Luckily, I had something the devil never had, not in her five million years of punishing the damned and being pissed at God: friends willing to pitch in and help.
Thus: meetings. But there were smoothies, too, so it wasn’t all bad.
CHAPTER
TWO
“Do we have the minutes of the meeting?”
I bit down on a groan and rested my forehead on the table (also made of Lego pieces). Then, remembering that the last time I’d done that, I’d walked around in Hell with Lego dots on my forehead and no one told me, I jerked upright.
“Do we even have those? Are we really trying to improve Hell by introducing more paperwork?”
“I don’t know if ‘improve’ is the right—”
“Plus, we’re not even all here yet,” I pointed out. Not “I complained.” Not “I bitched.” No matter what Marc wanted to call it. And speaking of my personal physician/zombie . . . “Where’s Marc?”
“Here,” my personal zombie/physician replied, ambling into the room. He was in (un)death as he was in life: slouchy and comfortable in a pale gray scrub shirt (it used to be green but after a zillion washings was faded and almost velvety to the touch), faded boyfriend jeans (“Ironic,” he’d sigh, “since I haven’t had a date in . . . when did I die again?”), dark hair in a George Clooney cut (“He’s really locked into one style, isn’t he?”), pale skin (not because of his zombification; he died in winter in Minnesota, when sunlight is more rumor than anything else), and smiling green eyes.
“What have I told you about wandering around Hell without an escort?” I hadn’t been running the place for even a few weeks. My “run it by committee” idea was only a week old. I was still figuring out my godlike powers of the damned. And I wanted to bite the shit out of somebody—anybody, really. When had I last drunk? Argh. Worrying about Marc on top of all that? It did nothing for my temper, which these days wasn’t great. “Well?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh.” Right. I’d been thinking he shouldn’t wander, but didn’t actually tell him. “Well, it’s a bad idea.”
“What can they do to me?” he asked, reasonably enough.
“It’s Hell! Who knows? Why would you ever want to find out?”
“Because I’m bored?”
Oh. Well, good point. If anyone needed to stay stimulated, it was Marc.
“And,” he continued, “Hell is really depressing.”
“Well, yeah,” Cathie replied.
“Lord Byron is so boring.”
Not good. Boring was bad. Marc being bored was the part of the horror movie where they establish the characters, the dumb stuff you have to sit through while waiting for the blood to spill. And it always spilled. Inevitable like the tides, or Transformers sequels being terrible.
“Oh?” I asked with perfect fake composure, even as Cathie started to give him the side-eye.
“Byron’s one of the greatest poets ever, maybe the greatest English poet—”
Oh, good. Now I wouldn’t have to ask, Who’s Lord Brian? The name was familiar. Kind of. Poets weren’t my thing.
“—and just a complete downer. First off, not gay. Bi, definitely bi.”
“Which is a problem why?” Cathie asked.
“Oh, bi artists are a dime a dozen.” Marc waved a hand, dismissing every bisexual artist in the history of human events. “All my life I’ve been reading about his complex sexuality, but there’s nothing complex about being able to pass for straight—he fathered a couple of kids. It’s not nearly the struggle it is to be in the closet, not into the opposite sex, but faking well enough to make babies while trying to fit into society without losing your mind, except a lot of them did lose their minds.”
“Those bisexuals,” Cathie said dryly, “with their uncomplicated natures and many, many banging options.”
“Oh, shut up,” he snapped. “I get it: where do I get off—”
Don’t giggle at “get off.” Whew! Thanks, inner voice.
“—marginalizing anyone’s sexuality, blah-blah. But it wasn’t just that. The guy’s supposed to be the first celebrity—I mean, how we understand the term today. Hordes of screaming fans; Byronmania kind of paved the way for Beatlemania. Sounds pretty interesting, right? He’s probably got great stories, right?”
“I’m guessing no,” I said, “on account of how annoyed you sound.”
“You know what the number one thing on his mind is? Art, poetry through the ages, reminiscing about commanding a rebel army despite having no military experience, feeding your muse from Hell, maybe moving on from Hell, looking up his descendants . . . anything like that? No. The fever that killed him. That’s what’s on his mind all the time. He died over two hundred years ago and he’s still bitching because Advil and NyQuil weren’t invented in time to save his whiney ass.” Marc slumped into his red Lego chair, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Never meet your heroes. Or people you read about once and thought would be really cool to meet in real life.” He raised his head and looked around at the ghost and the vampire queen surrounded by Lego furniture. “This is real life, right?”