncing off the walls of an invisible rubber box.
“You guys go on,” I say. “I’ll meet you at Thomason’s.”
Elinor is sandwiched protectively between Alfarin and Mitchell. Her feet barely touch the ground as they hustle out of the library. Mitchell keeps his head low and does his best to avoid eye contact with Patty. They’re almost beside an old man who is removing his clothes by the front door—the people you run into down here, I swear—when Elinor breaks free and runs back to me. She throws her arms around my neck and I hear her frail body snap and crackle, as if she’s made of Bubble Wrap.
“I want ye to know I heard it all, Medusa,” she whispers. “In that place, when ye came for me. I will never forget what ye did. Ye are truly a sister to me.”
“And I would do it again and again until the end of time,” I reply.
“Why are ye not coming to Thomason’s now?” asks Elinor.
I look over at Patty, who is staring at Elinor with a strange, perhaps soft, but definitely dumb expression on her face.
“I’m right on your heels. There’s just something I need to do first.”
“Don’t be long,” she says.
I watch Mitchell, Alfarin and Elinor leave the library. The Devil’s intern, a Viking prince, and a peasant from medieval England. My best friends.
“So you got her back,” says Patty, interrupting the moment.
“Yeah.”
“Quite the power player, aren’t you? Don’t think you can start lording it over the rest of us in the dorm because you’re The Devil’s bitch now. And if you—”
“I want to thank you, Patty,” I say quietly, interrupting her breathless flow of abuse.
“What?”
“I said, thank you.”
“Are you serious?”