THIRTY-EIGHT

Here's the thing about Minnesota, and it's nothing to do with the cold (which wasn't that big a deal) or the Minnesota Nice thing (more Midwestern Nice, I'd found). Minnesota was new. That's why I liked it.

I mean, it was just the coolest thing. The planet was zillions of years old, but Minnesota had only been around for, what? Less than two hundred years! Isn't that something?

I don't think it's a failing in all Minnesotans, just this one: we don't really have a sense of history, of age. Stephen King said Rome was a sprat (or maybe it was Greece?), and at the time I assumed it was the drugs talking. But I get it now. Compared to the planet, Rome (or was it Greece?) was a sprat. But compared to Rome, Minnesota was a preemie.

* * *

"Oh Father, please help your wayward child."

I looked up, annoyed. "Dammit, Lena Olin, ever heard of knocking? Don't you have a netherworld to lord it over? And don't pray for me. It creeps me out."

"Is that a blog? Are you ... are you blogging?" Hmm. Normally I'd be pleased to see the devil look so horrified about any of my antics, but mostly I was annoyed at the interruption.

It wasn't completely asinine. Royalty wrote stuff down, right? Stuff for the ages, right? So I'd try to get in the habit. Because if I wrote about things I liked, maybe I wouldn't write the Book of the Dead, which was full of things I didn't.

I know, I know, but ... it was the only thing I'd come up with so far. And sitting around doing nothing just wasn't acceptable anymore.

"None of your business, that's what it is. Don't you have some of the damned to bug?"

"Don't you have a shoe sale to crash?"

I gasped at the snide insult. "I never crash shoe sales! That's like spitting on ... on ... on something you would never spit on. Watch your step, Snidely McDevil."

"Yes, I'm quite terrified."

"You get how lame it is that you're sort of hanging around like the creepy aunt who doesn't have any friends her own age, so she likes to hang with your friends, who are too polite to tell the geezer that her wanting to hang around them all the time is not only sad but creepy? Right?"

"You know I'm a fan of free will. My own, too. Why shouldn't I want to 'hang' wherever I like?"

"Because it's so so so lame? And don't make me laugh. Free will! Ha! You're so full of shit."

"To borrow a page from your own book, some people are afraid of me, you know. And wouldn't dare talk to me like that."

Afraid? Why did that tickle something in my brain? Somebody else had mentioned fear and the devil. Too much had happened in too short a time. And also, I wasn't that bright.

So: onward. "You love to yak and yak about free will, while the whole time you're encouraging people to be bad."

"Yes! Free will. I'm not making them do a thing. Not one thing."

"Please! Someone wouldn't have killed someone else if the devil hadn't encouraged it. Then you sit there on your throne of fire and preach-"

"I never 'preach,' and I don't have a throne of fire. You're confusing me with my father."

"-about free will like it's not your secret plan to dominate, oh hell no, it's God's. It's a cheat, isn't it? Sure, we've all got free will ... and you're always there trying to talk us out of it. Always. You never stop."

"That's right," she said, startling me with her quick agreement. "I never do." She glanced at my laptop and made a tiny curl of a smile at me. "Really, Betsy. Blogging?"

"Not that I don't love our little chats, but Laura's not here."

"Yes, I know. She's sitting in."

"And Elderly Me isn't ... what?"

"Hmm?" Lena Olin examined her beautifully polished, pearly nails.

"Laura's what?"

"Sitting. In. She is my ... how did you put it? 'Temp worker of the damned'?"

"So."

"Yes."

God, I hated when she was smug. And she was smug a lot. I was thoroughly out of my league with her-duh, she was the devil-and I hated every second of it. The few, the very few, times I could one-up her were never enough to make things even close to even.

One of these days, I seethed to myself, one of these days I'd have so much power that cunning bitch will never be able to-

Whoa.

Okay, that was not the way to handle this. That was no way to think. Ever.

I yawned. "So you got my little sis to sit in for you, and you're spending your first day off in a zillion-"

"Five billion."

"-years telling me you got my sister to sit in? Really? That's how you wanted to spend your day off? Pathetic, thy name is Lucifer." I forced a chuckle and made myself stare into my laptop like I was still interested in my queen journaling.

"She's got quite the aptitude for it."

"Uh-huh."

"In fact, she reminds me of you."

"Mmmm. There's just one t in pathetic, right?"

"The other you, I mean. The one who's done something. The one worth talking to."

"She said, talking to me, anyway. Go away, Lena Olin. Go take God out for a late Father's Day brunch. There's an Old Country Buffet around here somewhere."

I could actually feel the room getting warmer around me as she struggled to hold her temper. It made the shock and fear I'd felt about hearing what Laura was doing almost not very bad news.

Because why was she hanging around? It was like she wanted something. Wanted something from me ... not Laura. But what?

