The Devil's Intern (27 page)

“Ye have been watching yer mom?”

“I don’t understand how you got the Viciseometer, Medusa,” I say. “How did you get into the safe?”

“You wrote the combination down on a piece of paper to memorize, Mitchell. I saw the numbers and put them into my cell phone because I thought they belonged to another girl’s cell phone. I was going to crank-call—but they never connected anywhere. Then I overheard you and Septimus talking about the safe combination and I put two and two together. The second Septimus mentioned the Viciseometer, I knew that was where he would put it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you trust me?”

“Because we all have secrets, Mitchell. I used the Viciseometer again in the bathroom of the Plaza after I had that nightmare. Just seeing how her life is ruined by what he does in the future . . . She did nothing wrong, but she gets blamed anyway. It was breaking my heart. I want to change
her
life, not
my
death. I owe it to her.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Medusa. You don’t owe anyone anything.”

“But you don’t understand the guilt I’ve been carrying, Mitchell. She lives on thinking I killed myself, but I only wanted to scare her into believing me about the abuse. That’s what haunts me in my sleep. I feel myself slipping . . . falling . . .”

Medusa breaks off. I try to hug her but she pushes me away.

“We only want to help ye,” sniffles Elinor. She’s trying really hard not to cry, and seeing her so upset just makes me angrier.

“Please try to understand,” begs Medusa. “I thought if I came back now, like this—dead—then maybe I could scare him into stopping before he hurts those other girls. But I had to come back to a time when I’m still living, since I need to appear to my mom, too. I need to warn her, I need to make her listen to me, and I can’t do that after my death because I don’t want to frighten her or make her think she’s going crazy. I can’t change Rory if I live, but I think
I stand a chance of stopping him and saving my mom now that I’m dead.”

Medusa pulls me farther behind the bush. Tiny thorns scratch the bare skin of my arms, leaving faint white lines. She’s trembling and sweating as the effects of lone time travel catch up with her.

“Are you all okay?” she groans.

“Do you care?”

I think Medusa’s sharp intake of air is real, as is the hurt look on her face, but I don’t trust her, and I hate myself for thinking it. I don’t want to be an asshole to Medusa. She’s everything to me. But she left us—she left me. I promised her I wouldn’t do that to her for any reason. Why couldn’t she have just trusted us to help her, to protect her?

“I was trying to save you from the Skin-Walkers, Mitchell. I was willing to spend an eternity here alone to keep you all safe.”

“Well, congratulations, because you failed miserably. We are now in more trouble than you know. Septimus came after us with a Viciseometer he stole from Up There. We traveled back to Hell; Elinor stole your records and we saw mine, which were put in your drawer. I’ve discovered that my mother has remarried and had another baby to replace me, and I saw my death but couldn’t stop it because if I live, everything else changes.”

I pause in my angry rant because Osmosis of the Dead has fully caught up with Medusa and she is throwing up into the bush. And now I feel sick with guilt, because even though Medusa should never have left us, I know she really was just trying to protect us. It’s what I had planned to do at the beginning of all this. Go on alone to protect my best friends. And what Medusa was facing was way worse than what I went through. For years she’s kept her life and death secret. The fact that she has now shared everything with us means she does trust us completely. She trusts me.

Elinor makes no sound as she leaves Alfarin’s side and walks to Medusa.

“What is yer plan, M?”

“I want to see my mom first,” replies Medusa. Her eyes are
watering. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “After that, I’ll confront
him
.”

“Then I’ll go with ye.”

Elinor places an arm around Medusa’s waist and supports her as they cross the road to Medusa’s former house. The sun is lingering on the horizon as if Up There is watching what happens next. I swear I can hear angels laughing in the wind.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” mumbles Alfarin, scratching at his face.

“Me too.”

I look around the park we landed in. A rusty-looking swing squeaks, even though the chains are still. Garbage is strewn across the dying grass. Alfarin and I stare at the house. My eyes hurt with the effort as I try to glimpse anything through the grimy windows.

And then a wolf howls in the distance.

“It’s just a dog,” I say quickly, but Alfarin and I are already running across the street.

