Chapter 32
We were back in the tacky office-waiting-room section
of hell. The devil wasn’t kidding about how her will shaped reality
here. Not that she was much of a kidder anyway. Although it seemed
like we’d been walking and talking for hours, she turned us around
and took something like three whole steps and boom! There was the waiting room
again.
“As Betsy surmised,
this room is symbolic of your ability to travel. As I said, your
brains simply can’t—”
“Since you said it, a
few times, I think, why are you saying it again? Let’s get this
abortion over with.”
“Watch your mouth,”
Laura said, looking irritated.
“Sorry. I guess being
in hell where my sister has to
smack me to teleport through
space and time to avoid going insane has made me a little grumpy.”
“That’s enough, drama
queen,” Satan said, nicely enough.
“It’s vampire queen.
And I’ll be the judge of what’s enough if you don’t mind. And even
if you do.” I brightened. “Especially if you do.”
“To leave, open a
door and step through.” Satan pointed.
I walked over and
inspected the closest door. Pretty standard. It even had a red neon
EXIT sign above it and an old-fashioned handle. There were at least
half a dozen in the room, each spaced about two feet
apart.
“To come back, Laura,
you’ll use your Hellfire sword to cut a doorway for you to return
through.”
Laura nodded. “All
right, Mother. I’m not very good with it ...”
“Yet,” Satan
said.
“I try not to use
it.”
“I trust that will
change.” Satan was unsmiling, even a little tense. “Your life will
depend on it.”
“Gosh, Satan. I’ve
never seen this sentimental side of you. And I won’t deny this; I
feel cheered up. It doesn’t sound like one single thing could go
wrong with any of that. Sure, I was nervous at the start of the
tour. But now all my worries have been thoroughly laid to
rest.”
“It may take several
tries for you to make it all the way back,” Satan cautioned, “but
you know what they say about practice guaranteeing
perfection.”
“Nope,” I said.
“Nothing at all will go wrong. How could it? It’s all so simple. So
easy. So free of potential disasters.”
“My hope,” Satan
continued, ignoring me, “is that eventually you will move all about
the universe simply by thinking it. That you will need no props”—a
vague gesture at me—“and no weapons.”
“Speaking
as the prop,” I said, “aren’t you going
to give us a panic button or something? What if we’re stranded
somewhere dangerous?”
“Oh, I expect you
will be,” Satan said, terrifying me. “But you won’t learn if I
rescue you.”
“But we could—” Wait.
That wasn’t the way to her black, black heart. “But Laura could get seriously maimed. Or killed. Or
kidnapped by nuns and forced to marry Jesus. Or exposed to ... uh
... horny Boy Scouts.”
“I know. It’s a risk
I’m willing to take.”
The scary part? She
was not kidding. At all. She’d really given it some thought and
weighed Laura’s possible demise against what her daughter could
learn, and judged it worth the risk.
And I thought the
Ant’s maternal instincts were poisonous.