Undead and Unforgiven(56)

Wow, this guy was seriously hung up on punishment. “Your opinion is noted. But some of these people have been tortured far too long already. What, you want me to ask them, say to them, ‘Hey, sorry you’ve been burning alive for three hundred years because you were gay; the good news is, we’re looking into springing you, but the bad is, it’s going to take a couple of years while we do the research, no problem, right?’”

“You don’t ask them anything! You’re their lord, they’re the damned, your word is law.”

“Yes,” I replied, pleased he’d fallen into my little trap. “It is. And my word is now changing the law. Look, I get that I’m probably not qualified for this—” I ignored the snort at “probably.” “But tough nuts, because I’m the only one doing it. The Antichrist couldn’t be bothered, the devil is dead, and that leaves me.” And Sinclair, if I allowed it. But Markus’s response to my new plan reminded me, again, why that would be a bad idea.

“I think it’s brilliant.”

“Thanks, T—” Whoa. Tina hadn’t said a thing. “Um. Thank you, Ant—Antonia.” God, had I ever used my stepmother’s full name to her face before?

At least the pressure was off me, because now they were staring at the Ant. “What?” she snapped, shifting in her seat. As always, her body moved but her tall hair stayed perfectly still. “It’s an idea whose time has come. Hell needs to be modernized just like any other long-term system of levying punishment. We don’t still do things the way they did them during the Salem witch trials. Why should we do the same thing in Hell for millions of years? People change and times change, too. Betsy’s right. And she’s right to not want to argue it to death, either, rather than make changes that will end agony for so many now.”

“I expected more from you, Antonia,” Father Markus said coldly.

“Why?” The Ant had a puzzled frown on her face. (She may have been a Botoxed mannequin lady in life, but in Hell she could make facial expressions.) “You don’t know me. We’ve served on a committee together for a month.” She looked around the table. “I think Betsy’s onto something. I’ve seen things here. We all have. Some of these people absolutely do not deserve what they’re enduring.”

Markus had no reply to that. Instead he climbed to his feet and put his hands behind his back, I guessed to keep from throttling me. “May I have your leave to go?”

I thought about refusing him, but I’d made my point. Anything else was just me indulging in being a petty bitch. Which I’d normally be fine with, but not just now. “Sure.”

He tipped his head toward me in a small nod. Looked around the Lego table, nodded at everyone else. Let himself out without another word.

Marc blew out an unnecessary breath. “Wow! I thought he was going to hit you. Who would have thought a Catholic priest would be so resistant to change?”

“I had that same thought earlier.”

“He was a lot nicer when he was alive.”

The Ant snorted and Tina hid a smile. Cathie remained quiet, but wore her “too much to think about right now, can’t talk” look, so I left her alone.

“He’ll come around. Change is hard.” My private thoughts weren’t so charitable. My private thoughts, in fact, were more along the lines of: cry me a river, pal.

In the past half dozen years, I’d died, come back as a vampire, found myself the queen of the vampires, been tricked into marrying and making Sinclair king, lost a friend to cancer, cured her cancer, been snatched and rescued, rescued those who had been snatched, died, killed, lost Marc to suicide, rediscovered him as a zombie, watched my friend endure a supernatural pregnancy and then give birth to her weird babies just a few rooms away from where I regularly banged my husband, and tolerated those same weird babies when they were five and sixteen and two years and four weeks, and currently I wasn’t speaking to my husband, who was sulking because I wasn’t letting him trick me into letting him take over Hell.

Change is hard, Father Markus, but it’s also inevitable: I suggest you suck it up.

I looked at my stepmother. “Thanks. For your support. I appreciate it.”

She shrugged. “A good idea is a good idea, no matter who— Uh, you’re welcome.”

“It’s weird, but your reflexive bitchiness really broke the tension,” Marc said, and the Ant surprised me for the second time in ten minutes by laughing out loud.

I was tempted to make it snow in Hell, just to add to the general surrealness. That was a word, right? Surrealness?