Another, longer howl follows us into the house. The screen door is pulled off its rusting hinges as Alfarin tugs it open with one violent yank. Whatever animal is making that noise, it sounds as if it’s in pain. A caustic, rotten smell washes over me and the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

Oh, crap, not now, not here.

“Elinor, Elinor!” yells Alfarin.

I shout for Medusa, but all I can hear is the gushing of water filling an upstairs bath and more audience laughter from a black-and-white television flickering in a small room to my left. The volume has been turned up really high, and I get a feeling of dread that it’s meant to block out the sounds of something else—something happening upstairs. I can hear creaking floorboards and then a muffled thump. Crooked pictures of farm animals line the wall by the stairs. They shift even more as the vibration shudders down like an aftershock. I notice a cream-colored rotary-dial telephone on a stool by the banister. The cord has been ripped out of the wall.

No one can call for help from this house.

The Viciseometer is in my hand, although I can’t remember reaching into my pocket for it. I attempt to move the red needle around the numbers on the red face, but my movements are too jerky and I can’t fix time properly. We shouldn’t have come here. The shadows of the dead have followed us and are howling with laughter at our stupidity.

Alfarin and I crash into the kitchen and come to a skidding halt on the sticky linoleum floor. A woman is aiming a handgun directly at us. It vibrates violently in her shaking hand.

“Mom!” begs Medusa; she and Elinor are standing on the other side of a scratched Formica table. “Mom, please put the gun down.” But as Medusa takes a step toward the woman she called Mom, the gun is pointed at her.

Elinor screams and puts herself in front of Medusa; her long, pale hands are raised in surrender. Alfarin makes a movement toward the girls, but then the gun is pointed at him.

“Mom, it’s me,” pleads Medusa, but instead of listening, the woman cocks the trigger with her thumb.

“You aren’t my daughter.”

Another wolf howls, and this time, it is joined by another.

They’re just dogs, I keep telling myself. Just a couple of mangy old mutts that have been left outside.

“We mean you no harm, woman,” says Alfarin, stepping forward. His hands are raised exactly like Elinor’s. “We are here to see the man called Rory. We will deliver a message and then we will leave.”

“Mommy.”

Medusa has gone to pieces. Seeing her mother again after all this time has driven thoughts of confronting her stepfather out of her head. She just wants her mom.

I have no idea what to do. We’re already dead, so we can’t be killed again, but I have no wish to see what kind of damage a bullet can cause to a dead face.

I lean in toward Alfarin and whisper, “Can you get the gun if I get the girls out?”

Alfarin grunts, and I take that as a yes.

Then I hear heavy, pounding footsteps on the stairs in the hall. Someone is coming down.

“You can’t see your living version!” I yell at my Medusa. “We have to leave now.”

“Mom!” cries Medusa as Alfarin creeps forward. “You have to get away from Rory. He’ll destroy you. He’ll destroy other girls. He’s evil, Mom.”

Then the stepfather is standing in the doorway to the kitchen. For a moment he looks confused; he glances upstairs, and then he looks at the dead soul that is sobbing in his kitchen. He swears.

“Now, Alfarin!” I yell, and Alfarin throws himself on top of Medusa’s mom. The gun is knocked from her hand and it slides across the floor and stops by the stepfather’s feet.

“Out now!” I shout to the girls, pushing them through a single-paned glass door that leads into an untidy back garden. Spare car parts are strewn across the long grass. The howling surrounds us in the evening air as everything in this horrible world starts turning against us.

“What about Alfarin?” screams Elinor, trying to get back into the house. “We can’t leave him in there.”

Then a gunshot shatters time.

“Alfarin!” screams Elinor.

“Mom!” screams Medusa.

Both girls make to run back into the house, but I have both of them by the waist. They’re pulling away from me like a couple of puppies on leashes, and the heels of my sneakers are dragging in the dry, dusty earth. There’s screaming coming from the kitchen, but I don’t know whether it’s the living Melissa or her mom. I wait to hear Alfarin’s booming voice, but there is nothing.

Medusa’s weight is easing slightly, but she’s still struggling. Elinor goes completely limp as Alfarin finally crashes through the back door and into her arms.

