The one without a Pier 1.
Appalling.
Because she’d defied Lucifer in the name of her best friend of over ten years, he had banished her once demonic butt from Hell. Seeing as she was now considered “the demon formerly known as,” hitching a ride on the elevator upstairs was simply out of the question, because ex-demons, no matter how ex, weren’t offered the light option package. There’d be no light for her to walk into.
Like, ever.
That wasn’t something she hadn’t known for decades now. But at least as a demon, she’d had earthly privileges. She’d wandered around as though she were still human. Here? Not likely.
So that meant she was shit out of luck. If she couldn’t go up, and down was no longer a possibility, in between was all that was left. Now she was doomed to drift endlessly, roaming a plane that was as mortifying as a trip to the Dollar Store.
But her arrival on this very plane meant Delaney had survived, and she’d won Clyde, the man of her dreams. That was all that mattered to Marcella. She’d smile for a hundred eternities spent right here in this dreary, colorless place because Lucifer’d lost that fucking battle. Delaney was safe.
Alive.
Lifting her head, she saw that Darwin remained rooted to her side, so she repeated, “Didn’t I tell you to go to hell? Where in there did I slur my words?”
“I’d much rather stay with you—here on Plane Dismal. It’s much less humid, don’t you agree?”
A chilly, raw wind whipped at the edges of her torn dress. The tree at her back shivered from the gust. “Isn’t there a light you should be chasing a cat into?”
“Oh, I’ve no question there is. But who in their right mind would want to walk into a light when they can hang out with the fucking ray of sunshine that is all you, peach pit?”
Her intake of breath was ragged with defeat. She was so done with their banter for today. So over the injustice that a dog, her friend Delaney’s
dead
dog, could not only
talk
on this plane but travel between planes with the ease of a 747. Done with feeling like she’d fallen through a black hole smack-dab into the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Done-da-done-done. “Just go the fuck away, Darwin. Go off to the plane where unicorns jump over goddamned rainbows in herds and showers of dog biscuits rain down on you every day at three sharp, and leave me the fuck alone.”
“And let you stew in the stank of that disgraceful dress? Not on your unlife, sweetheart. If I didn’t do my part to at least find you a change of clothing that’s more suited to your complexion, what kind of faithful companion would I be to Delaney? Stop being such a candy-ass and figure this out.”
They’d only been over this a thousand times. Okay, so she’d only been over it once with Darwin—out loud and all—but she’d been over it in her head at least a thousand times. “You’re a
dead
companion to Delaney, one that she can no longer see or hear, to boot. And what’s there to figure? I’m being punished for defying Lucifer. He has me tethered here somehow, the motherfucker. I’m sure of it. My eternal punishment is this plane, where the in-betweens roam with restless dissatisfaction or some such depressing, melodramatic crap. Oh, and you. You
have
to be part of some kind of damnation.”
“Tsk-tsk,” he growled, then he snorted, making his sagging jowls tremble. “This is so not the Marcella I know. The Marcella I know wouldn’t take this kind of crisis lying down. Well, not unless there was mancake involved and a bed with silk sheets to do the lying down on. The Marcella I know would be kicking and screaming her stilettoed feet until she found a solution. Scarier still? She’d be putting that one brain cell she has left to good use by figuring this out. If the other undecided and doomed souls can make contact with the living, if they can leave this plane at will, then why can’t you?”
Marcella jammed a hand into her tangled hair with tense fingers. “The Marcella you know is ass-fried, pal. How many people in an afterlifetime can lay claim to the fact that they’ve been not only a demon but now . . . this? I’m tired, Snausage breath. Bone weary,
chico
. And what about
damned
escapes you, mutt? Every time I try, I’m slammed right back into this dump. Satan jacked me up but good. The other souls on this plane seem to have some kind of magic transmission juju I just don’t. Don’t think I haven’t tried, either.”
Because she had tried. She’d even resorted to using the Heavenly Medium Administration’s approved list of mediums to attempt to contact a ghost whisperer so she could send a message to Delaney. She’d also blown chunks at it, but she was only halfway through the HMA’s list. Though, she hadn’t tapped that Sylvia Browne or John Edward yet. There was still hope.
