“None of that sounds like me,” I grumbled. “Those minutes are counterfeit, I bet.”
Tina kept the smile off her face, but was unable to prevent her eyes from crinkling at me. “Every last word of it sounds quite like you, dread Majesty.” Sigh. No matter how often I said she could drop the “O Dread Queen” stuff anytime, she persisted. Who knew someone from the antebellum South could be so stubborn?
“One thing at a time,” Father Markus said. “Else we’ll get bogged down in all the problems to surmount and not how to surmount them.”
I liked how he said “we.” It was why I’d made the damned committee in the first place. I nodded and he continued.
“Setting aside the idea of parole from Hell—”
“Not for long, though,” Marc said quickly. “I think it’s a really great idea.” At the surprised looks, he added, “What? I’m a gay atheist who knows how to perform abortions and is now a zombie. Hell being permanent does not work for me.”
“Oh, now you’re backing me up. When it’s political and stuff.”
“Well, now you’re making sense,” the Ant cut in and Marc, who had never liked her, grinned anyway.
“The seven deadly sins,” Markus said loudly, cutting off my whine. “That’s where we’ll start. I’ve been interviewing quite a few souls down here—sorry, not down here, of course—not anywhere, is my understanding . . .”
I couldn’t blame him. The Hell tropes were hard to shake. We weren’t down anywhere; Hell wasn’t a physical place you could go to, like Duluth. It was an entirely different dimension with its own rules, and hardly anyone was burning alive in a lake of fire. Okay, a few hard-core Christians were burning alive in a lake of fire, and they ignored all my attempts to rescue them, shouting over the crackling flames that they’d earned their punishment. What could I do? They seemed fine. Well. Not fine. But not inclined to move, either. That was the stuff that made this job seem so overwhelming. You’d focus on one person or one punishment area and get totally overwhelmed. To think I found the vampire queen gig daunting!
“. . . and most of the people here understand the concept of sin. They were unsurprised to find themselves here; they understand they sinned in life and this is their punishment in death. We’ve got murderers, thieves, false idolaters—”
“I don’t think people should go to Hell if they don’t believe in the Christian God,” I interjected. “This is America, isn’t it? Freedom of religion!” Oh. Wait . . .
Literal face-palms around the table, except for Tina, because at least one person in the Lego room was an adult who respected her sovereign. And, given all the religious talk, she was keeping her shivers and shudders under control. To most vampires, even hearing the word Jesus out loud was like a lash to the face.
“That is the entire concept Hell is based on!” Father Markus shouted, leaping to his feet. Ooh, only five minutes in and I got the eyelid twitch and the forehead vein. A new record! (It’s not enough to set goals; you’ve got to reach them, dammit.) “You can’t just pitch everything and start all over, you gorgeous idiot!”
“Sure I can. Wanna watch?” I hadn’t moved, just stared up at him, but he must have seen something in my face because he plunked back down in his Lego chair almost as quickly as he’d leaped out of it. Good thing he’d called me gorgeous, or I’d have been really pissed.
“I’m sorry I raised my voice,” he managed, not quite looking at me.
“No biggie. Yelling’s allowed.” Usually. “And you didn’t let me finish. I think I have a way that’ll make both of us happy. Just a reminder, though, for everyone here: I agreed to run Hell by committee for the most part, because it’s a huge job and I trust everyone in here.” Unspoken: Even you, Ant, much as it kills me to say it. “But I’ve got veto power over everything happening in this place, old rules and new, understand? If I don’t think a certain plan is the way to go, I’m open to discussion, but the final decision is always going to be mine.” This in my “how dare you try to sell me knockoff Jimmy Choos, you degenerate asshat!” tone.
“No one doubts it, Bets,” Cathie said. She’d pushed the minutes aside, thank God, and had been giving Markus a thoughtful look. Now she turned her attention to me. “Y’know, we touched on this last time, too. You were going to think about a twenty-first-century version of the Ten Commandments. Maybe nothing will get changed at all,” she added when Markus opened his mouth. And then, to me, “Did you? Think about it?”