03 Before The Devil Knows You're Dead-Speak Of The Devil Read online

  “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.”

  “All right.”

  She picked up a red folder and handed it to me. “They’re what we call our razor-blade cases.”

  “Razor-blade cases? What are those?”

  “People that are on the line. They could live or they could die. Surgical complications, people who’ve died on the table and come back, accident victims, suicides who may or may not succeed, crime victims. You have to decide if they die or if they somehow defy the odds.”

  “Okay.” I flipped open the case file and found myself staring at a beautiful redhead with green eyes and freckles across her cheeks. “Isabella Donovan, single-car accident, the driver is going to die and you are going through a car windshield, but today is your lucky day, because today you are going to live.”

  I picked up the stamp on my desk that read denied and pressed it to the red inkwell and then slammed it down on the paper. That was that. If all I had to go through was this stack of paper and stamp each of them, it was going to be an easy night.

  “Oh and Ms. Bettincourt?” Aurelia asked, now standing at the door.

  “What?”

  “Three percent.” She frowned at me and shook her head. “That’s all you can save. Once you’ve denied three percent of the files the rest of them are automatically accepted.”

  “Wait! What? That’s not fair. What if I want to save all of them?”

  “You can’t and I hate to break it to you, but life isn’t. Fair. But, if it makes you feel better, we currently staff at seventy-thirty margins.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Seventy percent of the people we take tonight are going to a better place—whether they deserve it or not. So that should balance the scales a little.”

  “Hardly.”

  As she walked out, closing my door behind her, I snatched up the next file on the stack. It was going to be a long time until lunch.

  Chapter Ten

  My desk phone rang a few hours later and I rubbed my eyes before setting down the folder I was reading on the IDK pile—which was by far the largest pile out of the group, still, on my third time through them.

  I had one thousand cases on my desk and I could choose thirty. Taking out all the long-term terminal illnesses, the stillborn, and the suicides had left me with three hundred minor accidents that could prove fatal, murders that could go right, and surgical interventions that could fail.

  Maybe I should set them up in ratios? Or play enny-meany-minny-moe? Or count them without reading the actual files? Like 1-2-3 saved, ninety-seven in the die pile?

  Screw me sideways and call me Barbie, I hated this job.

  The phone rang again, and I had to fight not to groan. Whoever it was could leave a message; I was up to my eyeballs in work. It rang again and I gave up, grabbing the receiver and pressing it to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Ms. Bettincourt it’s eleven thirty” Aurelia said crisply into the phone. “I thought I should remind you about your meeting with Mrs. Morningstar.”

  “Great.” I rubbed my hand over my eyes. Lunchtime and I wasn’t nearly done. “Thanks, and Aurelia can you please call me Faith? The whole Ms. Bettincourt thing sounds weird to me and so did the Mrs. Morningstar bit. She’s Lisa.”

  “Of course…” I could tell she was struggling to get my name out normally. “Faith.”

  I smiled at the phone. “Thanks, and can you do me another favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Could you duck in here for a minute? I need to ask you a question about procedure.”

  There was a sharp click and then the creak of my door opening. “What can I help you with?” Aurelia asked.

  “How did Valentin do it?” I asked. “What was his secret for staying up on all of this?”

  “His secret to what? Filing? Easy, he had me do it.” Aurelia raised an eyebrow at me as she came closer and sat down across the desk from me.

  “His secret to dealing with the Razorblades.” I motioned to the three piles on my desk. “How did he choose three percent of them? How did he pick?”

  “He used the scales.” Aurelia bit her lower lip. “Before I show you this I’ve got to tell you I don’t think it’s particularly a fair way to do things. There’s the possibility that the people on the left side would redeem if given the chance. Everyone has the potential to become better. The scales don’t mean that could never happen, just that it never got the chance.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but sure, every person on that list is human. I got that. Now how did Valentin sort them?”

  “He uses the scales,” Aurelia repeated and then wiggled her fingers at a small pair of brass scales—like the ones yo
u always saw in Lady Justice sculptures—in the corner of the room. It appeared on the middle of my desk with a rapid fade-out, fade-in sort of motion and she sighed one more time before she grabbed my stack of files. “Val would pile all the folders onto the scale and then set the scales.”

