The Devil's Intern

Text copyright © 2014 by Donna Hosie
All Rights Reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
www.holidayhouse.com

ISBN 978-0-8234-3265-3 (ebook)w
ISBN 978-0-8234-3266-0 (ebook)r

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hosie, Donna. The Devil’s intern / by Donna Hosie. — First edition.
pages cm

Summary: “Seventeen-year-old Mitchell discovers a time-travel device that will allow him to escape his internship in Hell’s accounting office and return to Earth, but his plans to alter the circumstances of his own death take an unexpected turn when his three closest friends in Hell insist on accompanying him back to the land of the living”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-8234-3195-3 (hardcover)
[1. Hell—Fiction. 2. Future life—Fiction.
3. Death—Fiction. 4. Time travel—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.H79325De 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014002402

For Beth Phelan and Kelly Loughman,
for loving Team DEVIL
as much as I do

It takes one person to write a manuscript but a whole army to take that manuscript out into the world. So, here is the love for
my
Team DEVIL.

First, to my wonderful agent, Beth Phelan, because no one worked harder: thank you for constantly supporting me and Mitchell on our journey through time—and for Americanizing this English writer’s spelling before her editor needed to do so!

Thanks to my amazing editor, Kelly Loughman. From our first introduction you have blown me away with your enthusiasm and attention to detail, picking up little things that the rest of us missed. Working with you has been a joy. Team DEVIL, and especially Alfarin, have no greater champion.

Thank you to Kelly Bohrer Zemaitis, Peggy Russell, and Charlotte Evans for your erudite critiquing skills.

To Mike Weinstein (and Bear, of course!), thank you for the supportive e-mails and Middle Earth/Sherlock YouTube links! You’ve been a tower of strength throughout my publishing journey, and I’ve learned more from you than anyone else, although those pesky dashes still kill me. . . .

Sincere thanks to Jennifer Azantian for your advice and support.

Thanks to my husband, Steve. You’ve never once complained about the hours and hours and hours I’ve spent typing away. You just kept me supplied with wine and chicken fajitas! Best. Husband. Ever.

Thanks to my gorgeous kids: Emily, Daniel, and Joshua for just being proud of Mum, and to
my
mum and dad, Lorraine and Peter Molloy.

And last, but definitely not least, thanks to my Devilish Degenerates of Doom who get onto social media and talk up my books to death. Gina Anstey, Kristin Weiss Devoe, Charlotte Evans, Madeleine Henderson, Connie House, Jennifer Jones Bragg, Anne Fetkovich Ehrenberger, Maria Dotson, Julie Elizabeth Seay, Denise Dowd, and Athena Stewart, I would be nothing without you.

P.S. Raj Khanna, no, you can’t retire!

“How did you die?”

That’s the first question you’ll be asked in Hell. Four years ago it was certainly the first question I was asked. I had just walked into a holding area cramped with the recently dead—the processing center I know now to be the HalfWay House—when I was thrown against a wall by another dead person demanding to know. It’s a question I’ve been asked a million times since.

I was too shell-shocked to consider lying. So I told him the truth.

“I—I was hit by a bus,” I stammered.

Big mistake. Huge. Rule number one in Hell: if you have a crappy death, don’t tell other dead people about it. You’ll be mocked for all eternity if you do, and apparently that’s a long time.

It was a Greyhound bus that did the dirty deed. I was visiting my father in Washington, DC—my parents are divorced—and . . . splat.

Here is the thing I can’t quite get my head around, though. I wasn’t crossing the road when it happened, or at least I hadn’t intended to. I was just walking down the street, listening to my iPod, minding my own business.

Something distracted me. Something major. I can’t remember what it was, and it drives me crazy when I try to think back. For some stupid, dumbass reason, I ran out into the road. I couldn’t hear
the bus, or the squealing of the brakes. All I could hear was Radiohead through my headphones.

At least my death was instant; I should be thankful for that. Down here, devils wear their demise like a badge of honor, but I bet if they had to relive it, not one of them would choose to bleed to death on a muddy battlefield, or slowly asphyxiate by hanging.

My death may have been stupid, and I may not like talking about it, but at least I can’t remember the pain.

A bus, though, I ask you. Of all the ways to snuff it.

I’m seventeen and always will be, but being dead for four years has made me a little more experienced. You can make your death as heroic as you want in Hell, because nobody checks up on you. The only way to know for sure is to look in the devil resources files, which no one ever does because the photographs freak everyone out. So now I say I died doing something brave. Animals, that’s the key. Say you died saving an animal and . . . well, if you end up here—and you almost certainly will—you try it. See for yourself how much love you get.

