I staggered toward the window, which to my happiness didn’t look barred or defended in any unusual way, as if I truly was a houseguest. I was hoping a view of the outside might give me an idea of what time of the infernal day it was, which would be a start at orienting myself. It seemed to me that I had been in Hell for months, and although I didn’t have a formal deadline on leaving again, I knew if I didn’t find the Countess of Cold Hands and get out soon I’d never get out at all. The crushing weight of the place, the sheer, dull horror of it was wearing me away. Only the memory of Caz was keeping me moving, the knowledge that if I didn’t do anything, her lot was going to be the same as all these others: eternal misery. In fact, I had probably made it worse for her, and not just by exposing her to my sparkling, charming self. I doubted Eligor was going to let her get back to the real world ever again, so even that small solace was denied her.
No, I couldn’t worry about that now, I told myself: it was too far away, too unlikely. One thing at a time.
I reached the window by standing on a heavy chair made of some kind of animal bones. But even when I got to the windowsill I still couldn’t tell anything about the time. We seemed to be at the bottom of one of the soaring towers, a few hundred feet beneath the tangled forest of spires and connecting bridges I’d seen when I came out of the Terminus. One of the city’s massive black walls loomed nearby, effectively cutting off my view of anything but the giant stones themselves, as though a starless night had been tipped on its side and shoved up next to the window. The light that painted the courtyard in red could have been anything, a day beacon, a dangerous fire nearby, or even just the glow of one of the open lava pits that pocked Pandaemonium like titanic gopher holes.
As I shakily climbed down from the window, awkward with only one hand and my whole right arm still throbbing with pain, I noticed something lying on top of a broad chest at the foot of the bed. Facedown in the middle of a gentleman’s grooming assortment, tweezers and brushes and such, lay a heavy hand mirror. I hadn’t seen my own face since I’d been in Hell. I’d grown quite familiar with my gray-and-black skin, patterned like some creature of the African Veldt, even fond of it (because it was tough as buffalo hide) but my features were still a mystery to me, except that they felt human to the touch. Hell was very short of reflecting surfaces; almost no clear standing water, of course, and most metal too defaced by rust and corrosion to show a reflection. I lifted the mirror with a mixture of unease and curiosity.
I got a shock, too, I can tell you.
It wasn’t that the face didn’t match the skin, because it did. The dark gray and light gray had the same streaky pattern, and black stripes rose from my jaw on either side of my mouth, over my eyes, and up into curls that looked a little like Maori tattoos across my forehead. The mouth was fanged, but I knew that already, and even the eyes were pretty much par for the course: a pale, goatish orange with vertical slits like a cat’s. But the astonishing part was that it was my face under it all; Bobby Dollar, immediately recognizable, like a hastily painted stolen car. No shit. The demon-body amounted to no more than camouflage, and I had real doubts that it would fool anyone who had met up with my earthly self—a group that included Grand Duke Eligor, the monster I was planning to rob.
Panic swept over me. I had been walking around in more or less my own face the whole time I’d been here. How could that be? Had Lameh failed me? Or had Temuel betrayed me somehow? But why would he go to such elaborate lengths when all he needed to do was report me as AWOL and let his superiors do the rest? The Ephorate investigating my buddy Sam’s Third Way movement had seemed to be only a moment’s irritation away from condemning me anyway.
I’d been walking around Hell wearing a huge “KILL ME” sign for weeks without knowing it.
I tried to calm myself. Perhaps it wasn’t anything to do with Temuel betraying me, but some effect of the body transfer. After all, I’d never heard of any angel using a demon body before. Back on Earth, my bodies always looked kind of similar. Maybe this was the same process at work. But did that mean that our souls had built-in facial features? That seemed crazy to me.
The door opened, startling me so that I dropped the heavy mirror. I tried to grab at it with the hand I no longer had, but only kept it from breaking by flinging out my (bare) foot and letting the mirror fall on that instead.
“What are you doing, my lord?” said Belle. “You will hurt yourself!” The servant hurried to me, picking up the mirror as though it were light as a playing card, then used her other strong hand to guide me back toward the bed. “Too soon! Too soon to be getting up!” She shook her head like a mother gorilla with a wayward youngster and gave me a gentle push that almost flung me across the mattress and off the other side. “Back you go. My lady will be angry with me if you harm yourself. Do you want me to lose my position?”
I assured her that I didn’t, and in truth it was rather nice to settle back into the sheets, but I still couldn’t figure out what was happening. Why was Lady Zinc treating me so kindly? I was at best a very minor member of the demonic nobility. My hostess, by comparison, clearly had an awfully nice thing going here. Did she want something from me?
And now I had to worry about my treacherous face, too. Worrying is hard work, though, and my body was still very weak. Sleep soon chased my thoughts away.
I woke to find Vera and her servant tenderly changing my bandages. The wrist had almost completely healed, the ragged marks of Block’s teeth now covered with new, pink skin, but what was astonishing was that my wrist seemed to be growing new bone already. I don’t know what they put in these Hell-bodies but they heal faster than the ones Heaven provides, and at that moment I wasn’t complaining. The worst of the pain was gone, nothing left but a mild throb, and although my brain still prickled when I first woke up, I had a sense of physical well-being I hadn’t felt since beginning my infernal adventure.
“You are doing so well!” Vera said when she saw I was watching. She got up quickly, as though sitting on the bed of a man awake was different than sitting on the bed of a slumbering invalid. “I think you are ready to go outside. Would you like that?”
No shit. I was feeling surprisingly well, and although the timer in the back of my thoughts was still ticking, I nodded. A chance to reconnoiter could only do me good.
“Wonderful,” she said, and the look of pleasure on her pretty face was girlish. Why was this woman in Hell? Did I even want to know? “Then we shall go out tonight. Francis and Elizabeth are having a party, two of my very closest friends, and you shall be my escort, handsome Snakestaff.”
I suffered getting dolled-up by the two women with as much good grace as I could muster, since no matter what secret worries I might have, Vera had done me nothing but good so far. Eventually they rigged me up in what they thought of as suitable clothes, including a tie and what seemed a distinctly Victorian-looking long coat. A pretty damn fancy outfit. Once I was dressed and seated, Vera herself very tenderly tied the tie, a narrow affair more like a ribbon than anything I was used to. I thought it made me look a bit like a posh Old West gunfighter (with a skin condition and yellow eyes). “It’s the climate, of course,” she told me, breathing on my ear. “Too hot for an ordinary tie.”
“Do I have to wear one?” I’ve never liked the things.
Vera gave me a look of undisguised horror. “Do you think I could take you to meet my dearest friends without you being properly dressed?”
While I waited for her to finish her own preparations, I sat stiffly in a chair and watched brawny Belle tidy my room. “She likes you,” the big woman said with a distinct twinkle in her eye. She pushed heavy furniture around as if the pieces were made of balsa, then swept beneath them. “She thinks you’re handsome.”