  “Okay?” I asked as she turned the small dial on the front of the scales until the small window above it showed a four then dropped all thousand folders onto the left scale and touched the top of the contraption with her finger. The folders faded to a dull, grayish reflection of what they’d been before and then blinked out of existence for a brief second before they reappeared, sorted between the scales—the left scale significantly higher than the right.

  “The people on the right are the forty most deserving souls. The ones that would be fast tracked into Heaven if you like,” Aurelia explained.

  “Right.” I nodded. “So now what?”

  She took the forty folders off the scale and stacked them. “One, two three.” She put three folders down together in one pile. “Four.” She set the other one on the scales with the rest of the less worthy people. “Repeat.”

  “So it’s what?” I asked. “Luck of the draw? What about circumstances? What if the person in folder four has kids and the person in folder three lives alone with a dozen cats?”

  “Sometimes you need to leave things up to chance. The humans call it faith, actually.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, I always thought that was one of their less well-thought-out concepts actually.”

  “I never said it was the perfect solution. I said that’s how it was done and today you have somewhere to be, so we don’t have time to fight over it. Later, if you like, we can work out a different answer but, for right now, you need to go home and spend time with the living. Leave the dead to those of us who were born for it.”

  “Okay.” I watched as the neatly stacked pile of Soon to be Dead folders faded out of the room and the Second Chance to Do it Right ones began sorting themselves into a large filing cabinet in the corner. “Why are they doing that?”

  “Razorblades are a onetime exemption. The next time they come up it’s good night Vienna. That’s only fair after all. Everyone deserves a second chance and these cases already got theirs, so next time it’s someone else’s turn.”

  I stared at her, trying to figure out how anyone who seemed so nice could be so blasé about death. About the chance to get things right the next time around. What about the people who were going to lose their second chances tonight? The ones I couldn’t save?

  I swallowed down my horror at what I’d just done, sentencing people to die—regardless of whether they deserved to live or not—and tried to remind myself of what I’d learned in nursing school. You can’t save everyone. You save the person in front of you and you hope for the best. Otherwise you’d lose your mind.

  “Faith?” Aurelia’s voice was soft.

  “Yeah?”

  “It does get easier,” she said, her voice soft. “Once you accept that this is just a natural part of life it does get easier.”

  “Sure.” I opened a small phase portal of my own, this one into my best friend’s apartment. When I saw that the living room was empty, I let the phase portal roam until it found Lisa and locked on to her, sitting against the headboard in her bedroom. “I’ll see you later, Aurelia. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the world will stop dying while I’m gone.”

  “I doubt that’s very likely, but have a good lunch with Mrs. Morning—I mean, Lisa—anyway.”

  I thought that the likelihood of anything going well today was probably debatable, but instead of stalling any longer, I stepped through the portal and into my sister-in-law’s room.

  “Well,” a short, button-nosed woman with an inky-black ponytail the same color as Matt’s said. “That was quite an entrance.”

  “Oh.” I froze. The gap behind me hung instead of stitching itself back up, suspended between two places, letting the people in Lisa’s bedroom all have a look at the less than fabulous office for Deathly Affairs. “Shit. I didn’t expect you to be here yet.”

  “Because you would have used the door?” Matt’s sister—Mary Beth—smirked.

  “Well, um…”

  “Do you think you could close that little door of yours? I’m afraid it might let in a draft,” the midwife continued, “and if I’m honest, the view from your portal…well, it sort of sucks.”

  “Uh.” I snapped my fingers at the rip in reality and it began to stitch itself back up with a faint burning smell, then disappeared with a quiet pop. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She stuck her hand out for me to shake. “I’m Mary Beth.”

  “I’m…” I looked at her hand and then over at Lisa lying in the bed. What the hell was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say? I could be polite and shake hands with her, but that would kill her. Or I could keep my hands to myself, and let the sister of the guy I was madly in love with think I’m a snotty witch.

  Snotty witch, or sister killer? Guess it was time for me to embrace my inner Hope and get my snotty on.

  “So how was the office?” Lisa asked.

  “Depressing,” I said, trying not to think about just how bad it really had been sentencing all those people to die. “How was your ménage with Ben and Jerry?”

  “I’ve had better.”