I work in the accounting department of Hell under the supervision of Septimus, The Devil’s accountant and civil servant number one. I’m The Devil’s intern so I get a desk in here with The Devil’s right-hand man. Like me, Septimus is tall and thin. Unlike me he wears the sharpest pinstripe suits. His dark skin has a reddish tinge to it, like a sunburned glow. He wears small golden hoops in his ears, and his head has been shaved to the scalp. But I think Septimus’s most awesome feature is his eyes. They are bloodred. They weren’t originally like that, of course, but Septimus has been here so long, he can’t remember their original color.

One day I’ll have eyes like that. Right now mine are pink. Pink! As soon as a devil enters Hell, their eye color changes. At first the irises turn opaque, the color of foamy warm milk. Eventually, after a year or so, the color starts to reflect the heat that has built up inside, and a hint of rose appears. This intensifies over time, and the spectrum of eye pigment changes from pale pink to magenta to cherry,
until finally the irises are bloodred. The only exception to this rule is The Devil himself. His irises are black.

I’m on my way to work right now—and I’m late. Again. Septimus isn’t the kind of boss who will rant and rave, because he knows I work my butt off in his office, but I’m just no good with time. Hell is so overcrowded it takes hours to move from one end of the corridor to the other.

I was sure I was wearing a watch when I died, but somewhere between getting hit by a bus and getting checked in at the HalfWay House, I lost it. At least I got to keep my cell phone and my iPod.

And now I’m really late because the alarm is going off for The Devil’s morning tea. The alarm is actually a recording of Chopin’s “Funeral March.” The Devil thinks it’s funny.

Yeah, right. My sides are splitting.

What’s even worse is that the recording is actually me. When The Devil found out I was a musical prodigy I had to spend a week playing Chopin for the Grim Reapers while they recorded it. I could hardly say no to The Devil, but I was so depressed afterward that I completely lost my appetite. All that recording session did was remind me of what I’d lost. I’m still not used to the fact that I’m dead, and I don’t think I ever will be. I breathe on reflex, even though I don’t need to. I still feel pain, though nothing can ever kill me again. I never really appreciated living until I stopped doing it.

And do you have any idea how unpopular that music makes me with some of the other devils? They have to hear the “Funeral March” every single day. Talk about rubbing our dead faces in it.

I—along with millions and millions of other devils—work in the central business district, or CBD, of the Underworld. There are nearly seven hundred floors, each with its own balcony and elevator. Flaming torches hang from the walls, so at first glance it looks like the façade of an enormous cruise liner docking in the dead of night. It freaked me out the first time I saw it, but pretty much everything freaked me out back then.

Each floor in the business hub of Hell deals with a specific area
of administration or maintenance. The higher up the cave you are, the more important the office. So The Devil’s Oval Office—not that he’s a democratically elected demon, he just likes irony—and the busy accounting department tower above everyone else on level 1; the heating department is on level 2; and The Devil’s fabric selection team has recently been promoted to level 3. Those in true torment work on level 666. This is a new department, reserved for reality TV stars. They clean out the ground-floor toilets.

The rest of Hell is separated into zones, connected by thousands and thousands of tunnels. Our dorms are near where we work, so there are enormous swaths of the Underworld that most of us never get to see.

Now I’m
really
late, because the recording of me playing Chopin has finished. I’d better reach the office by the time “Abide with Me” reminds everyone it’s lunchtime.

Finally, I get to the elevator. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I’m an astronaut flying into space. I wanted to do that when I was little: walk in space. Then I was going to be a paleontologist. Finally I settled on rock star. Not like Jon Bon Jovi or even Hendrix, but more alternative rock, like Chris Martin. Someone who plays the piano like a madman.

But then I died and became The Devil’s intern. They don’t tend to give you that option on career night.

I’m actually walking on tiptoes as I inch toward the accounting office. First I need to get past the Oval Office, and even though I walk past this door several times every day, it still makes me anxious.

I’m at the door when I hear raised voices. It’s The Devil and Septimus. I can tell The Devil is in another foul mood because sparks of blue electrical current are zapping across the damp outer stone walls.

The Devil has been throwing tantrums all week, and from the sound of it, he’s finally reached the end of his patience. Heaven—or Up There, as most of us call it—has sent another notice, making The Devil scream and rant until he set fire to his gold throne (the seat he extorted from King Louis XVI in return for his head). Septimus must have gone to try to calm Sir down.

I don’t know why I listen in on their conversations. It’s hard not to be inquisitive when you’re this close to power, but most of the stuff they talk about in there gives me nightmares.

“Septimus!” shrieks The Devil. “I am vexed, Septimus. One could claim I am in despair.”

“What’s He done now, sir?” asks Septimus. His accent, which apparently was once Roman, has now transformed into a deep southern American drawl. A lot of accents and languages change in Hell. I guess it depends on who you hang with. All dead people are implanted with a communication translator as soon as they arrive at the HalfWay House. So regardless of the mother tongue, all of us can understand one another. With all the scary stuff that gets screamed around here, I sometimes wish I didn’t have the translator.