Diabolical (4 page)

“My, you’re here early!” exclaims someone I’ve never seen before.

He’s tall, as tall as a guardian. Perhaps taller. He has no eyebrows or eyelashes or facial hair. He’s bald in a good-looking way. My first thought is chemo, but he exudes health, strength. Perhaps it’s an allergy or stress response or chemical reaction. He’s leaning against a doorframe and watching Lucy unpack. “You were originally expected to be our last check-in, and now you’re our first.”

“I hope it’s okay that I let myself in,” she says. “The front door was unlocked.”

“Completely okay. You just caught me by surprise. Have you had a chance to look around yet? It’s a brand-new building, state of the art.”

“Not yet.” Lucy rubs her arms. “Mr., um —”

“You can call me Seth. It’s nice to finally meet you in person. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed our chats on the phone.”

“About the heat?”

Seth offers a wry smile. “The heat is on. It’ll take a while to warm up.”

Who is Seth? Is he flirting with her?

A chime resonates throughout the ultramodern building.

“Shall we see who that is?” Seth asks.

Lucy abandons her stack of sweaters — price tags still attached — and jeans on the platform bed, shoves a key into her back pocket, and follows him.

Through her window, I can see several inches — feet? — of snow on the ground. Those hills, the pines! That’s not the University of North Texas. Where is she?

I use the monitor-com to look around. Five identical rooms are located on each side of the hallway, making ten altogether — three on each side to the east of the stairs and elevator, two to the west along with an opposing laundry room and kitchenette.

The furniture is metal framed and contemporary, in black, white, and gray with glass tabletops and canvas cushions. Each bedroom features an armoire, full-size bed, and dresser (against a side wall); a desk set loaded with office supplies (centered, facing the door); a Euro recliner with matching ottoman (alongside the window wall); and an empty shelf unit next to the unlit fireplace (on the other side wall).

In addition, each room has a walk-in closet and a restroom with a toilet, sink, medicine cabinet, mirror, towel bar, and glass-walled shower with a black tile floor. Plush gray bath linens have been rolled and piled artfully on metal-bar shelves.

Back in the main living area, a digital wall clock hangs above the door. The floors are likewise tiled in black, the walls are painted snowy white, and the ceilings soar thirty feet high. The overhead lights are cold fluorescents. The outside-facing wall is made up of tinted floor-to-ceiling windows, and a dead bolt has been installed in each of the thick doors.

The only pieces of art — framed in silver lacquered metal, hanging above each streamlined black lava-rock mantel — are prints of the same painting, depicting a yellow, potbellied monster with a scaled head, red horns, red claws on his four fingers and toes, and a red tongue protruding from his bluish-green face. The colors are brightly modern to Day-Glo, and the image repeats four times in two rows of two.

If my eternal-art education is worth anything, the style is a tribute to Andy Warhol. The beast is naked, except for a diaperlike cloth around his waist to cover his privates, though he’s squatting so low that it looks like his dewclaws are about to skewer them. His expression is mischievous, as if he’s barely keeping a secret. The eyes suggest an ancient evil, some
thing
that’s having fun. The effect is disconcerting, goblinlike . . . creepy in a way that crawls beneath your toenails and digs.

As Lucy and Seth chat about the weather (“How’s the skiing?”), I zoom in to view the third floor and take note of the seminar-style room, the library, and the restrooms. The same devilish print is the artistic focal point in each of those spaces, too. I move the monitor-com focus up and get no reception for the fourth floor. It’s all gray.

When did Lucy decide to transfer to a new school? I should’ve been paying more attention to her. However radiant Zachary may be, I was wrong to neglect my best friend.

The doorbell sounds again, and I zoom in to locate Lucy and Seth in the foyer. He opens the massive door.

The new arrival’s salty blond hair looks salon styled, her clothes designer label, and her cosmetics professionally applied.

“You must be Seth!” she exclaims, rising on her toes to kiss him full on the lips. “I can’t believe I made it.” She glances at Lucy. “Don’t you hate the weather?”

As a chauffeur begins unloading her fifteen-piece luggage set, Seth introduces the girl as Vesper Simon. I change screen functions to do an online search.

We ascended souls are unable to post messages or other content on the Web, but we’re welcome to read what’s out there.

Here it is. Vesper is the daughter of some financial guru worth $139.8 billion. Last year, Vesper herself was named Massachusetts It Girl by a local society magazine, and she’s been romantically linked to a minor Kennedy.

The chauffeur wheels another of Vesper’s trunks inside, and Seth admits, “I’m afraid I have to hit the road in a few minutes. The caretakers will arrive any moment, and they’ll finish getting you settled.”

Vesper yanks off her mink-lined black leather gloves. “I thought —”

“It’s the nature of the job.” Seth helps Vesper out of her fur jacket. “Tables to man, brochures to distribute, students to recruit. A glamorous life. I travel a lot, but I do have an office on the fourth floor, and you’ll see me again before you know it.”

Zooming out, I observe that the academy is a Mies van der Rohe–looking, four-story, rectangular building made of uniform thin steel columns supporting massive panes of tinted glass. What appears to be the basement is aboveground, and both the circular drive and the black-stone staircase leading to the entrance have been shoveled and sprinkled with sand.

The structure sits nestled among taller snow-blanked hills (mountains?) on wooded land alongside a fair-size lake, which is oddly not frozen. The closest waterline is about a hundred feet from the front of the structure. It tightly wraps around the east side, though, and laps against glass and metal. I zoom in on the chiseled gray stone sign above the front door, an archaic contrast to the otherwise modern architecture.