“What happened?” I yell. “Is anyone hurt in there?”

A new pitch accompanies the growls and howls surrounding us. It’s a siren.

“The police are coming!” cries Elinor. “How did they get here so quickly?”

“It’s the Skin-Walkers!” yells Alfarin. “We must flee.”

“My mom, my mom! It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”

Medusa is getting lighter by the second. It proves easy to pull her away to the end of the garden, where we all climb over a low wire fence and run down a narrow alley lined with metal trash cans.

“Alfarin, what happened?”

Alfarin takes a quick left, then another left, and leads us back
into the park where we arrived. We’re at the far end, several houses away from Medusa’s old home. A police car has already drawn up, quickly followed by an ambulance. Two tall, thin officers climb out, but something isn’t right. Even though it’s dark now, the two officers look as if they’re surrounded by a dense black cloud.

The Skin-Walkers are here.

But instead of claiming us, they disappear into the house with another two men from the ambulance. They seem to lope into the house on all fours, their extra-long arms swinging in tandem with their legs.

Alfarin can’t speak. His cheeks are crimson and sweat is dripping down his face. I’m struggling to hold on to Medusa, not because she’s trying to get back to her mom, but because her clothes are slipping through my fingers like sand.

We hear the living version before we see her. Melissa Pallister is screaming and sobbing as she runs out onto the weathered porch of the house. A female neighbor has run out of her house and is now cradling the living Melissa in her arms. Even in the twilight, we can see the blood on Melissa’s hands.

“He was shot,” gasps Alfarin finally. “There was a struggle for the gun. The gun went off. There was nothing I could do.”

“Is Rory dead?” Medusa sways on the spot. She goes straight through my hands.

Elinor screams. “M, what is happening to ye?”

Medusa is in shock and doesn’t understand. I try to hold her hot little hands, but there’s nothing but wispy vapor that swirls around my fingers like steam.

“She’s disappearing!”
I cry. “Time has changed. Her stepfather was shot, which didn’t happen the first time around. That means Medusa’s timeline has changed.”

“The Skin-Walkers weren’t coming for Medusa!” yells Alfarin. “They were coming for someone else in her timeline, and we led them straight here.”

With a stricken look, Medusa makes to grab me, but there is nothing to hold on to as her soul starts to dissolve.

“Mitchell, help me!”
she screams as tiny red pinpricks of fire start to appear on her body.

“The Viciseometer—who has the watch? We need to go back again!”
I cry.

But Medusa is being swallowed by fire. It isn’t the same as Elinor’s death because Medusa isn’t in any pain, but her face is terrified. I throw my arms around the flaming shadow of Medusa, but I can’t feel any part of her.

“Stay with me, Medusa. Don’t leave me!”

“Don’t let me go,” sobs Medusa, and she raises her right hand to touch my face. “Mitchell, don’t let me go.”

But she is gone before I can say another word.

“What is going on here, do you think?” asks Alfarin.

“What are
we
doing here?” asks Elinor, scratching her head.

The three of us—the triangle that is Team DEVIL—look around at each other. Alfarin is the first to start laughing. His chuckle is infectious, and it isn’t long before Elinor and I join in.

“Who took us here?” giggles Elinor.

“Well, I have the Viciseometer . . .” I reply, pulling it out of my back pocket. The date reads the eighteenth of June, 1967. “Does this date mean anything to anyone?”

Alfarin and Elinor shake their heads.

“I think lack of food has affected your judgment, my friend,” snorts Alfarin.

“Hey, maybe the recipe for fried chicken was invented in one of these houses and we’re the first to ever try it out,” I suggest hopefully.

We’re interrupted by the sound of a woman screaming. We look over to one of the houses on the street, where a police car and an ambulance are parked. I have no idea what brought us here, and I’m in no rush to find out. I’ve heard dead people scream like that in Hell. You never want to find out why.

“Where are we?” asks Elinor.

“I have no idea where we are, El.”

“What did ye just call me?”

“El.”

“When have ye ever called me El?” giggles Elinor.

I shrug. “I dunno. It just popped into my head.”

“I like it,” replies Elinor rather wistfully.

“Where is my axe?” says Alfarin suddenly.