Undead and Unforgiven by MaryJanice Davidson Read Free Book Online

makes no sense but is true regardless.
    â€œRight? Betsy?” I blinked and realized Marc had been waiting for an answer.
    â€œOkay, I see what you mean. If we put up flyers—”
    â€œWe’re not putting up flyers, for crying out loud,” Cathie muttered, staring down at the minutes. “What year do you think it is? Why not just round up all the town criers, have
them
disseminate the info?”
    â€œâ€”what good does it do? The people who ‘earned’ Hell, for lack of a better word”—There were
kids
down here, for God’s sake. No kid on the planet fucking deserved an eternity in a lake of fire and that was the fucking end of it. Although if a kid spent a century in a lake of fire, were they a kid still?—“they’re stuck here now. Knowing the rules won’t help them avoid Hell. It’s too late. Isn’t it?”
    â€œIt’s still a starting point. As I said, most of them know what they did to deserve eternal damnation.” Father Markuslooked around the table at all of us. “But if I understand Betsy’s plan correctly, they can learn what to do to earn their—I don’t know how you’d say it—heavenly parole?”
    â€œI can’t decide if they go to Heaven,” I said, shocked. “It’s absurd enough that I’ve got any say at all in what goes on in Hell! That’s . . . you know.” I pointed at the Lego ceiling. “Up to the big guy. So to speak. Once they’re paroled, they can leave here and go wherever.” Which reminded me: we needed some parole officers of the damned. I might not be as hard-core as the devil was, but I’m not about to release random spirits back into the wild without a way to keep an eye on them for a while. “Tina, while I’m thinking of it, could you make a note for us to talk to some actual parole officers, pick their brains?”
    â€œOf course.” She tap-tap-tapped on her phone, which would have been impressive except I knew how much time she spent playing Cupcake Crash on the thing.
    No one else had said anything, so I added, “Even if we could get the word to the living: ‘Hey, here are the new and improved Ten Commandments, even though that’s not for me to say—oh, who am I? Just a vampire who runs Hell on the side—anyway, I’ve got no authority on earth over regular people and God is probably generally disgusted with me, but just abide by the new (except not really) commandments as best you can and maybe you won’t end up with an eternal season pass to the Mall of America of the damned.’”
    â€œThat . . . probably won’t work,” Tina said, ever the tactician. (That’s what you call someone who’s super tactful, right?)
    â€œBetsy has a point about not choosing who goes to Hell,” Markus said. “That’s completely out of her—your—purview.” He shifted his full attention to me. “All you can do is decide what to do with the souls who show up in your territory.”
    I shivered. My territory used to be designer shoe storesand Orange Julius drive-thrus. Then it was the whole of the vampire nation. Now it was the endless dimension that was Hell, with all its billions of inhabitants. If I kept getting these unasked-for promotions, I’d end up running the universe if I wasn’t careful. And who needed
that
headache? I now perfectly understand why God created the universe and then basically went on vacation. I could almost picture the mind-set: “Here it is, you’ve got free will. Enjoy and good luck.” God: the first slack-ass.
    â€œI guess it’s God’s purview,” I said at last. “And He’s welcome to it! My end’s hard enough. I wonder—d’you think He knows? About Satan being dead and me being undead but nominally in charge? Of course He does,” I answered myself. “He’s