  “Hello?” Mary Beth wiggled her fingers at the two of us and I looked over to see that she had her hand extended. “Someone want to fill me in?”

  “Mary Beth, this is Faith. Faith, Matt’s twin sister, Mary Beth, our midwife,” Lisa said. “Faith is—”

  “The Devil’s youngest daughter,” Mary Beth said. “I know. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “I’m also the Angel of Death. Temporarily.” Alpha save me I hoped it was temporary at least. I didn’t think I could stand killing a thousand more people again. Much less the millions that I would be forced to pass sentence on if I actually had to do the full hundred years of this gig. I was a nurse after all, not a serial killer.

  Her hand dropped at the same time as her jaw. I watched as Matt’s perky, put-together sister in her green sundress stared at me with her mouth gaping and her eyes bulging like a gutted sprite.

  “So,” I tried not to take her look personally. “As nice as it would be to shake your hand, I probably shouldn’t, especially since you’re in charge of delivering my first niece or nephew. Although, if anything should happen…”

  “Down, girl,” Lisa said as I slumped down in the easy chair beside her bed, my eyes fixed on the midwife. “Good Angel of Death. Good girl.”

  “Woof. Woof.” I rolled my eyes at her and my best friend smiled again. Leave it to Lisa to find the humor in this situation.

  “I don’t want to sound like I’m stupid,” Mary Beth said, “but I have in my notes that Faith is going to be your birthing coach. Is that right? The Angel of Death is your labor-and-delivery partner?”

  “The Angel of Death thing is a new development.” I smiled at her sheepishly.

  “I talked with Mrs. Morningstar yesterday afternoon when she made the appointment,” Mary Beth said.

  “Yeah.” I shifted uncomfortably and tried not to meet her gaze. Talk about making a lousy impression on your boyfriend’s family. First I’d been there when Lilith had blown up his mother and now his sister was seeing me at my professional worst—moonlighting as a serial killer.

  “So what are you going to do?” Mary Beth asked.

  “We’re hoping to counteract the effects without too much difficulty,” I explained, feeling sheepish. “Right now your brother and my bodyguard are trying to get it all sorted out and bring the original Angel back to serve out the rest of my term. If they can swing that, then I’m all ready to go, ice chips and comforting words on standby for whenever you need me.”

  “Wow. Okay.” Mary Beth’s eyes widened. “So, I take it there will be changes made to your birthing lineup? Just in case, of course.”

  “No.” Lisa sat up even
straighter in her position on the bed. “No changes. Faith is going to be in the room, helping me bring this baby into the world.”

  “Are—”

  “If it comes down to it, I’ll coach without touching her. Or the baby. Ever.” I wanted to make her see that now was really not the time to argue with Lisa about this. If we couldn’t work the Angel of Death thing out, then we’d all have months to convince her that it was a bad idea.

  “I see.” Mary Beth nodded slowly and I felt my heart sink. I could see the pity flaring up in her eyes at my predicament.

  We had to find some way out of this. I wasn’t one for the whole ticking of the biological clock or anything—Chaos forbid I had my clock on mute for at least another three or four decades—but the thought of not touching my niece or nephew ever was too much to bear.

  “Well.” She clapped her hands together. “We’ll worry about all that when the time comes. For now, we don’t need you to do anything more than sit here and be supportive. So what do you say I have a bit of a look while you practice looking enthused about being at your best friend’s hysterical bidding for hours?”

  “Woohoo.” I lifted my hands up and shook them, mimicking a cheerleader with pom-poms.

  “Right, so now that Faith’s on moral-support duty and won’t accidentally kill anybody, let’s have a little gander at your new bundle of joy.”

  “So,” Mary Beth said, twenty minutes later. “The baby looks fine. It’s progressing normally. I heard both a heartbeat and wing flutter with the stethoscope and, with the measurements we’ve taken, it looks like you are right on target. You are thirteen weeks along and my guess is we’ll be welcoming this little hellion sometime near the middle of March.”

  “Wonderful.” I smiled and tried to seem enthused. My best friend was having a baby. I was getting a niece or nephew. I should be ecstatic, not ready to cry like a baby. And even if I wanted to sulk, I had to worry about Lisa first. She was the priority right now. “Beware the Ides of March huh?”