The minister, a charming, clear-eyed woman with wavy red hair and green eyes, had welcomed me into the sanctuary with a warm smile. Ah, if my grandfather could have lived to see such a sight! Knowing the old bounder, he would have jettisoned my grandmother and wooed the lovely reverend to his side. He had made no secret of his unfashionable love for strong women, and no apologies.
"So nice to see you again, Mr. Sinclair." This came as no surprise, as I had recently donated twenty thousand dollars. But I liked to think I would have gotten the smile and the welcome if I'd been a penitent, come to the Lord's house in rags. The prodigal son, so to speak.
I had briefly explained my business: "I am meeting my sister-in-law here. May I await her upstairs?"
She said of course, of course, and now I thought about parables and waited for the Antichrist. It did not take long; the spawn of Satan was unfailingly punctual.
"Hello!" She greeted me with a big smile. She looked beautiful, as she always did, though why she settled for dungarees and a "Fairview Ridges Volunteer" T-shirt when dark slacks and a navy turtleneck would have set off her coloring to far greater effect was a puzzle. "I apologized to the reverend for how I'm dressed," she whispered, shrugging out of her peacoat. "I didn't think you'd be up here again."
"I quite like it up here."
"I can imagine."
"You cannot."
"I'm sorry?" Her eyes widened.
"You cannot imagine. Not any of it."
"I don't-"
"You cannot imagine being cut off from your Father for decades longer than you lived and scurried on the earth as a bug among bugs. You cannot imagine the life-of sorts-of desolation and hopelessness you lead after being denied the Kingdom of Heaven. You cannot imagine what it is to come to terms with the darkness and then meet someone who drives it out, someone to whom the light is so ingrained she does not know how she does it. And you cannot imagine what it is like to realize there are others just as powerful, others who will snatch that light out of your life to indulge a tantrum and then expect everyone to be chums when the tantrum has passed."
She'd been staring, openmouthed, through my discourse, and when I had finished she raised an eyebrow and said, "So that's how it is now, huh?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I'm supposed to come home with you for dinner. Should I cancel?"
"Why?"
"Right, I almost forgot," she muttered. She had retrieved her purse from the floor and was rummaging through it. "You're one of those."
"I see no reason why antagonists cannot share a meal. Not that I will eat, of course."
"Of course. Don't worry, I never forget you don't eat. I keep it in mind all the time."
"Lovely. Are you planning to tell the queen what you and your accursed mother have done?"
"Uh..." She had retrieved a Kleenex and wiped her nose. I did not flatter myself that I had moved her to penitent tears. It was cold outside; it was warm in the church. The Antichrist was as prone to a runny nose as any living mammal. "What have we done, exactly?"
"How you trapped her into agreeing to help you run Hell. Except that was never the plan, was it, Laura? Elizabeth is to run Hell alone. Leaving you free to do whatever it is unemployed Antichrists do."
"Okay, I'd like you to explain that, please. Because I didn't even know my mother was doing that until after she was dead. She left me some papers and-and things."
"No doubt." And things? I was suddenly consumed with curiosity. What things? Written things? Artifacts? Instructions? I made a mental note to ask my queen for a tour of Hell very soon.
"I didn't get it at first," she was explaining as if I would be moved by her distress. "I was upset, and scared, and it took me a while to figure it out."
"Elaborate."
"That she hadn't ever been grooming me to take her place. She'd been grooming Betsy. Once I did figure it out, I could see it, you know?" She was as relaxed as I'd ever seen her, one denim-clad leg primly crossed over the other, her right arm resting along the back of the pew as she turned to face me. "Why would she have stuck me with a job she hated? I don't know if she loved me, but I know she liked me, and I know she wanted me to be happy."
"Satan, a doting mother," was my dry comment.
She shrugged off my sarcasm. I did not care for the changes I saw in her. I had expected her to be intimidated when I revealed what I had surmised. I had not expected the relief... or the self-confidence.
"I realized the last thing Mother would have done was stick me with the world's first thankless job. And most enduring thankless job. So if not me, who? Who shared a bloodline with me, and so had the potential to go back and forth? Betsy. Who liked me, which was something my mother knew she could exploit? Betsy. And who did my mom never like, not this Betsy or other timeline Betsy or future Betsy? Who could she stick with it and also not care if that person got stuck with Hell?"
She waited, and I realized she was waiting for me to say my line. "Elizabeth, clearly."
"Right! Okay, but how to even start to prep for the change of management? Offer Betsy things she wants. Who in the history of anything would be better at offering someone what they wanted so my mother could get what she wanted?"
"She had a gift," I allowed.
