03 Before The Devil Knows You're Dead-Speak Of The Devil (8 page)

Sitting on the battered desk in front of me were three tall piles of file folders and as I watched, the pile grew as more folders appeared underneath all the rest. Somehow, I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Then again, maybe I’d get lucky enough to have a secretary. Otherwise I was going to have to recruit Harold to take the job because there was no way I could handle all this paper on my own.

Chapter Nine

“Okay,” I muttered to myself as I opened another folder. “I’ve handled all the old-age related files. Those were the cyan ones.”

The room was filled with various stacks of file folders, all in different colors, and I sighed. This was the next twenty-four hours’ worth of death detail. Thousands of cases.

I looked over at the stack of folders sitting on the floor beside my desk. “Plus the blue folders.” I pointed at another stack of royal-blue folders sitting next to the door. “Those are the elderly people with cancer and other related maladies.”

“Hello?” a pleasant, musical-sounding voice called from somewhere down the hall. “Is someone there?”

“Hello?” I stood and started toward my office door, careful not to trip over the stacks of folders. “Hello? I’m back here.”

“Oh.” The door flew open and I saw a tiny, dark-haired angel standing on the other side of it wearing a pair of cute khaki capris and a pink scoop-necked T-shirt. “What are you doing in there?”

“It’s my office.” I shrugged, and stuck my hand out. “I’m Faith, the new Angel of—”

“Death?” She grabbed my hand, giving it a brisk shake, smiling cheerfully. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Aurelia, your personal assistant.”

“I have a personal assistant now? Wait a second, how can you touch me?”

“Yes, of course you have a personal assistant. No one could reasonably get through your new day-to-day routine without a little help. And why wouldn’t I…?” She looked at me, her eyes narrowing questioningly. “Oh, and we’re in a protected Celestial realm, that’s how I can touch you. Obviously.”

“A what?”

“I can touch you because Death’s office is carved out of a tiny portion of Purgatory. It makes interoffice workings easier since angels can’t go to Hell and demons aren’t welcome in Heaven. Well, besides your family I’ve been told you’re welcome anywhere.”

“What does being in Purgatory have to do with you being able to touch me?”

“Because everyone here is either already in their Celestial form—meaning our physical bodies are only mental projections of what the mortal skin we wear looks like—or they’re dead.” She shrugged. “If I were you, I’d try to forget about the dead part though. It’s just sort of creepy.”

“Wait, I’m not actually inside my body when I’m here? Where does it go then?”

“Um, no? Of course you’re not actually here. Do you really think a mortal body could withstand the fires of Hell?”

“No?” I asked, feeling stupid that this had never occurred to me before.

“No.” She shook her head at me like an overly patient kindergarten teacher with a kid who wouldn’t give up their paste-eating habit. “So you’re manifesting as what you believe your body to be.”

“So if I believed my body were ten pounds lighter and three inches taller that would happen?”

“Sure. Why not? It’s only a projection after all.”

“Great.” I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I am Giselle Bündchen’s hotter, curvier, taller sister. I am Giselle Bündchen’s hotter, curvier, taller sister.

“Very nice,” Aurelia said, her voice dry, and I opened my eyes. She was holding out a tiny gold compact and I peered into it.

“Wow. Watch out, Victoria’s Secret and the non-petite section of the mall, I’m going to rock your respective worlds.”

“It only works in Celestial realms.” Aurelia snapped the mirror shut before I even got a chance to play with my silky, new hairdo. “So, unless you want to be the Hottie Who Never Leaves Hell, it’s time to quit playing and get to work.”

“All right,” I said wearily, “but I think I have most of it done.”

“You have the schedules worked out? The work assignments? Not to mention going through all the necessary performance evaluations and managing this month’s budget requests?”

“Uh, no?” My heart pounded. “I did separate all those folders by color, though.”

“Good for you, but we separate them by district and reaper, not by color.”

“Shit.” I ran a hand through my once-again curly hair. When had that happened? Probably during my conversion from sex goddess to office moron.

“Look, I know you’re new and everyone’s heard that this was sort of a surprise assignment that Valentin threw at you. It’s okay. You need a few days to learn the ropes and you’ll be fine. Now come on, let’s get this mess settled.”

“Right. Okay. What should we do?”

“You should be prepared to answer your cell phone in three, two—”

My white iPhone danced across my cluttered desk and I hurried over to pick it up. “How did you know that?” I asked as I grabbed the phone.

