Nobody moved.
“Where’s the real Father Markus?”
“How should I know?” she cried, recovering quickly. Had to give it to her, Satan was like those stand-alone punching bags with sand in their base. You could punch them, but they bopped right back up. “Not here, that’s for sure! He’s in Heaven with my Father, I suppose, or haunting a rectory somewhere. I needed to be someone you’d trust, so he was it.”
Well. I guess it was good that the real Father Markus wasn’t condemned to Hell. Still, it made me sad for some reason, because I should have been happy for him. But now wasn’t the time.
“You’re here, you’re ‘alive,’ whatever that means anymore. But you’re not as strong as you were, because Hell is mine now. They”—nodding to the souls who hadn’t budged—“listen to me now. So tell me: why couldn’t I make it rain in the conference room? Why do some things here bend to my will, and some don’t?”
“Because you didn’t really want it to rain, you were clutching at a straw. When you really needed a watch, Hell provided. When you’re just bitching, Hell’s got nothing to fix on.”
“That sounds completely made up.”
She shrugged. “Mouthing words with nothing behind them isn’t bending Hell to your will. It’s just babbling, for which I assume you could take the gold.”
I smirked. “Yes, I babbled and I’m so stupid and, by the way, I saw through you in less than a week. So how about you choke on that for a while, you hateful tricky twat?”
Ever wonder what Satan would look like if she tried to swallow her own face? I don’t, because I know. It’s pretty funny. And like all mistresses of deflection, she didn’t directly respond. She just turned to the Ant (who was wearing a distinct “ulp!” expression) and said, “I expected better of you, Antonia.”
“Me?” she gasped. “Why, what was I supposed to do?”
“Prevent some of her sillier changes from going through! Rewriting the Ten? Buddies? And now she’s rewriting the Seven? What shit!”
“Well, I expected better of you,” the Ant replied, drawing herself up, her big, shellacked hair making her seem taller than she was. “You let her kill you, for what? So you could sneak back in and try to slow down any changes to your precious regime? That’s not worthy of you, Lucifer. Stay or go, but don’t do this cowardly in-between nonsense.”
“I know nobody says this anymore,” Marc murmured to Tina, “but oh, snap!”
“Shut up!” Satan snapped.
Marc gulped. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, you’re disappointed in me?” the devil taunted. “You think I should have confided in you? Did you think we were friends?”
“No.” That was it, just “no.” My stepmother stood on her dignity, which I would have thought was impossible.
“Good. We were never friends.” She ignored the Ant’s flinch and continued. “I allowed you to be the Vessel for the Antichrist, and when you left your tiresome dull life by way of your tiresome dull death, I put you to work so you’d feel wanted. That’s all you were to me: a worker bee. And I would have thought that you’d know a real leader from the false moron who’s been pretending to be in charge.”
“She might be a moron, but she’s doing a pretty good job so far. And as she pointed out, she figured you out pretty quick.”
“A fluke from a flake.”
“Ladies.” I cleared my throat. “I’m right here. Well within earshot.” Also, this was further proof (like I needed it) that this was all happening in Hell: the Ant was sticking up for me. And appeared to be sincere! Soon: the three horses of the Apocalypse. Wait. Four horses. Right? Red, white, black, and pink. No. Pale. Right? Argh.
I shook off thoughts of pink horses. “But why?” I asked. “Why do any of it? Why let me kill you and then sneak back and try to help, kind of, when not trying to undermine me? Because you were helpful, some of the time. But how come?”
“I wanted to see how you’d do at the helm. I couldn’t give you on-the-job training unless I came back disguised like someone you’d trust. If you sucked at this too much,” Satan said with aggravating cheer—I’d never known anyone to get so mad and then recover so quickly—“you’d have been replaced. My daughter might have been stuck with it. I went to too much trouble to prevent that, so I wasn’t going to just stay gone and risk that my sacrifice was for nothing.”
“God forbid,” I muttered. Blech: even after dealing with Satan, I still had to go back and deal with her rotten kid. Well, one thing at a time. Meanwhile, the devil was still pontificating.