Or not.
“What happened to the Marcella who would have
Matrix
ed her way out of here? Are you saying you’re going to let a wee thing like the fear that Satan has tethered you here keep you from making contact with Delaney? You do realize she’s been worried sick about you, don’t you? Just the other day I heard her and Clyde discussing it. She feels incredible guilt because of your sacrifice. She’s beyond frantic over your fate. If you were any kind of friend, you’d find a way to send her a message that would console her.”
Marcella flipped him the bird with the harsh whip of a finger. “Wee this, you ASPCA reject. You weren’t there that night with Delaney and Clyde. You have no clue what that was like. There was nothing
wee
about it.” A violent shiver slipped up her spine just recalling it.
Thunder, lightning, locusts, snakes—all the happy-clappy things true nightmares are made of. Marcella had no desire to dredge that night back up.
Evah.
Darwin yawned, revealing a gaping black hole filled with miles of pink tongue. “I know, I know. That night was dreadful times a million. Old Lucifer whipped you like so much cream. That still doesn’t mean you just give up, Marcella. Other souls from this plane manage to make contact. You could, too. If you were willing to break a nail, that is.”
“Don’t you think I’d send Delaney a message if I could, you antagonistic shit? I’ve tried everything. I just suck at this.” And she did. Suck at it, that is. She just couldn’t get a feel for the whole deal. No matter how many times she tried to connect with a medium, she ended up crapping out with a fizzle. She’d even gone so far as to attend this shitty plane’s therapy sessions and more self-help classes than she could count, like it was her new religion. Yet thus far, she’d tanked in “Medium + Ghost = Happily Ever After for Eternity,” and she couldn’t even begin to express her dismay over the “Limbo Doesn’t Have to Suck” class.
The one last earthly thing she wanted to do was let her friend know that she was all right. That the choice she’d made that night in a hospital room in Nebraska was made with no regrets. Not one.
What made being doomed here that much more doomish was the idea that knowing Delaney like she did, she knew guilt was chewing a hole in her gut. Delaney was the kind of friend who’d never have allowed her to give up what she’d given up that night. In fact, she’d have probably rather had a limb hacked off in lieu of. The least Marcella could do was let Delaney know she’d survived. Her friend would never have complete happiness if she didn’t have peace of mind about Marcella’s fate.
“So?” Darwin prodded. “What are you going to do? Whine or take charge?”
“Here’s the problem, mouth, and you know the rules as well as I do, Darwin. Because I was
banished
to this plane, I can’t leave unless someone summons my soul or unless I can find a medium to connect with and send signs to—which seems to be about as difficult as getting hold of the date for the second coming of Christ. Maybe some of the mediums on the approved list they gave me are just a bunch of shysters. Delaney always said there were more fakes than the real thing. And seriously, do you really think a place called the Spirit Shack—where, I might add, they offer five séances for five hundred bucks, get the sixth one free—is the real deal?”
“The Spirit Shack just helped that Andre, didn’t they? He’d been here for eight years, Marcella. They can’t all be hack mediums if they helped a hard-core plane dweller like Andre. That’s just a convenient excuse for you not to get off your keister.”
“Oh, bullshit,” she snorted, enraged that he was goading her. “Andre’s the perfect example for why I think I was
banished
to this plane instead of just
dumped
here. He crossed without the use of a real medium. It was just his time to go, I guess. I tried hitting up the Spirit Shack and got nothing out of it other than watching some lying piece of shit who called himself Jean-Franc perform a séance then pretend he could see some guy named Marlon from Hoboken who wasn’t even there. He couldn’t see me any more than Delaney can still see you. If that’s not enough proof for you, then I got nuthin’.”
Darwin scratched his underside with a rapid thump of his paw. “While I’m certain some of the mediums who manage to make the approved list are just as you claim, full of shit, they aren’t
all
full of shit.”