“Personal assistant, remember? Even the mortal ones are at least a little bit psychic. If they’re any good at least.”

“Hello?” I heard Lisa on the other end. “Faith, where are you?”

“I’m at the office. What’s up?” I asked, suddenly worried. Had something happened? Did she need me for some reason? Was something wrong with A.C.?

“Whose office?” Lisa asked.

“My office. You know, the place I go to do my Angel of Death stuff. I’m here meeting with my new personal assistant, Aurelia, to learn the ropes.”

“Well why are you doing that?” Lisa snapped. “We’re going to find a way out of this mess. Do you understand me? , So you don’t need to learn the ropes of anything.”

“I know we’re going to figure this out,” I said and rolled my eyes since she couldn’t see me, “but until we do, managing Death is my responsibility. Matt has an army, Dad has Hell, you’ve got Tolliver and the baby, Mom has driving us all to the edge of lunacy, but this is my thing. I’m responsible for Death and I’m not going to screw it up on my first day.”

“We’re going to find someone else to take the job,” Lisa protested.

“Yeah.” I looked around at the massive piles of crap that had ended up cluttering the room and all the files balanced on top of the different stacks of mess. The place looked like a homicidal hoarder’s idea of paradise. “Call me crazy, but when that person takes over I’d like to leave the place a bit more organized than how I found it.”

“Fine, fine, you goody two-shoes demon, run Death Incorporated if that makes you happy. I just called to let you know that we have a noon appointment. Instead of doing an office visit we’re going to meet at my place for the basic physical part and then we’re all going to do lunch.”

“Lunch? You want me and you and a demonic midwife to do lunch?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Lisa said. “I’m not actually using a demonic midwife.”

“You’re not?”

“No, Tolliver felt sort of weird about it. Like since Vicky had delivered him it would be weird if she delivered our baby. He’s afraid she’ll realize we’ve been having sex.”

“He’s a three-thousand-year-old demon with a wife—I’m pretty sure she’s given up on the idea of him being a virgin.”

“I know that and you know that but you know how Tolliver is.”

“Mentally deficient?”

Aurelia let out a loud snort and she clamped a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle her giggles. Apparently, even the reapers knew my brother was a moron.

“So anyway.” Lisa didn’t bother to answer my question—either because she was sick of listening to me take jabs at her new husband, or because she knew I was right about my brother. I was going with “she knew that I was right,” but who knows? “We decided to use a different midwife. One that Matt recommended, actually.”

“A midwife that Matt recommended?” I blinked, confused, because that was the last sentence I’d ever expected to hear anyone say. Ever. “I didn’t realize that Matt knew any midwives.”

“His twin sister was the apprentice to the old Angale healer. Now that the other woman has decided to retire Matt’s twin sister Mary Beth is taking over. He talked to her and she’s fully embraced the whole demons aren’t enemies agenda and wants to prove it by helping deliver our baby.”

“So wait a second.” I looked at the phone for a second and shook my head, as if I could somehow clear out the craziness from what I was hearing. “You’re using an Angale healer as your midwife and she’s Matt’s twin sister that I’ve never even met? Are you kidding me?”

“He thought it might go a long way to help cement Angale-Demon relations.”

“You’re using your firstborn child as a diplomatic bargaining chip? Seriously? You’re going to do something this risky because my brother doesn’t want to let a midwife demon know that he’s having sex?”

“Well yeah,” Lisa said. “Why? Does that seem weird to you?”

“A bit.”

“Can we argue about it in person then? After all, the least you can do is meet her, and then if we decide she’s not going to work out, you can dispose of her. One good kill before you hand the job over to someone else.”

“Fine.” I rolled my eyes, even though she couldn’t see me.

“Good because I’m tired and I don’t want to argue. Instead, I think I’m going to go grab the cookie dough out of the fridge and take it to bed with me. I need a long morning of watching movies in bed with my two favorite guys. See you at noon.”

“Wait, what? You’re in bed with two guys? Who? And how has Tolliver kept from killing the other guy?”

“Because he’s not here,” Lisa said. “I’m with my homeboys, Ben and Jerry. Later.”

I heard a quiet click as she hung up and stood there, shocked that my best friend had managed to boss me around again. Either that belly was turning her into a superhero when it came to manipulation, or I was seriously getting played.