As bad: Ancient Me lurking in her own past. She wanted something, too, but she'd at least been a little more open. She was waiting for me to do something. Or waiting for me not to do something. Ah yes. So helpful.

It stank. There was no logical reason for them to be just ... hovering in my life. So something big and bad was coming, was on the way, or worse ... was here.

"You're kind of a voyeur, aren't you? You like watching us."

"I'm a fan of man," she said, swiping Al Pacino's line from The Devil's Advocate.

"You really like to watch. Most of the time I see you, you're not actually doing anything. You're just hanging around until something happens. It's kind of gross," I told her in my most pleasant tone.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand, idiot child."

"And here with the superiority thing again. Yes, you're so far ahead of us poor mortals we can never ever ever understand all your layers of awesomeness." I laughed. "Wow, I could hardly get that out with a straight face."

"I like you more when you don't think so much."

I'll bet you do. Also, no one has ever told me that, ever.

"He thought too much, too, except at the end, when He simply refused to think for Himself." Satan was staring over my shoulder, lost in thought. I'd seen her like this once or twice before, and it never failed to unsettle me, and make me feel a little sorry for her.

Which I hated.

"Are you aware you're talking out loud?"

"Stupid boy, oh that stupid, stupid boy," the devil muttered.

"Aww ... not Jesus again." You know how some people talk to themselves? She talked to Him. The kid she couldn't save. The one thing the devil admitted regretting. Not the whole turning-against-God thing. Not getting half of heaven to turn on Him with her. Not talking all sorts of people through the ages into indulging their worst fears/lusts/rages/murders/hatreds. All that? Just a day at the office.

Him, though. The boy. She felt bad about Him.

I sighed and shifted in my chair so I could face her. "I can't believe I'm saying this to you, but you should ease up on yourself. Free will, right? He had it, too. He knew what was coming. Knew since He was a kid, or at least, that's the way I heard it. And you gave it the old college try, tempting Him..."

"Warning Him!"

"Okay, okay, don't get your asbestos panties in a twist. You tried to warn or tempt or whatever, and you couldn't, and they-"

"They killed Him. Like some half-dead alley cat ... you see grimy little kids poking it and prodding it and after three days of that kind of handling the poor thing just gives up. That's what He did for all you unworthy idiots. And His reward was ... nothing." She was actually giving off heat now. Being in the room with her was like standing in front of an oven full of roasting beef. I thought about all the old wood my house was made of and got, um, perturbed.

She was pacing now. The oven was pacing, and the heat waned and grew strong and waned, depending on where she was in the room. "You're all still unworthy. Mankind isn't even potty trained. A six-week-old puppy bitch knows not to shit where she eats. You guys can't figure out what a puppy knows."

I leaned back in my chair and looked at her. Either I was getting used to these confrontations, or my fear circuits were burning out. Cool as a cuke, that one, almost always. But I'd seen her angry before. I'd made her angry before. I'd even hurt her. But I was never sure if I was working my agenda, or hers.

See, one of the (many many many many) things I hate about the devil is how you can be booking along, minding your own business, thinking that everything you're doing is part of your bigger plan, and you never find out until it's leagues past too late that it was her plan you were following. Always hers, all along.

You were ready to pull the cart, but guess who'd been holding the reins the whole time? And never told you about the spurs 'til you felt them digging into your ribs?

"Are you channeling a cowboy or indulging a heretofore-unknown longing to be sidekick to the Lone Ranger?"

I blinked. I'd probably been staring at her with a blank look on my face for five minutes. "What, you read minds now?"

"More desires than minds, and yes. On occasion. It's not much of a trick. As a species, you're not especially complex."

And here she was again. Just hanging around. Nothing was going on. Oh, except Ancient Me had hitched a ride from the future and was also hanging around.

Too bad I had no idea what to do about any of it. We were all in a holding pattern, and I couldn't imagine what I could do to blast us out of the waiting game.

Nope. I wasn't a secret genius, or a computer freak. I wasn't a doctor or a cop or a farmer turned philanthropist. I wasn't an old wise vampire and I wasn't a pregnant millionaire. I wasn't a Pack werewolf with all the power and backup that implied, and I wasn't a formerly feral vampire who had survived decades of torture.

I wasn't anything like that. I had been a slightly above average office employee before I died, and a considerably below average vampire queen after I died.

What I knew was barreling into situations with no prep and no help. What I knew was stomping right through a problem until I somehow stumbled over the-

You have to look to your strengths. You do have some, you know.

Oh.

Oh!

I clicked to save my queen journal, all two paragraphs of it so far. Slapped my laptop closed. Stood. Stretched. "Say, Lucy..."

"Do not call me that." Her mouth was twisted in a sneer, but she was watching me carefully. Almost ... nervously?

Satan is afraid of you. Don't you find that at all interesting?

As a matter of fact, I did. Finally.

"Lucy, how about we cut the shit?"

The devil looked into my eyes ... and she knew that I knew.