"So when we went back in time, it wasn't so I could learn how to control 'porting through the dimensions... or not entirely. But it gave Betsy an idea of how to use the ability, too. Because she watched me learn, she was able to pick it up much faster once I'd left her in Hell. And if I needed any proof that my mother's plan was working, I had it when I found out about the silver shoes. I mean, come on! Silver slippers from The Wizard of Oz? Pure proof that Betsy's already starting to bend the place to her will."
"Yes, how clever." She was still lovely, but I could have cheerfully stripped the skin from her face and fed it to her. My beloved, manipulated into-what had her Judas sister called it? The first, most thankless job ever?
"Once I figured out what my mom had really been up to the last couple of years, I knew what I could do to help her work-her last work!-along: dump Betsy in Hell so she could see what Mother's death had stuck me with. And it worked. She saw and she offered to help me and now she thinks we're going to be running it together.
"And I'm not such a fool-
Wrong.
"-that I think Betsy's only in this to help me. She can see the potential as well as the harm in getting in on the ground floor. And it's a terrific way for her to keep an eye on me. That's the other thing she thinks would be an advantage." Unspoken: she thinks.
"Such a clever girl."
She was studying me as if she'd never seen me before. I likely had the same look on my own face. "You're not fooling me, you know. You're sitting here in the pew with me and the sun's shining through the windows, but you're just as capable of ripping the reverend's throat open and showering in her blood as you are of writing her a check. God's grace doesn't mean you're incapable of the evil you've been perpetuating for the last hundred-some years."
I made no comment, but wondered again what it was about me that made people think I was well into my next century. Perhaps Elizabeth had a point: I should dress younger. And perhaps she did not.
"It was a touching moment the other day. The prodigal son returned and all that. But you forgot about the other son."
"Oh?"
"Sure. No surprise; you're out of practice. The man had two sons, and the eldest-remember?-was the good one. He'd always done what his dad wanted, never gave him any trouble. And he had a huge problem with his little brother coming back after burning through their inheritance, coming back after pissing away all his money and cavorting with whores and basically being a real asshat-"
"I'm sorry," I said, struggling to hide my mingled horror and amusement. "Did you say 'asshat'?"
"Never mind! The point is, the little brother pulled all that crap and was still met with open arms. And fed fatted calf, too! 'Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.'"
Ah. It was time for me to say more of my lines. "'And he said to him, "Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found."'"
"Right." She sounded pleased. "You do remember. Well, my whole life, I've only tried to be good. Her whole life and yours, you never did. You never cared about anyone but yourselves. You know what that taught me? Being bad made her a queen; being good almost got me stuck with Hell. I'm done with it."
"Ah."
She waited, and I was childish enough to be glad to have disappointed her. "That's it? Ah?"
"What else is there to say? You were a fool a year ago and you remain one still. You still believe people will not change." I paused and shook my head. "Not quite right: you have decided you believe that to justify setting a trap for your sister, who only ever tried to help you. Congratulations: you fooled someone who loves you. A feat worthy of Machiavelli himself. Or any teenager."
She was watching me through narrowed eyes. "I don't expect you to take my side."
"At last, you have said something intelligent."
"And when you tell Betsy-"
"You know I will not tell the queen."
More surprise. I was surprised... and gratified at how much I enjoyed that look. "I do?"
I looked at her, unblinking. "Tell the woman I love that her cherished sister tricked her into a job out of laziness and selfishness? Explain to my queen that she has been manipulated for years and, after dispatching the Adversary, the author of all sin, the deceiver and the destroyer, the father of murder and the liar from the beginning-after ridding the earth of your blight of a mother-her reward is a job her enemy died to escape rather than accept the consequence of starting the war in Heaven? Of course not, never in life could I crush her with that. As you must have known."
She considered that and nodded. "Yeah. I did know."
"I shall do something much worse."
"Don't keep me in suspense," she said, trying for a jest and not... quite... getting there.
"It's quite simple. I am going to let you have what you think you desire. My Elizabeth, your sister, the Adversary's adversary, queen of the undead, will also be queen of the damned, if you'll pardon the obvious Anne Rice reference."
I stood and reached for my coat. Warm for Minnesota was still quite cold for a churchgoing vampire. "Elizabeth will rule Hell. And I shall do everything in my power to assist her." I shook out my coat and slipped into it while Laura gazed up at me from her pew.
"Big surprise. Eric Sinclair sticking his fingers into the power pie."
"Your analogy is almost as dreadful as your coat. I chose this spot so I could pray for you, as I did before you came, as I do now. May God pity you, Laura; may He shelter you from your most dread desire. May He save you from what you will bring to pass. You shall have what you want, and it shall be the end of you."
I left. Places to go, people to stomp, as Elizabeth would say, and both were true of me.
Besides, it would never do to keep my queen waiting.