“Well that was interesting,” Aurelia said as I put the phone back on the desk. “I’d always heard the Anti-Christ’s new bride was unique but I didn’t quite comprehend how unique she was until now.”

“Actually she’s really—” My shoulders slumped and I dropped my head back to stretch my neck and try to relieve some of the tension. “Yeah we’re pretty much the definition of dysfunctional family. Don’t worry you learn to live with it. We grow on you.”

“Like fungus? Or possibly mold would be a better description?”

“Yeah.” I dropped my head forward so that I could look at her and then at the enormous piles of folders scattered around the room. “We’re exactly like mold. Dumb question, though, have those stacks of folders been growing while I was on the phone or am I losing my mind?”

“Nope,” Aurelia said, “they’ve been growing. Now, want me to show you how to get rid of them?”

“Please. I hate paperwork more than I hate missionaries, and that’s saying something.”

“Then this job is really going to suck for you because we’re drowning in paperwork and occasionally missionaries.” She pointed at the cyan-colored pile of natural causes and wiggled her fingers. The stacks faded out of sight.

“Uh, where did my paperwork go?”

“Natural causes don’t require an intercession from the Angel of Death personally. Unless it’s somebody important.”

“Really?”

“Really. Death by natural causes is generally a pretty benign thing. People have had a long, full life and their soul has been adequately weighed and measured so there are no problems of jurisdiction. Occasionally you might want to pop in and help with a job around performance-appraisal time but other than that N.C.’s are no muss, no fuss deals.”

“What about the rest?”

“It’s the same thing with most of the other piles. Long-term illness, preexisting adult conditions, genocides, and murder are simply redirected from your office to the appropriate subteam. The files are labeled with region and destination so each subgroup’s regional subteam divvies them up and goes on about their business.”

“Wait you have subgroups that have subteams? Isn’t that redundant?”

“Not at all,” Aurelia said and then motioned me over to the royal-blue pile of long-term-illness-related deaths. She picked up a folder and flipped it open, showing me the picture of an older man. “Andre Welchin. He’s seventy-four, and three years ago he was diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer. It’s moved to the lungs, the bones, the liver, the kidneys, and pretty much everywhere else you can imagine. He’s on hospice and in a great deal of pain. It’s time for Andre to give up the mortal world for the Celestial one.”

Ouch. I grimaced. I wasn’t a big fan of ending someone’s life but even I could agree that at this point what we were doing with Andre Welchin was a mercy and not a murder. Especially since there was nothing that medicine was going to be able to do for him anymore besides ease his pain. “Okay…so?”

“So, now we know that because of the cancer Andre belongs to the Hospitallers—the reaper subteam that deals with long-term-illness patients.” She pointed to a code at the top of his page. “Apparently, Andre here has led a good life because he’s been designated ‘A’ instead of ‘D.’ That means—”

“He’s to be picked up by an angel?”

“Right.” Aurelia nodded like I’d answered a particularly difficult question. “Then there’s a number two next to the A which means that he’s in Region Two—that’s Western Europe—and then there’s the two letter country code ‘GR’ so that means he’s in Germany and the 13189 tells us that he’s a resident of Berlin in the Pankow neighborhood.”

“So you know where to find him is what you’re saying? That’s great, very efficient, but it doesn’t explain the subteams.”

“Sure it does. The Hospitallers have two teams—Angels and Demons—and then they split up into even smaller teams based on regions. Western Europe has its own angel group and then that group splits the work between them depending on whose schedule is the heaviest.”

“So how many people are we talking per subteam or group or whatever you want to call it? Five? Ten?”

“In the case of Andre Welchin?” Aurelia looked at me and then dropped the file folder back on the pile. “He could be collected by any of six thousand angelic Hospitallers who are on duty tonight.”

“We have six thousand Hospitaller angels?”

“No, we have somewhere close to a hundred thousand Hospitaller angels. Ten thousand of those are stationed in Western Europe. Six thousand of them are on duty, and the other four thousand have tonight off.”

“Crap. That’s a lot of angels.”

“Death’s a big business. Why do you think the health-care industry is so messed up?”

“I’ll say.”

“Now.” Aurelia lifted her hands and waved them. Most of the files disappeared, whizzing off to wherever they were supposed to be handled. “There is only one group of files that you have to personally approve and they’re all collected by your senior staff.”