It reads:
SCHOLOMANCE PREPARATORY ACADEMY
.

I’M YOUNG FOR A GA
. I’ve had only three formal assignments, but I’ve still managed to blow each of them to varying degrees.

Dan “the Man” Bianchi graduated from altar boy to small-time crooked politician. Alcohol led to drugs, prostitutes, and an early, ugly end in an upscale hotel suite. Only Nonna Bianchi and Dan’s cousin, Vaggio, showed up at the funeral to pray for the boy Dan had once been. (The same Vaggio Bianchi who served as Sanguini’s original chef. The Big Boss works in mysterious ways.)

Then my girl, my Miranda. A one-time North Dallas teen. She obsessed over Tolkien, dreamed of stage acting, mourned her parents’ failed marriage, and played the loyal sidekick to her adventurous best friend.

One winter night I broke heaven’s rules and revealed myself in full glory — corporeal, shining, wings and all — to warn her of an impending fall into an open grave. I’d worried she’d break her neck. I’d figured the appearance of an angel would reassure her. Instead, she panicked at the sight of me and fled.

Then the vamp king himself intercepted Miranda. Captured her, made her undead, and presented her to the underworld as his daughter and heir.

She lost her humanity. I lost my wings, my powers, and my full angelic status.

After some months of pointless wandering and burying my sorrow in booze and Miranda look-alikes, Michael assigned me to masquerade as my girl’s personal assistant. I found her irresistible, even in undeath. Miraculously, she fell for me in return.

We joined forces to defeat the king, and in the final battle, my wings and radiance were restored. She begged me to use heaven’s light to destroy her tainted form. To save her soul by ending her earthly existence. And, out of love, I did.

Now I’m supposed to watch over Quincie. She’s got the bravado of Pippi Longstocking, the humor and wry dignity of a young Katharine Hepburn.

She’s also wholly souled — the very first (and so far only) one of her kind to have ever resisted taking a life. A fact that I realized only
after
trying to convince her to end it all. Fortunately, she believed enough in herself to figure it out in time.

At sunrise, I’m pleased to find my latest assignment propped on a chaise lounge on her new screened-in back porch. Quincie avoided me yesterday, but I take this as a sign that she wants to talk. Normally, she’d be chatting with Nora and hovering over the pastry team in Sanguini’s kitchen.

“Does your cell phone range go all the way to heaven?” she asks, flipping through a restaurant-supply catalog. “Can you talk to other angels?”

“Good morning to you, too,” I reply. “No, my phone is a Samsung. Not heaven-sent, like my sword. My supervisor Michael appears sometimes, mostly to yell at me. My buddy Joshua visits, too.”

“Michael and Joshua are angels?”

“Full status,” I say, bracing myself. “Josh is my best friend.”

“Could you ask him if he’s seen Mitch in heaven?”

There it is. Not long after we first met, I scolded her to respect heaven’s mysteries. It’s become a joke between us. Quincie asks, and I don’t tell. I’m tempted sometimes. But I’m in enough trouble already without divulging more secrets. Granted, I confided in Kieren last night about angels and aging. I really should watch my mouth after a couple of beers. But that wasn’t heaven-and-hell stuff. Certain separations exist between the living and the dead, even between the dead and undead, for a reason.

“Never mind,” Quincie says, apparently resigned. “Truth is, I’ve thought more than once that it might become my responsibility to take my axe to Mitch. You spared me that.” Brightening, she changes the subject. “By the way, how many times have I told you not to come outside without clothes on? You’re going to cause a riot.”

What? “I’m
not
naked.”

I’m wearing the oversize white terry-cloth robe and slippers that Nora gave me for my birthday. Plus, under the robe, I’ve got on boxers with fanged smiley faces on them, a gift from Miranda.

Thinking Quincie is teasing, I open the
Statesman
to the sports section.

Then she points up at three middle-aged ladies, partially hidden by the vine-wrapped treetops. They’re taking turns studying me through a telescope mounted on the third-floor balcony of the backyard neighbor’s house.

I guess I have been coming out here on mornings fairly regularly.

I wave, which sends them squealing and ducking for cover.

I APPROACH THE UNIFORMED DOORMAN
for my honeycomb tower at the Penultimate. His name is Huan (1945 Oakland–2002 Oklahoma City), and he looks like Grandpa Shen, only plumper.

“Howdy, Miranda,” Huan says. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for a book, though it may not be permitted here. I wouldn’t blame anyone if it weren’t. I —”

“The title?”

I close my eyes and steel myself for his response.
“The Blood Drinker’s Guide.”

“Would you like a hard copy? Or I can show you how to download the text to your monitor-com. It has an e-reader built in.”

It does? I’m certain someone explained that at registration, but I was distracted by being newly dead. Since then, watching over Zachary and, to a lesser extent, Lucy and my family has occupied most of my attention, so I haven’t played with the device like I otherwise might’ve. “How long will it take for a hard copy?”

“English language?” He hits a button on the stand and keys in the title. The guide materializes. “The macabre is fascinating, don’t you think? Have you ever read Oscar Wilde’s
The Picture of Dorian
—”

“Thanks!” I grab the guide. “I have emergency research to do.”

“Emergency?” he echoes as I sprint toward the elevator. “Here?”

I’m tempted to grab the nearest lounge chair, but I’m not convinced everybody is as open-minded about demonic literature as Huan is. So I’m sprinting around souls floating down the promenade (theoretically, we could concentrate, dissipate, and pass through each other, but it’s considered rude) when someone calls, “Your Highness!”