Undead and Unforgiven(2)

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grateful.

“Hi, I’m Betsy, welcome to Hell.”

He blinked and looked around. He knew this place. He’d been there before, reluctantly. It was—

“Did you say welcome to Hell?”

The girl—woman, he supposed, she was probably in her twenties, and they didn’t like that, being called girls—nodded. “Yep.”

Only death could be both surreal and familiar at the same time. “Hell is the Mall of America?”

“Yep. Sorry.” She shrugged at him. “It was all I could think of.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

He took a closer look at her. Tall, slender, fair skinned, bright blue-green eyes. Sounded like a Minnesota gal, but what were the odds of that? Long legs, knee-length black linen shorts, a red short-sleeved shirt, reddish blond hair pulled into a ponytail. She was wearing a silver men’s watch that was too big for her slender wrist, silver pointy-toed flats, and a Hello My Name Is badge over her left breast, which read Satan 2.0.

“So I’m dead?” He looked around. Yep, the Mall of America and no mistake. He and the strange girl—woman—were standing beside a large information kiosk. There were other people around, many of them in a hurry, and there was an overall feeling of tense bustling.

And it was some big costume party, too, because there was a gal dressed like Cleopatra and another one dressed like she was on her way to a ball in a green gown with a billowing skirt, and an awful lot of the men were wearing hats. And not many of them were proper baseball caps. Lots were old-fashioned hats like Lincoln wore. Women in hats, too, big fancy ones like they wore in the old days, or in London for a royal wedding. The people were all intent on something, because they paid him no attention at all. It took him a second to realize what they were paying attention to: her. His . . . guide, maybe? But no one was approaching, or even staring. They’d send skittering glances her way, like they were afraid she’d look back. Maybe not a guide. Maybe a supervisor?

He opened his mouth and was annoyed when nothing came out. Tried twice more while the gal waited patiently, and finally managed to croak out, “This is death?”

“No, this is Hell,” she corrected him. “And since it’s 12:08 p.m., that makes you—uh—Tom Anderson?”

Oh no! Death is just like life! “Tim Andersson, double s,” he said in Hell, as he had hundreds of times in life.

“Dammit, I knew that.” She stomped one of her feet, which was as startling as it was charming. “What I’d like is a clipboard with all the info on it I need for work today, all of it accurate and easy to find.” Then she just stood there with her hands out, like those statues of the Virgin Mary you saw all over, often on lawns with plastic pink flamingos. Sometimes it looked like the statue was feeding the flamingos, which he always got a kick out of.

Now she was holding a clipboard.

Tim blinked, wondering if it was a hallucination. It had been that sudden—she asked for a clipboard and bink! There it was.

“And an Orange Julius,” she added, and bink! Now she was slurping orange glop through a straw, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked like the drink was about to be yanked away. “I will never get used to this,” she mumbled at him between sips. Then she was looking down at the clipboard. “Yep, Tim Andersson, got you right here. Sorry, I’m so bad with names. Okay, well, like I said, welcome to Hell. I’m not seeing a religious affiliation here—”

“Lapsed Presbyterian,” he replied absently, still staring around.

“Uh-huh, so not a regular churchgoer?” At his head shake she added, “So why d’you think you’re in Hell?”

Of all the things she might have asked, this had to be the most surprising. “You’re Satan 2.0. Don’t you know?”

Her brow wrinkled as she frowned. She was quite pretty, which was agreeable, and had magical powers, which he hadn’t expected from a fellow Minnesotan. He was pretty sure. “You’re from Minnesota, right? You sure sound like it.”

“Yeah, I live in St. Paul.” He barely had time to wonder at her use of the present tense—Satan lived in the state capital?—when she added, “Why did you call me Satan—oh, dammit!” She’d looked down at her name tag and ripped it off, crumpling it in her fist. “Ignore that. One of my horrible roommates stuck that on without me noticing.”

“How could you not notice when someone sticks a four-inch-by-four-inch sticker to your—”

“Hey, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities, okay? I don’t have the leisure to read my left boob every five minutes. And I don’t know why you’re here. There’s tons I don’t know, which is why I’m playing Welcome Wagon.”