“Look, the only friggin’ medium I knew for sure was the real deal was Delaney, and she’s no longer a medium, remember? Or are you forgetting the reason she could see the dead in the first place? The contract with Lucifer. You know, that crazy contract her freaky half brother Vincent had with the horned one that gave him all that evil power he abused the shit out of while he was alive? The power that, upon his death, was passed to his next oldest living relative? That relative being Delaney—who used the power for good instead of evil, by crossing souls. Do you also remember the clause in there that I mentioned to you? The stupid loophole that said the power would stay in Delaney’s bloodline for as long as there were living relatives to be had? Which would have been great had Delaney not actually died that night in the hospital.”
She shivered with remembrance all over again. When Lucifer had used Marcella as a human catapult, launching her body full force at Delaney, her friend had fallen hard and hit her head against a solid porcelain sink, essentially killing her from the impact to her skull.
Yet Clyde, the whole reason they’d had the big smackdown with Satan to begin with, had resuscitated Delaney, saving her life. Though Marcella’d been weak and battered beyond the point of moving, she’d seen everything, lying on that hospital room floor before she passed out and ended up here.
Darwin peered at her with an intent gaze. “I remember this tale as if you told it just yesterday. In fact, I believe it was just yesterday when you
finally
, after three months, decided to leave your entrails at my feet. What does that have to do with you getting off this plane?”
“The contract. It has to do with the contract. Because Delaney died, she lost the power. That means she no longer sees dead people. I am, for all intents and purposes, the former. You know—
dead people
. Her medium days are ovah. No one’s going to summon me because no one but Delaney cares that I’m dead . . . gone . . . whatever I am. And if Delaney’s the only medium I know—knew—then color me all kinds of screwed. I’ve tried doing what the others do when they set out to send messages to their family members via a medium. You do remember me following that moron Ivan to Psychic Saul’s in the West End, don’t you?”
What an ass-sucking disaster that’d been. She’d ended up crossing Ivan’s signals with her own and confusing the ever-loving shit out of poor Saul. Ivan had been so pissed because she’d messed up his big moment, a moment that had taken him four years to get the nads up for, he’d made sure no one, not a drifting soul, would sit with her during their “Decisive Decision Making in the Afterlife” class.
“Ah, yet the others, who’re lesser women than you, have managed to make contact. Slacker.”
For the love of all things shiny. “The others aren’t here on the orders of Satan, smart-ass. They’re just lost and undecided for the most part. They’re not bound here by anything other than their own pathetic lack of the take-charge-and-face-up-to-your-obligations gene. The light is still an option for the others once they figure out what they want and settle things. We both know, and I don’t need to be reminded, the light isn’t an op for me. I lost all hope for a choice years ago when I didn’t go into the light upon my death. Maybe that’s why I keep running into roadblocks when I try to contact a medium. Whoever’s in charge just thinks there’s no point in allowing me to send a message, because I’m not worthy. So get off my back, Lord of the Kibble, and go chase cars. A lot.”
If it were still possible for her to be nagged to death, she’d be six feet under, and Darwin would win all kinds of awards for all the poking and prodding he’d been doing since she’d hit this plane. Yet, he was right. She’d once been a take-no-prisoners kind of girl. But since she’d arrived here, her energy points had been dwindling by the hour—and the Marcella of three months ago would’ve been fucked before she’d allow even Satan to get one over on her.
“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you.”
Marcella snorted and looked Darwin in the eye. “I’m all kinds of broken up over it, too. I’m just good at hiding my complete devastation. You can’t see it, but really, I’m crying on the inside.” She let the sarcasm in her words ring crystal clear.
The pair remained silent for several moments. Marcella lost in her misery, Darwin flopping down beside her to roll on his back with a carefree wiggle.
“So riddle me this,” he said, interrupting any further wallowing.
“No.”
“Oh, stop being so negative, whiner. I have an important point to make. Something that’s been bothering me since you landed here on Chez Drab.”
“Make it—and then go awaaay.”
He eyed her from his upside-down position with glassy, dark brown eyes. “How do you know Satan
personally
banished you? I mean, did he actually raise his fist to the sky and dramatically declare you dead to him while you displayed weak emotions like tears and begged him to spare you from the pit?”