On the negative side, we’re among the few angels who actually have to deal with the Opposition on a day to day basis, really get to know them, and it’s pretty much as unpleasant as you’d think. For one thing, most of the Hell-folk take the struggle really, really seriously. They’re kind of like student government nerds with fangs. They’ve been at war with Heaven for millennia and they intend to beat us someday. They’re not stupid enough to provoke something big-that might bring down both sides-but they’re always scraping away at the foundations like cartoon tooth decay. As far as they’re concerned Milton and the others who say they can’t ever beat us are just propaganda artists shilling for Heaven in hope of a cushy spot up at the House. Like I said, they’re playing the long game, and they’re always playing to win. It just tires you out sometimes.
Why don’t haters get tired as fast as the rest of us? There’s a question you’d think the afterlife would have answered for me, but no.
Meanwhile, there are also a few odd souls from both sides who’ve dropped out of the game altogether: tweeners and renegades. Most of them sell information to survive and so most of them have some kind of price on their heads. We advocates deal with them, from time to time. I even like some of them in a guarded sort of way.
Put it all together and it’s more than a bit like the Cold War used to be-deadly dangerous but invisible to most of the living, and we’re all expected to play our part in the struggle. My job is to make certain that as many souls as possible make it into Heaven, and like my friend Sam I’m pretty good at what I do, which is one reason why, even though my attitude sucks, my bosses mostly leave me alone.
Another reason, as I was about to discover, was that even the big boys up at the House don’t know everything. That was a lesson I would rather not have learned.
So there I was, standing in the Outside version of Edward L. Walker’s driveway while various heavenly and infernal minions fresh in from headquarters made themselves useful (or at least busy). Some were drawing glittering golden lines in the air or scrying with instruments of black glass. Grasswax gave me a look of quite impressive hatred from his place at the center of it all, then snatched a small, sticky-looking thing out of the air, which I assumed was Hell’s version of Walker’s guardian angel, and carried it to one side where the two of them proceeded to enjoy a spirited conversation-“spirited” meaning that Grasswax shook the Hell-minion around like someone trying to flick snot off his finger as the minion squealed out its innocence.
“He was here, Master, he was here! We was with him when he died!”
“Then where is he?” Grasswax stared at the underling until it started to steam like an abalone on a hot stone.
“We doesn’t know! We is confused!”
“Curse you. I’ll have to call Scorchscar.” The prosecutor produced a handful of fire and held it up before his face and said, “Prosecutor to Prosecutor’s Office, put me through to the inquisitor immediately.” He scowled at me, his cheek-holes pulsing wetly. The weird thing was, Grasswax was more scared than he was acting, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. Not that I’m an expert on infernal psychology. “By the Master’s hot, pimpled arse-I’ll be stuck here for hours!” he snarled at me. “This is all your fault somehow, you fucking little cloud-jockey, and I’ll make you pay for it. Don’t you try to sneak off!”
I turned away with the prosecutor’s charming voice still ringing in my ears: I had my own call to make. Just because the house in old Palo Alto was now so full of shining angelic presences that it looked like a Christmas display didn’t mean I could assume everybody knew who needed to. I took out my phone, which in its Outside form appeared as a rod of silvery light. A moment later Temuel was in front of me, although nobody else could see him or hear him.
“You’re joking, right?” he said when I told him the situation, but the Mule didn’t sound quite as dumbfounded as I would have expected. “No? Then I’ll get a fixer out there right away.” Then the magnitude of it apparently began to set in. “This is bad, you know. This is very, very bad, Doloriel. Hang tight and don’t say anything to the Opposition.”
“Not even, ‘Let go of my balls?’ Because I can promise you, Grasswax is squeezing pretty hard at the moment.”
“Just do your job.” And that was all. He was gone. But if Temuel hadn’t known about the missing soul then where had all these heavenly functionaries come from? Not to mention all the nasty little things from the Opposition side? I put the question away for later, because just then a new, extra-shiny Zipper flared beside me and the Mule’s fixer appeared.
Another quick note: “Fixer” is actually a sort of job description. They’re really called “ministers”-not the priest kind but more like a government minister. You hardly ever see one. You hardly ever want to see one. Their job is to quickly remove the “fuck” from “fuck-up”, and nobody wants to be involved in one of those situations.
I already was, of course. A really big one, from the looks of it. I had a feeling it was going to be a long time until I saw my apartment again.
The fixer/minister looked a bit like a plague doctor from the seventeenth century, in long white robes and a strange white mask that might have represented a novelty drinking bird or a Winnie-the-Pooh Heffalump. He also may not have had any feet under those robes, but it was hard to see because he kind of glowed down at the bottom. He also moved like someone who knew no hurry.
He spent a long time staring at the car and the corpse, then at last turned to me. “You Are the Advocate?” He even talked with audible capitals.
“Yes, Minister.”
“Tell Us What You Know.“
I did, as concisely as I could, without guesses or assumptions. I had met one of these guys before (that’s another story) and knew that the last thing you wanted to do was waste their time. The one I met before had been half a whim away from demoting me all the way to the Bless the Beasts Division, where I’d be watching over depressed field mice, and that case hadn’t been anywhere near this serious.
I had just finished my story when another light glimmered in the air, this one dull and smoky-red, and someone else stepped through-or some several, to be precise: a woman and two men, although all those terms fall very far short, descriptively speaking. My friend Sweetheart is about the size of an Alaskan bear but these two guys could have been his bigger brothers. Both had necks wider than my chest and sported the dead gray skin common among the less pain-sensitive minions of Hell, as well as facial expressions that suggested a hammer-blow on the head would barely get their attention. In short, they had the look of argument-winners-the “you and what army?” kind of arguments.
The female demon, though, was something else. I don’t think I’d ever seen anything like her outside of a few fetish magazines (professional research only, of course). She was tiny, for one thing, especially standing between those two bonebreakers, and she was also astonishingly lovely by any normal standard, with straight white-blonde hair, skin as pale as milk, and long, stockinged legs prominently displayed by a schoolgirl miniskirt. She looked like Wonderland’s Alice as dressed for success by a committee of manga-reading Japanese businessmen. I didn’t expect to see one of the Opposition’s heavy hitters looking so mainstream. Usually they’re big on horns and fangs and weird, crusty skin.